To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a desire to overcome, a desire to throw down, a desire to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength.
A person must have a good memory to keep the promises he has made. A person must have a strong imagination to be able to have pity. So closely is morality tied to the quality of the intellect.
A vocation makes us unthinking; that is its greatest blessing. For it is a bulwark behind which we are permitted to withdraw whencommonplace doubts and cares assail us.
Whoever wants to set a good example must add a grain of foolishness to his virtue: then others can imitate and yet at the same time surpass the one they imitate-which human beings love to do.
There is something laughable about the sight of authors who enjoy the rustling folds of long and involved sentences: they are trying to cover up their feet.
Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms - in themselves such judgments are stupidities.