“Books for the masses are always bad-smelling books: the odour of little people cling to them.”

“Interpreting myself, I always readMyself into my books. I clearly needSome help. But all who climb on their own wayCarry my image, too, into the breaking day.”

“This book is intended for calm readers.”

“I can tell by my own reaction to it that this book is harmful." But let him only wait and perhaps one day he will admit to himself that this same book has done him a great service by bringing out the hidden sickness of his heart and making it visible.— Altered opinions do not alter a man’s character (or do so very little); but they do illuminate individual aspects of the constellation of his personality which with a different constellation of opinions had hitherto remained dark and unrecognizable.”

“What is it that I especially find utterly unendurable? That I cannot cope with, that makes me choke and faint? Bad air! Bad air! The approach of some ill-constituted thing; that I have to smell the entrails of some ill-constituted soul!”

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

“One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.”