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It is so little true that martyrs offer any support to the truth of a cause that I am inclined to deny that any martyr has ever had anything to do with the truth at all.
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To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying but an ancient, mighty, human, all-too-human principle which even the apes might subscribe; for it has been said that in devising bizarre cruelties they anticipate man and are, as it were his 'prelude.'
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A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation.
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Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.
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We no longer love our knowledge enough once we have passed it on.
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Christianity is Platonism for the people.
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What convinces is not necessarily true-it is merely convincing: a note for asses.
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To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
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Body am I entirely, and nothing else; and soul is only a word for something about the body.
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Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman — a rope over an abyss.
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Mastery.- We have reached mastery when we neither mistake nor hesitate in the achievement.
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God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.
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It is doubtful whether anyone who has travelled widely has found anywhere in the world regions more ugly than in the human face.
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Reckoned physiologically, everything ugly weakens and afflicts man. It recalls decay, danger, impotence; he actually suffers a loss of energy in its presence. The effect of the ugly can be measured with a dynamometer. Whenever man feels in any way depressed, he senses the proximity of something ugly. His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride - they decline with the ugly, they increase with the beautiful.
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'He who seeks may easily get lost himself. It is a crime to go apart and be alone.' Thus speaks the herd.
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I love him who justifieth the future ones, and redeemeth the past ones: for he is willing to succumb through the present ones.
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When thou goest to woman, take thy whip.
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The purpose of punishment is to improve those who do the punishing--that is the final recourse of those who support punishment.
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What, then is truth?... Truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are.
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Against war one might say that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished malicious. In its favor, that in producing these two effects it barbarizes, and so makes the combatants more natural. For culture it is a sleep or a wintertime, and man emerges from it stronger for good and for evil.
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There are men who desire power simply for the sake of the happiness it will bring; these belong chiefly to political parties.
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Only the most acute and active animals are capable of boredom.
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Moral sensibilities are nowadays at such cross-purposes that to one man a morality is proved by its utility, while to another its utility refutes it.
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Let them like the Tibetans, chew the cud of their "om mane padme hum" innumerable times, or, as in Benares, count the name of the God Ram-Ram-Ram (etc. with or without charm) on their fingers; or honour Vishnu with his thousand names of invocation, Allah with his ninety-nine; or they may make use of the prayer-wheels and the rosary: the main thing is that they are settled down for a time at this work and are tolerable to look at. This kind of prayer has been invented for the benefit of the pious who have thought and elevations of their own.