Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself.

Affectation

Affectation is a very good word when someone does not wish to confess to what he would none the less like to believe of himself.

Apathy

If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.

Belief

First we have to believe, and then we believe.

Books and Reading

A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out.

Brevity

It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth into a liar -- that I call an achievement.

Conceit

He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals.

Discovery

If we make a couple of discoveries here and there we need not believe things will go on like this for ever. Just as we hit water when we dig in the earth, so we discover the incomprehensible sooner or later.

Fallibility

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

Freedom

What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.

Habit

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.

Ideals and Idealism

If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.

Impartiality

Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial.

Literature

With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.

Mistakes

To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.

Necessity

If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.

Opinions

I have remarked very clearly that I am often of one opinion when I am lying down and of another when I am standing up...

Passion

Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.

Philosophers and Philosophy

If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind.

Self-improvement

He was always smoothing and polishing himself, and in the end he became blunt before he was sharp.

Talent

The great rule: If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of saying it that is a little bit special.

Temptation

The most successful tempters and thus the most dangerous are the deluded deluders.

Things and Little Things

The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things.

Virtue

Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.

Writers and Writing

As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word.