Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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The most intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would find only disaster: in the labyrinth, in being hard with themselves and with others, in effort; their delight is self-mastery; in them asceticism becomes second nature, a necessity, as instinct.
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Not necessity, not desire - no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything - health, food, a place to live, entertainment - they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.
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You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.
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The degree and kind of a man's sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit.
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Man alone suffers so excruciatingly in the world that he was compelled to invent laughter.
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The wreckage of stars - I built a world from this wreckage.
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Everything good is the transmutation of something evil: every god has a devil for a father.
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But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests. Lonely one, you are going the way to yourself! And your way goes past yourself, and past your seven devils! You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?
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To our strongest impulse, to the tyrant in us, not only our reason but also our conscience yields.
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Cows sometimes wear an expression resembling wonderment arrested on its way to becoming a question. In the eye of superior intelligence, on the other hand, lies the nil admirari spread out like the monotony of a cloudless sky.
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Through searching out origins, one becomes a crab. The historian looks backwards, and finally he also believes backwards.
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Few are made for independence, it is the privilege of the strong.
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Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.
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Not the intensity but the duration of high feelings makes high men.
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The 'kingdom of Heaven' is a condition of the heart - not something that comes 'upon the earth' or 'after death.'
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Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
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Pity makes suffering contagious.
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Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches - he has made music sick.
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We must learn to love, learn to be kind, and this from the earliest youth; if education or chance give us no opportunity to practice these feelings, our soul becomes dry and unsuited even to understanding the tender inventions of loving people.
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The only thing of interest in a refuted system is the personal element. It alone is what is forever irrefutable.
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Only individuals have a sense of responsibility.
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Discontent is the seed of ethics.
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God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
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Our vanity desires that what we do best should be considered what is hardest for us.