If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.
Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself.
I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.
There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things.
The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.
Many great actions are committed in small struggles.
Trust not too much to appearances.
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.
Sculpture is the art of the intelligence.
In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin.
To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.
A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.
Love has features which pierce all hearts, he wears a bandage which conceals the faults of those beloved. He has wings, he comes quickly and flies away the same.
Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea they become powerless when they oppose it.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.
Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys.
Genius without education is like silver in the mine.
The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?
There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.
An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
Ezra was right half the time, and when he was wrong, he was so wrong you were never in any doubt about it.
No emperor has the power to dictate to the heart.
Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces.
Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.
Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.
The tree of knowledge is not the tree of life! And yet can we cast out of our spirits all the good or evil poured into them by so many learned generations? Ignorance cannot be learned.
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