Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
-
A man as he ought to be: that sounds to us as insipid as 'a tree as it ought to be.'
-
There is a stupid humility that is quite common and when a person is afflicted with it, he is once and for all disqualified for being a disciple of knowledge.
-
Nothing ever succeeds which exuberant spirits have not helped to produce.
-
We come to recognize that playfulness, as a philosophical stance, can be very serious indeed; and moreover, that it possesses an unfailing capacity to arouse ridicule and hostility in those among us who crave certainty, reverence, and restraint.
-
Where could we find an instance of cultural pathology which philosophy restored to health? If philosophy ever manifested itself as helpful, redeeming, or prophylactic, it was in a healthy culture. The sick, it made even sicker.
-
Every characteristic absence of spirituality, every piece of common vulgarity, is due to an inability to resist a stimulus - you have to react, you follow every impulse.
-
We are praised or blamed, as the one or the other may be expedient, for displaying to advantage our power of discernment.
-
One does well to put on gloves when reading the New Testament. The proximity of so much uncleanliness almost forces one to do this.
-
Faith, indeed, has up to the present not been able to move real mountains, although I do not know who assumed that it could. But it can put mountains where there are none.
-
Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.
-
When one speaks of humanity, the idea is fundamental that this is something which separates and distinguishes man from nature. In reality, however, there is no such separation: "natural" qualities and those called truly "human" are inseparably grown together. Man, in his highest and noblest capacities, is wholly nature and embodies its uncanny dual character. Those of his abilities which are terrifying and considered inhuman may even be the fertile soil out of which alone all humanity can grow in impulse, deed, and work.
-
It is the stillest words that bring the storm.
-
Here the spirit becomes a lion who would conquer his freedom and be master… Who is the great dragon whom the spirit will no longer call lord and go? ‘Thou shalt’ is the name of the great dragon. But the spirit of the lion says, ‘I will.
-
One has to take a somewhat bold and dangerous line with this existence: especially as, whatever happens, we are bound to lose it.
-
Every man who has declared that some other man is an ass or a scoundrel, gets angry when the other man conclusively shows that the assertion was erroneous.
-
When we have to change our mind about a person, we hold the inconvenience he causes us very much against him.
-
When on a Sunday morning we hear the old bells ring out, we ask ourselves, "Is it possible! This is done on account of a Jew crucified two thousand years ago who said he was the Son of God. The proof of such an assertion is wanting".
-
He who humbles himself wants to be exalted.
-
Examine the life of the best and most productive men and nations, and ask yourselves whether a tree which is to grow proudly skywards can dispense with bad weather and storms. Whether misfortune and opposition, or every kind of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, distrust, severity, greed, and violence do not belong to the favourable conditions without which a great growth even of virtue is hardly possible?
-
Women and egoistic artists entertain a feeling towards science that is something composed of envy and sentimentality.
-
It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.
-
Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.
-
Ultimately, no one can extract from things, books included, more than he already knows.
-
At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.