Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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Perhaps man will rise ever higher as soon as he ceases to flow out into a god.
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Truth is a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, anthropomorphisms, in short a sum of human relations which have been subjected to poetic and rhetorical intensification, translation and decoration […]; truths are illusions of which we have forgotten that they are illusions, metaphors which have become worn by frequent use and have lost all sensuous vigour […]. Yet we still do not know where the drive to truth comes from, for so far we have only heard about the obligation to be truthful which society imposes in order to exist" from, "On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense".
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Our vanity desires that what we do best should be considered what is hardest for us.
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Men after death ... are understood worse than men of the moment, but heard better.
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A sedentary life is the real sin against the Holy Spirit. Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.
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The happiness of man is: I will. The happiness of woman is: he wills. 'Behold , just now the world ... entire love. And woman must obey and find a depth for her surface. Surface is the disposition of woman: a mobile, stormy film over shallow water. Man's disposition, however, is deep; his river roars in subterranean caves: woman feels his strength but does not comprehend it.
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The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.
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Egoism is the law of perspective applied to feelings: what is closest appears large and weighty, and as one moves farther away size and weight decrease.
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Every past is worth condemning.
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Possessions are usually diminished by possession.
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Noble and wise men once believed in the music of the spheres: noble and wise men still continue to believe in the "moral significance of existence." But one day even this sphere-music will no longer be audible to them! They will wake up and take note that their ears were dreaming.
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We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us.
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This crown to crown the laughing man, this rose-wreath crown: I myself have set this crown upon my head, I myself have pronounced my laughter holy.
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Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of something it must be profound. It is so timid and dislikes going into the water.
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A married philosopher belongs in comedy, that is my proposition-and as for that exception, Socrates-the malicious Socrates, it would seem, married ironically, just to demonstrate this proposition.
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One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.
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Their usual mistaken premise is that they affirm some consensus among people, at least among tame peoples, concerning certain moral principles, and then conclude that these principles must be unconditionally binding also for you and me-or conversely, they see that among different peoples moral valuations are necessarily different and infer from this that no morality is binding-both of which are equally childish.
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I and me are always too deeply in conversation.
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The rights which a man arrogates to himself are relative to the duties which he sets himself, and to the tasks which he feels capable of performing.
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Your god is dead and only the ignorant weep. And if you claim there is a hell, then we shall meet there!
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In music the passions enjoy themselves.
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What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force.
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Men who think deeply appear to be comedians in their dealings with others because they always have to feign superficiality in order to be understood.
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To discover he is loved in return ought really to disenchant the lover with the beloved.