The pure soul is a pure lie.
Pardon me, my friends, I have ventured to paint my happiness on the wall.
No one can draw more out of things, books included, than he already knows. A man has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access.
Memory says, ‘I did that.’ Pride replies, ‘I could not have done that.’ Eventually, memory yields.
A man who wills commands something within himself that renders obedience, or that he believes renders obedience.
It may be that until now there has been no more potent means for beautifying man himself than piety: it can turn man into so much art, surface, play of colors, graciousness that his sight no longer makes one suffer. –.
Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.
Books that teach us to dance: There are writers who, by portraying the impossible as possible, and by speaking of morality and genius as if both were high-spirited freedom, as if man were rising up on tiptoe and simply had to dance out of inner pleasure.
They would have to sing better songs for me to learn to have faith in their Redeemer; and his disciples would have to look more redeemed!
Every attainment, every step forward in knowledge, follows from courage, from hardness against oneself, from cleanliness in relation to oneself.
We would not let ourselves be burned to death for our opinions: we are not sure enough of them for that.
Companions the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators the creator seeks – those who write new values on new tablets. Companions the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest.
It is a terrible thought, to contemplate that an immense number of mediocre thinkers are occupied with really influential matters.
Even the most beautiful scenery is no longer assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some distant coast attracts our avarice: possessions are generally diminished by possession.
I want to speak to the despisers of the body. I would not have them learn and teach differently, but merely say farewell to their own bodies – and thus become silent.
It was the sick and decaying who despised the body and earth and invented the heavenly realm and the redemptive drops of blood: but they took even these sweet and gloomy poisons from body and earth. They wanted to escape their own misery, and the stars were too far for them.
You say, it’s dark. And in truth, I did place a cloud before your sun. But do you not see how the edges of the cloud are already glowing and turning light.
The noble soul reveres itself.
Those you cannot teach to fly, teach to fall faster.
We ought to face our destiny with courage.