So You Say

Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers.
— La Rochefoucauld , in The Last Word, Louis Kronenberger, p. 18.

Flattery is counterfeit money which, but for vanity, would have no cidculation.
— La Rochefoucauld, in The Last Word, Louis Kronenberger, p. 18.

Weakness, not vice, is virtue's worst enemy.
— La Rochefoucauld, in The Last Word, Louis Kronenberger, p. 20. 

By the time men are fit for company, they see the objections to it.
— The Marquis of Halifax (George Savile), in The Last Word, Louis Kronenberger, p. 39. 

One must do more, think less, and not watch oneself live.
— Chamfort (Sebastien Roch Nicolas de Chamfort), in The Last Word, Louis Kronenberger, p. 76. 

To totally block a given effect requires a force equal to that which it cost. To send it in a different direction, a trifle will often suffice.
— Lichtenberg, in The Last Word, Louis Kronenberger, p. 92. 

Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.
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There is strong shadow where there is much light.
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Viewed from the summit of reason, all life looks like a malignant disease and the world like a madhouse.
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There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in The Last Word, Louis Kronenberger, p. 110-112. 

There is a pleasure in madness, which none but madmen know.
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Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.
— Hazlitt, in The Last Word, Louis Kronenberger, p. 130-131. 

Solitude is impracticable, and society fatal.
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The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
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A man of genius is priveleged only as far as he is a genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.
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It is a luxury to be understood
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, in The Last Word, Louis Kronenberger, p. 148-149.

Logic and consistency are luxuries for the gods and the lower animals.
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A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.
— Samuel Butler, in The Last Word, Louis Kronenberger, p. 165-166.
 
...."Romanticism," Nietzsche himself remarked, "is only an emergency exit from ill-functioning reality"; and .... "One must pay dearly for immorality: one needs must several times die while still alive." .... "Women understand children better than men do, but men are more childlike than women." .... "A married philosopher belongs to comedy."
— Friedrich Nietzsche, in The Last Word, Louis Kronenberger, p. 181.

The thought of suicide is a great consolation; with the help of it one has got through many a bad night.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, in The Last Word, Louis Kronenberger, p. 184.