Assuming that he believes at all, the everyday Christian is a pitiful figure, a man who really cannot count up to three, and who besides, precisely because of his mental incompetence, would not deserve such a punishment as Christianity promises him.

[Heraclitus had] the highest form of pride [stemming] from a certainty of belief in the truth as grasped by himself alone. He brings this form, by its excessive development, into a sublime pathos by involuntary identification of himself with his truth.

A sedentary life is the real sin against the Holy Spirit. Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.

Although you have so far demonstrated little faith in my ability to pay, I yet hope to demonstrate that I am somebody who pays his debts-for example, to you.

It was modesty that invented the word "philosopher" in Greece and left the magnificent overweening presumption in calling oneselfwise to the actors of the spirit--the modesty of such monsters of pride and sovereignty as Pythagoras, as Plato.

He who bestows something great receives no gratitude; for in accepting it the recipient has already been weighed down too much.

Whoever wants to set a good example must add a grain of foolishness to his virtue: then others can imitate and yet at the same time surpass the one they imitate-which human beings love to do.