Towards gnats and fleas we should show no pity. We would do right to hang petty thieves, petty calumniators, and slanderers.

You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted.

In a man devoted to knowledge, pity seems almost ridiculous, like delicate hands on a cyclops.

Some die too young, some die too old; the precept sounds strange, but die at the right age.

There is no better soporific and sedative than skepticism.

But this word will I say to my enemies: What is all manslaughter in comparison with what you have done to me!

Has anyone...any distinct notion of what poets of a stronger age understood by the word inspiration? ... There is an ecstasy such that the immese strain of it is sometimes relaxed by a flood of tears, along with which one's steps either rush or involuntarily lag, alternately. There is the feeling that one is completely out of hand, with the very distinct consciousness of an endless number of fine thrills and quiverings to the very toes... Everything happens quite involuntarily, as if in a tempestuous outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of power and divinity.