Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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All philosophers make the common mistake of taking contemporary man as their starting point and of trying, through an analysis of him, to[21] reach a conclusion. "Man" involuntarily presents himself to them as an aeterna veritas as a passive element in every hurly-burly, as a fixed standard of things. Yet everything uttered by the philosopher on the subject of man is, in the last resort, nothing more than a piece of testimony concerning man during a very limited period of time.
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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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Quidquid luce fuit tenebris agit: but also the other way around. What we experience in dreams, so long as we experience it frequently, is in the end just as much a part of the total economy of our soul as anything we "really" experience: because of it we are richer or poorer, are sensitive to one need more or less, and are eventually guided a little by our dream-habits in broad daylight and even in the most cheerful moments occupying our waking spirit.
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No artist will tolerate the world for one second as it is.
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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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This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.
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Pain makes hens and poets cackle.
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One unconsciously takes it for granted that doer and sufferer think and feel alike, and according to this supposition we measure the guilt of the one by the pain of the other.
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If you have hitherto believed that life was one of the highest value and now see yourselves disappointed, do you at once have to reduce it to the lowest possible price?
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In every ascetic morality man worships a part of himself as God and for that he needs to diabolize the other part.
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When self control is lacking in small things, the ability to apply it to matters of importance withers away. Every day in which one does not at least deny himself some trifle is badly spent and a threat to the day following.
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The concepts "beyond" and "real world" were invented in order to depreciate the only world that exists-in order that no goal, no aim or task might be left for our earthly reality.
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Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.
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Our body is simply a social structure made of many souls.
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There is a lake that one day refused to flow away and threw up a dam at the place where it had before flowed out and since then this lake has always risen higher and higher. Perhaps the very act of renunciation provides us with the strength to bear it ; perhaps man will rise ever higher and higher when he no longer flows out into a God.
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Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.
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A change of values - that means, a change of the creators of values. He who has to be a creator always has to destroy.
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As regards the celebrated struggle for life, it seems to me for the present to have been rather asserted than proved. It does occur, but as the exception; the general aspect of life is not hunger and distress, but rather wealth, luxury, even absurd prodigality -- where there is a struggle it is a struggle for power.
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The question of place and climate is most closely related to the question of nutrition. Nobody is free to live everywhere; and whoever has to solve great problems that challenge all his strength actually has a very restricted choice in this matter. The influence of climate on our metabolism, its retardation, its acceleration, goes so far that a mistaken choice of place and climate can not only estrange a man from his task but can actually keep it from him: he never gets to see it.
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Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that the laws of nature are constantly broken for their sakes.
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Strong currents drag many stones and bushes along with them, strong intellects many dense and muddled minds.
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Good deeds shun the light as anxiously as evil deeds: the latter fear that disclosure will bring on pain (as punishment), while the former fear that disclosure will take away pleasure (that pure pleasure, that pleasure per se, which immediately ceases once the vanity's satisfaction is added).
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Books for general reading always smell bad; the odor of common people hangs around them.
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The various languages placed side by side show that with words it is never a question of truth, never a question of adequate expression; otherwise, there would not be so many languages. The 'thing in itself' (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for.