There is a lake that one day refused to flow away and threw up a dam at the place where it had before flowed out and since then this lake has always risen higher and higher. Perhaps the very act of renunciation provides us with the strength to bear it ; perhaps man will rise ever higher and higher when he no longer flows out into a God.

Without music, life would be an error. The German imagines even God singing songs

The will to incessant creation is vulgar, betraying jealousy, envy, and ambition. Assuming that you are something, there is really nothing that you need to do-and yet you do a great deal. Above the "productive" man there is still a higher type.

All parties attempt to represent important things that have developed outside themselves as unimportant, and where they fail in this they assail those things all the more bitterly the more admirable they are.

When I contemplated purpose I also contemplated chance and foolishness.

They call you heartless; but you have a heart and I love you for being ashamed to show it.

Whether a man hides his bad qualities and vices or confesses them openly, his vanity wants to gain an advantage by it in both cases: just note how subtly he distinguishes between those he will hide his bad qualities from and those he will face honestly and candidly.