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.
Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.
Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.
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.
The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.
If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.
He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.
Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.
The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority.
The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.
