Natural death is independent of all reason and is really an irrational death, in which the pitiable substance of the shell determines how long the kernel is to exist or not; in which, accordingly, the stunted, diseased and dull witted jailer is lord, and indicates the moment at which his distinguished prisoner shall die.

If ye would go up high, then use your own legs! Do not get yourselves carried aloft; do not seat yourselves on other people's backs and heads!

Sins are indispensable to every society organized on an ecclesiastical basis; they are the only reliable weapons of power; the priest lives upon sins; it is necessary to him that there be sinning.

Knowing things halfway is a greater success than knowing things completely: it takes things to be simpler than they really are andso makes its opinions more easily understandable and persuasive.

Around the hero everything turns into a tragedy, around the demigod, a satyr-play, and around God--what? perhaps a "world"?

It is not conflict of opinions that has made history so violent but conflict of belief in opinions, that is to say conflict of convictions.

A man of genius is unbearable, unless he possesses at least two things besides: gratitude and purity.