<i>The one necessary thing</i>. — A person must have one or the other. Either a cheerful disposition by nature, or a disposition made cheerful by art… - Friedrich Nietzsche

One thing a man must have: either a naturally light disposition or a disposition lightened by art and knowledge.

Artists have an interest in … so-called inspirations; as if the idea of a work of art, of poetry, the fundamental thought of a philosophy shines down like a merciful light from heaven.

In truth, the good artist's or thinker's imagination is continually producing things good, mediocre, and bad, but his power of judgment, highly sharpened and practiced, rejects, selects, joins together; thus we now see from Beethoven's notebooks that he gradually assembled the most glorious melodies and, to a degree, selected them out of disparate beginnings.

The artist who separates less rigorously, liking to rely on his imitative memory, can in some circumstances become a great improviser; but artistic improvisation stands low in relation to artistic thoughts earnestly and laboriously chosen. All great men were great workers, untiring not only in invention but also in rejecting, sifting, reforming, arranging.

In solitude the solitary man consumes himself, in the crowd the crowd consumes him.

I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus, I would rather be a satyr than a saint.