The more you let yourself go, the less others let you go.

Christianity has taken the part of all the weak, the low, the botched; it has made an ideal out of antagonism to all the self preservative instincts of sound life; it has corrupted even the faculties of those natures that are intellectually most vigorous, by representing the highest intellectual values as sinful, as misleading, as full of temptation.

The transition from Religion to Scientific contemplation is a violent, dangerous leap, which is not to be recommended. In order to make this transition, art is far rather to be employed to relieve the mind overburdened with emotions. Out of the illogical comes much good. It is so firmly rooted in the passions, in language, in art, in religion, and generally in everything which gives value to life. It is only the naive people who can believe that the nature of man can be changed into a purely logical one. We have yet to learn that others can suffer, and this can never be completely learned.

To have to fight the instincts - that is the definition of decadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness equals instinct.

Our vanity desires that what we do best should be considered what is hardest for us.

The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is called man.

All mankind is divided, as it was at all times and is still, into slaves and freemen.