And if you are not a bird, then beware of coming to rest above an abyss. - Friedrich Nietzsche

The wittiest authors raise the very slightest of smiles.

Wisdom — seems to the rabble a kind of escape, a means and a trick for getting well out of a wicked game. But the genuine philosopher — as it seems to us, my friends? — lives 'unphilosophically' and 'unwisely,' above all imprudently, and feels the burden and the duty of a hundred attempts and temptations of life — he risks himself constantly, he plays the wicked game.

Moralities and religions are the principal means by which one can make whatever one wishes out of man, provided one possesses a superfluity of creative forces and can assert one's will over long periods of time — in the form of legislation and customs.