Great Throughts Treasury

"When you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about."

"Whenever you observe an animal closely, you feel as if a human being sitting inside were making fun of you."

"Whenever the truth threatens, he hides behind a thought."

"Words are not too old, only people are too old if they use the same words too frequently."

"You can tirelessly keep on reading the same author, revere, admire, praise him, exalt him to the skies, know and recite each of his sentences by heart, and yet remain completely unaffected by him, as if he had never demanded anything of you and not said anything at all."

"You need the rhetoric of others, the aversion it inspires, in order to find the way out of your own."

"You don’t have to know a philosopher’s every syllable to know why he rubs you the wrong way. You may know it best after a few of his sentences, and les and less well after that. The important thing is to see his web and move away before you tear it."

"You keep taking note of whatever confirms your ideas—better to write down what refutes and weakens them!"