The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.

Animals often strike us as passionate machines.

It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.

There is a perfect ant, a perfect bee, but man is perpetually unfinished...Moreover, the incurable unfinishedness keeps man perpetually immature, perpetually capable of learning and growing.

It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites-opposite bents, tastes, yearnings, loyalties. Where there is no polarity-where energies flow smoothly in one direction-there will be much doing but no music.

Action is basically a reaction against loss of balance - a flailing of the arms to to regain one's balance. To dispose a soul to action, we must upset its equilibrium.

To a man utterly without a sense of belonging, mere life is all that matters. It is the only reality in an eternity of nothingness, and he clings to it with shameless despair.