The one conclusive argument that has at all times discouraged people from drinking a poison is not that it kills but rather that it tastes bad.

...If I continued to harbour any hope for music it lay in the expectation that a musician might come who was sufficiently bold, subtle, malicious, southerly, superhealthy to confront that music and in an immortal fashion take revenge on it.

He who attains his ideal, precisely thereby surpasses it.

As soon as we climb higher than those who had at one time admired us, we appear to them as though we have sunken and fallen down:for, in any event, they had at one time supposed that they were with us (even if it were through us) on the heights.

I call a lie: wanting not to see something one does see, wanting not to see something as one sees it... The most common lie is the lie one tells to oneself; lying to others is relatively the exception.

Nobody is more inferior than those who insist on being equal.

That God became man indicates only this: that man should not seek his salvation in eternity, but rather establish his heaven on earth.