Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

The lack of closeness among friends is a fault that cannot be reprimanded without becoming incurable.

What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment. And just that shall man be for the superman: a laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment.

How lovely it is that there are words and sounds. Are not words and sounds rainbows and illusive bridges between things which are eternally apart?

Solitude makes us tougher towards ourselves and tenderer towards others. In both ways it improves our character.

That which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable echo of what was formerly considered good - the atavism of an old ideal.

Philosophers are in the habit of setting themselves before life and experience.