"A small garden, figs, a little cheese, and, along with this, three or four good friends; such was luxury to Epicurus."
"Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'."
"The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception"
"In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad."
"Men are even lazier than they are timorous, and what they fear most is the troubles with which any unconditional honesty and nudity would burden them."
"It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages."
"All things that are truly great are at first thought impossible."
"Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naÔvety rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man-the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined."
"At bottom every man know 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."
"Where there is the tree of knowledge, there is always Paradise: so say the most ancient and the most modern serpents."
"One must have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star."
"Believe me! The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously!"
"No more fiction: we calculate; but that we may calculate, we had to make fiction first."
"The living is a species of the dead; and not a very attractive one."
"Plato was a bore."
"Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal."
"We should never let ourselves be burnt for our opinions; we are not that sure of them. But perhaps for this - that we may have and change our opinions."
"Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper."
"True, we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness."
"No, life has not disappointed me. On the contrary, I find it truer, more desirable and mysterious every year - ever since the day when the great liberator came to me: the idea that life could be an experiment of the seeker for knowledge - and not a duty, not a calamity, not trickery."
"The Earth has a skin and that skin has diseases, one of those diseases is man."
"The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others."
"Without music, life would be a mistake."
"The cure for love is still in most cases that ancient radical medicine: love in return."
"Love is blind, friendship closes its eyes."