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.

I love something: and scarcely do I love it completely when the tyrant in me says: "I want that in sacrifice." This cruelty is in my entrails. Behold! I am evil.

In certain pious people I have found a hatred of reason, and have been favourably disposed to them for it: their bad intellectual conscience was at least exposed by that!

This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.

One has to take a somewhat bold and dangerous line with this existence: especially as, whatever happens, we are bound to lose it.

I teach you the Overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? ... The time has come for man to set himself a goal. The time has come to plant the seed to his highest hope.

In the end we love our desire and not what it is that we desire.