Ah, how little you know of human happiness – you comfortable and benevolent people! For happiness and unhappiness are brother and sister – or even twins who grow up together – or in your case – remain small together!
To have to fight the instincts – that is the definition of decadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness equals instinct.
When one rows it is not the rowing which moves the ship: rowing is only a magical ceremony by means of which one compels a demon to move the ship.
You gave him an opportunity of showing greatness of character and he did not seize it. He will never forgive you for that.
Man wishes woman to be peaceable, but in fact she is essentially warlike, like the cat.
One must learn to be a sponge if one wants to be loved by hearts that overflow.
The relatives of a suicide hold it against him that out of consideration for their reputation he did not remain alive.
Egoism is the law of perspective applied to feelings: what is closest appears large and weighty, and as one moves farther away size and weight decrease.
Unexplained, obscure matters are regarded as more important than explained, clear ones.
He who lives as children live – who does not struggle for his bread and does not believe that his actions possess any ultimate significance – remains childlike.
A degree of culture, and assuredly a very high one, is attained when man rises above superstitions and religious notions and fears, and, for instance, no longer believes in guardian angels or in original sin, and has also ceased to talk of the salvation of his soul.
What good is all this free-thinking, modernity, and turncoat flexibility if at some gut level you are still a Christian, a Catholic, and even a priest!
Do you believe then that the sciences would ever have arisen and become great if there had not before hand been magicians, alchemists, astrologers and wizards, who thirsted and hungered after abscondite and forbidden powers?
The anarchist and the Christian have a common origin.
I want to teach men the sense of their existence, which is the Superman, the lightning out of the dark cloud man.
Do not paint a picture either of God or the devil on your walls: this will ruin both your walls and the atmosphere.
Christianity has a hunter’s instinct for finding out all those who by one means or another may be driven to despair -although only a part of mankind is capable of such despair. Christianity lies in wait for such as those and pursues them.
Away from God and gods did this will lure me: what would there be to create if gods existed?
The concepts “soul”, “spirit” and last of all the concept “immortal soul” were invented in order to despise the body, in order to make it sick – “holy” – in order to cultivate an attitude of appalling disrespect for all things in life which deserve to be treated seriously i.
I have not come to know atheism as a result of logical reasoning and still less as an event in my life: in me it is a matter of instinct.