Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes - Page 2

Masks. - There are women who, however you may search them, prove to have no content but are purely masks. The man who associates with such almost spectral, necessarily unsatisfied beings is to be commiserated with, yet it is precisely they who are able to arouse the desire of the man most strongly: he seeks for her soul - and goes on seeking.

The conviction reigns that it is only through the sacrifices and accomplishments of the ancestors that the tribe exists--and that one has to pay them back with sacrifices and accomplishments; one thus recognizes a debt that constantly grows greater, since these forebears never cease, in their continued existence as powerful spirits, to accord the tribe new advantages and new strength.

Alas, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the compassionate?And what in the world has caused more suffering than the follies of the compassionate?Woe to all lovers who cannot surmount pity!Thus spoke the Devil to me once: Even God has his Hell: it is his love for man.And I lately heard him say these words: God is dead; God has died of his pity for man.

One is punished most for one’s virtues.

It is not the strength, but the duration, of great sentiments that makes great men.

Every talent must unfold itself in fighting.

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

Dangerous Helpfulness. There are people who want to make men's lives more difficult for no other reason than afterwards to offer them their prescriptions for making life easier -- their Christianity, for example.

People have always wanted to 'improve' human beings; for the most part, this has been called morality.

All history is the experimental refutation of the theory of the so-called moral order of things.

In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the haughtiest and most mendacious minute of "world history"- yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.

There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.

You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted.

Your bad love of yourselves makes solitude a prison to you.

Happiness: being able to forget or, to express in a more learned fashion.

It is true: we love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.There is always a certain madness in love. But also there is always a certain method in madness.

There are no facts only interpretations.

If thinking is your fate, revere this fate with divine honour and sacrifice to it the best, the most beloved

Should not the giver be thankful that the receiver received? Is not giving a need? Is not receiving mercy?

And how does one basically recognize good development? In that a well-developed man does our senses good: that he is carved from wood which is hard, delicate, and sweet-smelling, all at the same time.

Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.

It is the business of the very few to be independent; it is a privilege of the strong. And whoever attempts it, even with the best right, but without being OBLIGED to do so, proves that he is probably not only strong, but also daring beyond measure. He enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies a thousandfold the dangers which life in itself already brings with it; not the least of which is that no one can see how and where he loses his way, becomes isolated, and is torn piecemeal by some minotaur of conscience. Supposing such a one comes to grief, it is so far from the comprehension of men that they neither feel it, nor sympathize with it. And he cannot any longer go back! He cannot even go back again to the sympathy of men!

Has a woman who knew that she was well dressed ever caught a cold?

I and me are always too deeply in conversation: how could I endure it,if there were not a friend?The friend of the hermit is always the third one: the third one is the float which prevents the conversation of the two from sinking into the depth.

The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good thing for the first time.

Knowing one's 'individuality'. - We are too prone to forget that in the eyes of people who are seeing us for the first time we are something quite different from what we consider ourselves to be: usually we are nothing more than a single individual trait which leaps to the eye and determines the whole impression that we make.

All modern philosophizing is political, policed by governments, churches, academics, custom, fashion, and human cowardice, all off which limit it to a fake learnedness.

Where solitude endeth, there beginneth the market-place; and where the market-place beginneth, there beginneth also the noise of the great actors, and the buzzing of the poison-flies.

All good things are powerful stimulants to life, even a good book written against life.

With rope-ladders learned I to reach many a window, with nimble legs did I climb high masts: to sit on high masts of perception seemed to me no small bliss; To flicker like small flames on high masts: a small light, certainly, but a great comfort to cast-away sailors and shipwrecked ones!By diverse ways and wendings did I arrive at my truth; not by one ladder did I mount to the height where mine eye roveth into my remoteness. And unwillingly only did I ask my way - that was always counter to my taste! Rather did I question and test the ways themselves. A testing and a questioning hath been all my travelling: and verily, one must also learn to answer such questioning! That, however - is my taste: Neither a good nor a bad taste, but my taste, of which I have no longer either shame or secrecy."This is now my way - where is yours?" Thus did I answer those who asked me "the way." For "the way" - it doth not exist!

if we possess a why of life we can put up with almost any how.

Let the young soul survey its own life with a view of the following question: ‘What have you truly loved thus far? What has ever uplifted your soul, what has dominated and delighted it at the same time?

Strong hope is a much greater stimulant of life than any single realized joy could be.

When one has not had a good father one must create one.

We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total absence in our opponent.

The historian looks backward. In the end he also believes backward.

The life of the enemy . Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in the enemy's staying alive.

What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure - as a mere automaton of duty?

Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.

It breaks my heart. Better than your words, your eye tells me all your peril.You are not yet free, you still search for freedom. Your search has fatigued you and made you too wakeful.You long for the open heights, your soul thirsts for the stars. But your bad instincts too thirst for freedom. Your fierce dogs long for freedom; they bark for joy in their cellar when your spirit aspires to break open all prisons.To me you are still a prisoner who imagines freedom: ah, such prisoners of the soul become clever, but also deceitful and base.

One is fruitful only at the cost of being rich in contradictions.

This workshop where ideals are manufactured--it seems to me it stinks of so many lies

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you have still chaos in you.

Popular medicine and popular morality belong together and ought not to be evaluated so differently as they still are: both are the most dangerous pseudo-sciences.

A: But why this solitude? - B: I am not at odds with anyone. But when I am alone I seem to see my friends in a clearer and fairer light than when I am with them; and when I loved and appreciated music the most, I lived far from it. It seems I need a distant perspective if I am to think well of things.

Man has been reared by his errors: first he never saw himself other than imperfectly, second he attributed to himself imaginary qualities, third he felt himself in a false order of rank with animal and nature, fourth he continually invented new tables of values and for a time took each of them to be eternal and unconditional...If one deducts the effect of these four errors, one has also deducted away humanity, humaneness, and 'human dignity'.

And as long as you are in any way ashamed before yourself, you do not yet belong with us.

One does not hate as long as one has a low esteem of someone, but only when one esteems him as an equal or a superior.

The strongest intimidation, by the way, is the invention of a hereafter with a hell everlasting.

O my brothers, I dedicate and direct you to a new nobility: you shall become procreators and cultivators and sowers of the future — verily, not to a nobility that you might buy like shopkeepers and with shopkeepers' gold: for whatever has its price has little value. Not whence you came shall henceforth constitute your honor, but whither you are going! Your will and your foot which has a will to go over and beyond yourselves — that shall constitute your new honor.

The good life is that which succeeds in existing for the moment, without reference to past or future, without condemnation or selection, in a state of absolute lightness, and in the finished conviction that there is no difference therefore between the instant and eternity.

Be careful when you cast out your demons that you don’t throw away the best of yourself.

Physician, heal thyself: then wilt thou also heal thy patient. Let it be his best cure to see with his eyes him who maketh himself whole.

The Church today is more likely to alienate than to seduce...

When the gratitude that many owe to one discards all modesty, then there is fame.

[N]othing is more easily corrupted than an artist.

All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment… (…) Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman—a rope over an abyss… What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under…

Writers whose thoughts are expressed with clarity and precision are assumed by readers to be superficial. Where the meaning is obscured, then readers give more attention and consider the fruit of their labour more valuable

The spiritualization of sensuality is called love: it is a great triumph over Christianity.