Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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Whoever knows he is deep tries to be clear, but whoever wants to seem deep to the crowd tries to be obscure. For the crowd supposes that anything it cannot see to the bottom must be deep: it is so timid and goes so unwillingly into the water.
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The state lies in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it says, it lies-and whatever it has, it has stolen.
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Whatever we have words for, that we have already got beyond.
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Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature.
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Brave people may be persuaded to an action by representing it as being more dangerous than it really is.
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What separates two people most profoundly is a different sense and degree of cleanliness.
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A man far oftener appears to have a decided character from persistently following his temperament than from persistently following his principles.
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What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.
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The real question is: How much truth can I stand?
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All preachers of morality, as also all theologians have a bad habit in common: all of them try to persuade man that he is very ill, and that a severe, final, radical cure is necessary.
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Folk music is the original melody of man; it is the musical mirror of the world.
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When we dream about those who are long since forgotten or dead, it is a sign that we have undergone a radical transformation and that the ground on which we live has been completely dug up: then the dead rise up, and our antiquity becomes modernity.
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The man who meets with a failure attributes this failure rather to the ill will of another than to fate.
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The shortest route is not the most direct one, but rather the one where the most favorable winds swell our sails:Mthat is the lesson that seafarers teach. Not to abide by this lesson is to be obstinate: here, firmness of character is tainted with stupidity.
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Gott ist tot! aber so wie die Art der Menschen ist, wird es vielleicht noch Jahrtausende lang Höhlen geben, in denen man seinen Schatten zeigt. - Und wir - Wir müssen auch noch seinen Schatten besiegen.
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Thus strength is afforded by good and thorough customs, thus is learnt the subjection of the individual, and strenuousness of character becomes a birth gift and afterwards is fostered as a habit.
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What? A great man? I only ever see the ape of his own ideal.
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Man büßt es theuer, unsterblich zu sein: man stirbt dafür mehrere Male bei Lebzeiten.
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A little health now and again is the ailing person's best remedy.
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That the world is not the embodiment of an eternal rationality can be conclusively proved by the fact that the piece of the worldthat we know--I mean our human reason--is not so very rational. And if it is not eternally and completely wise and rational, then the rest of the world will not be either; here the conclusion a minori ad majus, a parte ad totum applies, and does so with decisive force.
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There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.
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Yet tell me, my brothers: if a goal for humanity is still lacking, is there not still lacking--humanity itself?
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However modest one may be in one's demand for intellectual cleanliness, one cannot help feeling, when coming into contact with the New Testament, a kind of inexpressible discomfiture: for the unchecked impudence with which the least qualified want to raise their voice on the greatest problems, and even claim to be judges of such things, surpasses all measure. The shameless levity with which the most intractable problems (life, world, God, purpose of life) are spoken of, as if they were not problems at all but simply things that these little bigots knew!
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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).