From the sun did I learn this, when it goeth down, the exuberant one: gold doth it then pour into the sea, out of inexhaustible riches, -So that the poorest fisherman roweth even with golden oars! For this did I once see, and did not tire of weeping in beholding it. - Like the sun will also Zarathustra go down: now sitteth he here and waiteth, old broken tables around him, and also new tables half-written.

The most fundamental form of human stupidity is forgetting what we were trying to do in the first place.

Everyone needs a sense of shame, but no one needs to feel ashamed.

Active, successful natures act, not according to the maxim, "know thyself," but as if prompted by the commandment: will a self, and so become a self.

Where the good begins.- Where the poor power of the eye can no longer see the evil impulse as such because it has become too subtle, man posits the realm of goodness; and the feeling that we have now entered the realm of goodness excites all those impulses which had been threatened and limited by the evil impulses, like the feeling of security, of comfort, of benevolence. Hence, the duller the eye, the more extensive the good. Hence the eternal cheerfulness of the common people and of children. Hence the gloominess and grief - akin to a bad conscience - of the great thinkers.

It is the privilege of greatness to confer intense happiness with insignificant gifts.

There are two types of genius; one which above all begets and wants to beget, and another which prefers being fertilized and giving birth.