People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.

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

Yes, life is a woman!

O sancta simplicitas! What strange simplification and falsification mankind lives on! One can never cease to marvel once one has acquired eyes for this marvel! How we have made everything around us bright and free and easy and simple! How we have known how to bestow on our senses a passport to everything superficial, on our thoughts a divine desire for wanton gambling and false conclusions! - how we have from the very beginning understood how to retain our ignorance so as to enjoy an almost inconceivable freedom, frivolity, impetuosity, bravery, cheerfulness of life, so as to enjoy life!

The hypocrite who always plays one and the same part ceases at last to be a hypocrite.

Man is the cruelest animal.

In this state one enriches everything out of one's own fullness: whatever one sees, whatever wills is seen swelled, taut, strong, overloaded with strength. A man in this state transforms things until they mirror his power—until they are reflections of his perfection. This having to transform into perfection is—art.