Consider the cattle, grazing as they pass you by. They do not know what is meant by yesterday or today, they leap about, eat, rest, digest, leap about again, and so from morn till night and from day to day, fettered to the moment and its pleasure or displeasure, and thus neither melancholy nor bored. [...] A human being may well ask an animal: 'Why do you not speak to me of your happiness but only stand and gaze at me?' The animal would like to answer, and say, 'The reason is I always forget what I was going to say' - but then he forgot this answer too, and stayed silent.

Do you call yourself Free? It is your ruling thought that I would hear, and not that you have escaped from a yoke.

Necessity is an interpretation, not a fact.

Whoever feels predestined to see and not to believe will find all believers too noisy and pushy: he guards against them.

For all things are baptized at the font of eternity, and beyond good and evil; good and evil themselves, however, are but intervening shadows and damp afflictions and passing clouds.

Has a woman who knew she was well-dressed ever caught a cold?

Life is that which must overcome itself again and again