Nihilism: any aim is lacking, any answer to the question "why" is lacking. What does nihilism mean?--that the supreme values devaluate themselves.

Childhood and youth are ends in themselves, not stages.

Anyone who has looked deeply into the world may guess how much wisdom lies in the superficiality of men. The instinct that preserves them teaches them to be flighty light, and false.

The vanity of others runs counter to our taste only when it runs counter to our vanity.

We do not belong to those who only get their thought from books, or at the prompting of books, -- it is our custom to think in the open air, walking, leaping, climbing, or dancing on lonesome mountains by preference, or close to the sea, where even the paths become thoughtful.

Enjoying praise is in some people merely a civility of the heart--and just the opposite of a vanity of the spirit.

Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.