There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.

Do ask yourself why you, the individual, exist, and if you can get no other answer try for once to justify the meaning of your existence as it were a posteriori by setting before yourself an aim, a goal, a 'to this end', an exalted and noble 'to this end'.

One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.

Happiness is a fata morgana. the only way to not end up unhappy is to not long for happiness.

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.

Women's modesty generally increases with their beauty.

He who denies his own vanity usually possesses it in so brutal a form that he instinctively shuts his eyes to avoid the necessity of despising himself.