“Either one does not dream, or one does so interestingly. One should learn to spend one's waking life in the same way: not at all, or interestingly.”

“one does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood.”

“Man is the most bungled of all the animals, the sickliest, and not one has strayed more dangerously from its instincts. But for all that, of course, he is the most interesting.”

“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.”

“A small company is more welcome to me than a bad one: but they must come and go at the right time. So does it accord with good sleep.”

“The Greeks are interesting and extremely important because they reared such a vast number of great individuals. How was this possible? This question is one which ought to be studied”

“When one is young, one venerates and despises without that art of nuances which constitutes the best gain of life, and it is only fair that one has to pay dearly for having assaulted men and things in this manner with Yes and No. Everything is arranged so that the worst of tastes, the taste for the unconditional, should be cruelly fooled and abused until a man learns to put a little art into his feelings and rather to risk trying even what is artificial — as the real artists of life do.”