Rascals are always sociable, more's the pity! and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others' company.
It is, indeed, only in old age that intellectual men attain their sublime expression, whilst portraits of them in their youth show only the first traces of it.
As a general rule, the longer a man's fame is likely to last, the later it will be in coming; for all excellent products require time for their development.
I have not yet spoken my last word about women. I believe that if a woman succeeds in withdrawing from the mass, or rather raising herself from above the mass, she grows ceaselessly and more than a man.
Just as the largest library, badly arranged, is not so useful as a very moderate one that is well arranged, so the greatest amount of knowledge, if not elaborated by our own thoughts, is worth much less than a far smaller volume that has been abundantly and repeatedly thought over.
When a man has reached a condition in which he believes that a thing must happen because he does not wish it, and that what he wishes to happen never will be, this is really the state called desperation.
It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else's meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.
...a genuine work of art, can never be false, nor can it be discredited through the lapse of time, for it does not present an opinion but the thing itself.