"To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away."

"A man's delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes."

"Pride is the direct appreciation of oneself."

"Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!"

"Spirit? Who is that fellow? And where do you know him from? Is he perhaps not merely an arbitrary and convenient hypostasis that you have not even defined, let alone deduced or proved? Do you think you have an audience of old women in front of you?"

"To free a man from error is not to deprive him of anything but to give him something: for the knowledge that a thing is false is a piece of truth. No error is harmless: sooner or later it will bring misfortune to him who harbours it. Therefore deceive no one, but rather confess ignorance of what you do not know, and leave each man to devise his own articles of faith for himself."

"Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man."

"Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest."

"National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right."

"Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect."

"All striving comes from lack, from a dissatisfaction with one's condition, and is thus suffering as long as it is not satisfied; but no satisfaction is lasting; instead, it is only the beginning of a new striving. We see striving everywhere inhibited in many ways, struggling everywhere; and thus always suffering; there is no final goal of striving, and therefore no bounds or end to suffering."

"Gaiety alone as it were is the hard cash of happiness everything else is just a promissory note."

"Hatred comes from the heart contempt from the head and neither feeling is quite within our control."

"Very often inertia, selfishness, and vanity play the greatest role in our trust in others; inertia when we prefer to trust somebody else, in order not to investigate, be vigilant, or act ourselves; selfishness when the desire to speak about our own affairs tempts us to confide in someone else; vanity when it concers something that we are proud of."

"A man's face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man's thoughts and aspirations."

"The will is the strong blind man who carries on his shoulders the lame man who can see."

"A sense of humour is the only divine quality of man."

"Boredom is certainly not an evil to be taken lightly: it will ultimately etch lines of true despair onto a face. It makes beings with as little love for each other as humans nonetheless seek each other with such intensity, and in this way becomes the source of sociability."

"It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain."

"Fame is something which must be won honour is something which must not be lost."

"If the immediate and direct purpose of our life is not suffering then our existence is the most ill-adapted to its purpose in the world."

"Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth."

"Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection."

"I have long held the opinion that the amount of noise that anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity and therefore be regarded as a pretty fair measure of it."

"All geniuses are peculiarly inclined to solitude, to which they are driven as much by their difference from others as the inner wealth with which they are quipped, since among humans, among diamonds, only the uncommonly great are suited as solitaires: the ordinary ones must be set in clusters to produce any effect."

"To measure a man's happiness only by what he gets, and not also by what he expects to get, is as futile as to try and express a fraction which shall have a numerator but no denominator."

"Optimism, where it is not just the thoughtless talk of someone with only words in his flat head, strikes me as not only absurd, but even a truly wicked way of thinking, a bitter mockery of the unspeakable sufferings of humanity."

"The ingenious person will above all strive for freedom from pain and annoyance, for tranquility and leisure, and consequently seek a quiet, modest life, as undisturbed as possible, and accordingly, after some acquaintance with so-called human beings, choose seclusion and, if in possession of a great mind, even solitude. For the more somebody has in himself, the less he needs from the outside and the less others can be to him. Therefore, intellectual distinction leads to unsociability."

"To live alone is the fate of all great souls."

"Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them."

"There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity."

"The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body."

"Just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read. If one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost."

"The origin of wickedness is the cliff upon which theism, just as much as pantheism, is wrecked; for both imply optimism. However, evil and sin, both in their terrible magnitude, cannot be disavowed; indeed, because of the promised punishments for the latter, the former is only further increased. Whence all this, in a world that is either itself a God or the well-intentioned work of a God?"

"When we see that almost everything men devote their lives to attain, sparing no effort and encountering a thousand toils and dangers in the process, has, in the end, no further object than to raise themselves in the estimation of others; when we see that not only offices, titles, decorations, but also wealth, nay, even knowledge[1] and art, are striven for only to obtain, as the ultimate goal of all effort, greater respect from one's fellowmen,-is not this a lamentable proof of the extent to which human folly can go?"

"To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them."

"Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude."

"Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think."

"Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame."

"A man can do as he will, but not will as he will."

"It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character."

"Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life."

"Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other."

"Genius lives only one storey above madness."

"Truth is most beautiful undraped."

"We should comport ourselves with the masterpieces of art as with exalted personages - stand quietly before them and wait till they speak to us."

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

"The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom."

"The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust."

"Only by the aid of language does reason bring about its most important achievements, namely the harmonious and consistent action of several individuals, the planned cooperation of many thousands, civilization, the State; and then, science, the storing up of previous experience, the summarizing into one concept of what is common, the communication of truth, the spreading of error, thoughts and poems, dogmas and superstitions. The animal learns to know death only when he dies, but man consciously draws every hour nearer his death; and at times this makes life a precarious business, even to the man who has not already recognized this character of constant annihilation in the whole of life itself."