Books for all the world are always foul-smelling books: The smell of small people clings to them.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.

How good bad music and bad reasons sound when we march against an enemy.

Idleness is the beginning of all psychology. What? Could it be that psychology is -- a vice?

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

Liberal institutions straightway cease from being liberal the moment they are soundly established.

Life always gets harder toward the summit -- the cold increases -- responsibility increases.

Man alone suffers so excruciatingly in the world that he was compelled to invent laughter.

Men after death are understood worse than men of the present, but heard better.

Men would sooner have the void for his purpose than to be void of purpose.

One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.

One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.

Strong hope is a much greater stimulant of life than any realized joy could be.

The higher we soar, the smaller we seem to those who cannot fly.

The struggle against a purpose in art is always a struggle against the moral tendency in art -- against its subordination to morality. Art for art's sake means, Let morality go to the Devil.

The surest way to corrupt a sound man is to teach him to esteem more highly those who think alike than those who think differently.

When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.

Which is it, is man one of God's blunders, or is God one of man's blunders?