[T]he moralists of Europe [have] pretended that beasts have no rights... a doctrine revolting/gross/barbarous... on which a native of the Asiatic uplands could not look without righteous horror.

It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher. He must be like Sophocles' Oedipus, who, seeking enlightenment concerning his terrible fate, pursues his indefatigable inquiry even though he divines that appalling horror awaits him in the answer. But most of us carry with us the Jocasta in our hearts, who begs Oedipus, for God's sake, not to inquire further.

Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is.

Talent works for money and fame; the motive which moves genius to productivity is, on the other hand, less easy to determine.

Genius and madness have something in common: both live in a world that is different from that which exists for everyone else.

Every satisfaction he attains lays the seeds of some new desire, so that there is no end to the wishes of each individual will.

Genuine contempt, on the other hand, is the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another.