It may be that until now there has been no more potent means for beautifying man himself than piety: it can turn man into so much art, surface, play of colors, graciousness that his sight no longer makes one suffer.---

Enduring habits I hate.... Yes, at the very bottom of my soul I feel grateful to all my misery and bouts of sickness and everything about me that is imperfect, because this sort of thing leaves me with a hundred backdoors through which I can escape from enduring habits.

How good music and bad reasons sound when one marches against an enemy.

Is man God's biggest blunder, or is man's God?

The command 'become hard! ', the deep conviction that all creators are hard, is the really distinctive sign of a Dionysian nature.

Beggars should be entirely abolished! Truly, it is annoying to give to them and annoying not to give to them.

But he who is hated by the people, as the wolf by the dogs - is the free spirit, the enemy of fetters, the non-adorer, the dweller in the woods.