What a person is begins to betray itself when his talent weakens--when he stops showing what he can do. Talent, too, is ornamentation, and ornamentation, too, is a hiding place.

The wittiest authors evoke a barely perceptible smile.

One must first be firmly set in oneself, one must stand securely on one's own two legs otherwise one cannot love at all.

This is the crux of the moral pessimists: if they really wanted to promote their neighbor's redemption, then they would have to resolve themselves to spoiling existence for him, and thus to being his misfortune; out of pity, they would have to--become evil!

One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.

We are franker towards others than towards ourselves.

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.