One is punished best for one's virtues.

The ascetic makes a necessity of virtue.

Crude men who feel themselves insulted tend to assess the degree of insult as high as possible, and talk about the offense in greatly exaggerated language, only so they can revel to their heart's content in the aroused feelings of hatred and revenge.

In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering among innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge.

Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man - the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.

The great epochs of our life come when we gain the courage to rechristen our evil as what is best in us.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.