Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life's nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in "another" or "better" life.

Young people love what is interesting and odd, no matter how true or false it is. More mature minds love what is interesting and odd about truth. Fully mature intellects, finally, love truth, even when it appears plain and simple, boring to the ordinary person; for they have noticed that truth tends to reveal its highest wisdom in the guise of simplicity.

In certain pious people I have found a hatred of reason, and have been favourably disposed to them for it: their bad intellectual conscience was at least exposed by that!

Whenever the truth is uncovered, the artist will always cling with rapt gaze to what still remains covering even after such uncovering; but the theoretical man enjoys and finds satisfaction in the discarded covering and finds the highest object of his pleasure in the process of an ever happy uncovering that succeeds through his own efforts.

The task is not to overcome opponents in general but only those opponents against whom one has to summon all one's strength, one's skill and one's swordsmanship-in fact to master opponents who are one's equals.

It is not the strengths, but the durations of great sentiments that make great men.

It takes just such painful and terrible things to occur for the great emancipation to take place.