Quotes About Author

The distortion of a text resembles a murder: the difficulty is not in perpetrating the deed, but in getting rid of its traces.

Hope, in reality, is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.

In reality, hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs man's torments.

Though I may seem at times somewhat distant from you, through the gray mist of philology, I am never far, my thoughts always circle around you.

There is a point in every philosophy at which the conviction of the philosopher appears on the scene; or, to put it in the words of an ancient mystery: adventavit asinus, / pulcher et fortissimus. (Translation: The ass arrives, beautiful and most brave.)

Against the censurers of brevity. - Something said briefly can be the fruit of much long thought: but the reader who is a novice in this field, and has as yet reflected on it not at all, sees in everything said briefly something embryonic, not without censuring the author for having served him up such immature and unripened fare.

It is a curious thing that God learned Greek when he wished to turn author--and that he did not learn it better.

The danger in happiness - Now everything is turning out right for me; from now on I'll love every turn of fate - Who wants to be my fate?

Popular medicine and popular morality belong together and ought not to be evaluated so differently as they still are: both are the most dangerous pseudo-sciences.

It is terrible to die of thirst on the sea. Does your truth have to be so salty that it can no longer even—quench thirst?

God is a conjecture; but I desire that your conjectures should be limited by what is thinkable. Can you think a god? [...] You should think through your own senses to their consequences.

The criminal type is the type of the strong human being under unfavorable circumstances: a strong human being made sick.

Dante, or the hyena that writes poetry in tombs.

And finally, to call to mind the enormous influence which German philosophy--I hope you understand its right to inverted commas-

They dislike, therefore, to hear of 'contempt' of themselves. So I will appeal to their pride.

If everything we project onto reality to make it intelligible were eliminated, ? no things remain but only dynamic quanta, in a relation of tension to all other dynamic quanta.

Modern pessimism is an expression of the uselessness of the modern world — not of the world and of existence.

Here the intellectual cynicism of the Jew almost counterbalances his social unpleasantness.

When the gratitude that many owe to one discards all modesty, then there is fame.

The rest is abortion and not-yet-science: which is to say metaphysics, theology, psychology, epistemology.

Is not wounded vanity the mother of all tragedies?

We do not dispute what is magical or irrational when it flatters our self-esteem.

Behind them the long galley lay like a dead beetle, the oars sprawled out all askew from the ports.

There are laws of hate in the universe, shaping even its loves, and it is time I made them work for me.