"Genius depends on dry air, on clear skies -- that is, on rapid metabolism, on the possibility of drawing again and again on great, even tremendous quantities of strength."
"The strength required for the vision of the most powerful reality is not only compatible with the most powerful strength for action, for monstrous action, for crime -- it even presupposes it."
"He is wholly without envy, but there is not merit therein: for he wants to conquer a land which no one yet possessed and hardly any one has ever seen."
"Nobody is so constituted as to be able to live everywhere and anywhere; and he who has great duties to perform, which lay claim to all his strength, has, in this respect, a very limited choice."
"Men are even lazier than they are timorous, and what they fear most is the troubles with which any unconditional honesty and nudity would burden them."
"The Germans -- once they were called the nation of thinkers: do they still think at all? Nowadays the Germans are bored with intellect, the Germans mistrust intellect, politics devours all seriousness for really intellectual things. . ."
"The most dangerous physicians are those who can act in perfect mimicry of the born physician."
"All things return eternally, and ourselves with them: We have already existed in times without number, and all things with us."
"So then, friends, what do you say? Amen! Until we meet again."
"It has been said that misfortune sharpens our wits, but . . . it often simply dulls them."