But let me open up my heart to you completely, my friends: if there were gods, how could I bear not being a god! Hence, there areno gods. I drew this conclusion, to be sure--but now it draws me.

Remain faithful to the earth, my brothers, with the power of your virtue. Let your gift-giving love and your knowledge serve the meaning of the earth. Thus I beg and beseech you. Do not let them fly away from earthly things and beat with their wings against eternal walls. Alas, there has always been so much virtue that has flown away. Lead back to the earth the virtue that flew away, as I do—back to the body, back to life, that it may give the earth a meaning, a human meaning.

I love those who do not know how to live for today.

There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.

The task is not to overcome opponents in general but only those opponents against whom one has to summon all one's strength, one's skill and one's swordsmanship-in fact to master opponents who are one's equals.

He that writeth in blood and proverbs doth not want to be read, but learnt by heart.

Every virtue has its privilege: for example, that of contributing its own little bundle of wood to the funeral pyre of one condemned.