It is not conflict of opinions that has made history so violent but conflict of belief in opinions, that is to say conflict of convictions.

Enduring habits I hate.... Yes, at the very bottom of my soul I feel grateful to all my misery and bouts of sickness and everything about me that is imperfect, because this sort of thing leaves me with a hundred backdoors through which I can escape from enduring habits.

But this people has deliberately made itself stupid, for nearly a millennium: nowhere have the two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity, been abused more dissolutely.

It is not conflict of opinions that has made history so violent but conflict of belief in opinions, that is to say conflict of convictions.

Noble and wise men once believed in the music of the spheres: noble and wise men still continue to believe in the "moral significance of existence." But one day even this sphere-music will no longer be audible to them! They will wake up and take note that their ears were dreaming.

Reckoned physiologically, everything ugly weakens and afflicts man. It recalls decay, danger, impotence; he actually suffers a loss of energy in its presence. The effect of the ugly can be measured with a dynamometer. Whenever man feels in any way depressed, he senses the proximity of something ugly. His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride - they decline with the ugly, they increase with the beautiful.

Poets and writers who are in love with the superlative all want to do more than they can.