To receive applause for works which do not demand all our powers hinders our advance towards a perfecting of our spirit. It usually means that thereafter we stand still.

The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things.

A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.

Just as we outgrow a pair of trousers, we outgrow acquaintances, libraries, principles, etc., at times before they're worn out and times - and this is the worst of all - before we have new ones.

The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.

Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.

If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.

Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.

Men still have to be governed by deception.

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

It is in the gift for employing all the vicissitudes of life to one's own advantage and to that of one's craft that a large part of genius consists.

The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.

The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority.

Man loves company - even if it is only that of a small burning candle.

Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.

I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.

Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.

One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.

He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.

If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of saying it that is a little bit special.

To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.

If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.

There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.

A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.

When an acquaintance goes by I often step back from my window, not so much to spare him the effort of acknowledging me as to spare myself the embarrassment of seeing that he has not done so.

The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by poor people who cannot afford the real thing.

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.

Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.

We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.

It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a child makes when it hits the chair it has bumped into.

Doubt must be no more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous.

We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.

God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs.

It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.

Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.

The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.

The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.

With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.

Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven.

I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.

There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.

Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.

Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.

Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficult, elephants and poodles find many things obscure.

What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I don't deny we sometimes draw the right conclusions, but don't we just as often draw the wrong ones?

To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.