That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.

Once the good man was dead, one wore his hat and another his sword as he had worn them, a third had himself barbered as he had, a fourth walked as he did, but the...

Cautiousness in judgment is nowadays to be recommended to each and every one: if we gained only one incontestable truth every ten years from each of our philosophical writers the harvest we reaped would be...

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

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

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.

So-called professional mathematicians have, in their reliance on the relative incapacity of the rest of mankind, acquired for themselves a reputation for profundity very similar to the reputation for sanctity possessed by theologians.

Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do...

In each of us there is a little of all of us.

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

Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever.

There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face.

Sickness is mankind’s greatest defect.

A man is never more serious than when he praise himself.

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...

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.

He was always smoothing and polishing himself, and in the end he became blunt before he was sharp.

It is hardly to be believed how spiritual reflections when mixed with a little physics can hold people’s attention and give them a livelier idea of God than do the often ill-applied examples of his...

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

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

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.

The proof that the human being is the noblest of all creatures is that no other creature has ever denied it.

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.

It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth...

The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.

Most subjects at universities are taught for no other purpose than that they may be re-taught when the students become teachers.

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

The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.

What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer’s own weaknesses reflected back from others.

The great rule: 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.

If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.

We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings their original state of innocence, to find our way out of the rubble of things alien to us, to begin to feel...

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

If we make a couple of discoveries here and there we need not believe things will go on like this for ever. Just as we hit water when we dig in the earth, so we...

If another Messiah was born he could hardly do so much good as the printing-press.

A schoolteacher or professor cannot educate individuals, he educates only species.

I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.

The most successful tempters and thus the most dangerous are the deluded deluders.

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.

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

There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true...

Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush, a cloud, whatever you will, even a man, only no longer make me.

One is rarely an impulsive innovator after the age of sixty, but one can still be a very fine orderly and inventive thinker. One rarely procreates children at that age, but one is all the...

There is no more important rule of conduct in the world than this: attach yourself as much as you can to people who are abler than you and yet not so very different that you...

He swallowed a lot of wisdom, but all of it seems to have gone down the wrong way.