Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death freely chosen, death at the right time, brightly and cheerfully accomplished amid children and witnesses: then a real farewell is still possible, as the one who is taking leave is still there; also a real estimate of what one has wished, drawing the sum of one's life--all in opposition to the wretched and revolting comedy that Christianity has made of the hour of death.
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And as long as you are in any way ashamed before yourself, you do not yet belong with us.
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Even the most honest writer lets slip a word too many when he wants to round off a period.
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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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My wisdom has long accumulated like a cloud, it becomes stiller and darker. So does all wisdom which shall one day bear lightnings.
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Compassion for the friend should conceal itself under a hard shell.
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Against war it may be said that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished revengeful.
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Why does man not see things? He is himself standing in the way: he conceals things.
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Death is close enough at hand so we do not need to be afraid of life.
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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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For as long as they praise you, never forget that it is not yet your own path that you walk, but another person's.
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What is new, however, is always evil, being that which wants to conquer and overthrow the old boundary markers and the old pieties; and only what is old is good. The good men are in all ages those who dig the old thoughts, digging deep and getting them to bear fruit - the farmers of the spirit. But eventually all land is depleted, and the ploughshare of evil must come again and again.
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There is nothing more necessary than truth, and in comparison with it everything else has only secondary value. This absolute will to truth: what is it? Is it the will to not allow ourselves to be deceived? Is it the will not to deceive? One does not want to be deceived, under the supposition that it is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived.
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Young people love what is interesting and odd, no matter how true or false it is. More mature minds love what is interesting and odd about truth. Fully mature intellects, finally, love truth, even when it appears plain and simple, boring to the ordinary person; for they have noticed that truth tends to reveal its highest wisdom in the guise of simplicity.
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The perfect woman perpetrates literature as she perpetrates a small sin: as an experiment, in passing, glancing around to see whether anybody notices--and to make sure that somebody notices.
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Every talent must unfold itself in fighting.
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Contentment preserves one from catching cold. Has a woman who knew that she was well dressed ever caught a cold? No, not even when she had scarcely a rag on her back.
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Dionysus:Be clever, Ariadne! …You have little ears; you have my ears:Put a clever word in them! -Must one not first hate oneself, in order to love oneself? …I am your labyrinth …
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But tell me: how did gold get to be the highest value? Because it is uncommon and useless and gleaming and gentle in its brilliance; it always gives itself. Only as an image of the highest virtue did gold get to be the highest value. The giver's glance gleams like gold. A golden brilliance concludes peace between the moon and the sun. Uncommon is the highest virtue and useless, it is gleaming and gentle in its brilliance: a gift-giving virtue is the highest virtue.
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It is the powerful who know how to honour, it is their art, their domain for invention.
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We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.
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Every habit makes our hand more witty and our wit less handy.
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Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.
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War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.