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

When virtue has slept it will arise more vigorous.

I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. the will to a system is a lack of integrity.

My conception of freedom. — The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it — what it costs us. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions.

Nobody thanks a witty man for politeness when he puts himself on a par with a society in which it would not be polite to show one's wit.

He who rejoices even at the stake triumphs not over pain but over the absence of pain where he had anticipated feeling it. A parable.

A certain type of person strives to become a master over all, and to extend his force, his will to power, and to subdue all that resists it. But he encounters the power of others, and comes to an arrangement, a union, with those that are like him: thus they work together to serve the will to power. And the process goes on.