“Ah, ye brethren, that God whom I created was human work and human madness, like all the Gods!”

“It was suffering and incapacity that created all afterworlds - this, and that brief madness of bliss which is experienced only by those who suffer deeply. Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.”

“What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.”

“By saying 'God sees into the heart' it denies the deepest and the highest desires of life and takes God for the enemy of life. The saint in whom God takes pleasure is the ideal castrate. Life is at an end where the kingdom of God begins.”

“Ah, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the pitiful? And what in the world hath caused more suffering than the follies of the pitiful?Woe unto all loving ones who have not an elevation which is above their pity!Thus spake the devil unto me, once on a time: "Even God hath his hell: it is his love for man." And lately, did I hear him say these words: "God is dead: of his pity for man hath God died.”

“Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.”

“At the moment when anyone begins to take philosophy seriously, all the world believes the opposite.”—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,”