A man who whinnies with noisy laughter, surpasses all the animals in vulgarity.

Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature

The golden fleece of self-sufficiency guards against cudgel- blows but not against pin-pricks.

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

One never dives into the water to save a drowning man more eagerly than when there are others present who dare not take the risk.

One should part from life as Odysseus parted from Nausicaa-blessing it rather than in love with it.

It is the evening that questions thus from within me.