To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.
The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.
Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.
Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?
Become who you are.
I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.
Is it better to out-monster the monster or to be quietly devoured?
Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
Remorse. – Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second.
There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.
I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.
One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.
One must give value to one’s existence by behaving as if one’s very existence were a work of art.
There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.
If you know the why, you can live any how.
For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.
Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.
Only sick music makes money today.
The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.
Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.