One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.

Sometimes we owe a friend to the lucky circumstance that we give him no cause for envy.

What is life? A continuous praise and blame.

Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness — as if happiness sat on the throne. Often, mud sits on the throne — and often the throne also on mud. Mad they all appear to me, clambering monkeys and overardent. Foul smells their idol, the cold monster: foul, they smell to me altogether, these idolators.

Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong.

One has renounced the great life when one renounces war.

It quite often happens that the old man is subject to the delusion of a great moral renewal and rebirth, and from this experience he passes judgments on the work and course of his life, as if he had only now become clear-sighted; and yet the inspiration behind this feeling of well-being and these confident judgements is not wisdom, but weariness .