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

“What is the sign of every literary decadence? That life no longer dwells in the whole. The word becomes sovereign and leaps out of the sentence, the sentence reaches out and obscures the meaning of the page, the page gains life at the expense of the whole—the whole is no longer a whole.”

“What does your conscience say? — 'You should become the person you are'.”

“To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying but an ancient, mighty, human, all-too-human principle [....] Without cruelty there is no festival.”

“...throw roses into the abyss and say: 'here is my thanks to the monster who didn't succeed in swallowing me alive.”

“For ten years you have climbed here to my cave: you would have become weary of shining and of the journey, had it not been for me, my eagle, and my serpent.”

“And if a friend does you wrong, then say: "I forgive you what you have done to me; that you have done it to YOURSELF, however--how could I forgive that!”