The ascetic makes a necessity of virtue.

The command 'become hard! ', the deep conviction that all creators are hard, is the really distinctive sign of a Dionysian nature.

The sick are the greatest danger for the healthy; it is not from the strongest that harm comes to the strong, but from the weakest.

However modest one may be in one's demand for intellectual cleanliness, one cannot help feeling, when coming into contact with the New Testament, a kind of inexpressible discomfiture: for the unchecked impudence with which the least qualified want to raise their voice on the greatest problems, and even claim to be judges of such things, surpasses all measure. The shameless levity with which the most intractable problems (life, world, God, purpose of life) are spoken of, as if they were not problems at all but simply things that these little bigots knew!

Sins are indispensable to every society organized on an ecclesiastical basis; they are the only reliable weapons of power; the priest lives upon sins; it is necessary to him that there be sinning.

The more a person indulges himself the less others are willing to indulge him.

The universe without music would be madness.