I go in solitude, so as not to drink out of everybody’s cistern. When I am among the many I live as the many do, and I do not think I really think; after a time it always seems as if they want to banish myself from myself and rob me of my soul.
Strong hope is a much greater stimulant to life than any single realized joy could be.
The discipline of suffering, of great suffering – do you not know that it is this discipline alone that has produced all the elevations of humanity so far?
There is nothing for which men ask to be paid dearer than for humiliation.
But are there many honest people who will admit that it is pleasing to give pain?
Illusions are certainly expensive amusements; but the destruction of illusions is still more expensive, if looked upon as an amusement, as it undoubtedly is by some people.
Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there stands a mighty ruler. an unknown sage – whose name is self. In yourt body he dwells; he is your body. There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom.
Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman-a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting.
The great man fights the elements in his time that hinder his own greatness, in other words his own freedom and sincerity.
All good things were formerly bad things; every original sin has turned into an original virtue.
A light has dawned for me: I need companions, living ones, not dead companions and corpses which I carry with me wherever I wish. But I need living companions who follow me because they want to follow themselves- and who want to go where I want to go.
We ought to learn from the kine one thing: ruminating.
Everyone who enjoys supposes that the tree was concerned with the fruit, but it was really concerned with the seed. -In this lies the difference between all those who create and those who enjoy.
Life is an instinct for growth, for survival, for the accumulation of forces, for power.
Robinson had a servant even better than Friday: His name was Crusoe.
If one considers how much reason every person has for anxiety and timid self-concealment, and how three-quarters of his energy and goodwill can be paralyzed and made unfruitful by it, one has to be very grateful to fashion.
Man is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art.
Science and art have that in common that everyday things seem to them new and attractive.
Most of the time in married life is taken up by talk.
If married couples did not live together, happy marriages would be more frequent.