My humanity is a constant self-overcoming.
Light for some time to come will have to be called darkness.
When man does not have firm, calm lines on the horizon of his life- mountain and forest lines, as it were- then a man’s innermost will becomes agitated, preoccupied, and wistful.
Oh great star! What would your happiness be if you did not have us to shine for?
Behold! I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that has gathered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to take it from me. I wish to spread it and bestow it, until the wise have once more become joyous in their folly, and the poor happy in their riches.
One has to take a somewhat bold and dangerous line with this existence: especially as, whatever happens, we are bound to lose it.
Your educators can only be your liberators.
No one dies of fatal truths nowadays: there are too many antidotes.
Was that life? Well then, once more!
In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that no imaginable chance will for a second time gather together into a unity so strangely variegated an assortment as he is: he knows it but hides it like a bad conscience.
Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.
Good writers have two things in common: they prefer to be understood rather than admired; and they do not write for knowing and over-acute readers.
Our crime against criminals lies in the fact that we treat them like rascals.
Most people are far too much occupied with themselves to be malicious.
There is a certain right by which we many deprive a man of life, but none by which we may deprive him of death; this is mere cruelty.
A man far oftener appears to have a decided character from persistently following his temperament than from persistently following his principles.
One thing a man must have: either a naturally light disposition or a disposition lightened by art and knowledge.
Disobedience- that is the nobility of slaves.
Dead are all gods: now we want the overman to live.
Foolish is my happiness, and foolish things will it speak: it is still too young – so have patience with it!