Fathers and sons are much more considerate of one another than mothers and daughters.
Woman is essentially unpeaceful, like the cat, however well she may have trained herself to present an appearance of peace.
Vanity is the fear of appearing original: it is thus a lack of pride, but not necessarily a lack of originality.
To produce music is also in a sense to produce children.
A nation usually renews its youth on a political sick-bed, and there finds again the spirit which it had gradually lost in seeking and maintaining power.
As soon as we are shown the existence of something old in a new thing, we are pacified.
A refined nature is vexed by knowing that some one owes it thanks, a coarse nature by knowing that it owes thanks to some one.
Enjoyment and innocence are the most bashful things: both do not want to be sought.
The great poet draws his creations only from out of his own reality.
The poet presents his thoughts festively, on the carriage of rhythm: usually because they could not walk.
There are men who desire power simply for the sake of the happiness it will bring; these belong chiefly to political parties.
The man who sees little always sees less than there is to see; the man who hears badly always hears something more than there is to hear.
Every high degree of power always involves a corresponding degree of freedom from good and evil.
There is a universal need to exercise some kind of power, or to create for one’s self the appearance of some power, if only temporarily, in the form of intoxication.
He who is not a bird should not build his nest over abysses.
To the mean all becomes mean.
A married philosopher belongs to comedy.
Verily, I do not like them, the merciful who feel blessed in their pity: they are lacking too much in shame. If I must pity, at least I do not want it known; and if I do pity, it is preferably from a distance.
A good aphorism is too hard for the tooth of time, and is not worn away by all the centuries, although it serves as food for every epoch.
Wherever on earth the religious neurosis has appeared we find it tied to three dangerous dietary demands: solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence.