The best of all things is something entirely outside your grasp: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second-best thing for you - is to die soon.

Towards gnats and fleas we should show no pity. We would do right to hang petty thieves, petty calumniators, and slanderers.

What an age experiences as evil is usually an untimely reverberation echoing what was previously experienced as good--the atavismof an older ideal.

Great men's errors are to be venerated as more fruitful than little men's truths.

Does not the discipline of the scientific spirit just commence when one no longer harbours any conviction?

Love of one is a piece of barbarism: for it is practised at the expense of all others. Love of God likewise.

For this remains as I have already pointed out the essential difference between the two religions of decadence : Buddhism promises nothing, but actually fulfils; Christianity promises everything, but fulfils nothing.