So long as the spectator has to figure out the meaning of this or that person, or the presuppositions of this or that conflict of inclinations and purposes, he cannot become completely absorbed in the activities and sufferings of the chief characters or feel breathless pity and fear.

Faith, indeed, has up to the present not been able to move real mountains, although I do not know who assumed that it could. But it can put mountains where there are none.

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

Never trust a thought that didn't come by walking.

Even in the lust of knowledge I feel only my will's delight in begetting and becoming; and if there be innocence in my knowledge it is because my procreative will is in it.

One must separate from anything that forces one to repeat No again and again.

One receives as reward for much ennui, despondency, boredom -such as a solitude without friends, books, duties, passions must bring with it -those quarter-hours of profoundest contemplation within oneself and nature. He who completely entrenches himself against boredom also entrenches himself against himself: he will never get to drink the strongest refreshing draught from his own innermost fountain.