Aphorisms and quotations selected by Bruno Cancellieri

I think that this is the first war in history that on the morrow the victors sued for peace and the vanquished called for unconditional surrender.

Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives.

A statesman who keeps his ear permanently glued to the ground will have neither elegance of posture nor flexibility of movement.

His ignorance is encyclopedic.

And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her.

You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.

Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice.

I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth.

Theory is when we know everything but nothing works. Praxis is when everything works but we do not know why. We always end up by combining theory with praxis: nothing works and we do not know why.

Every person who knows how to read has it in their power to magnify themselves, to multiply the ways in which they exist, to make life full, significant, and interesting.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than "try to be a little kinder."

A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.

Never lend books -- nobody ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are those which people have lent me.

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity--- romantic love and gunpowder.

A liberal is someone too poor to be a capitalist, and too rich to be a communist.

A theologian is like a blind man in a dark room searching for a black cat which isn't there - and finding it!

A woman always has the last word in an argument. Anything a man says after it is the beginning of a new argument.

Advertising - the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.

All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them.

Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves... for they will never cease to be amused.

Cigarette: A pinch of tobacco rolled in paper with fire at one end and a fool on the other.

For every complicated problem there is a simple, easy to understand, wrong answer.

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.

If God is love and love is blind then isn't it a logical conclusion that God is blind? And if so how could God make man in his own image? Scary thought isn't it?

If you can keep your head when all around you have lost theirs, then you probably haven't understood the seriousness of the situation.

If you have to deal with a bad person, the first thing you have to do is not to improve him, but to improve yourself.

If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every word you say, talk in your sleep.

It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.

Learning is acquired by reading books; but the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading man, and studying all the various editions of them.

Marriage is when a man and woman become as one; the trouble starts when they try to decide which one.

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong.

My wife and I have an agreement. I don't try to run her life and I don't try to run mine.

Once there was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time is called the Dark Ages.

Tears: The hydraulic force by which masculine will-power is defeated by feminine water power.

The difference between 'involvement' and 'commitment' is like an eggs-and-ham breakfast: the chicken was 'involved' - the pig was 'committed'.

Who do you turn to when the only person who can stop your tears, is the one that's causing them?

Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Suffering is above, not below. And everyone thinks that suffering is below. And everyone wants to rise.

They have stopped deceiving you, not loving you. And it seems to you that they have stopped loving you.

When you seem to be listening to my words, they seem to be your words, with me listening.

When your suffering is a little greater than my suffering I feel that I am a little cruel.

You wound and you will wound again. Because you wound and then you go away. You do not stay with the wound.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove.

There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.

Those who give up liberty for the sake of security deserve neither liberty nor security.

A marriage is likely to be called happy if neither party ever expected to get much happiness out of it.

A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not be endured with patient resignation.

A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin -- more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.

Religion may in most of its forms be defined as the belief that the gods are on the side of the Government.

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

The Christian view that all intercourse outside marriage is immoral was, as we see in the above passages from St. Paul, based upon the view that all sexual intercourse, even within marriage, is regrettable. A view of this sort, which goes against biological facts, can only be regarded by sane people as a morbid aberration. The fact that it is embedded in Christian ethics has made Christianity throughout its whole history a force tending towards mental disorders and unwholesome views of life.

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first is unpleasant and ill-paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.

Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

It is politically incorrect to say that the majority of human beings have always been, and still are, stupid, evil, false, selfish, ignorant, vulgar, conformist and politically correct.

Most people do not want to understand why things are as they are, why what happened has happened and how the world could be improved. They just want to know what the market offers and at what prices, what fashions and morals are in and what are out, who is winning and who is losing, who is rising and who is sinking, who is protecting their interests and who is threatening them. In other words, they just want to know what are the right things to buy, the right fashions and morals to follow and the right people to side with.

To appreciate the intelligence of a person, you have to be at least as intelligent.

Truth is much more complicated than falsity. That is why falsity is more popular.

It is not too much to say that in the extreme development the chance to reason of most men is destroyed, as rationality increases and its locus, its control, is moved from the individual to the big-scale organization.

There is then rationality without reason. Such rationality is not commensurate with freedom but the destroyer of it.

It is one of the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive.

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn...and change.

They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.

After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.

It’s not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but those most responsive to change.

The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.

Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, Why me? And the voice says: "Nothing personal your name just happened to come up".

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.

You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair.

When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bustling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a time of moral crisis, remain neutral.

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.

If you can keep your head when all around you have lost theirs, then you probably haven't understood the seriousness of the situation.

The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for.

Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone but only his friends. He has other matters in his mind which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But there are other things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.

There are two ways of spreading the light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.

"Never judge a man without putting yourself in his place." This old proverb makes all judgment impossible, for we judge someone only because, in fact, we cannot put ourselves in his place.

Friendship is a pact, a convention. Two beings tacitly promise never to broadcast what each really thinks of the other. A kind of alliance based on compromises. When one of them publicly calls attention to the other's defects, the pact is declared null and void, the alliance broken. No friendship lasts if one of the partners ceases to play the game. In other words, no friendship tolerates an exaggerated proportion of honesty.

From the cradle to the grave, each individual pays for the sin of not being God.

I have no faith, luckily. If I had, I should live in constant fear of losing it. Hence, far from helping me, it would do nothing but injure me.

In a work of psychiatry, only the patients' remarks interest me; in a work of criticism, only the quotations.

It makes no sense to say that death is the goal of life. But what else is there to say?

Neither mystics nor saints need eyes; they don't look at the world. Their heart is their eye.

Say what we will, death is the best thing nature has found to please everyone. With each of us, everything vanishes, everything stops forever. What an advantage, what an abuse! Without the least effort on our part, we own the universe, we drag it into our own disappearance. No doubt about it, dying is immoral...

That faint light in each of us which dates back to before our birth, to before all births, is what must be protected if we want to rejoin that remote glory from which we shall never know why we were separated.

The only profitable conversations are with enthusiasts who have ceased being so, with the ex-naïve. Calmed down at last, they have taken, willy-nilly, the decisive step toward knowledge, that impersonal version of disappointment.

The poor, by thinking unceasingly of money, reach the point of losing the spiritual advantages of non-possession, thereby sinking as low as the rich.

To be objective is to treat others as you treat an object, a corpse to behave with them like an undertaker.

We make choices, decisions, as long as we keep to the surface of things; once we reach the depths, we can neither choose nor decide; we can do nothing but regret the surface.

We smile, because no answer is conceivable, because the answer would be even more meaningless than the question.

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.

There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.

Education makes machines which act like men and produces men who act like machines.

If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.

If faith cannot be reconciled with rational thinking, it has to be eliminated as an anachronistic remnant of earlier stages of culture and replaced by science dealing with facts and theories which are intelligible and can be validated.

Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.'

Love is often nothing but a favorable exchange between two people who get the most of what they can expect, considering their value on the personality market.

Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.

Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self.

Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.

Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want.

The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.

The history of man is a graveyard of great cultures that came to catastrophic ends because of their incapacity for planned, rational, voluntary reaction to challenge.

There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started out with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet which fails so regularly, as love.

To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.

Understanding a person does not mean condoning; it only means that one does not accuse him as if one were God or a judge placed above him.

Who will tell whether one happy moment of love, or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies?

Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?

In individuals madness is a rarity, but in groups, parties, peoples it is the rule.

It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right - especially when one is right.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.

Education ... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.

Der Aphorismus hat vor jeder anderen Literaturgattung den Vorteil, dass man ihn nicht weglegt, bevor man ihn zu Ende gelesen hat.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

Isn't it odd, that people like to fight for their religion but unwillingly live after its prescriptions.

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul.

Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

Do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

Do not give your children moral and religious instruction unless you are quite sure they will not take it too seriously. Better be the mother of Henri Quatre and Nell Gwynne than of Robespierre and Queen Mary Tudor.

If you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end by hating those to whom you have sacrificed yourself.

In a stupid nation the man of genius becomes a god: everybody worships him and nobody does his will.

Man is the only animal which esteems itself rich in proportion to the number and voracity of its parasites.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

Mens sana in corpore sano is a foolish saying. The sound body is a product of the sound mind.

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

The man who listens to Reason is lost: Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her.

The man with toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

The more a man possesses over and above what he uses, the more careworn he becomes.

The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless a passion for gaming is common, though a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown.

The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment your conscious self meddles with it.

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity

Two starving men cannot be twice as hungry as one; but two rascals can be ten times as vicious as one.

We are told that when Jehovah created the world he saw that it was good. What would he say now?

Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.

There is no such thing as a 'self-made' man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts, as well as our success.

A lady came up to me on the street, pointed at my suede jacket and said, "Don't you know a cow was murdered for that jacket?" I said "I didn't know there were any witnesses. Now I'll have to kill you too".

Ever notice that anyone going slower than you is an idiot, but anyone going faster is a maniac?

Future historians will be able to study at the Jimmy Carter Library, the Gerald Ford Library, the Ronald Regan Library, and the Bill Clinton Adult Bookstore.

You have to stay in shape. My mother started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She's 97 now and we have no idea where she is.

It is in vain to hope to please all alike. Let a man stand with his face in what direction he will, he must necessarily turn his back on one half of the world.

Blessed is the man, who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.

As a man's desires grow cooler, he becomes better equipped to deal with other men or to succeed in society. Nature, with her usual benevolence, has ordained that men shall not learn to live until they lose the motives for living.

Death is not evil, for it frees man from all ills and takes away his desires along with desire's rewards. Old age is the supreme evil, for it deprives man of all pleasures while allowing his appetites to remain, and it brings with it every possible sorrow. Yet men fear death and desire old age.

I say that the world is a league of scoundrels against the men of good will, and of the petty against the generous.

I will admit that virtue -- like everything else beautiful and great -- is nothing but an illusion. But if it were a shared illusion, if all men believed and wanted to be good, if they were compassionate, generous, high-minded, full of enthusiasm, in a word, if everyone were sensible (for I make no distinction between sensibility and what we call virtue), wouldn't people be happier?

If in this moment I were to go mad, my madness would consist of sitting always with my eyes staring, my mouth open, and my hands between my knees, without laughing or crying, or even moving except for sheer necessity. I haven't the least urge to conceive a desire, not even for death. . . . This is the first time that noia [boredom or spleen] not only presses and tires me but harries and rips like the sharpest pain.

If those few truly worthy men who seek glory were to know, one by one, the people who make up that public by which the seeker of glory strives with a thousand hardships to be esteemed, it is believable that they would grow cold in their endeavor or perhaps abandon it altogether.

If you analyze well your most poetic impressions and imaginings -- the ones that most exalt you and pull you outside of yourself and of the real world -- you would find that they and the pleasure they cause (at least after childhood) consist totally or chiefly in remembrance.

Illusions, however weakened and unmasked by reason, still remain and form the chief part of our life.

Man (like the other animals) is not born to enjoy life, but only to perpetuate life, to communicate it to others who come after, to conserve it. Neither he himself, nor life, nor any object of this world is actually made for him, but, on the contrary, he exists completely for life. Terrifying, but a true proposition of all metaphysics.

People are ridiculous only when they try or seem to be that which what they are not.

Real misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the world; since it is experience of life, and not philosophy, which produces real hatred of mankind.

The old man, especially if he is in society, in the privacy of his thoughts, though he may protest the opposite, never stops believing that, through some singular exception of the universal rule, he can in some unknown and inexplicable way still make an impression on women.

The period of enthusiasm, heat, and agitated imagination is not right [for poetic creation]; indeed it works against it. One needs a time of intensity, but tranquil intensity, a time of real genius rather than real excitement . . . , an impression of past or future or habitual emotion rather than its actual presence -- one could say its twilight rather than its bright noon. Often the best moment occurs when, the feeling and impulse being over, the mind though calm surges up again after the storm, as it were, to pleasurably recall the past sensation.

There is no greater need in society than that of gossip. It is the principal means of passing the time, which is one of the first necessities of life.

Works of genius have this in common, that even when they vividly capture the nothingness of things, when they clearly show and make us feel the inevitable unhappiness of life, and when they express the most terrible despair, nonetheless to a great soul -- though he find himself in a state of extreme duress, disillusion, nothingness, noia, and despair of life, or in the bitterest and deadliest misfortunes (caused by deep feelings or whatever) -- these works always console and rekindle enthusiasm; and though they treat or represent only death, they give back to him, at least temporarily, that life which he had lost.

Amazing the advances we make in science and the primitive uses we find for them.

No human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another's happiness.

Some people claim that marriage interferes with romance. There's no doubt about it. Anytime you have a romance, your wife is bound to interfere.

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.

A drunk was in front of a judge. The judge says "You've been brought here for drinking. The drunk says "Okay, let's get started.

My Grandmother is over eighty and still doesn't need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle.

Someone stole all my credit cards, but I won't report it. The thief spends less than my wife.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much of life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.

It is not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.

Asking 'Who ought to be the boss?' is like asking 'Who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?' Obviously, the man who can sing tenor.

Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.

Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.

It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.

One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do.

The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.

There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it.

The greatest task before civilization at present is to make machines what they ought to be, the slaves, instead of the masters of men.

No one will ever win the battle of the sexes; there's too much fraternizing with the enemy.

Bachelors know more about women than married men do. If they didn't, they'd be married too

For every major problem in this nation there is a simple solution--and it is wrong.

The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure."

Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be a very silent place if no birds sang except the best.

My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.

A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity.

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

The optimist proclaims we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.

I do not believe that women are better than men. We have not wrecked railroads, nor corrupted legislature, nor done many unholy things that men have done; but then we must remember that we have not had the chance.

Cats are smarter than dogs. You can not get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.

The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.

If the rich could hire someone else to die for them, the poor would make a wonderful living.

Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable.

Failures are divided into two classes--those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.

A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.

There's a difference between beauty and charm. A beautiful woman is one I notice. A charming woman is one who notices me.

If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitable.

John Maynard Keynes

It is better to be roughly right than to be precisely wrong.

John Powell

Blessed is he who has learned to laugh at himself, for he shall never cease to be entertained.

John Ruskin

Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.

John Steinbeck

The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.

Jonathan Swift

Quando un vero genio appare in questo mondo, lo si può riconoscere dal fatto che gli idioti sono tutti coalizzati contro di lui.

Joseph Joubert

Are you listening to the ones who keep quiet?

Close your eyes and you will see.

Don't cut what you can untie.

Everything is a game except what makes the soul better or worse.

Give me a morality that equally suits the healthy and the sick, men and women, children, adults, and old people.

God is the place where I do not remember the rest.

He who has imagination without learning has wings and no feet.

Ideas never lack for words. It is words that lack ideas. As soon as the idea has come to its last degree of perfection, the word blossoms; or, if you like, it blossoms from the word that presents it and clothes it.

Maxims, because what is isolated can be seen better.

Melancholy: when we have sorrows without a name.

The essential thing is not that there be many truths in a work, but that no truth be abused.

The imagination has made more discoveries than the eye.

The only good in man is his young feelings and his old thoughts.

The poet must not cross an interval with a step when he can cross it with a leap.

The talkative man speaks from his mouth, the eloquent man speaks from his heart.

Thought forms in the soul in the same way clouds form in the air.

Through memory we travel against time, through forgetfulness we follow its course.

To seek wisdom rather than truth. It is more within our grasp.

We are all old children.

We are in the world as words are in a book. Each generation is like a line, a phrase.

What is promised to you in dreams is given to you in dreams!

Wisdom is the strength of the weak.

Writing is closer to thinking than to speaking.

Joseph Stalin

One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.

Jules Renard

I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for his reputation if he didn't.

If you are afraid of being lonely, don't try to be right.

Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties.

Kahlil Gibran

In truth you owe naught to any man. You owe all to all men.

Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.

Karl Marx

It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world. The point, however, is to change it.