Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man - the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.

Heavy, heavy-hearted people grow lighter and rise occasionally to their surface through precisely that which makes others heavier,through hatred and love.

The English are the people of consummate cant.

Every extension of knowledge arises from making the conscious the unconscious.

Every attainment, every step forward in knowledge, follows from courage, from hardness against oneself, from cleanliness in relation to oneself.

When horror is associated with what is harmful, evil results, when disgust does, badness.

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.