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

There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.

About what we neither know nor feel precisely while awake-whether we have a good or a bad conscience toward a certain person-our dreams instruct us fully and unambiguously.

But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests. Lonely one, you are going the way to yourself! And your way goes past yourself, and past your seven devils! You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?

There are highly gifted spirits who are always infertile simply because, owing to a weakness in temperament, they are too impatient to wait out their pregnancy to term.

One lives for the day, one lives very fast, one lives very irresponsibly: precisely this is called "freedom."

That roguish and cheerful vice, politeness.