There are two types of genius; one which above all begets and wants to beget, and another which prefers being fertilized and giving birth.

Whoever possesses the will to suffering within himself has a different attitude towards cruelty: he does not regard it as inherently harmful and bad.

To produce music is also in a sense to produce children.

What makes us heroic?--Confronting simultaneously our supreme suffering and our supreme hope.

The discipline of suffering, of great suffering- do you not know that only this discipline has created all enhancements of man so far? That tension of the soul in unhappiness which cultivates its strength, its shudders face to face with great ruin, its inventiveness and courage in enduring, preserving, interpreting, and exploiting suffering, and whatever has been granted to it of profundity, secret, mask, spirit, cunning, greatness- was it not granted to it through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering?

A man who whinnies with noisy laughter, surpasses all the animals in vulgarity.

I have forgotten my umbrella.