“A gay temper is like a bright day; true, it may have its faults — a little petulance, a little wilfulness — the flush may be too ready in the cheek, and the flash too prompt in the eye; still these are only trifles to be pardoned, and we like that all the better in which we have something to forgive.”

By the Waters of Babylon (1937)
Context: It is better the truth should come little by little. I have learned that, being a priest. Perhaps, in the old days, they ate knowledge too fast.
Nevertheless, we make a beginning. it is not for the metal alone we go to the Dead Places now — there are the books and the writings. They are hard to learn. And the magic tools are broken — but we can look at them and wonder. At least, we make a beginning. And, when I am chief priest we shall go beyond the great river. We shall go to the Place of the Gods — the place newyork — not one man but a company. We shall look for the images of the gods and find the god ASHING and the others — the gods Lincoln and Biltmore and Moses. But they were men who built the city, not gods or demons. They were men. I remember the dead man's face. They were men who were here before us. We must build again.

Source: The Collected Stories

"Take Something Like a Star" (1949)
1940s

Nous n'avouons de petits défauts que pour persuader que nous n'en avons pas de grands.
Maxim 327.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

1990s, 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997), p. 88, Epilogue

Gott ist tot! aber so wie die Art der Menschen ist, wird es vielleicht noch Jahrtausende lang Höhlen geben, in denen man seinen Schatten zeigt.
Und wir — Wir müssen auch noch seinen Schatten besiegen.
Sec. 108
Quotes about quotes: see also God is dead.
The Gay Science (1882)
Source: The Portable Nietzsche

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), IV : The Essence of Catholicism
Context: ... as the great Unitarian preacher Channing pointed out, that in France and Spain there are multitudes who have proceeded from rejecting Popery to absolute atheism, because "the fact is, that false and absurd doctrines, when exposed, have a natural tendency to beget skepticism in those who receive them without reflection. None are so likely to believe too little as those who have begun by believing too much." Here is, indeed, the terrible danger of believing too much. But no! the terrible danger comes from another quarter — from seeking to believe with the reason and not with the life.

Marius amid the Ruins of Carthage