One should use praise to recognize what one is not.

As if one could know the good a person is capable of, when one doesn't know the bad he might do.

There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange.

Pessimists are not boring. Pessimists are right. Pessimists are superfluous.

There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth.

He who is obsessed by death is made guilty by it.

Whenever you observe an animal closely, you feel as if a human being sitting inside were making fun of you.

Most religions do not make men better, only warier.

The fear of burglars is not only the fear of being robbed, but also the fear of a sudden and unexpected clutch out of the darkness.

There is no doubt: the study of man is just beginning, at the same time that his end is in sight.

One should not confuse the craving for life with endorsement of it.

Words are not too old, only people are too old if they use the same words too frequently.

All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.

When you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about.

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.

The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well.

Success is the space one occupies in the newspaper. Success is one day's insolence.

Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim.

One should use praise to recognize what one is not.

Adults find pleasure in deceiving a child. They consider it necessary, but they also enjoy it. The children very quickly figure it out and then practice deception themselves.

Someone who always has to lie discovers that every one of his lies is true.

It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.

Justice requires that everyone should have enough to eat. But it also requires that everyone should contribute to the production of food.

People love as self-recognition what they hate as an accusation.

The profoundest thoughts of the philosophers have something trickle about them. A lot disappears in order for something to suddenly appear in the palm of the hand.

A "modern" man has nothing to add to modernism, if only because he has nothing to oppose it with. The well-adapted drop off the dead limb of time like lice.

Every decision is liberating, even if it leads to disaster. Otherwise, why do so many people walk upright and with open eyes into their misfortune?

Success listens only to applause. To all else it is deaf.

Whether or not God is dead: it is impossible to keep silent about him who was there for so long.

People's fates are simplified by their names.

The planet's survival has become so uncertain that any effort, any thought that presupposes an assured future amounts to a mad gamble.

The paranoiac is the exact image of the ruler. The only difference is their position in the world. One might even think the paranoiac the more impressive of the two because he is sufficient unto himself and cannot be shaken by failure.

His head is made of stars, but not yet arranged into constellations.

A 'modern' man has nothing to add to modernism, if only because he has nothing to oppose it with. The well-adapted drop off the dead limb of time like lice.

A crowd exists so long as it has an unattained goal.

The crowd is the same everywhere in all periods and cultures it remains essentially the same among men of the most diverse origin education and language.

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.

Poets lose half the praise they should have got, Could it be known what they discreetly blot.

Books that have become classics - books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal - always remind me of retired colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay.

Happiness is within. It has nothing to do with how much applause you get or how many people praise you. Happiness comes when you believe that you have done something truly meaningful.

I love criticism just so long as it's unqualified praise.

To praise it would amount to praising myself. For the entire content of the work... coincides almost exactly with my own meditations which have occupied my mind for the past thirty or thirty-five years.

The sacrifices made by veterans and their willingness to fight in defense of our nation merit our deep respect and praise - and to the best in benefits and medical care.

There is no belittling worse than to over praise a man.

It was not the part of His kindly love that he who was to praise God's divine generosity in regard to others should be compelled to condemn it in regard to himself.

Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.

There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise.

I praise the Lord here today. I know that all my talent and all my ability comes from him, and without him I'm nothing and I thank him for his great blessing.

I find war detestable but those who praise it without participating in it even more so.