What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment. And just that shall man be for the superman: a laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment.

The one conclusive argument that has at all times discouraged people from drinking a poison is not that it kills but rather that it tastes bad.

A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.

The reason adultery is immoral is that it might lead to marriage.

Let us not underestimate the privileges of the mediocre. As one climbs higher, life becomes ever harder, the coldness increases, responsibility increases.

There is no more dreary or more repulsive creature than the man who has evaded his genius.

He who has attained the freedom of reason to any extent cannot, for a long time, regard himself otherwise than as a wanderer on the face of the earth - and not even as a traveler towards a final goal, for there is no such thing. But he certainly wants to observe and keep his eyes open to whatever actually happens in the world; therefore he cannot attach his heart too firmly to anything individual; he must have in himself something wandering that takes pleasure in change and transitoriness.