To have to fight the instincts - that is the definition of decadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness equals instinct.

Beggars should be entirely abolished! Truly, it is annoying to give to them and annoying not to give to them.

Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.

But thus I counsel you, my friends: Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. They are people of a low sort and stock; the hangmen and the bloodhound look out of their faces. Mistrust all who talk much of their justice! Verily, their souls lack more than honey. And when they call themselves the good and the just, do not forget that they would be pharisees, if only they had-power.

The hour when you say, "What does my happiness matter? It is poverty and filth, and a wretched complacency. Yet my happiness should justify existence itself!

Great men's errors are to be venerated as more fruitful than little men's truths.

What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness