“Their [philosophers] thinking is, in fact, far less a discovery than a re-recognizing, a remembering, a return and a home-coming to a far-off, ancient common-household of the soul, out of which those ideas formerly grew: philosophizing is so far a kind of atavism of the highest order.”

“Moral contempt is a far greater indignity and insult than any kind of crime.”

“The Olympian vice.--In defiance of that philosopher who as true Englishman tried to give any thinking person's laughter a bad reputation ('Laughter is a nasty infirmity of human nature that any thinking person will endeavour to overcome'---Hobbes), I would actually go as far as to rank philosophers according to the level of their laughter---right up to the ones who are capable of golden laughter. And assuming that gods, too, are able to philosophize, as various of my conclusions force me to believe, then I do not doubt when they do so, they know how to laugh in a new and superhuman fashion---and at the expense of everything serious! Gods like to jeer: it seems that even at religious observances they cannot keep from laughing.”

“The philosopher seeks to hear within himself the echoes of the world of symphony and to re-project them in the form if concepts”

“All beings so far have created something beyond themselves”

“I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer.”

“I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus, and I would prefer to be even a satyr than a saint.”