In order to acquire intellect one must need it. One loses it when it is no longer necessary.

The flame is not as bright to itself as it is to those it illuminates: so too the sage.

O my brothers, am I then cruel? But I say: that which is falling should also be pushed!

Even in the lust of knowledge I feel only my will's delight in begetting and becoming; and if there be innocence in my knowledge it is because my procreative will is in it.

We criticize a thinker more acutely when he advances a proposition that is disagreeable to us; and yet it would be more reasonableto do so when his proposition is agreeable to us.

We become aware, however, that all customs, even the hardest, grow pleasanter and milder with time, and that the severest way of life may become a habit and therefore a pleasure.

What does it matter whether I am shown to be right! I am right too much!--And he who laughs best today will also laugh last.