In intercourse with scholars and artists one readily makes mistakes of opposite kinds: in a remarkable scholar one not infrequently finds a mediocre man; and often, even in a mediocre artist, one finds a very remarkable man.

It is a prejudice to think that morality is more favourable to the development of reason than immorality.

The most fatal seductive lie that has yet existed

What is more harmful than any vice? Practical sympathy and pity for all the failures and all the weak : Christianity.

The state lies in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it says, it lies-and whatever it has, it has stolen.

Was aus Liebe getan wird, geschieht immer jenseits von Gut und Böse. (What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.)

Man is not equally moral at all hours, this is well known. If his morality is judged to be the capability for great self-sacrificing resolutions and self-denial (which, when continuous and grown habitual, are called holiness)