I know my fate. One day my name will be tied to the memory of something monstrous - a crisis without equal on earth.... I am no man, I am dynamite!

There are people who are so presumptuous that they know no other way to praise a greatness that they publicly admire than by representing it as a preliminary stage and bridge leading to themselves.

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.

A little wisdom is indeed possible; but this blessed security have I found in all things, that they prefer--to DANCE on the feet of chance.

The poison by which the weaker nature is destroyed is strengthening to the strong individual and he does not call it poison.

Above all, there is no exception to this rule: that the idea of political superiority always resolves itself into the idea of psychological superiority.

Everyone who has ever built anywhere a "new heaven" first found the power thereto in his own hell.