Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all.Collection: Peace
Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.Collection: Brainy
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.Collection: Imagination
Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.Collection: History
It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.Collection: Wisdom
Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven.Collection: Courage
We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.Collection: Wisdom
One must judge men not by their opinions, but by what their opinions have made of them.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Change
Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.Collection: Intelligence
To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.
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.
Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.
Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.
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.
To grow wiser means to learn to know better and better the faults to which this instrument with which we feel and judge can be subject.
We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever as they are.
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.
The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.
Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.
With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.
He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.
God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs.
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.
What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.
Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.
That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.
To be content with life or to live merrily, rather all that is required is that we bestow on all things only a fleeting, superficial glance; the more thoughtful we become the more earnest we grow.