The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.
Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them; but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.
Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is like deserting untrammeled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes.
Immediate reality is conditional upon individual consciousness. Thus the individual real existence of man also lies first and foremost in his consciousness. But this is as such necessarily ideational, and thus conditioned by the intellect and by the sphere and substance of the intellect's activity. The degree of clarity of consciousness, and consequently of thought, can therefore be regarded as the degree of reality of existence. But this degree of thought, or of clear consciousness of ones own existence and that of others, varies very greatly within the human race itself according to the measure of natural intellectual power, the extent to which this is developed, and the amount of leisure available for reflection. - On Psychology
[...] it is rare for a man who teaches to know his subject thoroughly; for if he studies it as he ought, he has in most cases no time left in which to teach it. [...]
In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.
There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.
The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.
Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.
A man's delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.
Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head.
Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.
A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.
To live alone is the fate of all great souls.
The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.
Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.
Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.
A man's face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man's thoughts and aspirations.
