Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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Everyone wants to be foremost in this future-and yet death and the stillness of death are the only things certain and common to all in this future! How strange that this sole thing that is certain and common to all, exercises almost no influence on men, and that they are the furthest from regarding themselves as the brotherhood of death! It makes me happy to see that men do not want to think at all of the idea of death!
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Lightning and thunder need time, the light of the stars needs time, deeds need time, even after they are done, to be seen and heard.
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Or shall I go out as a light does, not first blown out by the wind, but grown tired and weary of itself - a burnt out light? Or finally, shall I blow myself out, so as not to burn out?
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I am one thing, my writings are another.
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With regard to philosophical metaphysics, I always see increasing numbers who have attained to the negative goal, but as yet few who climb a few rungs backwards; one ought to look out, perhaps, over the last steps of the ladder, but not try to stand upon them.
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He divines remedies against injuries; he knows how to turn serious accidents to his own advantage; whatever does not kill him makes him stronger.
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Precisely this is godliness--that there are gods, but no God.
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But he who is hated by the people, as the wolf by the dogs - is the free spirit, the enemy of fetters, the non-adorer, the dweller in the woods.
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When, however, you have an enemy, then do not requite him good for evil: for that would shame him. Instead, prove that he did some good for you. And rather be angry than put to shame! And when you are cursed, I do not like it that you want to bless. Rather curse a little also! And if you are done a great injustice, then quickly add five small ones. Hideous to behold is he who is obsessed with an injustice.
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The great works are produced in such an ecstasy of love that they must always be unworthy of it, however great their worth otherwise.
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Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live. The value for life is ultimately decisive.
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What? You seek something? You wish to multiply yourself tenfold, a hundredfold? You seek followers? Seek zeros!
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These four, however, seek the freedom of their will at the very point where they are most securely chained. It is as if the silkworm sought freedom of will in spinning. What is the reason?
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The higher culture an individual attains, the less field there is left for mockery and scorn.
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All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.
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That whatever a man says, promises, or resolves in passion he must stick to later on when he is cold and sober--this demand is among the heaviest burdens that weigh on humankind.
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What is originality? To see something that is as yet without a name, that is as yet impossible to designate, even though it staresus in the face. The way it usually is with people, it is a thing's name that makes it perceptible to them in the first place.--For the most part, the original ones have also been the name-givers.
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But let us not forget this either: it is enough to create new names and estimations and probabilities in order to create in the long run new 'things.'
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However closely people are attached to one another, their mutual horizon nonetheless includes all four compass directions, and nowand again they notice it.
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Most thinkers write badly, because they communicate not only their thoughts, but also the thinking of them.
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The public easily confuses him who fishes in troubled waters with him who draws up water from the depths.
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What Europe owes to the Jews? - Many things, good and bad, and above all one thing of the nature both of the best and the worst: the grand style in morality, the fearfulness and majesty of infinite demands, of infinite significations, the whole Romanticism and sublimity of moral questionableness - and consequently just the most attractive, ensnaring, and exquisite element in those iridescences and allurements to life, in the aftersheen of which the sky of our European culture, its evening sky, now glows - perhaps glows out.
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Socrates and Plato are right: whatever man does he always does well, that is, he does that which seems to him good (useful) according to the degree of his intellect, the particular standard of his reasonableness.
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Philosophers are not honest enough in their work, although they make a lot of virtuous noise when the problem of truthfulness is touched even remotely. They all pose as if they had discovered and reached their real opinions through the self-development of a cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic...; while at bottom it is an assumption, a hunch, indeed a kind of "inspiration" most often a desire of the heart that has been filtered and made abstract that they defend with reasons they have sought after the fact.