Untroubled, scornful, outrageous - that is how wisdom wants us to be: she is a woman and never loves anyone but a warrior.

I feel all those human beings to be pernicious who can no longer oppose what they love: they thereby ruin the best things and people.

You tell me: 'Life is hard to bear.' But if it were otherwise why should ou have your pride in the morning nad your resignation in the evening?

Can an ass be tragic?--To perish under a burden that one can neither bear nor cast off? The case of the philosopher.

Wherever primitive man put up a word, he believed he had made a discovery. How utterly mistaken he really was! He had touched a problem, and while supposing he had solved it, he had created and obstacle to its solution. Now, with every new knowledge we stumble over flint-like and petrified words and, in so doing, break a leg sooner than a word.

The desire for a strong faith is not the proof of a strong faith, rather the opposite. If one has it one may permit oneself the beautiful luxury of skepticism: one is secure enough, fixed enough for it.

Man alone suffers so excruciatingly in the world that he was compelled to invent laughter.