There are slavish souls who carry their appreciation for favors done them so far that they strangle themselves with the rope of gratitude.

All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment…

(…)

Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman—a rope over an abyss…

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under…

Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach honesty.

Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.

Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful

Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm