When we have a great goal we are superior even to justice, not merely to our deeds and our judges.
Pity is extolled as the virtue of prostitutes.
In our interactions with people, a benevolent hypocrisy is frequently required – acting as though we do not see through the motivesof their actions.
Love and hatred are not blind, but are blinded by the fire they bear within themselves.
The most welcome joke to me is the one that takes the place of a heavy, not altogether innocuous thought, at once a cautionary hint of the finger and a flash of the eye.
When I contemplated purpose I also contemplated chance and foolishness.
We talk about taking “pleasure in a thing”: but in truth it is pleasure in ourselves, mediated by a thing.
Whoever regards human beings as a herd and flees them as swiftly as he can will no doubt be overtaken by them and impaled on theirhorns.
He who rejoices even at the stake triumphs not over pain but over the absence of pain where he had anticipated feeling it. A parable.
The wheel and the brake have different duties, but also one in common: to hurt one another.
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what there is to love in man is that he is a going-over and a going-under.
And it is the great noon when man stands at the midpoint of his course between beast and superman and celebrates his way to the evening as his highest hope: for it is the way to a new morning.
Every relationship that does not raise us up pulls us down, and vice versa; this is why men usually sink down somewhat when they take wives while women are usually somewhat raised up. Overly spiritual men require marriage every bit as much as they resist it as bitter medicine.
For the longest time, marriage has had a guilty conscience about itself. Should we believe it? – Yes, we should believe it.
It is inhuman to bless where one is cursed.
When we cannot stand certain people, we try to have suspicions about them.
One who dresses in rags that have been washed clean dresses cleanly to be sure, but raggedly nonetheless.
Whoever no longer finds greatness in God no longer finds it anywhere – he must either deny it or create it.
One is punished best for one’s virtues.
One can also be undignified and flattering toward a virtue.