In the 'in-itself' there is nothing of 'causal connections', of 'necessity', or of 'psychological non-freedom'; there the effect does not follow the cause, there is no rule or 'law'. It is we alone who have devised cause, sequence, for-each-other, relativity, constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, and purpose; and when we project and mix this symbol world into things as if it existed 'in itself', we act once more as we have always acted- mythologically.
I call a lie: wanting not to see something one does see, wanting not to see something as one sees it... The most common lie is the lie one tells to oneself; lying to others is relatively the exception.
Once we have found ourselves, we must understand how from time to time to lose--and then to find--ourselves once again: assuming,that is, that we are thinkers. For a thinker it is a drawback to be bound to a single person all the time.
There are the terrible ones who carry about in themselves the beast of prey, and have no choice except lusts or self-laceration. And even their lusts are self-laceration.
It is so little true that martyrs offer any support to the truth of a cause that I am inclined to deny that any martyr has ever had anything to do with the truth at all.
Enduring habits I hate.... Yes, at the very bottom of my soul I feel grateful to all my misery and bouts of sickness and everything about me that is imperfect, because this sort of thing leaves me with a hundred backdoors through which I can escape from enduring habits.