I overcame myself, the sufferer; I carried my own ashes to the mountains; I invented a brighter flame for myself.

Nobody is so constituted as to be able to live everywhere and anywhere; and he who has great duties to perform, which lay claim toall his strength, has, in this respect, a very limited choice. The influence of climate upon the bodily functionsextends so far, that a blunder in the choice of locality and climate is able not only to alienate a man from his actual duty, but also to withhold it from him altogether, so that he never even comes face to face with it.

That lies should be necessary to life is part and parcel of the terrible and questionable character of existence.

As long as you still experience the stars as something "above you", you lack the eye of knowledge.

Unexplained, obscure matters are regarded as more important than explained, clear ones.

Heroism--that is the disposition of a man who aspires to a goal compared to which he himself is wholly insignificant. Heroism is the good will to self-destruction.

When we dream about those who are long since forgotten or dead, it is a sign that we have undergone a radical transformation and that the ground on which we live has been completely dug up: then the dead rise up, and our antiquity becomes modernity.