The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.

Not with wrath do we kill, but with laughter. Come, let us kill the spirit of gravity!

All signs of superhuman nature appear in man as illness or insanity.

Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man - the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.

We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.

Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm.

One must repay good and ill; but why just to the person who did us good or ill?