“To the fool-king belongs the world.”

Wouldst thou know thyself, observe the actions of others. Wouldst thou other men know, look thou within thine own heart.

Emulation is a noble and just passion, full of appreciation.

Revenge is barren of itself: it is the dreadful food it feeds on; its delight is murder, and its end is despair.

Truth lives on in the midst of deception.

Even now, nature is the only flame, on which the poetic spirit feeds; from it alone it draws all its power, to it alone it speaks even in the artificial, in the man engaged in culture.

Time consecrates; and what is gray with age becomes religion.

It hinders the creative work of the mind if the intellect examines too closely the ideas as they pour in.

Gray hairs are death’s blossoms.

Love is only known by him who hopelessly persists in love.

Did you think the lion was sleeping because he didn’t roar?

Even weak men when united are powerful.

The brave person thinks of himself last of all.

Whatever is not forbidden is permitted.

The strong man is strongest when alone.

The painter is, as to the execution of his work, a mechanic; but as to his conception and spirit and design he is hardly below even the poet.

We, we live! ours are the hours, and the living have their claims.

Get it into your head once and for all, my simple and very fainthearted fellow, that what fools call humanness is nothing but a weakness born of fear and egoism; that this chimerical virtue, enslaving only weak men, is unknown to those whose character is formed by stoicism, courage, and philosophy.

The man who alters his way of thinking to suit others is a fool.

Adjectives are the sugar of literature and adverbs the salt.

Fifty percent of Winston is genius, fifty percent bloody fool. He will behave like a child.

No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers, alas, have to be fools in public, while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.

Silence is the only answer you should give to the fools. Where ignorance speaks, intelligence should not give advices.

People are so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool’s caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else’s are transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone are rosy.

A dictator must fool all the people all the time and there’s only one way to do that, he must also fool himself.