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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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The Devil has the broadest perspectives for God; therefore, he keeps so far away from God -- the Devil being the most ancient friend of wisdom.
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The last Christian died on a cross.
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Time flies apace-we would fain believe that everything flies forward with it.
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And if a friend does you wrong, then say: "I forgive you what you have done to me; that you have done it to YOURSELF, however--how could I forgive that!
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As a result, nature is something entirely different from what comes to mind when we invoke its name.
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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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Every one being allowed to learn to read, ruineth in the long run not only writing but also thinking.
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Gegen die Langeweile kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
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It is only possible through the fact that sympathy for the general life and suffering of mankind is very weakly developed in the individual.
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The pure soul is a pure lie.
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Worldly Wisdom Do not stay in the field! Nor climb out of sight. The best view of the world Is from a medium height.
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Since Copernicus, man seems to have got himself on an inclined plane-now he is slipping faster and faster away from the center into-what? into nothingness? into a 'penetrating sense of his nothingness?' ... all science, natural as well as unnatural-which is what I call the self-critique of knowledge-has at present the object of dissuading man from his former respect for himself, as if this had been but a piece of bizarre conceit.
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One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
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Books and drafts mean something quite different for different thinkers. One collects in a book the lights he was able to steal and carry home swiftly out of the rays of some insight that suddenly dawned on him, while another thinker offers us nothing but shadows - images in black and grey of what had built up in his soul the day before.
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It is an end with priests and gods, if man becomes scientific. Moral: science is the thing forbidden in itself - it alone is forbidden. Science is the first sin, the germ of all sin, original sin. This alones is mortality: Thou shalt not know.
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Germany is a great nation only because its people have so much Polish blood in their veins.
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It has therewith come to be recognized that the history of moral valuations is at the same time the history of an error, the error of responsibility, which is based upon the error of the freedom of will.
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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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Die Leugner des Zufalls. - 'Kein Sieger glaubt an den Zufall.'
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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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To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death of one's own free choice, death at the proper time, with a clear head and with joyfulness, consummated in the midst of children and witnesses: so that an actual leave-taking is possible while he who is leaving is still there.
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One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.
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There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.