Whoever does not know how to find the way to his ideal lives more frivolously and impudently than the man without an ideal.

And this do I call immaculate perception of all things: to want nothing else from them, but to be allowed to lie before them as a mirror with a hundred facets.

We fear our neighbor's hostile mood because we are afraid that this mood will lead him to penetrate our secrets.

The empty, the one, the unmoved, the full, satiation, wanting nothing--that would be my evil: in short, dreamless sleep.

What is it that you love in others?--My hopes.

From the State the exceptional individual cannot expect much. He is seldom benefited by being taken into its service; the only certain advantage it can give him is complete independence. Only real culture will prevent him being too early tired out or used up, and will spare him the exhausting struggle against culture-philistinism.

Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm.