Rash actions are seldom committed in isolation. With the first rash action we always do too much. So we usually go on to commit asecond one--and then we do too little.

A man who wills commands something within himself that renders obedience, or that he believes renders obedience.

Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.

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

The machine is impersonal, it takes the pride away from a piece of work, the individual merits and defects that go along with allwork that is not done by a machine--which is to say, its little bit of humanity.

Man is the cruelest animal. At tragedies, bullfights, and crucifixions he has so far felt best on earth; and when he invented hell for himself, behold, that was his very heaven.

The most spiritual men, as the strongest, find their happiness where others would find their destruction: in the labyrinth, in hardness against themselves and others, in experiments. Their joy is self-conquest: asceticism becomes in them nature, need, and instinct. Difficult tasks are a privilege to them; to play with burdens that crush others, a recreation. Knowledge-a form of asceticism. They are the most venerable kind of man: that does not preclude their being the most cheerful and the kindliest.