Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.

The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.

The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.

Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.

Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed.

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.

It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.

Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

A man's delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.

A man's face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man's thoughts and aspirations.

A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.

The thing-in-itself, the will-to-live, exists whole and undivided in every being, even in the tiniest; it is present as completely as in all that ever were, are, and will be, taken together.