Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.
Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.
In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.
There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.
There is nothing we like to communicate to others as much as the seal of secrecy together with what lies under it.
When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets.
In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.
I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his ‘divine service.’
Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.
Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.
I consist of body and soul – in the worlds of a child. And why shouldn’t we speak like children? But the enlightened, the knowledgealbe would say: I am body through and through, nothing more; and the soul is just a word for something on the body.
In the mountains of truth, you never climb in vain.
Digressions, objections, delight in mockery, carefree mistrust are signs of health...
We are, all of us, growing volcanoes that approach the hour of their eruption, but how near or distant that is, nobody knows- not even God.
The most spiritual human beings, assuming they are the most courageous, also experience by far the most painful tragedies: but it is precisely for this reason that they honor life, because it brings against them its most formidable weapons.
I am a law only for my kind, I am no law for all.
My abyss speaks, I have turned my ultimate depth into light!
The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.
Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
To learn from our enemies is the best pathway to loving them: for it makes us grateful to them.