The most vulnerable and yet most unconquerable of things is human vanity; nay, through being wounded its strength increases and can grow to giant proportions.
The desire for a strong faith is not the proof of a strong faith, rather the opposite. If one has it one may permit oneself the beautiful luxury of skepticism: one is secure enough, fixed enough for it.
If we lacked curiosity, we should do less for the good of our neighbor. But, under the name of duty or pity, curiosity steals into the home of the unhappy and the needy. Perhaps even in the famous mother-love there is a good deal of curiosity.
Such men alone are my readers, my proper readers, my preordained readers. Of what account are the rest? The rest are simply... humanity. One must be superior to humanity in power, in loftiness of soul- in contempt.
Posthumous men-myself, for example-are not as well understood as timely ones, but we are listened to better. More precisely: we are never understood-hence our authority.