Beggars should be entirely abolished! Truly, it is annoying to give to them and annoying not to give to them.

Few serve truth in truth because only few have the pure will to be just, and of those again very few have the strength to be just.

Man, however, is the most courageous animal: thereby has he overcome every animal. With sound of triumph has he overcome every pain; human pain, however, is the sorest pain.

Having become conscious of the truth he once perceived, man now sees only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence, he now understands the symbolic element in Ophelia's fate, he now recognizes the wisdom of the woodland god, Silenus: it nauseates him.

For such is man: a Theological Dogma might be refuted to him a thousand times - provided however, that he had need of it, he would again and again accept it as true. Belief is always most desired, most pressingly needed where there is a lack of will. Fanaticism is the sole "volitional strength" to which the weak and irresolute can be excited, as a sort of hypnotising of the entire sensory-intellectual system.

We talk about taking "pleasure in a thing": but in truth it is pleasure in ourselves, mediated by a thing.

The destiny of the human race is to widen the gap separating it from the lower races of animals. Any code of morality which retains its permanence and authority after the conditions of existence which gave rise to it have changed, works against this upward progress of man.