Quote collection
571 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"In our early youth we sit before the life that lies ahead of us like children sitting before the curtain in a theatre, in happy and tense anticipation of whatever is going to appear. Luckily we do not know what really will appear."
"To read a book is to hold an entire world in the palm of your hand. That world is unique to you; no two readers can ever inhabit the same world"
"For, as you know, religions are like glow-worms; they shine only when it is dark."
"Always to see the general in the particular is the very foundation of genius."
"To desire immortality is to desire the eternal perpetuation of a great mistake"
"To forgive and forget means to throw away dearly bought experience."
"Life to the great majority is only a constant struggle for mere existence, with the certainty of losing it at last."
"The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time."
"Human existence is an error...it is bad today and every day it gets worse, until the worst happens."
"Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another."
"For our improvement we need a mirror."
"We deceive and flatter no one by such delicate artificies as we do our own selves."
"Will without intellect is the most vulgar and common thing in the world, possessed by every blockhead, who, in the gratification of his passions, shows the stuff of which he is made."
"In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head."
"The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting."
"Talent works for money and fame; the motive which moves genius to productivity is, on the other hand, less easy to determine."
"The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust."
"Shame on such a morality that is worthy of pariahs, and that fails to recognize the eternal essence that exists in every living thing, and shines forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun!"
"Reasonable and vicious are quite consistent with each other, in fact, only through their union are great and far-reaching crimes possible"
"National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right."