Mankind must work continually to produce individual great human beings-this and nothing else is the task... for the question is this: How can your life, the individual life, retain the highest value, the deepest significance? Only by living for the good of the rarest and most valuable specimens.

Do not allow yourselves to be deceived: Great minds are skeptical.

I looked for great men, but all I found were the apes of their ideals.

The Great Man... is colder, harder, less hesitating, and without fear of 'opinion'; he lacks the virtues that accompany respect and 'respectability,' and altogether everything that is the 'virtue of the herd.' If he cannot lead, he goes alone... He knows he is incommunicable: he finds it tasteless to be familiar... When not speaking to himself, he wears a mask. There is a solitude within him that is inaccessible to praise or blame.

It is not the strength, but the duration, of great sentiments that makes great men.

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.