One man cannot practice many arts with success.
Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man - the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.
This is the truth: as from a fire aflame thousands of sparks come forth, even so from the Creator an infinity of beings have life and to him return again.
I am a soul. I know well that what I shall render up to the grave is not myself. That which is myself will go elsewhere. Earth, thou art not my abyss!
A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.
Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.
Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.
My different personalities leave me in peace now.
Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.
The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth.
If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me.
All styles are good except the tiresome kind.
Politics have no relation to morals.
Time is money.
The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.
Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.
Age appears to be best in four things old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.
If the skies fall, one may hope to catch larks.
An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.
When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.
I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this.
Caught up in life, you see it badly. You suffer from it or enjoy it too much. The artist, in my opinion, is a monstrosity, something outside of nature.
Wisdom is a sacred communion.
One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.
I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.
The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.
I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things.
Freedom is a possession of inestimable value.
He who can be, and therefore is, another's, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.
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