I feel all those human beings to be pernicious who can no longer oppose what they love: they thereby ruin the best things and people.

To learn to see- to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to it; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides. This is the first preparatory schooling of intellectuality. One must not respond immediately to a stimulus; one must acquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

The snake that cannot shed its skin perishes.

I absolutely cannot see how one can later make up for having failed to go to a good school at the proper time. For this is what distinguishes the hard school as a good school from all others: that much is demanded; and sternly demanded; that the good, even the exceptional, is demanded as the norm; that praise is rare, that indulgence is nonexistent; that blame is apportioned sharply, objectively, without regard for talent or antecedents. What does one learn in a hard school? Obeying and commanding.

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

Human existence basically is──a never to be completed imperfect tense.