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People are always angry at anyone who chooses very individual standards for his life; because of the extraordinary treatment which that man grants to himself, they feel degraded, like ordinary beings.
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Blessed are the sleepy ones: for they shall soon drop off.
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The most unendurable thing, to be sure, the really terrible thing, would be a life without habits, a life which continually required improvisation.
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The Refinement of Shame. People are not ashamed to think something foul, but they are ashamed when they think these foul thoughts are attributed to them.
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We have already gone beyond whatever we have words for. In all talk there is a grain of contempt.
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God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives; who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?
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You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.
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Never trust a thought that didn't come by walking.
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Some people throw a bit of their personality after their bad arguments, as if that might straighten their paths and turn them into right and good arguments-just as a man in a bowling alley, after he has let go of the ball, still tries to direct it with gestures.
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One must never have spared oneself, one must have acquired hardness as a habit to be cheerful and in good spirits in the midst of nothing but hard truths.
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And I offer you this parable: Not a few who sought to cast out their devil entered into the swine themselves.
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A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us.
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If a man wishes to rid himself of a feeling of unbearable oppression, he may have to take hashish.
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A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.
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Perhaps no philosopher is more correct than the cynic. The happiness of the animal, that thorough cynic, is the living proof of cynicism.
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There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective 'knowing'; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our 'concept' of this thing, our 'objectivity,' be.
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He who recites dramatic works makes discoveries about his own character.
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Where the good begins.- Where the poor power of the eye can no longer see the evil impulse as such because it has become too subtle, man posits the realm of goodness; and the feeling that we have now entered the realm of goodness excites all those impulses which had been threatened and limited by the evil impulses, like the feeling of security, of comfort, of benevolence. Hence, the duller the eye, the more extensive the good. Hence the eternal cheerfulness of the common people and of children. Hence the gloominess and grief - akin to a bad conscience - of the great thinkers.
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Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions.
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You're going to women? Don't forget your whip!
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It is difficult to preach, this morality of mediocrity! It may never admit what it is and what it wants! It must speak about restraint and worth and duty and love of one's neighbor.
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Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.
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If you look long enough into the void, the void begins to look back through you.
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To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.