Every profound spirit needs a mask: even more, around every profound spirit a mask is continually growing.

Having become conscious of the truth he once perceived, man now sees only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence, he now understands the symbolic element in Ophelia's fate, he now recognizes the wisdom of the woodland god, Silenus: it nauseates him.

The hypocrite who always plays one and the same part ceases at last to be a hypocrite.

Do not be deceived! The busiest people harbor the greatest weariness, their restlessness is weakness--they no longer have the capacity for waiting and idleness.

Some men have sighed over the abduction of their wives, but many more have sighed because no one wanted to abduct theirs.

There is sense in hoping for recognition in a distant future only when we take it for granted that mankind will remain essentially unchanged, and that whatever is great is not for one age only but will be looked upon as great for all time.

Man is something that is to be surpassed.