Give me today, for once, the worst throw of your dice, destiny. Today I transmute everything into gold.

Just look at the faces of the great Christians! They are the faces of great haters.

The bite of conscience, like the bite of a dog into a stone, is a stupidity.

Could truth perhaps be a woman who has reasons for not permitting her reasons to be seen? Could her name perhaps be--to speak Greek--Baubo?... Oh, those Greeks! They understood how to live: to do that it is necessary to stop bravely at the surface, the fold, the skin, to adore the appearance, to believe in forms, in tones, in words, in the whole Olympus of appearance! Those Greeks were superficial--out of profundity!

The moment Germany rises as a great power, France gains a new importance as a cultural power.

whatever is profound loves masks; what is most profound even hates image and parable.

The charm of the Platonic mode of thought ... consisted precisely in the resistance to the obvious evidence of the senses.