An important species of pleasure, and therewith the source of morality, arises out of habit.

In a friend one should have ones best enemy. You should be closest to him with your heart when you resist him.

Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.

Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness — as if happiness sat on the throne. Often, mud sits on the throne — and often the throne also on mud. Mad they all appear to me, clambering monkeys and overardent. Foul smells their idol, the cold monster: foul, they smell to me altogether, these idolators.

To be ashamed of one's immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one's morality.

The misunderstanding of passion and reason, as if the latter were an independent entity and not rather a system of relations between various passions and desires; and as if every passion did not possess its quantum of reason.

What? A great man? I only ever see the ape of his own ideal.