"The wreckage of stars - I built a world from this wreckage."

"Still am I the richest and most to be envied - I, the lonesomest one!"

"Mystical explanations are thought to be deep the truth is that they are not even shallow."

"Success has always been the greatest liar - and the "work" itself is a success; the great statesman, the conqueror, the discoverer is disguised by his creations, often beyond recognition; the "work," whether of the artist or the philosopher, invents the man who has created it, who is supposed to have create it; "great men," as they are venerated, are subsequent pieces of wretched minor fiction."

"Water is sufficient...the spirit moves over water."

"Art is the proper task of life."

"Sleep knocks on my eyes: they grow heavy. Sleep touches my mouth: it stays open.Truly, he comes to me on soft soles, the dearest of thieves, and steals my thoughts from me."

"Visiting the sick' is an orgasm of superiority in the contemplation of our neighbor's helplessness."

"I love the forest."

"One is fruitful only at the cost of being rich in contradictions."

"Everything goes, everything comes back; eternally rolls the wheel of being. Everything dies, everything blossoms again; eternally runs the year of being. Everything breaks, everything is joined anew; eternally the same House of Being is built. Everything parts, everything greets every other thing again; eternally the ring of being remains faithful to itself. In every Now, being begins; round every Here rolls the sphere There. The center is everywhere. Bent is the path of eternity."

"No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse."

"Deeds need time, even after they are done, in order to be seen or heard."

"You know these things as thoughts, but your thoughts are not your experiences, they are an echo and after-effect of your experiences: as when your room trembles whe na carriage goes past. I however am sitting in the carriage, and often I am the carriage itself.Ina man who thinks like this, the dichotomy between thinking and feeling, intellect and passion, has really disappeared. He feels his thoughts. He can fall in love with an idea. An idea can make him ill."

"One should hold fast one's heart; for when one letteth it go, how quickly doth one's head run away!"

"A light has dawned for me: I need companions, living ones, not dead companions and corpses which I carry with me wherever I wish. But I need living companions who follow me because they want to follow themselves- and who want to go where I want to go."

"For fanaticism is the only form of willpower that even the weak and insecure can be brought to attain."

"It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book."

"There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings."

"This book belongs to the most rare of men. Perhaps not one of them is yet alive. First the day after tomorrow must come for me. Some men are born posthumously."

"Love as a passion-it is our European specialty-must absolutely be of noble origin; as is well known, its invention is due to the Provencal poet-cavaliers, those brilliant, ingenious men of the "gai saber," to whom Europe owes so much, and almost owes itself."

"Insanity in individuals is rare - but in groups parties nations and epochs it is the rule."

"You say 'I' and you are proud of this word. But greater than this- although you will not believe in it - is your body and its great intelligence, which does not say 'I' but performs 'I'."

"This workshop where ideals are manufactured--it seems to me it stinks of so many lies."

"Among such persons are those women who transform themselves into just that function of a man that is but weakly developed in him, and then become his purse, or his politics, or his social intercourse. Such beings maintain themselves best when they insert themselves in an alien organism; if they do not succeed they become vexed, irritated, and eat themselves up."

"In the true man there is a child concealed - who wants to play."

"To leave is to suffer,to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering."

"A: But why this solitude? - B: I am not at odds with anyone. But when I am alone I seem to see my friends in a clearer and fairer light than when I am with them; and when I loved and appreciated music the most, I lived far from it. It seems I need a distant perspective if I am to think well of things."

"Only those thoughts which come from walking have any value."

"In the end one loves one's desire and not what is desired."

"Whoever has provoked men to rage against him has always gained a party in his favor, too."

"The happiness of man is: I will. The happiness of woman is: he wills. 'Behold, just now the world became perfect!'-thus thinks every woman when she obeys out of entire love. And women must obey and find a depth for her surface. Surface is the disposition of woman: a mobile, stormy film over shallow water. Man's disposition, however, is deep; his river roars in subterranean caves: woman feels his strength but does not comprehend it."

"In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering among innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge."

"It is true: we love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.There is always a certain madness in love. But also there is always a certain method in madness."

"Did you ever say yes to a pleasure? oh my friends, then you also said yes to all pain. all things are linked, entwined, in love with one another."

"If a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which always recurs."

"When we observe how some people know how to manage their experiences--their insignificant, everyday experiences--so that they become an arable soil that bears fruit three times a year, while others--and how many there are!--are driven through surging waves of destiny, the most multifarious currents of the times and the nations, and yet always remain on top, bobbing like a cork, then we are in the end tempted to divide mankind into a minority (a minimality) of those who know how to make much of little, and a majority of those who know how to make little of much."

"As an artist, a man has no home in Europe save in Paris."

"Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice."

"When man no longer regards himself as evil he ceases to be so!"

"He who doesn't know how to put his will into things at least puts a meaning into them: that is, he believes there is a will in them already."

"At a certain place in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, for example, he might feel that he is floating above the earth in a starry dome, with the dream of immortality in his heart; all the stars seem to glimmer around him, and the earth seems to sink ever deeper downwards."

"It was a subtle refinement of God to learn Greek when he wished to write a book " and that he did not learn it better."

"Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal."

"In the end things must be as they are and have always been--the great things remain for the great, the abysses for the profound, the delicacies and thrills for the refined, and, to sum up shortly, everything rare for the rare."

"Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar."

"In comparison with the spirit of priestly revenge all the remaining spirits are hardly worth considering."

"The deepest and most sublime hatred is a hatred which creates ideals and transforms values-something whose like has never been seen on earth."

"Try for once to justify the meaning of your existence as it were a posteriori by setting yourself an aim, a goal... an exalted and noble 'to this end.' Perish in pursuit of this and only this."

"Whoever extolleth him as a God of love, doth not think highly enough of love itself. Did not that God want also to be judge? But the loving one loveth irrespective of reward and requital."