“Rousseau, this first modern man, idealist and rabble in one person — one who needed moral 'dignity' to be able to stand his own sight, sick with unbridled vanity and unbridled self-contempt. This miscarriage, couched on the threshold of modern times, also wanted a 'return to nature'—to what did he really want to return?... what I hate is the Rousseauan morality — the so-called 'truths' of the Revolution through which it still works and attracts everything shallow and mediocre.”

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“About life, the wisest men of all ages have come to the same conclusion: it is no good.”

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“He who laughs best today, will also laugh last.”

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“I, the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus — I, the teacher of the eternal recurrence... I think of myself as the scrawl which an unknown power scribbles across a sheet of paper, to try out a new pen.”

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“If we possess a why of life we can put up with almost any how.”

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“It is precisely the weaker nature, as the more delicate and free, that makes progress possible at all.”

Chapters: 26. The Still Rule the Restless

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“Maintaining cheerfulness in the midst of a gloomy task, fraught with immeasurable responsibility, is no small feat; and yet what is needed more than cheerfulness? Nothing succeeds if prankishness has no part in it.”

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“One is fruitful only at the cost of being rich in contradictions.”

Chapters: 40. Returning

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“Out of life's school of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.”

Chapters: 18. The Sick Society

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“the will to a system is a lack of integrity”

Chapters: 21. Following Empty Heart

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“Which is it? Is man only a blunder of God? Or is God only a blunder of man?”

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“Wisdom requires moderation in knowledge as in other things.”

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“Without music, life would be a mistake.”

Chapters: 27. No Trace

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