I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.

The universe without music would be madness.

In all institutions from which the cold wind of open criticism is excluded, an innocent corruption begins to grow like a mushroom - for example, in senates and learned societies

It is the privilege of greatness to confer intense happiness with insignificant gifts.

When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.

Every church is a stone on the grave of a god-man: it does not want him to rise up again under any circumstances.

A belief, however necessary it may be for the preservation of a species, has nothing to do with truth. The falseness of a judgment is not for us necessarily an objection to a judgment. The question is to what extent it is life-promoting, life-preserving, species preserving, perhaps even species cultivating. To recognize untruth as a condition of life--that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.