Friendship is based on mutual good, on common interests, but as soon as interests collide, friendship falls apart: the wind took it.
Do you think that philosophy will not be, like a true work of art, an incomparable standard against which anyone can measure his height? Or do you think it will be a simple calculation problem that is accessible to even the most limited and stupid mind?
Conscience is the only witness of man's most secret thoughts and movements; but eventually we lose it - and we know it. Yet perhaps it is precisely this circumstance, more than anything else, that makes us believe that there is still a witness to our most secret thoughts and goings-on.
If you don't want to make enemies, try not to show your superiority over people.
If it were possible to predict the future as we know the past, then the day of death would seem as close to its past as, for example, childhood.
If the immediate and immediate purpose of our life is not suffering, then our existence is a meaningless and inadequate phenomenon. Because it is absurd to admit the endless suffering that arises from the essential needs of life and fills the whole world to be aimless and purely accidental. Although each misfortune taken separately is an exception, misfortune in general is the rule.
If the will were only in a particular deed, then the latter would be free. But since it is found throughout lifetimes, that is, in a series of deeds, then each of these, as part of a whole, is predetermined and cannot be otherwise than it is. On the contrary, the whole string taken as a whole, being the discovery of the individualized will, is free.
If on the last step of its creation - from ape to man - nature had done differently, starting with the elephant or the dog, for example, then the human race would probably have been different than it is now; he would then have been a rational elephant or dog, and not a rational ape. Nature took this step starting from the ape, because it was the shortest; but if the slightest change had taken place in the original development of nature, then the shortest step towards man would have been made otherwise.
If you suspect someone of lying - pretend to believe him: he will lie without care and expose himself. And if the truth he wanted to hide crept into his words - pretend not to believe him; he will also tell the rest of the truth.
If a joke hides behind something serious - it is an irony; if something serious is hidden behind a joke - it's humor.
There is only one inborn error - the belief that we are born for happiness.
There is a special kind of courage that comes from the same source as human kindness, from the ability to know yourself in others as clearly as you know yourself. Courage comes from this because a man endowed with the ability to know himself in others is less attached to his personal existence, lives more of a communal life, and therefore cares little for his own welfare. Of course, this is not the only source of courage, for courage is the result of many causes, but this kind of courage is the noblest, because it proves a greater meekness of character. Women are irresistibly influenced by such characters.
To marry is to halve your rights and double your obligations.
Life and dreams are the pages of one and the same book.
Health is so much above all other goods of life, that it is true that a healthy beggar is happier than a sick king.
Of all the personal traits, a cheerful nature contributes most directly to our happiness.
An individual could not have known anything about the essence of the world, given to him only as an idea, if he had not had the faculty of knowing, by which he learns that the Universe of which he is an infinitesimal part, is identical with that particle known to him closely as his inner world. Thus, the Self gives a clue in the unraveling of the world.
Intellect can be seen as a barrier or a brake that prevents separate individuals from communicating with each other and closes the path of knowledge to the future or to something absent. For the knowledge of all these would be as useless and painful to us as the sensibility and receptivity of a plant without irritability and movement would be torturous.
Intellectuality or representativeness is too weak, secondary, superficial a phenomenon for the essence of all others to be based on it; the world, although represented in the intellect, does not result from it, as Fichte believed.
True friendship is one of those things that, like giant sea serpents, you don't know if they are imagined or actually exist somewhere.
A man's true character is revealed precisely in the details, when he ceases to control himself.
The source of lies is always the desire to extend the dominance of one's own will or the denial of the will of others in order to assert one's own; therefore, a lie is born of injustice, ill-will, and malice. This explains why truthfulness, sincerity, frankness, are directly recognized and appreciated as noble qualities, because it is assumed that the man who possesses them will commit no injustice or cruelty, and therefore has no need of pretense. He who is honest does not plan anything bad.
What conclusion did Voltaire, Hume and Kant ultimately reach? Because the world is a hospital for the incurably ill.
The advantages of polygamy are added, among others, by the fact that it excludes clashes with the wife's parents, necessary in monogamy, a fear that holds many back from marriage. But on the other hand, dealing with ten mothers-in-law instead of one is also not a very pleasant prospect.
Every nation mocks another, and all are right in their own way.
Each writer must be understood as he himself would like to be understood. Such an attitude requires, on the one hand, a spirit of justice, and, on the other, study.
Every society needs, first of all, to adapt, because it is all the more vulgar the bigger it is. Every man can be fully himself only when he is alone. Therefore, he who does not love solitude does not love freedom either, because man is free only when he is alone. Coercion is necessary for any society; every society requires sacrifices which are all the heavier the greater the personality of that society.
The following consolation is available to each of us: death is as natural as life, and what will be beyond, we will see.
Just as animals do some things better than humans, such as finding a way or a lost object, so the average human is capable and more useful in everyday situations than a genius. And then, just as animals never do stupid things, so an average person does less stupid things than a genius.
Just as a medicine does not achieve its purpose if the dose is too high, so does censorship and criticism when they exceed a certain limit.