What is not intelligible to me is not necessarily unintelligent

Whoever gives advice to the sick gains a sense of superiority over them, no matter whether his advice is accepted or rejected. That is why sick people who are sensitive and proud hate their advisors even more than their illnesses.

The strong individual loves the earth so much he lusts for recurrence. He can smile in the face of the most terrible thought: meaningless, aimless existence recurring eternally. The second characteristic of such a man is that he has the strength to recognize - and to live with the recognition - that the world is valueless in itself and that all values are human ones. He creates himself by fashioning his own values; he has the pride to live by the values he wills.

Some people throw a bit of their personality after their bad arguments, as if that might straighten their paths and turn them into right and good arguments-just as a man in a bowling alley, after he has let go of the ball, still tries to direct it with gestures.

We believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things - metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities.

Both classically- and romantically-minded spirits-inasmuch as these two species always exist-occupy themselves with a vision of the future: but the former do so out of a strength of their age, the latter out of its weakness.

Phlegmatic natures can be inspired to enthusiasm only by being made into fanatics.