“Oh, my friends, that your self be in your deed as the mother is in her child - let that be your word concerning virtue!”

“Behold how each of your virtues is covetous of the highest place; each wants your whole spirit to be her herald, it wants your whole power, in wrath, hatred, and love.”

“Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord, an unknown sage- it is called Self; it dwells in your body, it is your body.”

“You implanted your highest goal into the heart of those passions: then they became your virtues and joys.”

“What is the greatest thing you can experience? It is the hour of your greatest contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becomes loathsome to you, and so also your reason and virtue.”

“I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go. Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died, and these sinners died with him. To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful thing, and to esteem the entrails of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth... What is the greatest experience you can have? It is the hour of the great contempt. The hour when your happiness, too, arouses your disgust, and even your reason and your virtue.”

“And so, onwards... along a path of wisdom, with a hearty tread, a hearty confidence.. however you may be, be your own source of experience. Throw off your discontent about your nature. Forgive yourself your own self. You have it in your power to merge everything you have lived through- false starts, errors, delusions, passions, your loves and your hopes- into your goal, with nothing left over.”