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

If it were true what in the end would be gained? Nothing but another truth. Is this such a mighty advantage? We have enough old truths still to digest, and even these we would be quite unable to endure if we did not sometimes flavor them with lies.

Body and soul: a horse harnessed beside an ox.

We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy - at least until we have become as clever as they are.

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

Cultivate that kind of knowledge which enables us to discover for ourselves in case of need that which others have to read or be told of.

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.

When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?

What makes our poetry so contemptible nowadays is its paucity of ideas. If you want to be read, invent. Who the Devil wouldn't like to read something new?

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