History is nothing more than the belief in the senses, the belief in falsehood.
A fool who, after plain warning, persists in dosing himself with dangerous drugs should be free to do so, for his death is a benefit to the race in general.
Moral contempt is a far greater indignity and insult than any kind of crime.
Man alone suffers so excruciatingly in the world that he was compelled to invent laughter.
All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.
Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.
Women in general seem to me to be appreciably more intelligent than men. A great many of them suffer in silence from the imbecilities of their husbands.
Ye shall be those whose eyes ever seek for an enemy - for YOUR enemy. And with some of you there is hatred at first sight.
In any combat between a rogue and a fool the sympathy of mankind is always with the rogue.
The deeper minds of all ages have had pity for animals.
I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.
What are the hallmarks of a competent writer of fiction? The first, it seems to me, is that he should be immensely interested in human beings, and have an eye sharp enough to see into them, and a hand clever enough to draw them as they are. The second is that he should be able to set them in imaginary situations which display the contents of their psyches effectively, and so carry his reader swiftly and pleasantly from point to point of what is called a good story.
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
A free citizen in a free state, it seems to me, has an inalienable right to play with whomsoever he will, so long as he does not disturb the general peace. If any other citizen, offended by the spectacle, makes a pother, then that other citizen, and not the man exercising his inalienable right, should be put down by the police.
Men subsequently put whatever is newly learned or experienced to use as a plowshare, perhaps even as a weapon: but women immediately include it among their ornaments.
When one has not had a good father, one must create one.
A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.
No politician is ever benefited by saving money; it is spending it that makes him.
Strength is the morality of the man who stands out from the rest, and it is mine.
For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child.
The people we keep standing in the anteroom of our favor either start fermenting or turn sour.
We fear our neighbor's hostile mood because we are afraid that this mood will lead him to penetrate our secrets.
After all, the world is not our handiwork, and we are not responsible for what goes on in it, save within very narrow limits.
The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.
My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin or when he sees silver he looks for the cloud it lines. A wise happy person does the exact opposite.
If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies.
Is it hot in the rolling mill? Are the hours long? Is $15 a day not enough? Then escape is easy. Simply throw up your job, spit on your hands, and write another "Rosenkavailer."
In solitude there grows what anyone brings into it, the inner beast too. Therefore solitude is inadvisable to many.
One must learn to be a sponge if one wants to be loved by hearts that overflow.
But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! Distrust all those who talk much of their justice!
Natural death is independent of all reason and is really an irrational death, in which the pitiable substance of the shell determines how long the kernel is to exist or not; in which, accordingly, the stunted, diseased and dull witted jailer is lord, and indicates the moment at which his distinguished prisoner shall die.
The most vulnerable and yet most unconquerable of things is human vanity; nay, through being wounded its strength increases and can grow to giant proportions.
Man and man's earth are unexhausted and undiscovered. Wake and listen! Verily, the earth shall yet be a source of recovery. Remain faithful to the earth, with the power of your virtue. Let your gift-giving love and your knowledge serve the meaning of the earth.
Enjoying praise is in some people merely a civility of the heart--and just the opposite of a vanity of the spirit.
The criminal is quite frequently not equal to his deed: he belittles and slanders it.
Truths are illlusions which we have forgotten are illusions.
The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself.
Those who are slow to know suppose that slowness is the essence of knowledge.
One must know how to conserve oneself- the best test of independence.
Fall down seven times, stand up eight. - Chinese proverbWithout music, life would be a mistake.
The reasons for which 'this' world has been characterized as 'apparent' are the very reasons which indicate its reality; any other kind of reality is absolutely indemonstrable.
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
Resistance - that is the distinction of the slave. Let your distinction be obedience. Let your commanding itself be obeying!
Most thinkers write badly, because they communicate not only their thoughts, but also the thinking of them.
There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how you use them.
In loneliness, the lonely one eats himself; in a crowd, the many eat him. Now choose.
It is neither the best nor the worst things in a book that defy translation.
The truth is ugly: we have art so as not to perish from the truth.
But eternal liveliness is what counts: what does "eternal life" matter, or life at all?
Preparatory human beings. - I welcome all signs that a more virile, warlike age is about to begin, which will restore honour to courage above all! For this age shall prepare the way for one yet higher, and it shall gather the strength that this higher age will require some day - the age that will carry heroism into the search for knowledge and that will wage wars for the sake of ideas and their consequences.
Man is a natural polygamist: he always has one woman leading him by the nose, and another hanging on to his coattails.
To argue that the gaps in knowledge which confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity.
Wherever progress is to ensue, deviating natures are of greatest importance.
Some people do not become thinkers simply because their memories are too good.
Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.
What we need in this country is a general improvement in eating. We have the best raw materials in the world, both quantitatively and qualitatively, but most of them are ruined in the process of preparing them for the table.
Only you must have worthy foes hate, but not enemies worthy of contempt. You must be proud of your enemy.
From the State the exceptional individual cannot expect much. He is seldom benefited by being taken into its service; the only certain advantage it can give him is complete independence. Only real culture will prevent him being too early tired out or used up, and will spare him the exhausting struggle against culture-philistinism.
They devour each other and cannot even digest themselves.
