Lust and self-mutilation are closely related impulses. There are also self-mutilators among knowers: they do not want to be creators under any circumstances.

Envy and jealousy are the private parts of the human soul. Perhaps the comparison can be extended.

I go in solitude, so as not to drink out of everybody's cistern. When I am among the many I live as the many do, and I do not think I really think; after a time it always seems as if they want to banish myself from myself and rob me of my soul.

Since Copernicus, man seems to have got himself on an inclined plane-now he is slipping faster and faster away from the center into-what? into nothingness? into a 'penetrating sense of his nothingness?' ... all science, natural as well as unnatural-which is what I call the self-critique of knowledge-has at present the object of dissuading man from his former respect for himself, as if this had been but a piece of bizarre conceit.

Everything that is profound loves the mask: the profoundest things have a hatred even of figure and likeness.

We cannot live without valuing: but we can live without valuing what you value.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.