i have never pondered over questions that are not questions.

Without meaning, without substance, without aim: a mere 'public opinion'.

He who climbeth on the highest mountains, laugheth at all tragic plays and tragic realities.

But what if pleasure and pain should be so closely connected that he who wants the greatest possible amount of the one must also have the greatest possible amount of the other, that he who wants to experience the "heavenly high jubilation," must also be ready to be "sorrowful unto death"?

Most people are too stupid to act in their own interest

Because we have for millenia made moral, aesthetic, religious demands on the world, looked upon it with blind desire, passion or fear, and abandoned ourselves to the bad habits of illogical thinking, this world has gradually become so marvelously variegated, frightful, meaningful, soulful, it has acquired color - but we have been the colorists: it is the human intellect that has made appearances appear and transported its erroneous basic conceptions into things.

A refined soul is distressed to know that someone owes it thanks; a crude soul, to know that it owes someone thanks.