You want to be paid as well, you virtuous! You want reward for virtue, and heaven for earth, and eternity for your today?

Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of something it must be profound. It is so timid and dislikes going into the water.

The tragedy is that we cannot believe the dogmas of religion and metaphysics if we have the strict methods of truth in heart and head, but on the other hand, we have become through the development of humanity so tenderly suffering that we need the highest kind of means of salvation and consolation: whence arises the danger that man may bleed to death through the truth that he realises.

... art approaches as a saving sorceress, expert at healing. She alone knows how to turn these nauseous thoughts about the horror or absurdity of existence into notions with which one can live.

Men who think deeply appear to be comedians in their dealings with others because they always have to feign superficiality in order to be understood.

A man who is very busy seldom changes his opinions.

When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.