Men of great ambition have sought happiness . . . and have found fame.

Where there is happiness, there is found pleasure in nonsense. The transformation of experience into its opposite, of the suitable into the unsuitable, the obligatory into the optional (but in such a manner that this process produces no injury and is only imagined in jest), is a pleasure.

To the mediocre, mediocrity is a form of happiness.

To have to fight the instincts-that is the definition of decadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness equals instinct.

Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness - as if happiness sat on the throne. Often, mud sits on the throne - and often the throne also on mud. Mad they all appear to me, clambering monkeys and overardent. Foul smells their idol, the cold monster: foul, they smell to me altogether, these idolators.

What is bad?-All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness?-The feeling that power is increasing-that resistance has been overcome.