Examine the life of the best and most productive men and nations, and ask yourselves whether a tree which is to grow proudly skywards can dispense with bad weather and storms. Whether misfortune and opposition, or every kind of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, distrust, severity, greed, and violence do not belong to the favourable conditions without which a great growth even of virtue is hardly possible?

We attack not only to hurt someone, to defeat him, but perhaps also simply to become conscious of our own strength.

Among austere men intimacy involves shame--and is something precious.

Your soul will be dead even before your body: fear nothing further.

There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.

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

The mouth may lie, alright, but the face it makes nonetheless tells the truth.