All men are born with a nose and ten fingers, but no one was born with a knowledge of God.
We are never so defensless against suffering as when we love.
Morality is of the highest importance - but for us, not for God.
Just as the soul fills the body, so God fills the world. Just as the soul bears the body, so God endures the world. Just as the soul sees but is not seen, so God sees but is not seen. Just as the soul feeds the body, so God gives food to the world.
Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.
The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.
Speak ill of no man, but speak all the good you know of everybody.
A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.
Even in the centuries which appear to us to be the most monstrous and foolish, the immortal appetite for beauty has always found satisfaction.
Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
I've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'm afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.
Society cannot share a common communication system so long as it is split into warring factions.
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil.
There are as many kinds of beauty as there are habitual ways of seeking happiness.
Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.
Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.
The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.
Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.
The sexual embrace can only be compared with music and with prayer.
If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.
It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.
As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.
Veiling truth in mystery.
We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.
Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.
Clever and attractive women do not want to vote they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.
About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.
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