That which intoxicates, the sensually ecstatic, the sudden surprise, the urge to be profoundly stirred at any price – dreadful tendencies!
In the end things must be as they are and have always been – the great things remain for the great, the abysses for the profound, the delicacies and thrills for the refined, and, to sum up shortly, everything rare for the rare.
When virtue has slept it will arise more vigorous.
The believer in magic and miracles reflects on how to impose a law on nature – : and, in brief, the religious cult is the outcome of this reflection.
There is no pre-established harmony between the furtherance of truth and the well-being of mankind.
Supposing truth is a woman – what then?
Worldly Wisdom Do not stay in the field! Nor climb out of sight. The best view of the world Is from a medium height.
Happiness is the feeling that power increases – that resistance is being overcome.
All modern philosophizing is political, policed by governments, churches, academics, custom, fashion, and human cowardice, all off which limit it to a fake learnedness.
I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. the will to a system is a lack of integrity.
Deeds need time, even after they are done, in order to be seen or heard.
It is the evening that questions thus from within me.
What have we in common with the rosebud, which trembles because a drop of dew is lying upon it?
Pity is the most agreeable feeling among those who have little pride and no prospects of great conquests.
Every habit makes our hand more witty, and out wit more handy.
Knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion.
The wisest man would be the one richest in contradictions, who has, as it were, antennae for all types of men – as well as his great moments of grand harmony – a rare accident even in us! A sort of planetary motion –.
In the end we are always rewarded for our good will, our patience, fair-mindedness, and gentleness with what is strange.
Love, too, has to be learned.
Truth as Circe. – Error has transformed animals into men; is truth perhaps capable of changing man back into an animal?