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.

Tolerance is a proof of distrust in one's own ideals.

We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge - and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves - how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves? It has rightly been said: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also"; our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge are.

A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what there is to love in man is that he is a going-over and a going-under.

It is obvious that all sense has gone out of modern marriage; which is, however, no objection to marriage but to modernity.

When an idea is just rising on the horizon, the soul's temperature with respect to it is usually very cold. Only gradually does the idea develop its warmth, and it is hottest (which is to say, exerting its greatest influence) when belief in the idea is already once again in decline.