"A bad conscience is easier to cope with than a bad reputation."

"Science and art have that in common that everyday things seem to them new and attractive."

"In large States public education will always be extremely mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is at best only mediocre."

"One does not only wish to be understood when one writes, one wishes just as surely not to be understood."

"For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with himself, whether it be by means of this or that poetry or art; only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is constantly ready for revenge, and we others will be his victims, if only by having to endure his ugly sight."

"What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine."

"As soon as a religion comes to dominate it has as its opponents all those who would have been its first disciples."

"The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions."

"What is happening to me happens to all fruits that grow ripe. It is the honey in my veins that makes my blood thicker, and my soul quieter."

"Man alone suffers so excruciatingly in the world that he was compelled to invent laughter."

"One is necessary, one is a piece of fate, one belongs to the whole, one is the whole " there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole, But nothing exists apart from the whole!"

"One must not let oneself be misled: they say 'Judge not!' but they send to Hell everything that stands in their way."

"The Church today is more likely to alienate than to seduce..."

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

"Art is the proper task of life."

"Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated."

"We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value."

"Morality negates life."

"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."

"What? A great man? I only ever see the ape of his own ideal."

"Belief in form but disbelief in content - that's what makes an aphorism charming."

"In music the passions enjoy themselves."

"Ich lehre euch den Aœbermenschen. Der Mensch ist Etwas, das A1⁄4berwunden werden soll. Was habt ihr gethan, ihn zu A1⁄4berwinden? Was ist der Affe fA1⁄4r en Menschen? Ein GelA¤chter oder eine schmerzliche Scham. Und ebendas soll der Mensch fA1⁄4r den Aœbermenschen sein: ein GelA¤chter oder eine schmerzliche Scham. Ihr habt den Weg vom Wurme zum Menschen gemacht, und Vieles ist in euch noch Wurm. Einst wart ihr Affen, und auch jetzt ist der Mensch mehr Affe, als irgend ein Affe."

"Marriage as a long conversation. - When marrying you should ask yourself this question: do you believe you are going to enjoy talking with this woman into your old age? Everything else in a marriage is transitory, but most of the time that you're together will be devoted to conversation."

"A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us."

"You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause."

"Pity is the most agreeable feeling among those who have little pride and no prospects of great conquests."

"The spiritualization of sensuality is called love: it is a great triumph over Christianity."

"Dante, I think, committed a crude blunder when, with a terror-inspiring ingenuity, he placed above the gateway of his hell the inscription, 'I too was created by eternal love'--at any rate, there would be more justification for placing above the gateway to the Christian Paradise...the inscription 'I too was created by eternal hate'..."

"If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn."

"Solitude is a virtue for us, since it is a sublime inclination and impulse to cleanliness which shows that contact between people, "society, inevitably makes things unclean. Somewhere, sometime, every community makes people-"base."

"In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary."

"It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages."

"Whoever battles with monsters had better see that it does not turn him into a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."

"A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow."

"You go above and beyond them: but the higher you climb, the smaller you appear to the eye of envy. And he who flies is hated most of all."

"Every past is worth condemning."

"Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob."

"Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?"

"Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?"

"The images of myth must be the daemonic guardians, omnipresent and unnoticed, which protect the growth of the young mind, and guide man's interpretation of his life and struggles."

"What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame."

"The bite of conscience is indecent."

"How can we "find ourselves again? How can man "know himself? He is a thing obscure and veiled. If the hare has seven skins, man can cast from him seventy times seven skins, and not be able to say: "Here you truly are; there is skin no more.Also this digging into oneself, this straight, violent descent into the pit of one's being, is a troublesome and dangerous business to start. You may easily take such hurt, that no doctor can heal you. And what is the point: since everything bears witness to our essence - our friendships and enmities, our looks and greetings, our memories and forgetfulnesses, our books and our writing!"

"The word "Christianity" is already a misunderstanding; in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the cross."

"Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?"

"When the gratitude that many owe to one discards all modesty, then there is fame."

"How good music and bad reasons sound when one marches against an enemy."

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."

"When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago."