Convictions are prisons.
Sharp and mild, dull and keen, well known and strange, dirty and clean, where both the fool and wise are seen: All this am I, have ever been, – in me dove, snake and swine convene!
He who obeys, does not listen to himself!
And as long as you are in any way ashamed before yourself, you do not yet belong with us.
There’s no defense against stupidity.
What do you plan to do in the land of the sleepers? You have been floating in a sea of solitude, and the sea has borne you up. At long last, are you ready for dry land? Are you ready to drag yourself ashore?
Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.
Ten truths must you find during the day; otherwise will you seek truth during the night, and your soul will have been hungry.
Human life is inexplicable, and still without meaning: a fool may decide its fate.
Only ideas won by walking have any value.
One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.
The consequences of our actions take hold of us, quite indifferent to our claim that meanwhile we have ’improved.
The higher man is distinguished from the lower by his fearlessness and his readiness to challenge misfortune.
This woman is beautiful and clever: but how much cleverer she would have become if she were not beautiful!
Our faith in others betrays that we would rather have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer. And often with our love we want merely to overcome envy. And often we attack and make ourselves enemies, to conceal that we are vulnerable.
When we have to change our mind about a person, we hold the inconvenience he causes us very much against him.
How lovely it is that there are words and sounds. Are not words and sounds rainbows and illusive bridges between things which are eternally apart?
Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.
They devour each other and cannot even digest themselves.
Thus the man who is responsive to artistic stimuli reacts to the reality of dreams as does the philosopher to the reality of existence; he observes closely, and he enjoys his observation: for it is out of these images that he interprets life, out of these processes that he trains himself for life.