Quotes to inspire and reflect

They're so cold, these scholars!May lightning strike their food so that their mouths learn how to eat fire!

In large States public education will always be extremely mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is at best only mediocre.

Ultimately, nobody can get more out of things, including books, than he already knows.

Success has always been the greatest liar - and the "work" itself is a success; the great statesman, the conqueror, the discoverer is disguised by his creations, often beyond recognition; the "work," whether of the artist or the philosopher, invents the man who has created it, who is supposed to have create it; "great men," as they are venerated, are subsequent pieces of wretched minor fiction

The drive to knowledge has become too strong for us to be able to want happiness without knowledge or of a strong, firmly rooted delusion; even to imagine such a state of things is painful to us! Restless discovering and divining has such an attraction for us, and has grown as indispensable to us as is to the lover his unrequited love, which he would at no price relinquish for a state of indifference – perhaps,indeed, we too are unrequited lovers.

Knowledge kills action action requires the veils of illusion.

What good is all this free-thinking, modernity, and turncoat flexibility if at some gut level you are still a Christian, a Catholic, and even a priest!

A degree of culture, and assuredly a very high one, is attained when man rises above superstitions and religious notions and fears, and, for instance, no longer believes in guardian angels or in original sin, and has also ceased to talk of the salvation of his soul.

Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.

It may be that until now there has been no more potent means for beautifying man himself than piety: it can turn man into so much art, surface, play of colors, graciousness that his sight no longer makes one suffer.---

The believer in magic and miracles reflects on how to impose a law on nature--: and, in brief, the religious cult is the outcome of this reflection.

As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies—but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters: other kinds of spirit hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.

In truth,there was only one christian and he died on the cross.

There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.

In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.

Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?

Twofold misjudgement. - The misfortune suffered by clear-minded and easily understood writers is that they are taken for shallow and thus little effort is expended on reading them: and the good fortune that attends the obscure is that the reader toils at them and ascribes to them the pleasure he has in fact gained from his own zeal.

It is not the strength, but the duration, of great sentiments that makes great men.

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

Against the censurers of brevity. - Something said briefly can be the fruit of much long thought: but the reader who is a novice in this field, and has as yet reflected on it not at all, sees in everything said briefly something embryonic, not without censuring the author for having served him up such immature and unripened fare.

All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and thenI can turn the world upside down.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

This eternal accusation against Christianity I shall write upon all walls, wherever walls are to be found--I have letters that even the blind will be able to see. . . . I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough,--I call it the one immortal blemish upon the human race...

The desire for a strong faith is not the proof of a strong faith, rather the opposite. If one has it one may permit oneself the beautiful luxury of skepticism: one is secure enough, fixed enough for it.

At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.

Just as in the second part of a verse bad poets seek a thought to fit their rhyme, so in the second half of their lives people tend to become more anxious about finding actions, positions, relationships that fit those of their earlier lives, so that everything harmonizes quite well on the surface: but their lives are no longer ruled by a strong thought, and instead, in its place, comes the intention of finding a rhyme.

Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

The final reward of the dead - to die no more

There is a certain right by which we many deprive a man of life, but none by which we may deprive him of death; this is mere cruelty.

Remain faithful to the earth, my brothers, with the power of your virtue. Let your gift-giving love and your knowledge serve the meaning of the earth. Thus I beg and beseech you. Do not let them fly away from earthly things and beat with their wings against eternal walls. Alas, there has always been so much virtue that has flown away. Lead back to the earth the virtue that flew away, as I do—back to the body, back to life, that it may give the earth a meaning, a human meaning.

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.

O sky above me, you modest, glowing sky! O you, my happiness before sunrise! Day is coming: so let us part!

Sensuality often hastens the "Growth of Love" so much that the roots remain weak and are easily torn up.

One thing a man must have: either a naturally light disposition or a disposition lightened by art and knowledge.

Happiness: being able to forget or, to express in a more learned fashion.

We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge - and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves - how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves? It has rightly been said: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also"; our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge are.

The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.

You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted.

You tell me: 'Life is hard to bear.' But if it were otherwise why should you have your pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening?Life is hard to bear: but do not pretend to be so tender! We are all of us pretty fine asses and assesses of burden!

New struggles. -- After Buddha was dead, they still showed his shadow in a cave for centuries -- a colossal, horrible shadow. God is dead, but given the way people are, there may still be caves for millennia in which his shadow is displayed. -- And we -- we must still defeat his shadow as well!

Whoever extolleth him as a God of love, doth not think highly enough of love itself. Did not that God want also to be judge? But the loving one loveth irrespective of reward and requital.

Einer hat immer Unrecht: aber mit zweien beginnt die Wahrheit. Einer kann sich nicht beweisen: aber zweie kann man bereits nicht widerlegen.

...inability to lie is still far from being love to truth. Be on your guard! ... He who cannot lie, doth not know what truth is.

Sometimes it is harder to accede to a thing than it is to see its truth.

There is no pre-established harmony between the furtherance of truth and the well-being of mankind.