Our sense of the tragic waxes and wanes with our sensuality.

To have to fight the instincts - that is the definition of decadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness equals instinct.

Plato was a bore.

The definition of morality: Morality is the idiosyncrasy of decadents having the hidden desire to revenge themselves upon life - and being successful.

Moderation sees itself as beautiful; it is unaware that in the eye of the immoderate it appears black and sober and consequently ugly-looking.

Whoever has looked deeply into the world might well guess what wisdom lies in the superficiality of men.

The strongest and most evil spirits have to date advanced mankind the most: they always rekindled the sleeping passions - all orderly arranged society lulls the passions to sleep; they always reawakened the sense of comparison, of contradiction, of delight in the new, the adventurous, the untried; they compelled men to set opinion against opinion, ideal plan against ideal plan.