O my brothers, am I then cruel? But I say: that which is falling should also be pushed!

A good aphorism is too hard for the tooth of time, and is not worn away by all the centuries, although it serves as food for every epoch.

Indeed, what forces us at all to suppose that there is an essential opposition of 'true' and 'false'? Is it not sufficient to assume degrees of apparentness and, as it were, lighter and darker shadows and shades of appearance- different 'values', to use the language of painters?

Better know nothing than half-know many things.

The secret of realizing the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships out into uncharted seas! Live in conflict with your equals and with yourselves! Be robbers and ravagers as soon as you ca not be rulers and owners, you men of knowledge! The time will soon past when you could be content to live concealed int he woods like timid deer!

Good writers have two things in common: they prefer to be understood rather than admired; and they do not write for knowing and over-acute readers.

That roguish and cheerful vice, politeness.