Consciousness and Self-Knowledge

At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.

One is fruitful only at the cost of being rich in contradictions.

A man far oftener appears to have a decided character from persistently following his temperament than from persistently following his principles.

The most common sort of lie is that by which a man deceives himself: the deception of others is a relatively rare offense.

The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.

Whatever they may think and say about their "egoism", the great majority nonetheless do nothing for their ego their whole life long: what they do is done for the phantom of their ego which has formed itself in the heads of those around them and has been communicated to them.

Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.

A well-constituted human being, a ‘happy one’, must perform certain actions and instinctively shrinks from other actions, he transports the order of which he is the physiological representative into his relations with other human beings and with things. In a formula: his virtue is the consequence of his happiness…Everything good is instinct—and consequently easy, necessary, free. Effort is an objection.

Every Profound thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood

But one thing is the thought, another thing is the deed, and another thing is the idea of the deed. The wheel of causality doth not roll between them.

To learn to see- to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to it; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides. This is the first preparatory schooling of intellectuality. One must not respond immediately to a stimulus; one must acquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts.

When man no longer regards himself as evil he ceases to be so!

No more the victory of spirit over matter and definitely not the victory of matter over spirit – the next stage is not one overcoming the other, but a merge.

The existence of forgetting has never been proved: we only know that some things do not come to our mind when we want them to.

So long as men praise you, you can only be sure that you are not yet on your own true path but on someone else's.

We no longer have a sufficiently high estimate of ourselves when we communicate. Our true experiences are not garrulous. They could not communicate themselves if they wanted to: they lack words. We have already grown beyond whatever we have words for. In all talking there lies a grain of contempt. Speech, it seems, was devised only for the average medium, communicable. The speaker has already vulgarized himself by speaking.

To him who feels himself preordained to contemplation and not to belief, all believers are too noisy and obtrusive; he guards against them.

For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with himself, whether it be by means of this or that poetry or art; only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is constantly ready for revenge, and we others will be his victims, if only by having to endure his ugly sight.

We have abolished the real world: what world is left? The apparent world perhaps? . . . But no! with the real world we have also abolished the apparent world.

Giving style” to one’s character - a great and rare art! It is exercised by those who see all the strengths and weaknesses of their own natures and then comprehend them in an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason and even weakness delights the eye.

One should hold fast one's heart; for when one letteth it go, how quickly doth one's head run away!

Is the world really beautified by the fact that man thinks it beautiful? He has humanized it, that is all.

A thinking man never be a party man.

No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep awake all day.