The thirst for equality can express itself either as a desire to draw everyone down to one's level, or to raise oneself and everyone else up.

Around the hero everything turns into a tragedy, around the demigod, a satyr-play, and around God--what? perhaps a "world"?

Free will without fate is no more conceivable than spirit without matter, good without evil.

Good writers have two things in common: they prefer to be understood rather than admired; and they do not write for knowing and over-acute readers.

There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.

We think that play and fairytales belong to childhood - how shortsighted that is! As though we would want at any time in our life to live without play and fairytales! We give these things other names, to be sure, and feel differently about them, but precisely this is the evidence that they are the same things, for the child too regards play as his work and fairy tales as his truth. The brevity of life ought to preserve us from a pedantic division of life into different stages - as though each brought something new.

Belief in truth begins with doubting all that has hitherto been believed to be true.