"I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous — a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite."

"And nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment."

"Man büßt es theuer, unsterblich zu sein: man stirbt dafür mehrere Male bei Lebzeiten."

"Der Mensch der Erkenntniss muss nicht nur seine Feinde lieben, er muss auch seine Freunde hassen können."

"I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus, I would rather be a satyr than a saint."

"I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty — I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind."

"Christianity destroyed for us the whole harvest of ancient civilization, and later it also destroyed for us the whole harvest of Mohammedan civilization. The wonderful culture of the Moors in Spain, which was fundamentally nearer to us and appealed more to our senses and tastes than that of Rome and Greece, was trampled down ( — I do not say by what sort of feet — ) Why? Because it had to thank noble and manly instincts for its origin — because it said yes to life, even to the rare and refined luxuriousness of Moorish life! The crusaders later made war on something before which it would have been more fitting for them to have grovelled in the dust — a civilization beside which even that of our nineteenth century seems very poor and very "senile." [...] Intrinsically there should be no more choice between Islam and Christianity than there is between an Arab and a Jew. The decision is already reached; nobody remains at liberty to choose here. Either a man is a Chandala or he is not.... “War to the knife with Rome! Peace and friendship with Islam!”: this was the feeling, this was the act, of that great free spirit, that genius among German emperors, Frederick II."

"Nihilist und Christ: das reimt sich, das reimt sich nicht bloss."

"Whom do I hate most among the rabble of today? The socialist rabble, the chandala apostles, who undermine the instinct, the pleasure, the worker's sense of satisfaction with his small existence–who make him envious, who teach him revenge. The source of wrong is never unequal rights but the claim of “equal” rights."

"»Glaube« heißt Nicht-wissen-wollen."

"That faith makes blessed under certain circumstances, that blessedness does not make of a fixed idea a true idea, that faith moves no mountains but puts mountains where there are none: a quick walk through a madhouse enlightens one sufficiently about this."

"Gegen die Langeweile kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens."

"God created woman. And boredom did indeed cease from that moment — but many other things ceased as well! Woman was God's second mistake."

"The God that Paul invented for himself, a God who "reduced to absurdity" "the wisdom of this world" (especially the two great enemies of superstition, philology and medicine), is in truth only an indication of Paul's resolute determination to accomplish that very thing himself: to give one's own will the name of God, Torah — that is essentially Jewish."

"Do I still have to add that in the entire New Testament there is only one solitary figure one is obliged to respect? Pilate, the Roman governor. To take a Jewish affair seriously — he cannot persuade himself to do that. One Jew more or less — what does it matter ?... The noble scorn of a Roman before whom an impudent misuse of the word 'truth' was carried on has enriched the New Testament with the only expression which possesses value — which is its criticism, its annihilation even: 'What is truth?..."

"What follows, then? That one had better put on gloves before reading the New Testament. The presence of so much filth makes it very advisable. One would as little choose early Christians for companions as Polish Jews: not that one need seek out an objection to them — neither has a pleasant smell."

"Even when provocation was great, his satire was so gentle and genial that it warmed even its object."

"American self-confidence, Emerson argued, should be grounded not in a narrow chauvinistic claim about the superiority of the American way but rather in a mature affirmation of America's gifts to the world as well as candid acknowledgment of the "most un-handsome part of our condition." Cheap American patriotism not only reflects an immaturity and insecurity, he warned, but also is an adolescent defense mechanism that reveals a fear to engage the world and learn from others. Narrow nationalism is a handmaiden of imperial rule, he argues-it keeps the populace deferential and complacent. Hence it abhors critics and dissenters like Emerson who unsettle and awaken the people. His shining example of democratic intellectual work is a challenge to us today. This challenge has been taken up through the years by a stream of Emersonian voices-from Walt Whitman to William James, Gertrude Stein. W. E. B. Du Bois, and Muriel Rukeyser."

"He began where many poets end, seeking at once the upper air, the region of pure thought and ideality. ... Emerson was the freest and most ideal of them all, and what came to him by inheritance or prophetic forecast he gave like a victor."

"We are told of his mode of preparing an essay,—of the slow-growing medley of thoughts on a topic, at last brought out and strung at random, like a child's variegated beads."

"Emerson's prose is full of poetry, and his poems are light and air. ... His modes of expression, like his epithets, are imaginative."

"Virtually at the same time as Kierkegaard gave philosophical significance to moods, Emerson was doing the same. In "Experience" he characterized our life experiences as "a train of moods" that color whatever we encounter, and he described life as "a flux of moods" that affect our "states of mind.""

"I love Emerson, the first great American writer."

"Emerson broke away from all conditions of age or country and represented nothing except intelligence itself."

"A cheery, child-like soul, impervious to the evidence of evil."

"Modern technics, even apart from the special arts that it fostered, had a cultural contribution to make in its own right. Just as science underlined the respect for fact, so technics emphasized the importance of function: in this domain, as Emerson pointed out, the beautiful rests on the foundation of the necessary."

"There was a majesty about him beyond all other men I have known, and he habitually dwelt in that ampler and diviner air to which most of us, if ever, only rise in spurts."

"There is no man living to whom, as a writer, so many of us feel and thankfully acknowledge so great an indebtedness for ennobling impulses."

"What, then, is his secret? Is it not that he out-Yankees us all? that his range includes us all? that he is equally at home with the potato disease and original sin, with pegging shoes and the Over-soul? that, as we try all trades, so has he tried all cultures? and above all, that his mysticism gives us a counterpoise to our super-practicality?"

"I love Emerson, I just had a problem with something I read in his journal. He was talking about Asians. Chinese, specifically. He said they had no culture to speak of, no music. He said they're not even as good as the Africans, who are at least willing to carry our wood. And he said that they've done nothing useful except manage "to preserve to a hair / for three or four thousand years / the ugliest features in the world." The poem begins by looking at the face of this butcher. So it's about that-it's about countenance, and it's about what the culture defines as beauty or ugliness. It's a weird wrestling I'm doing with Emerson. I can't imagine me without Emerson. And yet there's this thing about him that gets to me. That's deep in the culture."

"You can take better care of your secret than another can."

"A nation never falls but by suicide."

"The believing we do something when we do nothing is the first illusion of tobacco."

"I have been writing & speaking what were once called novelties, for twenty five or thirty years, & have not now one disciple. Why? Not that what I said was not true; not that it has not found intelligent receivers but because it did not go from any wish in me to bring men to me, but to themselves. I delight in driving them from me. What could I do, if they came to me? — they would interrupt and encumber me. This is my boast that I have no school & no follower. I should account it a measure of the impurity of insight, if it did not create independence."

"The book written against fame and learning has the author's name on the title-page."

"All the thoughts of a turtle are turtle."

"The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution."

"I trust a good deal to common fame, as we all must. If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods."

"The word liberty in the mouth of Mr. Webster sounds like the word love in the mouth of a courtesan."

"Blessed are those who have no talent!"

"Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know."

"I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad Gita. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us."

"It is easy to live for others; everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves."

"Poetry must be new as foam, and as old as the rock."

"If I made laws for Shakers or a school, I should gazette every Saturday all the words they were wont to use in reporting religious experience, as "spiritual life," "God," "soul," "cross," etc., and if they could not find new ones next week, they might remain silent."

"The sky is the daily bread of the eyes."

"Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better."

"You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both."

"People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad."

"People say law but they mean wealth."