One does not want to be deceived, under the supposition that it is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived.

Error has made animals into men; is truth in a position to make men into animals again?

A vocation makes us unthinking; that is its greatest blessing. For it is a bulwark behind which we are permitted to withdraw whencommonplace doubts and cares assail us.

The Great Man... is colder, harder, less hesitating, and without fear of 'opinion'; he lacks the virtues that accompany respect and 'respectability,' and altogether everything that is the 'virtue of the herd.' If he cannot lead, he goes alone... He knows he is incommunicable: he finds it tasteless to be familiar... When not speaking to himself, he wears a mask. There is a solitude within him that is inaccessible to praise or blame.

I despise mystics, they fancy themselves so deep, when they aren't even superficial.

What a person is begins to betray itself when his talent weakens--when he stops showing what he can do. Talent, too, is ornamentation, and ornamentation, too, is a hiding place.

The concepts "soul", "spirit" and last of all the concept "immortal soul" were invented in order to despise the body, in order to make it sick - "holy" - in order to cultivate an attitude of appalling disrespect for all things in life which deserve to be treated seriously i.