He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself; and if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into you.

Live so that thou mayest desire to live again - that is thy duty - for in any case thou wilt live again!

A vocation is the backbone of life.

The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.

Everyone nowadays lives through too much and thinks through too little: they have a ravenous appetite and colic at the same time so that they keep getting thinner and thinner no matter how much they eat.--Whoever says nowadays, "I have not experienced anything"--is a simpleton.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what there is to love in man is that he is a going-over and a going-under.

The truth is ugly: we have art so as not to perish from the truth.