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One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.
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Digressions, objections, delight in mockery, carefree mistrust are signs of health.
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Tolerance is a proof of distrust in one's own ideals.
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He who strays from the customary becomes a sacrifice to the extraordinary; he who keeps to the customary becomes its slave. He iscondemned to perish in either case.
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Your enemy shall ye seek; your war shall ye wage, and for the sake of your thoughts! And if your thoughts succumb, your uprightness shall still shout triumph thereby!
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In pain there is as much wisdom as in pleasure: like the latter it is one of the best self preservatives of a species.
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Everything good, fine or great they do is first of all an argument against the skeptic inside them.
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To think historically is almost the same thing now as if in all ages history had been made according to theory.
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We would not let ourselves be burned to death for our opinions: we are not sure enough of them for that.
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Foolish is my happiness, and foolish things will it speak: it is still too young—so have patience with it!
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Nothing in life possesses value except the degree of power--assuming that life itself is the will to power.
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In a friend one should have ones best enemy. You should be closest to him with your heart when you resist him.
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Towards gnats and fleas we should show no pity. We would do right to hang petty thieves, petty calumniators, and slanderers.
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Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
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Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.
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We are more pained when one of our friends is guilty of something shameful than when we do it ourselves.
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I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.
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Ah, there are so many things betwixt heaven and earth of which only the poets have dreamed!
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The good-they cannot create; they are always the beginning of the end.
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What is wanted - whether this is admitted or not - is nothing less than a fundamental remolding, indeed weakening and abolition of the individual: one never tires of enumerating and indicating all that is evil and inimical, prodigal, costly, extravagant in the form individual existence has assumed hitherto, one hopes to manage more cheaply, more safely, more equitably, more uniformly if there exist only large bodies and their members.
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The errors of great men are venerable because they are more fruitful than the truths of little men.
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Man believes that the world itself is filled with beauty - he forgets that it is he who has created it. He alone has bestowed beauty upon the world - alas! only a very human, an all too human, beauty.
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We can destroy only as creators.
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What is the difference between someone who is convinced and one who is deceived? None, if he is well deceived.