 The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery. |
| 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. |
| The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things. |
| To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so. |
| We cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing. |
| To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite. |
| 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. |
| One must judge men not by their opinions, but by what their opinions have made of them. |
| Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions. |
| God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs. |
| 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 me. |
| Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit. |
| 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. |
| Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficult, elephants and poodles find many things obscure. |
| What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others. |
