A good aphorism is too hard for the tooth of time, and is not worn away by all the centuries, although it serves as food for every epoch. Hence it is the greatest paradox in literature, the imperishable in the midst of change, the nourishment which always remains highly valued, as salt does, and never becomes stupid like salt.

The most fundamental form of human stupidity is forgetting what we were trying to do in the first place.

Man Is Something That Must Be Overcome

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.

You cannot learn to fly by flying. First you must learn to walk, to run, to climb, to dance.

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.

There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.