To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.
He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage - he won't encounter many rivals.
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.
A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.
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.
I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.
Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficult, elephants and poodles find many things obscure.
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.
Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever.
We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.
Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.
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.
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.
We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him.
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.
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.
To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.
Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven.
The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by poor people who cannot afford the real thing.
Men still have to be governed by deception.
