When gods die, they always die many sorts of death.

We think that play and fairytales belong to childhood - how shortsighted that is! As though we would want at any time in our life to live without play and fairytales! We give these things other names, to be sure, and feel differently about them, but precisely this is the evidence that they are the same things, for the child too regards play as his work and fairy tales as his truth. The brevity of life ought to preserve us from a pedantic division of life into different stages - as though each brought something new.

Creation is the great redemption from suffering and all life's growing light. But the creator must be suffering if needed and accept much change.

Marriage was contrived for ordinary people, for people who are capable of neither great love nor great friendship, which is to say, for most people--but also for those exceptionally rare ones who are capable of love as well as of friendship.

One must give value to their existence by behaving as if ones very existence were a work of art.

Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that the laws of nature are constantly broken for their sakes.

Whoever gives advice to a sick person acquires a feeling of superiority over him, whether the advice be accepted or rejected.