Unexemplary words and unfounded doctrines are avoided by the noble person. Why utter them?

History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.

Words pay no debts.

Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.

I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

Language is the house of being. In its home human beings dwell. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home.

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

Man is the one name belonging to every nation upon earth: there is one soul and many tongues, one spirit and various sounds; every country has its own speech, but the subjects of speech are common to all.

I live by good soup, and not on fine language.

Information can tell us everything. It has all the answers. But they are answers to questions we have not asked, and which doubtless don’t even arise.