I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous – a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.
Even the pluckiest among us has but seldom the courage of what he really knows.
A moral system valid for all is basically immoral.
What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure – as a mere automaton of duty?
The desire for a strong faith is not the proof of a strong faith, rather the opposite. If one has it one may permit oneself the beautiful luxury of skepticism: one is secure enough, fixed enough for it.
Whoever thought that he had understood something of me had merely construed something out of me, after his own image.
The complete irresponsibility of man for his actions and his nature is the bitterest drop which he who understands must swallow.
I would only believe in a god who could dance. And when I saw my devil I found him serious, thorough, profound, and solemn: it was the spirit of gravity – through him all things fall. Not by wrath does one kill but by laughter. Come, let us kill the spirit of gravity!
Untroubled, scornful, outrageous – that is how wisdom wants us to be: she is a woman and never loves anyone but a warrior.
Some men are born posthumously.
How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare?
The same passions in man and woman nonetheless differ in tempo; hence man and woman do not cease misunderstanding one another.
Against boredom even gods struggle in vain.
God is dead, God remains dead, and we have killed him.
The vanity of others runs counter to our taste only when it runs counter to our vanity.
The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness.
But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthword, downword, into the dark, the deep – into evil.
He who speaks a bit of a foreign language has more delight in it than he who speaks it well; pleasure goes along with superficial knowledge.
Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.
The real world is much smaller than the imaginary.