Forgetting: that is a divine capacity. And whoever aspires to the heights and wants to fly must cast off much that is heavy and make himself light--I call it a divine capacity for lightness.

Man's maturity: to have regained the seriousness that he had as a child at play.

So far no one had had enough courage and intelligence to reveal me to my dear Germans. My problems are new, my psychological horizon frighteningly comprehensive, my language bold and clear; there may well be no books written in German which are richer in ideas and more independent than mine.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

I fear that, with our current veneration for the natural and the real, we have arrived at the opposite pole to all idealism, and have landed in the region of the waxworks.

When you stare into an abyss for a long time, the abyss also stares into you.

That lies should be necessary to life is part and parcel of the terrible and questionable character of existence.