O sancta simplicitas! What strange simplification and falsification mankind lives on! One can never cease to marvel once one has acquired eyes for this marvel! How we have made everything around us bright and free and easy and simple! How we have known how to bestow on our senses a passport to everything superficial, on our thoughts a divine desire for wanton gambling and false conclusions! - how we have from the very beginning understood how to retain our ignorance so as to enjoy an almost inconceivable freedom, frivolity, impetuosity, bravery, cheerfulness of life, so as to enjoy life!

Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.

For as long as they praise you, never forget that it is not yet your own path that you walk, but another person's.

It is obvious that all sense has gone out of modern marriage; which is, however, no objection to marriage but to modernity.

Youth is an unpleasant period; for then it is not possible or not prudent to be productive in any sense whatsoever.

Without music, life would be an error. The German imagines even God singing songs

We do not by any means think it desirable that the kingdom of righteousness and peace should be established on earth (because under any circumstances it would be the kingdom of the profoundest mediocrity and Chinaism); we rejoice in all men, who like ourselves love danger, war and adventure, who do not make compromises, nor let themselves be captured, conciliated and stunted; we count ourselves among the conquerors; we ponder over the need of a new order of things, even of a new slavery for every strengthening and elevation of the type "man" also involves a new form of slavery.