But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! Distrust all those who talk much of their justice!

Great men's errors are to be venerated as more fruitful than little men's truths.

"God", "the immortality of the soul", "salvation", "the beyond"-even as a child I had no time for such notions, I do not waste any time upon them-maybe I was never childish enough for that?

For the longest time, marriage has had a guilty conscience about itself. Should we believe it?--Yes, we should believe it.

Only in war are you holy, and when you are robbers and cruel.

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

Do not talk about giftedness, inborn talents! One can assume great men of all kinds who were very little gifted. They acquired greatness, became “geniuses” (as we put it), through qualities the lack of which no one who knew what they were would boast of: they all possessed that seriousness of the efficient workman which first learns to construct the parts properly before it ventures to fashion a great whole; they allowed themselves time for it, because they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole.