It was modesty that invented the word “philosopher” in Greece and left the magnificent overweening presumption in calling oneselfwise to the actors of the spirit – the modesty of such monsters of pride and sovereignty as Pythagoras, as Plato.
Once and for all, there are many things I choose not to know. – Wisdom sets limits even to knowledge.
Women want to serve, and this is where their happiness lies: but the free spirit does not want to be served, and this is where hishappiness lies.
Desire is happiness: satisfaction as happiness is merely the ultimate moment of desire. To be wish and wish alone is happiness, and a new wish over and over again.
This is one of the stout-hearted old warriors: he is angry with civilization because he supposes that its aim is to make all goodthings – honors, treasures, beautiful women – accessible even to cowards.
Brave people may be persuaded to an action by representing it as being more dangerous than it really is.
It takes physical courage to indulge in wickedness. The “good” are too cowardly to do it.
A friend whose hopes we cannot satisfy is a friend we would rather have as an enemy.
The lack of closeness among friends is a fault that cannot be reprimanded without becoming incurable.
Sometimes in our relationship to another human being the proper balance of friendship is restored when we put a few grains of impropriety onto our own side of the scale.
We should not talk about our friends: otherwise we will talk away the feeling of friendship.
We should be a mirror of being: we are God in miniature.
With sturdy shoulders, space stands opposing all its weight to nothingness. Where space is, there is being.
Our sense of the tragic waxes and wanes with our sensuality.
Is not wounded vanity the mother of all tragedies?
A philosophical mythology lies concealed in language, which breaks out again at every moment, no matter how cautious we may be.
The philosopher caught in the nets of language.
The spiritual activity of millennia is deposited in language.
Through searching out origins, one becomes a crab. The historian looks backwards, and finally he also believes backwards.
Error has made animals into men; is truth in a position to make men into animals again?