“It is unworthy of great spirits to spread abroad the agitation they feel”

“Here the spirit becomes a lion who would conquer his freedom and be master…Who is the great dragon whom the spirit will no longer call lord and go? ‘Thou shalt’ is the name of the great dragon.But the spirit of the lion says, ‘I will.”

“The tension of the soul in unhappiness, which cultivates its strength; its horror at the sight of the great destruction; its inventiveness and bravery in bearing, enduring, interpreting, exploiting unhappiness, and whatever in the way of depth, mystery, mask, spirit, cleverness, greatness the heart has been granted - has it not been granted them through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering?”

“Pity is the most agreeable feeling among those who have little pride and no prospects of great conquests.”

“As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies—but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters: other kinds of spirit hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.”

“A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.”

“For, confronted with morality (especially Christian, or unconditional, morality), life must continually and inevitably be in the wrong, because life is something essentially amoral--and eventually, crushed by the weight of contempt and the eternal No, life must then be felt to be unworthy of desire and altogether worthless.”