“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.”

“It was suffering and incapacity that created all afterworlds - this, and that brief madness of bliss which is experienced only by those who suffer deeply. Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.”

“It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge. ”

“What really raises one's indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering”

“The tragedy is that we cannot believe the dogmas of religion and metaphysics if we have the strict methods of truth in heart and head, but on the other hand, we have become through the development of humanity so tenderly suffering that we need the highest kind of means of salvation and consolation: whence arises the danger that man may bleed to death through the truth that he realises.”

“At the moment when anyone begins to take philosophy seriously, all the world believes the opposite.”—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,”

“They believe one becomes selfless in love because one desires the advantage of another human being, often against one's own advantage. But in return for that they want to possess the other person.”