"love as a passion—it is our European specialty—must absolutely be of noble origin; as is well known, its invention is due to the Provencal poet-cavaliers, those brilliant, ingenious men of the "gai saber,"to whom Europe owes so much, and almost owes itself."
"Their [philosophers] thinking is, in fact, far less a discovery than a re-recognizing, a remembering, a return and a home-coming to a far-off, ancient common-household of the soul, out of which those ideas formerly grew: philosophizing is so far a kind of atavism of the highest order."
"The maturity of man—that means, to have reacquired the seriousness that one had as a child at play"
"Every philosophy is a foreground philosophy — that is a hermit's judgment: "There is something arbitrary in his stopping here to look back and look around, in his not digging deeper here but laying his spade aside; there is also something suspicious about it."Every philosophy also conceals a philosophy; every opinion is also a hideout, every word also a mask."
"Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule."
"Success has always been the greatest liar - and the "work"itself is a success; the great statesman, the conqueror, the discoverer is disguised by his creations, often beyond recognition; the "work,"whether of the artist or the philosopher, invents the man who has created it, who is supposed to have create it; "great men,"as they are venerated, are subsequent pieces of wretched minor fiction"