-
The value of many men and books rests solely on their faculty for compelling all to speak out the most hidden and intimate things.
-
Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.
-
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.
-
We evaluate the services that anyone renders to us according to the value he puts on them, not according to the value they have for us.
-
On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.
-
But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests. Lonely one, you are going the way to yourself! And your way goes past yourself, and past your seven devils! You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?
-
Asceticism is the right way of thinking for those who have to extirpate their sensual drives because they are ravening beasts of prey. But only for those!
-
Most people are too stupid to act in their own interest.
-
"God", "immortality of the soul", "redemption", "beyond" - Without exception, concepts to which I have never devoted any attention, or time; not even as a child. Perhaps I have never been childlike enough for them? I do not by any means know atheism as a result; even less as an event: It is a matter of course with me, from instinct. I am too inquisitive, too questionable, too exuberant to stand for any gross answer. God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers - at bottom merely a gross prohibition for us: you shall not think!
-
Whoever regards human beings as a herd and flees them as swiftly as he can will no doubt be overtaken by them and impaled on theirhorns.
-
And you tell me, friends, that there is no disputing taste and tasting? But all life is a dispute over taste and tasting!
-
Happiness: being able to forget or, to express in a more learned fashion.
-
It is not doubt,is certitude that drives you mad.
-
Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.
-
A book full of brilliance imparts some of it even to its opponents.
-
A man of genius is unbearable, unless he possesses at least two things besides: gratitude and purity.
-
The greatest cure for love is still that time honoured medicine - love returned.
-
The best of all things is something entirely outside your grasp: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second-best thing for you - is to die soon.
-
If a woman seeks education it is probably because her sexual apparatus is malfunctioning.
-
If you stare into the Abyss long enough the Abyss stares back at you.
-
Man Is Something That Must Be Overcome.
-
Even cohabitation has been corrupted - by marriage.
-
I welcome all the signs indicating that a more manly and warlike age is commencing, which will, above all, bring heroism again into honour!
-
Will, pure will, without the troubles and complexities of intellect - how happy! how free!