Oh great star! What would your happiness be if you did not have us to shine for?

When man does not have firm, calm lines on the horizon of his life- mountain and forest lines, as it were- then a man's innermost will becomes agitated, preoccupied, and wistful.

All life rests on appearance, art, illusion, optics, the need for perspective and for error...

He who speaks a bit of a foreign language has more delight in it than he who speaks it well; pleasure goes along with superficial knowledge.

Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord, an unknown sage- it is called Self; it dwells in your body, it is your body.

There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice.

It is a self-deception of philosophers and moralists to imagine that they escape decadence by opposing it. That is beyond their will; and, however little they acknowledge it, one later discovers that they were among the most powerful promoters of decadence.

Being sick is itself a kind of ressentiment. — Against this the invalid has only one great means of cure — I call it Russian fatalism, that fatalism without rebellion with which a Russian soldier for whom the campaign has become too much at last lies down in the snow.

The sublime man has the highest value, even when he is most delicate and fragile, because an abundance of very difficult and rare things have been bred and united in him.

We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge--and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves--how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves?