One must cease letting oneself be eaten when one tastes best: that is known to those who want to be loved long.

The value of many men and books rests solely on their faculty for compelling all to seek out the most hidden and intimate things.

Preparatory human beings. - I welcome all signs that a more virile, warlike age is about to begin, which will restore honour to courage above all! For this age shall prepare the way for one yet higher, and it shall gather the strength that this higher age will require some day - the age that will carry heroism into the search for knowledge and that will wage wars for the sake of ideas and their consequences.

However un-Christian this may sound, I am not even predisposed against myself.

In the stream.- Mighty waters draw much stone and rubble along with them; mighty spirits many stupid and bewildered heads.

To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying but an ancient, mighty, human, all-too-human principle [....] Without cruelty there is no festival.

We grow hostile to many an artist or writer, not because we finally come to see he has deceived us, but because he thought no subtler means were required to ensnare us.