Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
-
Alas! There cometh the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There cometh the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself.
-
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.
-
Darum hat Lessing, der ehrlichste theoretische Mensch, es auszusprechen gewagt, dass ihm mehr am Suchen der Wahrheit als an ihr selbst gelegen sei...
-
Genuine historical knowledge requires nobility of character, a profound understanding of human existence - not detachment and objectivity.
-
Every tradition grows continually more venerable, and the more remote its origins, the more this is lost sight of. The veneration paid the tradition accumulates from generation to generation, until it at last becomes holy and excites awe.
-
One should only question gods where none but gods can reply.
-
The superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the superman is to be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, be true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not.
-
There will be but few people who, when at a loss for topics of conversation, will not reveal the more secret affairs of their friends.
-
When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.
-
We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.
-
When one has not had a good father, one must create one.
-
So long as men praise you, you can only be sure that you are not yet on your own true path but on someone else's.
-
Jesus died too soon. If he had lived to my age he would have repudiated his doctrine.
-
Even today a crude sort of persecution is all that is required to create an honorable name for any sect, no matter how indifferent in itself.
-
I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgetteth himself, and all things are in him: thus all things become his down-going.
-
Like the creatures of the forest and the sea, I love To lose myself for a while.
-
The saying, "The Magyar is much too lazy to be bored," is worth thinking about. Only the most subtle and active animals are capable of boredom.--A theme for a great poet would be God's boredom on the seventh day of creation.
-
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.
-
Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach honesty.
-
The states in which we infuse a transfiguration and a fullness into things and poetize about them until they reflect back our fullness and joy in life...three elements principally: sexuality, intoxication and cruelty - all belonging to the oldest festal joys.
-
The charm of knowledge would be small indeed, were it not that there is so much shame to be overcome on the way to it.
-
If you have an enemy, do not requite him evil with good, for that would put him to shame. Rather prove that he did you some good.
-
The hour when you say, "What does my happiness matter? It is poverty and filth, and a wretched complacency. Yet my happiness should justify existence itself!
-
The disappointed one speaks. I searched for great human beings; I always found only the apes of their ideals.