Men are even lazier than they are timorous, and what they fear most is the troubles with which any unconditional honesty and nudity would burden them.

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

Wherever I found a living creature, there I found the will to power.

Aphorisms should be peaks - and those who are addressed, tall and lofty. The air thin and pure, danger near, and the spirit full of gay sarcasm: these go well together.

A book calls for pen, ink, and a writing desk; today the rule is that pen, ink, and a writing desk call for a book.

Even today a crude sort of persecution is all that is required to create an honorable name for any sect, no matter how indifferent in itself.

Only great pain is, as the teacher of great suspicion, the ultimate liberator of the spirit...I doubt whether such pain improves us-but I do know it deepens us.