The great epochs of our life come when we gain the courage to rechristen our evil as what is best in us.

Men use a new lesson or experience later on as a ploughshare or perhaps also as a weapon; women at once make it into an ornament.

When one has finished building one's house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way-before one began.

Our shortcomings are the eyes with which we see the ideal.

One must cease letting oneself be eaten when one tastes best: that is known to those who want to be loved long.

Every master has but one disciple, and that one becomes unfaithful to him, for he too is destined for mastership.

The followers of a great man often put their eyes out, so that they may be the better able to sing his praise.

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

The genius-in work and in deed-is necessarily a squanderer: the fact that he spends himself constitutes his greatness.

There are two types of genius: one which above all begets and wants to beget, and another which prefers being fertilized and giving birth.