“I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise.”

“The more I see of Mankind, the more I prefer my dog.”

“They prefer death to peace, others prefer death to war. Any opinion can be preferred to life, which it seems so natural to love dearly.”

“Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?”

“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”

“Extreme intelligence is accused of being as foolish as extreme lack of it; only moderation is good. The majority have laid this down and attack anyone who deviates from it towards any extreme whatever. I am not going to be awkward, I readily consent to being put in the middle and refuse to be at the bottom end, not because it is the bottom but because it is the end, for I should refuse just as much to be put at the top. It is deserting humanity to desert the middle way. The greatness of the human soul lies in knowing how to keep this course; greatness does not mean going outside it, but rather keeping within it.”

“I lay it down as a fact that if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.”