A man of correct insight among those who are duped and deluded resembles one whose watch is right while all the clocks in the town give the wrong time.
The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body.
In truth the most striking figure for the relation of the two is that of the strong blind man carrying the sighted lame man on his shoulders.
Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.
All the cruelty and torment of which the world is full is in fact merely the necessary result of the totality of the forms under which the will to live is objectified.
Ordinary people merely think how they shall 'spend' their time; a man of talent tries to 'use' it.
For whence did Dante take the materials for his hell but from this our actual world? And yet he made a very proper hell of it.
Something of great importance now past is inferior to something of little importance now present, in that the latter is a reality, and related to the former as something to nothing.
A man of talent will strive for money and reputation; but the spring that moves genius to the production of its works is not as easy to name
Genuine contempt, on the other hand, is the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another.
Just as the largest library, badly arranged, is not so useful as a very moderate one that is well arranged, so the greatest amount of knowledge, if not elaborated by our own thoughts, is worth much less than a far smaller volume that has been abundantly and repeatedly thought over.
Music is the answer to the mystery of life. The most profound of all the arts, It expresses the deepest thoughts of life.
It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else's meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.
The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.
Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will. (One can choose what to do, but not what to want.)
The animal lacks both anxiety and hope because its consciousness is restricted to what is clearly evident and thus to the present moment: the animal is the present incarnate.
We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.
Wir tappen im Labyrinth unsers Lebenswandels und im Dunkel unserer Forschungen umher: helleAugenblicke erleuchten dabei wie Blitze unsernWeg. We grope about in the labyrinth of our life and in the obscurity of our investigations; bright moments illuminate our path like flashes of lightning.
Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes; this is partly because it gets unobstructed hold of the hearer’s mind without his being distracted by secondary thoughts, and partly because he feels that here he is not being corrupted or deceived by the arts of rhetoric, but that the whole effect is got from the thing itself.
The happiness which we receive from ourselves is greater than that which we obtain from our surroundings. . . . The world in which a person lives shapes itself chiefly by the way in which he or she looks at it.
Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.
A man of intellect is like an artist who gives a concert without any help from anyone else, playing on a single instrument--a piano, say, which is a little orchestra in itself. Such a man is a little world in himself; and the effect produced by various instruments together, he produces single-handed, in the unity of his own consciousness. Like the piano, he has no place in a symphony; he is a soloist and performs by himself--in soli tude, it may be; or if in the company with other instruments, only as principal; or for setting the tone, as in singing.
Talent works for money and fame; the motive which moves genius to productivity is, on the other hand, less easy to determine.
...in the end every one stands alone, and the important thing is who it is that stands alone.
A man shows his character just in the way in which he deals with trifles, for then he is off his guard.
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