Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness — as if happiness sat on the throne. Often, mud sits on the throne — and often the throne also on mud. Mad they all appear to me, clambering monkeys and overardent. Foul smells their idol, the cold monster: foul, they smell to me altogether, these idolators.

There is a stupid humility that is quite common and when a person is afflicted with it, he is once and for all disqualified for being a disciple of knowledge.

A soul which knows that it is loved, but does not itself love, betrays its sediment: its dregs come up.

Everything in the world displeases me: but, above all, my displeasure in everything displeases me.

Unresolved dissonances between the characters and dispositions of the parents continue to reverberate in the nature of the child and make up the history of its inner sufferings.

Yet tell me, my brothers: if a goal for humanity is still lacking, is there not still lacking--humanity itself?

Christianity is Platonism for the people.