Nietzsche Quotes

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything. A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still A man has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access A matter that becomes clear ceases to concern us A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy. After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands Ah, there are so many things betwixt heaven and earth of which only the poets have dreamed! Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent. All good things were at one time bad things; every original sin has developed into an original virtue. All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth. All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking All truth is simple... is that not doubly a lie? And if your friend does evil to you, say to him, ''I forgive you for what you did to me, but how can I forgive you for what you did to yourself?'' Art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence Belief means not wanting to know what is true Believe me! The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously! Better know nothing than half-know many things Blessed are the forgetful; for they get the better even of their blunders But for every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing. Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had. Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. Courageous, untroubled, mocking and violent-that is what Wisdom wants us to be. Wisdom is a woman, and loves only a warrior. Deep is the well of truth and long does it take to know what has fallen into its depths Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful Every extension of knowledge arises from making the conscious the unconscious. Everyone who has ever built anywhere a ''new heaven'' first found the power thereto in his own hell. Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

Faith, indeed, has up to the present not been able to move real mountains . . . But it can put mountains where there are none. Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons. Fear is the mother of morality For a tree to become tall it must grow tough roots among the rocks. God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight. Great intellects are skeptical Growth in wisdom may be exactly measured by decrease in bitterness He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either. He who cannot lie does not know what the truth is He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures. He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. He who writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read, he wants to be learned by heart. Hope in reality is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time. I know my fate. One day there will be associated with my name the recollection of something frightful / of a crisis like no other before on earth, of the profoundest collision of conscience, of a decision evoked against everything that until then had been believed in, demanded, sanctified. I am not a man I am dynamite. I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible. . . . I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think. If a man has a strong faith he can indulge in the luxury of skepticism If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself. If a woman seeks education it is probably because her sexual apparatus is malfunctioning If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn. If you believed more in life you would fling yourself less to the moment. If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. If you go to see the woman, do not forget the whip I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play. In order to acquire intellect one must need it. One loses it when it is no longer necessary. Is it better to out-monster the monster or to be quietly devoured? It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.

It is not strength but the duration of great sentiments that makes great men. It is through being wounded that power grows and can, in the end, become tremendous Let man fear woman when she loves: then she makes any sacrifice, and everything else seems without value to her Let us not underestimate the privileges of the mediocre. As one climbs higher, life becomes ever harder; the coldness increases, responsibility increases. Like tourists huffing and puffing to reach the peak we forget the view on the way up Living in a constant chase after gain compels people to expend their spirit to the point of exhaustion Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not Man is the cruelest animal. At tragedies, bullfights, and crucifixions he has so far felt best on earth; and when he invented hell for himself, behold, that was hiry heaven. Man is the cruelest animal. Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal. Men have hitherto treated women like birds which have strayed down to them from the heights; as something more delicate, more fragile, more savage, stranger, sweeter, soulful - but as something which has to be caged up so that it shall not fly away Merely through the constant need to ward off, one can become weak enough to be unable to defend oneself any longer. No victor believes in chance Not every end is the goal. The end of a melody is not its goal, and yet if a melody has not reached its end, it has not reached its goal. A parable. Nothing ever succeeds which exuberant spirits have not helped to produce. Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive One is not free to become a Christian. One must be sick enough for it. One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth. One must separate from anything that forces one to repeat No again and again One never dives into the water to save a drowning man more eagerly than when there are others present who dare not take the risk. One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. One should never know too precisely whom one has married One should not go into church if one wants to breathe pure air Only strong personalities can endure history, the weak ones are extinguished by it Our shortcomings are the eyes with which we see the ideal Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter. Possessions are usually diminished by possession. Science and art have that in common that everyday things seem to them new and attractive Sensuality often makes love grow too quickly, so that the root remains weak and is easy to pull out Success has always been a great liar. Talking much about oneself may be a way of hiding oneself The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude. The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly. The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. The last Christian died on the cross The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters The love of truth has its reward in heaven and even on earth. The man who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more you must allure the senses to it The more you let yourself go, the less others let you go The most instructive experiences are those of everyday life The most serious parody I have ever heard was this: In the beginning was nonsense, and the nonsense was with God, and the nonsense was God The person lives most beautifully who does not reflect upon existence The spiritualization of sensuality is called love: it is a great triumph over Christianity. The thought of suicide is a great source of comfort; with it a calm passage is to be made across many a bad night. The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything. The world is beautiful, but has a disease called man There are no facts, only interpretations. There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He. There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness. There is no knowledge of true being. The world is fundamentally in a state of becoming. There is not enough love and goodness in the world for us to be permitted to give any of it away to imaginary things. There is not enough religion in the world to destroy the world's religions There is one thing one has to have: either a soul that is cheerful by nature, or a soul made cheerful by work, love, art, and knowledge. Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier and simpler.

To become wise, one must "wish" to have certain experiences and run, as it were, into their gaping jaws. This, of course, is very dangerous; many a wise guy has been swallowed. To forget one's purpose is the commonest form of stupidity. To make the individual uncomfortable, that is my task Under peaceful conditions the militant man attacks himself. Vanity is the polite mask of pride. We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total absence in our opponent. We have art to save ourselves from the truth. We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us. We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh. What I really want from music. That it be cheerful and profound like an afternoon in October. That it be individual, frolicsome, tender, a sweet small woman full of beastliness and charm. What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest loneliness, and say, 'This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!' Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon? Or would you answer, 'Never have I heard anything more divine'? You gave him an opportunity of showing greatness of character and he did not seize it. He will never forgive you for that. What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness What separates two people most profoundly is a different sense and degree of cleanliness. What someone is, begins to be revealed when his talent abates, when he stops showing us what he can do. What we do in dreams we also do when we are awake: we invent and fabricate the person with whom we associate -and immediately forget we have done so. What we do is never understood, but only praised and blamed. Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil. When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory. When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago When we have to change our minds about a person, we hold the inconvenience he causes us very much against him. When we set truth on its head we usually fail to notice that our head too is not standing where it ought to stand. Whoever knows he is deep, strives for clarity; whoever would like to appear deep to the crowd, strives for obscurity. For the crowd considers anything deep if only it cannot see to the bottom: the crowd is so timid and afraid of going into the water. Whoever knows he is deep, strives for clarity; whoever would like to appear deep to the crowd, strives for obscurity. For the crowd considers anything deep if only it cannot see to the bottom: the crowd is so timid and afraid of going into the water. Without music, life would be a mistake.... I would only believe in a God who knew how to dance.

Without music, life would be an error. Woman understands children better than man does, but man is more childlike than woman Women are considered deep - why? Because one can never discover any bottom to them. Women are not even shallow. Women's modesty generally increases with their beauty. You are rewarding a teacher poorly if you remain always a pupil. You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist. You may have enemies whom you hate, but not enemies whom you despise. You must be proud of your enemy: then the success of your enemy shall be your success too. You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star. Your god is dead and only the ignorant weep. And if you claim there is a hell, then we shall meet there! Your soul will be dead even before your body: fear nothing further. You gave him an opportunity of showing greatness of character and he did not seize it. He will never forgive you for that.