Bad cooks - and the utter lack of reason in the kitchen - have delayed human development longest and impaired it most.

The existence of forgetting has never been proved: We only know that some things don't come to mind when we want them.

To be ashamed of one's immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one's morality.

Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.

You lack the courage to be consumed in flames and to become ashes: so you will never become new, and never young again!

Truth as Circe. - Error has transformed animals into men; is truth perhaps capable of changing man back into an animal?

The wise who control their body, who control their tongue, the wise who control their mind, are indeed well controlled.

In the end we are always rewarded for our good will, our patience, fair-mindedness, and gentleness with what is strange.

It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn't.

Whoever feels predestined to see and not to believe will find all believers too noisy and pushy: he guards against them.

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

What really raises one's indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering

To live alone one must be a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both - a philosopher.

Sometimes all you need to do to win clever people over to a principle is to present it in the form of a shocking paradox.

If Islam despises Christianity, it has a thousandfold right to do so: Islam at least assumes that it is dealing with men.

Untroubled, scornful, outrageous - that is how wisdom wants us to be: she is a woman and never loves anyone but a warrior.

A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.

What really raises one's indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

That deed is not well done of which a man must repent, and the reward of which he receives crying and with a tearful face.

It is obvious that all sense has gone out of modern marriage; which is, however, no objection to marriage but to modernity.

Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches - he has made music sick.

One must learn to love oneself with a wholesome and healthy love, so that one can bear to be with oneself and need not roam.

Follow in the footsteps of your fathers' virtue! How could you hope to climb high unless your fathers' will climbs with you?

The poison by which the weaker nature is destroyed is strengthening to the strong individual and he does not call it poison.

The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.

While the river of life glides along smoothly, it remains the same river; only the landscape on either bank seems to change.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong.

If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself.

Surrounded by the flames of jealousy, the jealous one winds up, like the scorpion, turning the poisoned sting against himself.

The same passions in man and woman nonetheless differ in tempo; hence man and woman do not cease misunderstanding one another.

A refined nature is vexed by knowing that some one owes it thanks, a coarse nature by knowing that it owes thanks to some one.

There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.

Some people appear to be more meager in talent than they are, just because the tasks they set themselves are always too great.

Everyone thinks that the principal thing to the tree is the fruit, but in point of fact the principal thing to it is the seed.

The great epochs of our life are the occasions when we gain the courage to rebaptize our evil qualities as our best qualities.

A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.

The word 'Christianity' is already a misunderstanding - in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.

He in whom all this is destroyed, and taken out with the very root, he, when freed from hatred and wise, is called respectable.

In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.

All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

The complete irresponsibility of man for his actions and his nature is the bitterest drop which he who understands must swallow.

Have you noticed there are no interesting people in heaven? -Just a hint to the girls as to where they can find their salvation.

This mother needs happy, reputable children, and that one needs unhappy ones: otherwise she cannot show her kindness as a mother.

There would be no sunshine in society if the born flatterers, I mean the so-called amiable people, did not bring it in with them.

Truth will have no gods before it.- The belief in truth begins with the doubt of all truths in which one has previously believed.

When we stand the truth on its head we generally fail to notice that our head is not standing where it should be standing either.

I understand by 'freedom of spirit' something quite definite - the unconditional will to say No, where it is dangerous to say No.

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