Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.

I live in my own place - have never copied anyone even half, and at any master who lacks the grace - to laugh at himself - I laugh.

There would be no sunshine in society if the born flatterers, I mean the so-called amiable people, did not bring it in with them.

The Antichrist, Section 7

Because we have for millenia made moral, aesthetic, religious demands on the world, looked upon it with blind desire, passion or fear, and abandoned ourselves to the bad habits of illogical thinking, this world has gradually become so marvelously variegated, frightful, meaningful, soulful, it has acquired color - but we have been the colorists: it is the human intellect that has made appearances appear and transported its erroneous basic conceptions into things.

One thing a man must have: either a naturally light disposition or a disposition lightened by art and knowledge.

How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which has to be overcome, by the effort it costs to stay aloft. One would have to seek the highest type of free man where the greatest resistance is constantly being overcome: five steps from tyranny, near the threshold of the danger of servitude.