Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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If you buy the why, the how is infinitely bearable.
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Here we also see: what this divinity lacks is not only a sense of shame-and there are also other reasons for conjecturing that in several respects all of the gods could learn from us humans. We humans are-more humane.
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It is possible that the production of genius is reserved to a limited period of mankind's history.
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Even truthfulness is but one means to knowledge, a ladder--but not the ladder.
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This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!
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At every step one has to wrestle for truth; one has to surrender for it almost everything to which the heart, to which our love, our trust in life, cling otherwise. That requires greatness of soul: the service of truth is the hardest service. What does it mean, after all, to have integrity in matters of the spirit? That one is severe against one's heart...that one makes of every Yes and No a matter of conscience.
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Not with wrath do we kill, but with laughter. Come, let us kill the spirit of gravity!
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Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.
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The first opinion that occurs to us when we are suddenly asked about something is usually not our own but only the current one pertaining to our class, position, or parentage; our own opinions seldom swim on the surface.
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With sturdy shoulders, space stands opposing all its weight to nothingness. Where space is, there is being.
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A book should long for pen, ink, and writing-table: but usually it is pen, ink, and writing-table that long for a book. That is why books are so negligible nowadays.
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In solitude the lonely man is eaten up by himself, among crowds by the many.
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Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.
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The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
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The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more must you allure the senses to it.
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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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I am one thing, my writings are another.
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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 is the music in our conscience, the dance in our spirit, to which Puritan litanies, moral sermons, and goody goodness won’t chime.
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Sing me a new song; the world is transfigured; all the Heavens are rejoicing.
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Enjoyment and innocence are the most bashful things: both do not want to be sought.
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A noble soul is not the one that can manage the highest flights but the one that rises very little and falls very little but always dwells in a free, resplendent atmosphere and altitude.
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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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No, life has not disappointed me. On the contrary, I find it truer, more desirable and mysterious every year -- ever since the day when the great liberator came to me: the idea that life could be an experiment of the seeker for knowledge -- and not a duty, not a calamity, not trickery.