Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes - Page 4

When virtue has slept it will arise more vigorous.

Music heals all forms of misery

A degree of culture, and assuredly a very high one, is attained when man rises above superstitions and religious notions and fears, and, for instance, no longer believes in guardian angels or in original sin, and has also ceased to talk of the salvation of his soul.

The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.

Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.

Believe me, friend Hellishnoise: the greatest events—they are not our loudest but our stillest hours.

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.

O sky above me, you modest, glowing sky! O you, my happiness before sunrise! Day is coming: so let us part!

The beast lives unhistorically; for it 'goes into' the present, like a number, without leaving any curious remainder.

Sleeping is no mean art. For its sake one must stay awake all day.

A thought comes when it will, not when I will.

What really arouses indignation against suffering is not suffering as such but the senselessness of suffering...

Besides this I place another equally obvious confirmation of my view that opera is based on the same principles as our Alexandrian culture. Opera is the birth of the theoretical man, the critical layman, not of the artist: one of the most surprising facts in the history of all the arts. It was the demand of throughly unmusical hearers that before everything else the words must be understood, so that according to them a rebirth of music is to be expected only when some mode of singing has been discovered in which textword lords it over counterpoint like master over servant: For the words, it is argued, are as much nobler than the accompanying harmonic system as the soul is nobler than the body.

Who art thou then, O my soul!" (and here [Zarathustra] became frightened, for a sunbeam shot down from heaven upon his face.""O heaven above me," said he sighing, and sat upright, "thou gazest at me? Thou hearkenest unto my strange soul?When wilt thou drink this drop of dew that fell down upon all earthly things—when wilt thou drink this strange soul——When, thou well of eternity! thou joyous, awful, noontide abyss! when wilt thou drink my soul back into thee?

Weariness, which seeketh to get to the ultimate with one leap, with a death-leap; a poor ignorant weariness, unwilling even to will any longer: that created all Gods and backworlds.

Only those thoughts which come from walking have any value

The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.

It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right --especially when one is right.

Amor Fati – “Love Your Fate”, which is in fact your life.

Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders.

If you know the why, you can live any how.

Every moment of life wants to tell us something, but we do not want to hear what it has to say: when we are alone and quiet we are afraid that something will be whispered into our ear and hence we despise quiet and drug ourselves with sociability.

The more thoroughly a person understands life, the less he will mock, though in the end he might still mock the "thoroughness of his understanding.

A thing can only live through a pious illusion.

Every past is worth condemning.

The word "Christianity" is already a misunderstanding; in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the cross.

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

All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

The more you let yourself go the less others let you go.

Belief means not wanting to know what is true.

The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.

When virtue has slept she will get up more refreshed.

Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept "leaf" is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects. This awakens the idea that, in addition to the leaves, there exists in nature the "leaf": the original model according to which all the leaves were perhaps woven, sketched, measured, colored, curled, and painted--but by incompetent hands, so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct, trustworthy, and faithful likeness of the original model.

Ich lehre euch den Übermenschen. Der Mensch ist Etwas, das überwunden werden soll. Was habt ihr gethan, ihn zu überwinden? Was ist der Affe für en Menschen? Ein Gelächter oder eine schmerzliche Scham. Und ebendas soll der Mensch für den Übermenschen sein: ein Gelächter oder eine schmerzliche Scham. Ihr habt den Weg vom Wurme zum Menschen gemacht, und Vieles ist in euch noch Wurm. Einst wart ihr Affen, und auch jetzt ist der Mensch mehr Affe, als irgend ein Affe.

As an artist, a man has no home in Europe save in Paris.

To be incapable of taking one’s enemies, one’s accidents, even one’s misdeeds seriously for very long - that is the sign of strong full natures in whom there is an excess of power to form, to mold, to recuperate and to forget. Mirabeau had no memory for insults and vile actions done to him and was unable to forgive simply because he - forgot. Such a man shakes off with a single shrug the many vermin that eat deep into others.

For truth to tell, dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education: dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with pen- that one must learn how to write

The craving for equality can express itself either as a desire to pull everyone down to our own level (by belittling them, excluding them, tripping them up) or as a desire to raise ourselves up along with everyone else (by acknowledging them, helping them, and rejoicing in their success).

A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us.

At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.

When virtue has slept, it will arise again all the fresher.

Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen few in pursuit of the goal.

All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.

I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go. Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died, and these sinners died with him. To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful thing, and to esteem the entrails of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth... What is the greatest experience you can have? It is the hour of the great contempt. The hour when your happiness, too, arouses your disgust, and even your reason and your virtue.

Giving style” to one’s character - a great and rare art! It is exercised by those who see all the strengths and weaknesses of their own natures and then comprehend them in an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason and even weakness delights the eye.

The slow arrow of beauty. The most noble kind of beauty is that which does not carry us away suddenly, whose attacks are not violent or intoxicating (this kind easily awakens disgust), but rather the kind of beauty which infiltrates slowly, which we carry along with us almost unnoticed, and meet up with again in dreams; finally, after it has for a long time lain modestly in our heart, it takes complete possession of us, filling our eyes with tears, our hearts with longing. What do we long for when we see beauty? To be beautiful. We think much happiness must be connected with it. But that is an error.

You tell me: 'Life is hard to bear.' But if it were otherwise why should you have your pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening?Life is hard to bear: but do not pretend to be so tender! We are all of us pretty fine asses and asseses of burden!

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

Psychology has falsified love as surrender and altruism, while it is an appropriation or a bestowal following from a super-abundance of personality. Only the most complete persons can love. The depersonalized and objective are the worst lovers.

We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.

He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.

One in three all friends are:Brothers in distress,equals facing rivals,free men - facing death!

A man who wills commands something within himself that renders obedience, or that he believes renders obedience.

There have been two great narcotics in European civilisation: Christianity and alcohol.

None of the people have any real interest in a science, who only begin to be enthusiastic about it when they themselves have made discoveries in it.

What? A great man? I only ever see the ape of his own ideal.

Whatever they may think and say about their "egoism", the great majority nonetheless do nothing for their ego their whole life long: what they do is done for the phantom of their ego which has formed itself in the heads of those around them and has been communicated to them.

Healthy introspection, without undermining oneself; it is a rare gift to venture into the unexplored depths of the self, without delusions or fictions, but with an uncorrupted gaze.

The good men of every age are those who go to the roots of the old thoughts and bear fruit with them.

One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.