Man and Superman

"This Don Juan was kind to women and courteous to men as your daughter here was kind to her pet cats and dogs; but such kindness is a denial of the exclusively human character of the soul."

"ANA. ...Tell me where can I find the Superman? THE DEVIL. He is not yet created, Senora. THE STATUE. And never will be, probably[...] ANA. Not yet created! Then my work is not yet done. [Crossing herself devoutly] I believe in the Life to Come. [Crying to the universe] A father--a father for the Superman!"

"[between his teeth] Goon. Talk politics, you idiots: nothing sounds more respectable. Keep it up, I tell you."

"Hell is full of musical amateurs. Music is the brandy of the damned."

"An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable."

"What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?"

"There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it."

"Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same. Never resist temptation: prove all things: hold fast that which is good. Do not love your neighbor as yourself. If you are on good terms with yourself it is an impertinence: if on bad, an injury. The golden rule is that there are no golden rules."

"The art of government is the organization of idolatry."

"Kings are not born: they are made by universal hallucination."

"Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."

"He who confuses political liberty with freedom and political equality with similarity has never thought for five minutes about either."

"Nothing can be unconditional: consequently nothing can be free."

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it."

"He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches."

"Activity is the only road to knowledge."

"Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity."

"Imprisonment is as irrevocable as death."

"It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind."

"Whilst we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells."

"Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior, and are disgraced by the inferior."

"There are no perfectly honorable men; but every true man has one main point of honor and a few minor ones."

"Man is the only animal which esteems itself rich in proportion to the number and voracity of its parasites."

"If you strike a child, take care that you strike it in anger, even at the risk of maiming it for life. A blow in cold blood neither can nor should be forgiven."

"Beware of the man whose god is in the skies."

"What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts."

"No specific virtue or vice in a man implies the existence of any other specific virtue or vice in him, however closely the imagination may associate them. Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it. Self-denial is not a virtue : it is only the effect of prudence on rascality. Obedience simulates subordination as fear of the police simulates honesty. Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices. Vice is waste of life. Poverty, obedience and celibacy are the canonical vices. Economy is the art of making the most of life. The love of economy is the root of all virtue."

"In heaven an angel is nobody in particular."

"Happiness and beauty are by-products."

"The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment your conscious self meddles with it."

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

"Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience."

"Hell is paved with good intentions, not with bad ones."

"The right to live is abused whenever it is not constantly challenged."

"Civilization is a disease produced by the practice of building societies with rotten material."

"Every man over forty is a scoundrel."

"Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing."

"Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get. Where there is no ventilation fresh air is declared unwholesome. Where there is no religion hypocrisy becomes good taste. Where there is no knowledge ignorance calls itself science."

"If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience!"

"Those who understand evil pardon it: those who resent it destroy it."

"It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid."

"Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself."

"Two starving men cannot be twice as hungry as one; but two rascals can be ten times as vicious as one."

"Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing."

"First things first."