Among human beings there is no greater banality than death. Second in order, because it is possible to die without being born, comes birth, and next comes marriage.

I am too inquisitive, too skeptical, too arrogant, to let myself be satisfied with an obvious and crass solution of things. God is such an obvious and crass solution; a solution which is a sheer indelicacy to us thinkers - at bottom He is really nothing but a coarse commandment against us: ye shall not think!

Writers ought to be regarded as wrongdoers who deserve to be acquitted or pardoned only in the rarest cases: that would be a way to keep books from getting out of hand.

A matter that becomes clear ceases to concern us.

Children from humble families must be taught how to command just as other children must be taught how to obey.

Do not be deceived! The busiest people harbor the greatest weariness, their restlessness is weakness--they no longer have the capacity for waiting and idleness.

Thus do I want man and woman to be: the one fit to wage war and the other fit to give birth, but both fit to dance with head and feet.