In certain pious people I have found a hatred of reason, and have been favourably disposed to them for it: their bad intellectual conscience was at least exposed by that!

He who knows not how to plant his will in things at least endows them with some meaning: that is to say, he believes that a will is already present in them (A principle of faith.)

It is very noble hypocrisy not to talk of one's self.

... hitherto we have been permitted to seek beauty only in the morally good - a fact which sufficiently accounts for our having found so little of it and having had to seek about for imaginary beauties without backbone! - As surely as the wicked enjoy a hundred kinds of happiness of which the virtuous have no inkling, so too they possess a hundred kinds of beauty; and many of them have not yet been discovered.

We grow hostile to many an artist or writer, not because we finally come to see he has deceived us, but because he thought no subtler means were required to ensnare us.

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.

What we call truths are just those errors that we cannot give up.