A man only understands what is akin to something already existing in himself..

The stationary condition is the beginning of the end.

Wisdom consists in rising superior both to madness and to common sense, and is lending oneself to the universal illusion without becoming its dupe..

Common sense is calculation applied to life..

An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains..

The growth and development of the soul is more important than power and glory..

Time wasted is a theft from God..

Time and space are fragments of the infinite for the use of finite creatures..

Philosophy starts with doubt and loves only truth..

Criticism is above all a gift, an intuition, a matter of tact and flair; it cannot be taught or demonstrated--it is an art..

At the bottom of the modern man there is always a great thirst for self-forgetfulness, self-distraction . . . and therefore he turns away from all th….

The art which is grand and yet simple is that which presupposes the greatest elevation both in artist and in public..

He who is silent is forgotten; he who does not advance falls back; he who stops is overwhelmed; out distanced, crushed; he who ceases t grow becomes ….

Sympathy is the first condition of criticism; reason and justice presuppose, at their origin, emotion..

I find myself regarding existence as though from beyond the tomb, from another world; all is strange to me; I am, as it were, outside my own body and….

To feel keenly the poetry of a morning's roses, one has to have just escaped from the claws of this vulture which we call sickness..

Let us be true: this is the highest maxim of art and of life, the secret of eloquence and of virtue, and of all moral authority..

Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what we think ourselves to be..

The efficacy of religion lies precisely in what is not rational, philosophic, nor eternal; its efficacy lies in the unforeseen, the miraculous, the e….

To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits..

Man is saved by love and duty, and by the hope that springs from duty, or rather from the moral facts of consciousness, as a flower springs from the ….