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He was a philologist professor who served in the Franco-Prussian war, on the German side, that helped liberate Europe from a "liberated" French empire. He was also a musician, poet, novelist, and philosopher. He lived from about 1845 to 1900, so not that long ago. He is very much oversimplified by people who teach "philosophy" classes.

We are always eventually rewarded for our goodwill, our patience, reasonableness and gentleness towards what is strange. —The Joyous Science, 'We must learn to love'

Life has no deceived or disappointed me! ... Life [is] an experiment for the knowledge seeker - and not a duty, not a tragedy, not a swindle! —The Joyous Science, 'In media vita'

To not die from doubt and distress when inflicting great suffering and hearing the cry of this suffering. —The Joyous Science, 'A part of greatness'

The epicurean selects the situations, the persons and the events which fit with his extremely irritable intellectual constitution; he renounces the rest - that is, the bulk of them - because they would constitute fare too strong and too heavy for him. The stoic, on the other hand, practices swallowing stones and worms, glass shards and scorpions, without revulsion; his stomach is supposed to become indifferent in the end to everything that the accidents of existence pour into it. ... For men subject to the capriciousness or fate, who live in violent times and are dependent on abrupt ans changeable men, stoicism may be quite advisable. But he who anticipates that fate will allow him to spin out a long thread does well to set himself up as an epicurean, as all men engaged in intellectual labor have hitherto done! For it would be a great pity for them to forfeit their delicate irritability, and to receive in return the rough and spiny hide of a stoical hedgehog. —The Joyous Science, 'On stoics and epicureans'