Those are my enemies: they want to overthrow and to construct nothing themselves. They say: "All that is worthless"--and want to create no value themselves.

The charm of knowledge would be small indeed, were it not that there is so much shame to be overcome on the way to it.

Man is more sensitive to the contempt that others feel towards him than to the contempt that he feels towards himself.

Dreadful experiences raise the question whether he who experiences them, is not something dreadful also.

In the mountains, the shortest way is from peak to peak: but for that you must have long legs

A man should not play the coward to his deeds. He should not repudiate them once he has performed them. Pangs of conscience are indecent.

All human life is sunk deep in untruth; the individual cannot pull it out of this well without growing profoundly annoyed with his entire past, without finding his present motives (like honor) senseless, and without opposing scorn and disdain to the passions that urge one on to the future and to the happiness in it.