Only the individual exists through himself and for himself. I am, I
live, is the sole thing a man can affirm.

The categories and divisions arranged for classification are like the
series of squares an artist places over a drawing to copy it by. The
lines of the squares may cut the lines of the sketch; but they will cut
them, not in reality but only in the artist's eye.

In humanity, as in all of nature, the individual is the one thing. Only
individuality exists in the realm of life and in the realm of spirit.

Individuality is not to be grouped or classified. Individuality simply
cannot fit into a pigeon-hole, and it is all the further from fitting if
the pigeon-hole is shaped according to an ethical principle. Ethics is a
poor tailor to clothe the body of reality.

The ideas of the good, the logical, the just, the consistent, are too
generic to be completely represented in nature.

The individual is not logical, or good, or just; nor is he any other
distinct thing; and this through the force of his own fatal actions,
through the influence of the deviation in the earth's axis, or for
whatsoever other equally amusing cause. Everything individual is
always found mixed, full of absurdities of perspective and picturesque
contradictions,--contradictions and absurdities that shock us, because
we insist on submitting individuals to principles which are not
applicable to them.

If instead of wearing a cravat and a bowler hat, we wore feathers and a
ring in our nose, all our moral notions would change.