Many works of the ancients have become fragments. Many works of the moderns are fragments at the time of their origin.

Philosophy is the true home of irony, which might be defined as logical beauty: for wherever men are philosophizing in spoken or written dialogues, and provided they are not entirely systematic, irony ought to be produced and postulated; even the Stoics regarded urbanity as a virtue.

Because Christianity is a religion of death, it could be treated with the utmost realism, and it could have its orgies, just likethe old religion of nature and life.

Beauty is that which is simultaneously attractive and sublime.

Life is writing. The sole purpose of mankind is to engrave the thoughts of divinity onto the tablets of nature.

Some speak of the public as if it were someone with whom they have had dinner at the Leipzig Fair in the Hotel de Saxe. Who is this public? The public is not a thing, but rather an idea, a postulate, like the Church.

Man is free whenever he produces or manifests God, and through this he becomes immortal.