The pure soul is a pure lie.

Truth will have no gods before it.- The belief in truth begins with the doubt of all truths in which one has previously believed.

This is one of the stout-hearted old warriors: he is angry with civilization because he supposes that its aim is to make all goodthings--honors, treasures, beautiful women--accessible even to cowards.

So live your life of obedience and of war! What matter about long life! What warrior wisheth to be spared!

With the strength of his spiritual sight and insight the distance, and as it were the space, around man continually expands: his world grows deeper, ever new stars, ever new images and enigmas come into view.

One loves ultimately one's desires, not the thing desired.

All philosophers make the common mistake of taking contemporary man as their starting point and of trying, through an analysis of him, to[21] reach a conclusion. "Man" involuntarily presents himself to them as an aeterna veritas as a passive element in every hurly-burly, as a fixed standard of things. Yet everything uttered by the philosopher on the subject of man is, in the last resort, nothing more than a piece of testimony concerning man during a very limited period of time.