Quote collection
684 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The world has proclaimed the reign of freedom, especially of late, but what do we see in this freedom of theirs? Nothing but slavery and self-destruction! For the world says: "You have desires and so satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the most rich and powerful. Don't be afraid of satisfying them and even multiply your desires.""
"There is, indeed, nothing more annoying than to be, for instance, wealthy, of good family, nice-looking, fairly intelligent, and even good-natured, and yet to have no talents, no special faculty, no peculiarity even, not one idea of one's own, to be precisely "like other people."
"You are told a lot about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved since childhood, is perhaps the best education of all."
"I'm drunk but truthful."
"I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody."
"Power is only vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up. There is only one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare!"
"I cannot truly imagine a truly great person who hasn't suffered."
"An artist must know the reality he is depicting in its minutest detail. In my opinion we have only one shining example of that - Count Leo Tolstoy."
"Sometimes we desire absolute nonsense because in our stupidity we see in this nonsense the easiest way of attaining some conjectural good."
"And though I suffer for you, yet it eases my heart to suffer for you."
"You will have many enemies, but even your foes will love you. Life will bring you many misfortunes, but you will find your happiness in them, and will bless life and will make others bless it-which is what matters most."
"No, evidently habit means a lot. The devil knows what habit can do to a person."
"Two times two will be four even without my will. Is that what you call man's free will?"
"Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also."
"It's in the homes of spiteful old widows that one finds such cleanliness."
"Can a man possessing conciousness ever really respect himself?"
"If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once."
"I have a plan-to go mad."
"I am a sick man...I am a spiteful man. I am a most unpleasant man."
"How many ideas have there been in the history of man which were unthinkable ten years before they appeared?"