Superstition is a part of the very being of humanity; and when we fancy that we are banishing it altogether, it takes refuge in the strangest nooks and corners, and then suddenly comes forth again, as soon as it believes itself at all safe.
Power should act and not talk.
Piety is not an end, but a means: a means of attaining the highest culture by the purest tranquillity of soul. Hence it may be observed that those who set up piety as an end and object are mostly hypocrites.
Perfection is the measure of heaven, and the wish to be perfect the measure of man.
Painting and tattooing of the body is a return to animalism.
Our passions are, in truth, like the phoenix. When the old one burns away, the new one rises out of its ashes at once.
Opponents fancy they refute us when they repeat their own opinion and pay no attention to ours.
Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.
Nothing is more highly to be prized than the value of each day.
Nothing is more frightful than imagination without taste.
Man would not be the finest creature in the world if he were not too fine for it.
Love of truth shows itself in this, that a man knows how to find and value the good in everything.