What if God were not exactly truth, and if this could be proved? And if he were instead the vanity, the desire for power, the ambitions, the fear, and the enraptured and terrified folly of mankind?

Strong hope is a much greater stimulant of life than any single realised joy could be.

Give me today, for once, the worst throw of your dice, destiny. Today I transmute everything into gold.

I condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible of all accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worse possible corruption. The Christian Church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul.

A book calls for pen, ink, and a writing desk; today the rule is that pen, ink, and a writing desk call for a book.

If a man wishes to rid himself of a feeling of unbearable oppression, he may have to take hashish.

The wisest man would be the one richest in contradictions, who has, as it were, antennae for all types of men---as well as his great moments of grand harmony---a rare accident even in us! A sort of planetary motion---