Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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We forget our guilt when we have confessed it to another, but the other does not usually forget it.
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A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation.
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Do not talk about giftedness, inborn talents! One can assume great men of all kinds who were very little gifted. They acquired greatness, became “geniuses” (as we put it), through qualities the lack of which no one who knew what they were would boast of: they all possessed that seriousness of the efficient workman which first learns to construct the parts properly before it ventures to fashion a great whole; they allowed themselves time for it, because they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole.
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Let woman be a plaything, pure and fine, like a precious stone, illumined with the virtues of a world not yet come.
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So long as the spectator has to figure out the meaning of this or that person, or the presuppositions of this or that conflict of inclinations and purposes, he cannot become completely absorbed in the activities and sufferings of the chief characters or feel breathless pity and fear.
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Be generous in nature and thought; for this wins respect and gives confidence and power.
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Whoever commits to paper what he suffers becomes a melancholy author: but he becomes a serious author when he tells us what he suffered and why he now reposes in joy.
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To ask strength not to express itself as strength, not to be a will to dominate, a will to subjugate, a will to become master, a thirst for enemies and obstacles and triumphant celebrations, is just as absurd as to ask weakness to express itself as strength.
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Some die too young, some die too old; the precept sounds strange, but die at the right age.
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Moral sensibilities are nowadays at such cross-purposes that to one man a morality is proved by its utility, while to another its utility refutes it.
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Just as bones, tissues, intestines, and blood vessels are enclosed in a skin that makes it possible to bear the sight of a human being, so the agitations and passions of the soul are wrapped up in vanity: it is the soul's skin.
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It may be that until now there has been no more potent means for beautifying man himself than piety: it can turn man into so much art, surface, play of colors, graciousness that his sight no longer makes one suffer.
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They would have to sing better songs for me to learn to have faith in their Redeemer; and his disciples would have to look more redeemed!
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As much as possible, and this as quickly as possible: that is what the great mental and emotional illness craves that is variously called "present" or "culture," but that is actually a symptom of consumption.
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People to whom their daily life appears too empty and monotonous easily grow religious; this is comprehensible and excusable, only they have no right to demand religious sentiments from those whose daily life is not empty and monotonous.
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It is not enough to prove something, one has also to seduce or elevate people to it. That is why the man of knowledge should learn how to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that it sounds like folly!
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Assuming that rapture is nature's play with man, the Dionysian artist's creative activity is the play with rapture.
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Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.
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It is, indeed, a fact that, in the midst of society and sociability every evil inclination has to place itself under such great restraint, don so many masks, lay itself so often on the procrustean bed of virtue, that one could well speak of a martyrdom of the evil man. In solitude all this falls away. He who is evil is at his most evil in solitude: which is where he is at his best - and thus to the eye of him who sees everywhere only a spectacle also at his most beautiful.
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Ist das Leben nicht hundert Mal zu kurz, sich in ihm- zu langweilen?
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One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.
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Idleness is the parent of psychology.
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When gods die, they always die many sorts of death.
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...to the priestly class - decadence is no more than a means to an end. Men of this sort have a vital interest in making mankind sick, and in confusing the values of 'good' and 'bad,' 'true' and 'false' in a manner that is not only dangerous to life, but also slanders it.