All that the world most needs today, is combined in the most seductive manner in his art, — the three great stimulants of exhausted people: brutality, artificiality and innocence (idiocy).

Was that life? Well then, once more!

Whoever does not know how to find the way to his ideal lives more frivolously and impudently than the man without an ideal.

He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself; and if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into you.

Why couldn't the world that concerns us- be a fiction? And if somebody asked, 'but to be a fiction there surely belongs an author?'- couldn't one answer simply: 'Why? Doesn't this "belongs" perhaps belong to the fiction, too?'

We must take precautions against being prematurely honed sharp--since at the same time we are being prematurely honed thin.

...one can speak with the utmost clearness, and yet not be heard by anyone.