Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
-
Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman — a rope over an abyss.
-
Whoever is related to me in the height of his aspirations will experience veritable ecstasies of learning; for I come from heights that no bird ever reached in its flight, I know abysses into which no foot ever strayed.
-
The command 'become hard! ', the deep conviction that all creators are hard, is the really distinctive sign of a Dionysian nature.
-
For the purpose of knowledge we must know how to make use of the inward current which draws us towards a thing, and also of the current which after a time draws us away from it.
-
There is nothing for which men ask to be paid dearer than for humiliation.
-
In order to acquire intellect one must need it. One loses it when it is no longer necessary.
-
Profundity of thought belongs to youth, clarity of thought to old age.
-
There are expressions and bulls-eyes of the spirit, there are epigrams, a little handful of words, in which a whole culture, a whole society is suddenly crystallized.
-
To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
-
One must learn to be a sponge if one wants to be loved by hearts that overflow.
-
Read from a distant star, the majuscule script of our earthly existence would perhaps lead to the conclusion that the earth was the distinctively ascetic planet, a nook of disgruntled, arrogant creatures filled with a profound disgust with themselves, at the earth, at all life, who inflict as much pain on themselves as they possibly can out of pleasure in inflicting pain which is probably their only pleasure.
-
One must learn to love oneself with a wholesome and healthy love, so that one can bear to be with oneself and need not roam.
-
I am too inquisitive, too skeptical, too arrogant, to let myself be satisfied with an obvious and crass solution of things. God is such an obvious and crass solution; a solution which is a sheer indelicacy to us thinkers - at bottom He is really nothing but a coarse commandment against us: ye shall not think!
-
The man loves danger and sport. That is why he loves woman, the most dangerous of all sports.
-
Every virtue has its privilege: for example, that of contributing its own little bundle of wood to the funeral pyre of one condemned.
-
Every tradition grows ever more venerable - the more remote its origin, the more confused that origin is. The reverence due to it increases from generation to generation. The tradition finally becomes holy and inspires awe.
-
To those human beings who are of any concern to me, I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill treatment, indignities, profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, and the wretchedness of the vanquished.
-
The love of truth has its reward in heaven and even on earth.
-
I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer.
-
I climb upon the highest mountains, laughing at all tragedies - whether real or imaginary.
-
To live alone one must be a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both - a philosopher.
-
To be moral, correct, and virtuous is to be obedient to an old established law and custom.
-
Reckoned physiologically, everything ugly weakens and afflicts man. It recalls decay, danger, impotence; he actually suffers a loss of energy in its presence. The effect of the ugly can be measured with a dynamometer. Whenever man feels in any way depressed, he senses the proximity of something ugly. His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride - they decline with the ugly, they increase with the beautiful.
-
The wittiest authors evoke a barely perceptible smile.