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But how can we venture to reprove or praise the universe! Let us beware of attributing to it heartlessness and unreason or their opposites: it is neit...more

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No one is accountable for existing at all, or for being constituted as he is, or for living in the circumstances and surroundings in which he lives. T...more

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I praise, I do not reproach, [nihilism's] arrival. I believe it is one of the greatest crises, a moment of the deepest self-reflection of humanity. Wh...more

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Youth's longing misconceived inconsistency.Those whom I deemedChanged to my kin, the friends of whom I dreamed,Have aged and lost our old affinity:One...more

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The wreckage of stars - I built a world from this wreckage.

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In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented ...more

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You say 'I' and you are proud of this word. But greater than this- although you will not believe in it - is your body and its great intelligence, whic...more

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Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.... Through words and concepts w...more

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What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived...more

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I ascended, I ascended, I dreamt, I thought,—but everything oppressed me. A sick one did I resemble, whom bad torture wearieth, and a worse dream reaw...more

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You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted.

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It is intoxicating joy for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and to forget himself.

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One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.

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No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.

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You know these things as thoughts, but your thoughts are not your experiences, they are an echo and after-effect of your experiences: as when your roo...more