“To make a vow is a greater sin than to break one.”

“The highest level than can be reached by a mediocre but experienced mind is a talent for uncovering the weaknesses of those greater than itself.”

“To make clever people believe we are what we are not is in most instances harder than really to become what we want to seem to be.”

“I am confident of my ability to demonstrate that one can sometimes believe in something and yet not believe in it. Nothing is less fathomable than the systems that motivate our actions.”

“One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.”

“In his Comedy, Dante Alighieri names Virgil, with many tokens of respect, as his teacher, and yet as Herr Meinhard remarks, makes such ill use of him: clear proof that even in the days of Dante one praised the ancients without knowing why. This respect for poets one does not understand and yet wishes to equal is the source of the bad writing in our literature.”

“Nothing is more conductive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all.”