The governments of the great States have two instruments for keeping the people independent, in fear and obedience: a coarser, the army, and a more refined, the school. 2, 152
To call a thing good not a day longer than it appears to us good, and above all not a day earlier—that is the only way to keep joy pure. 2, 158
To honour and acknowledge even the bad, when it pleases one, and to have no conception of how one could be ashamed of being pleased thereat, is the mark of sovereignty in things great and small. 2, 158-159
When life has treated us in true robber fashion, and has taken away all that it could of honour, joys, connections, health, and property of every kind, we perhaps discover in the end, after the first shock, that we are richer than before. For now we know for the first time what is so peculiarly ours that no robber hand can touch it, and perhaps, after all the plunder and devastation, we come forward with the airs of a mighty real estate owner. 2, 162
You rank far below others when you try to establish the exception and they the rule. 2, 167
The most senile thought ever conceived about men lies in the famous saying, "The ego is always hateful," the most childish in the still more famous saying, "Love thy neighbour as thyself."—With the one knowledge of men has ceased, with the other it has not yet begun. 2, 172
You find your burden of life too heavy? Then you must increase the burden of your life. 2, 176
That the world is not the abstract essence of an eternal reasonableness is sufficiently proved by the fact that that bit of the world which we know—I mean our human reason—is none too reasonable. And if this is not eternally and wholly wise and reasonable, the rest of the world will not be so either. 2, 184
There exists a simulated contempt for all things that mankind actually holds most important, for all everyday matters. For instance, we say "we only eat to live"—an abominable lie, like that which speaks of the procreation of children as the real purpose of all sexual pleasure. Conversely, the reverence for "the most important things" is hardly ever quite genuine. 2, 185