He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals.

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.

One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.

Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way.

Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.

To read means to borrow; to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts.

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

He who understands the wise is wise already.

Let me tell you how the French seduce you. They are the most bloody seductive people on Earth. They are charming, they are well-mannered and they praise and flatter you.

I often hear people say that a person suffering from Alzheimer's is not the person they knew. I wonder to myself - Who are they then?

When he got loaded, the human cannonball knew there were not many men of his caliber.

My appearance was always good and my ability to play on the piano, especially ragtime, which was then at the height of its vogue, made me a welcome guest.

If someone asks, ‘But what in the end is a philosopher?’ I would say ‘A philosopher is a human being who fights in theory.’

God is conscience. He is even the atheism of the atheist.

Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised.

I'm a little territorial and defensive.

Words are the pen of the heart, but music is the pen of the soul.

To inquire and to create; these are the grand centres around which all human pursuits revolve, or at least to these objects do they all more or less directly refer.