“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”

“The surest way to corrupt a youth? Teach him to value thinking alike more than thinking differently.”

“The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.”

“Do I advise you to love thy neighbor? I suggest rather to escape from thy neighbor and to love those who are the farthest away from you. Higher than the love for thy neighbor is the love for the man who is distant and has still to come.”

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”

“I love those who do not know how to live, except by going under, for they are those who cross over.”

“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.”