Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.
That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.
A woman brightens up facial flaws with cosmetics, figure flaws with clothes and mental flaws with marriage to a smart man.
He who has a 'why' to live can bear almost any 'how'.
The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.
The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.
Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.
To feel good in a marriage means to feel good with your spouse's shortcomings.
No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.
The unselective knowledge drive resembles the indiscriminate sexual drive – signs of vulgarity!
Virtue is the health of the soul.
You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.
Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.
He that feeds the hungry refreshes his own soul, says wisdom.
A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us.
To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
Those who inflate themselves are cursed when pricked by a small pin to burst.
It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right, especially when one is right.
Whoever is not capable of either love or friendship, he most certainly makeshis bet- on marriage.
You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame, how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?
Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.
One must pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while still alive.
The lack of young men is that they think they are more happy or unhappy than they really are.
I was in darkness, but I took three steps and found myself in paradise. The first step was a good thought, the second, a good word; and the third, a good deed.
The higher man is distinguished from the lower by his fearlessness and his readiness to challenge misfortune.
The strength of a person’s spirit would then be measured by how much ‘truth’ he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified.
The most spiritual people experience by far the most painful tragedies: but this is precisely why they honour life, because it provides them with their greatest adversities.
He who cannot put his thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of dispute.
Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, Few in pursuit of the goal.
I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.
We stop too often at knowing the good without doing it, because we also know the better but cannot do it.
Sensuality often forces the growth of love too much, so that its roots remains weak, and is easily torn up.
He who obeys, does not listen to himself!
He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures.
Without music, life would be an error.
What was silent in the father speaks in the son, and often I found in the son the unveiled secret of the father.
The fewer friends a person has, the more he has the time to be alone with himself. and the happier they feel.
In the mountains, the shortest way is from peak to peak, but for that root thou must have long legs, Proverbs should be peaks, and those spoken to should be big and tall.
I notice that autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature.
When we have to change our mind about a person, we hold the inconvenience he causes us very much against him.
It's risky to get married after 40, because the risk of making such a decision under the influence of loneliness is very high.
The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously.
Be very careful if you are praised, it means that you can only be sure that you are not on your true path yet, but on someone else's.
To become what one is, one must not have the faintest notion what one is.
I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.
To some people you may give not your hand, but only a slap with a paw: and I would at your paw might also have claws.
The only thing that makes a marriage unhappy is not a lack of love, it's the lack of friendship.
To speak about oneself not at all is a very refined form of hypocrisy.
Under peaceful conditions the militant man attacks himself.
Is not wounded vanity the mother of all tragedies?
And when you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.
What is great in the human is that it is a bridge and not a goal: what can be loved in the human is that it is a going-over and a going-under.