One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too. |
One person seeks a midwife for his thoughts; the other, someone he can assist. Here is the origin of a good conversation. |
One receives as reward for much ennui, despondency, boredom --such as a solitude without friends, books, duties, passions must bring with it --those quarter-hours of profoundest contemplation within oneself and nature. He who completely entrenches himself against boredom also entrenches himself against himself: he will never get to drink the strongest refreshing draught from his own innermost fountain. |
One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. |
One should never know too precisely whom one has married |
One should not go into church if one wants to breathe pure air |
One should part from life as Odysseus parted from Nausicaa: with a blessing rather than in love |
One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear. |
One's belief in truth begins with doubt of all truths one has believed hitherto |
One's own self is well hidden from one's own self; of all mines of treasure, one's own is the last to be dug up. |
Only as an aesthetic phenomenon is the world justified. |
Only sick music makes money today. |
Only strong personalities can endure history, the weak ones are extinguished by it |
Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today |
Our most sacred convictions, the unchanging elements of our supreme values, are judgements of our muscles. |