Whoever knows he is deep tries to be clear, but whoever wants to seem deep to the crowd tries to be obscure. For the crowd supposes that anything it cannot see to the bottom must be deep: it is so timid and goes so unwillingly into the water.
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.
Since Copernicus, man seems to have got himself on an inclined plane-now he is slipping faster and faster away from the center into-what? into nothingness? into a 'penetrating sense of his nothingness?' ... all science, natural as well as unnatural-which is what I call the self-critique of knowledge-has at present the object of dissuading man from his former respect for himself, as if this had been but a piece of bizarre conceit.
War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.
Thus the will to power strives towards oppositions, towards displeasure. There is a will to suffering at the foundation of all organic life (contrary to "happiness" as "goal").