He who desires something infinite knows not what he desires; but the converse of this proposition is not true.

In the ordinary kind of fair or even good translation it is precisely the best part of a work that is lost.

It is impossible to offend a man if he will not be offended.

Every honest author writes for no one or for all men; he who writes that this one or that one may read him, deserves not to be read at all.

In the poetry of the Ancients we see the perfection of the letter:  in that of the moderns we divine the growth of the spirit.

The Germans are said to be the foremost nation of the world as regards artistic sense and scientific genius.  Very true, only—­there are very few Germans.

Almost all marriages are only concubinages, morganatic wedlock, or, rather, provisional attempts and remote approximations to a real marriage, the peculiar essence of which consists in the fact that more than one person are to become but one, not in accordance with the paradoxes of this system or that, but in harmony with all spiritual and temporal laws.  A fine concept, although its realization seems to have many grave difficulties.  For this very reason there should here be the least possible restriction of the caprice which may well have a word to say when it becomes a question of whether one is to be an individual in himself or is to be merely an integral part of a corporate personality; nor is it easy to see what objections, on principle, could be made to a marriage a quatre.  If the State, however, is determined to hold together, even by force, the unsuccessful attempts at marriage, it thereby impedes the very possibility of marriage, which might be furthered by new—­and perhaps happier—­attempts.

A regiment of soldiers on parade is, according to some philosophers, a system.

A man can only become a philosopher, he cannot be one; so soon as he believes that he is one, he ceases to become one.

The printed page is to thought what a nursery is to the first kiss.

The historian is a prophet looking backward.

There are people whose entire activity consists in saying “No.”  It would be no small thing always to be able rightly to say “No,” but he who can do nothing more, surely cannot do it rightly.  The taste of these negationists is an admirable shears to cleanse the extremities of genius; their enlightenment a great snuffer for the flame of enthusiasm; and their reason a mild laxative for immoderate passion and love.

Every great philosopher has always so explained his predecessors—­often unintentionally—­that it seemed as though they had not in the least been understood before him.

As a transitory condition skepticism is logical insurrection; as a system it is anarchy; skeptical method would thus be approximately like insurgent government.

At the phrases “his philosophy,” “my philosophy,” we always recall the words in Nathan the Wise:  “Who owns God?  What sort of a God is that who is owned by a man?”