It is the good war that hallows every cause.
He who wills believes with a fair amount of certainty that will and action are somehow one; he ascribes the success, the carrying out of the willing, to the will itself, and thereby enjoys an increase of the sensation of power which accompanies all success.
My wisdom has long accumulated like a cloud, it becomes stiller and darker. So does all wisdom which shall one day bear lightnings.
Woman learns to hate to the extent to which her charms decrease.
Let woman be a plaything, pure and fine, like a precious stone, illumined with the virtues of a world not yet come.
I shall repeat a hundred times; we really ought to free ourselves from the seduction of words!
It is the stillest words that bring the storm.
The church is precisely that against which Jesus preached – and against which he taught his disciples to fight.
Many brief follies – that is what you call love. And your marriage puts an end to many brief follies, with a single long stupidity.
To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a desire to overcome, a desire to throw down, a desire to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength.
We are responsible to ourselves for our own existence; consequently we want to be the true helmsman of this existence and refuse to allow our existence to resemble a mindless act of chance.
There are more idols than realities in the world: that is my “evil eye” for this world, which is also my “evil ear”...
Even cohabitation has been corrupted – by marriage.
Everything which distinguishes man from the animals depends upon this ability to volatilize perceptual metaphors in a schema, and thus to dissolve an image into a concept.
The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive, which one cannot for a single instant dispense with in thought, for one would thereby dispense with man himself.
I do not know what meaning classical studies could have for our time if they were not untimely that is to say, acting counter to our time and thereby acting on our time and, let us hope, for the benefit of a time to come.
No one talks more passionately about his rights than he who in the depths of his soul doubts whether he has any. By enlisting passion on his side he wants to stifle his reason and its doubts: thus he will acquire a good conscience and with it success among his fellow men.
If you have hitherto believed that life was one of the highest value and now see yourselves disappointed, do you at once have to reduce it to the lowest possible price?
People who live in an age of corruption are witty and slanderous; they know that there are other kinds of murder than by dagger or assault; they also know that whatever is well said is believed...
One can promise actions, but not feelings, for the latter are involuntary. He who promises to love forever or hate forever or be forever faithful to someone is promising something that is not in his power.