You may lie with your mouth, but with the mouth you make as you do so you none the less tell the truth.

The vanity of others runs counter to our taste only when it runs counter to our vanity.

That the world is not the embodiment of an eternal rationality can be conclusively proved by the fact that the piece of the worldthat we know--I mean our human reason--is not so very rational. And if it is not eternally and completely wise and rational, then the rest of the world will not be either; here the conclusion a minori ad majus, a parte ad totum applies, and does so with decisive force.

My philosophy is inverted Platonism: the further a thing is from true being, the purer, the lovelier, the better it is. Living inillusion as a goal!

A few hours of mountain climbing make a blackguard and a saint two rather similar creatures.

The will to truth is merely the longing for a stable world.

Those who are failures from the start, downtrodden, crushed -- it is they, the weakest, who must undermine life among men, who call into question and poison most dangerously our trust in life, in man, and in ourselves.