"Men still have to be governed by deception."

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

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

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

"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."

"A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents."

"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."

"If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards."

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

"The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter."

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

"We cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing."

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

"He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage - he won't encounter many rivals."

"One must judge men not by their opinions, but by what their opinions have made of them."

"With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed."

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

"Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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 are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself."

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

"The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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