If we have our own why of life, we shall get along with almost any how. Man does not strive for pleasure; only the Englishman does.

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.

Subordination to morality can be slavish or vain or self- interested or resigned or gloomily enthusiastic or thoughtless or an act of despair, just as subordination to a prince can be: in itself it is nothing moral.

The great advantage in noble parentage is that enables one to endure poverty more easily.

The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.

Our knowledge will take its revenge on us, just as ignorance exacted its revenge during the Middle Ages.

You know these things as thoughts, but your thoughts are not your experiences, they are an echo and after-effect of your experiences: as when your room trembles whe na carriage goes past. I however am sitting in the carriage, and often I am the carriage itself. Ina man who thinks like this, the dichotomy between thinking and feeling, intellect and passion, has really disappeared. He feels his thoughts. He can fall in love with an idea. An idea can make him ill.