truths are illusions of which one has forgotten that they are illusions, metaphors that have become worn-out and deprived of their sensuous force, coins that have lost their imprint and are now no longer seen as coins but as metal.

Learning from one's enemies is the best way to love them, for it puts one into a grateful mood toward them.

Not with wrath do we kill, but with laughter. Come, let us kill the spirit of gravity!

Good prose is written only face to face with poetry.

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

If there were gods, how could I endure not to be a god? Therefore there are no gods.

Do not talk about giftedness, inborn talents! One can assume great men of all kinds who were very little gifted. They acquired greatness, became “geniuses” (as we put it), through qualities the lack of which no one who knew what they were would boast of: they all possessed that seriousness of the efficient workman which first learns to construct the parts properly before it ventures to fashion a great whole; they allowed themselves time for it, because they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole.