Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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Death is close enough at hand so we do not need to be afraid of life.
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A nation that still believes in itself holds fast to its own god.
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Among austere men intimacy involves shame--and is something precious.
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If there is to be art, if there is to be any aesthetic doing and seeing, one physiological condition is indispensable: frenzy.
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We are franker towards others than towards ourselves.
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The strong individual loves the earth so much he lusts for recurrence. He can smile in the face of the most terrible thought: meaningless, aimless existence recurring eternally. The second characteristic of such a man is that he has the strength to recognize - and to live with the recognition - that the world is valueless in itself and that all values are human ones. He creates himself by fashioning his own values; he has the pride to live by the values he wills.
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The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.
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Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood.
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A certain sense of cruelty towards oneself and others is Christian; hatred of those who think differently; the will to persecute. Mortal hostility against the masters of the earth, against the 'noble', that is also Christian; hatred of mind, of pride, courage, freedom, libertinage of mind, is Christian; hatred of the senses, of joy in general, is Christian.
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But let me open up my heart to you completely, my friends: if there were gods, how could I bear not being a god! Hence, there areno gods. I drew this conclusion, to be sure--but now it draws me.
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Socrates ... is the first philosopher of life [Lebensphilosoph], ... Thinking serves life, while among all previous philosophers life had served thought and knowledge. ... Thus Socratic philosophy is absolutely practical: it is hostile to all knowledge unconnected to ethical implications.
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From the State the exceptional individual cannot expect much. He is seldom benefited by being taken into its service; the only certain advantage it can give him is complete independence. Only real culture will prevent him being too early tired out or used up, and will spare him the exhausting struggle against culture-philistinism.
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What does it matter whether I am shown to be right! I am right too much!--And he who laughs best today will also laugh last.
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What is the task of higher education? To make a man into a machine. What are the means employed? He is taught how to suffer being bored.
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With the unknown, one is confronted with danger, discomfort, and care; the first instinct is to abolish these painful states. First principle: any explanation is better than none. . . . The causal instinct is thus conditional upon, and excited by, the feeling of fear. The "why?" shall, if at all possible, not give the cause for its own sake so much as for a particular kind of cause -- a cause that is comforting, liberating, and relieving
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Whoever does not know how to find the way to his ideal lives more frivolously and impudently than the man without an ideal.
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Those things for which we find words, are things we have already overcome.
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Learning from one's enemies is the best way to love them, for it puts one into a grateful mood toward them.
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Unresolved dissonances between the characters and dispositions of the parents continue to reverberate in the nature of the child and make up the history of its inner sufferings.
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That grand drama in a hundred acts, which is reserved for the next two centuries of Europe-the most terrible, most questionable and perhaps also the most hopeful of all dramas.
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Behold, I am weary of my wisdom, like a bee that has gathered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to receive it.
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One must first be firmly set in oneself, one must stand securely on one's own two legs otherwise one cannot love at all.
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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.
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I need solitude, which is to say, recovery, return to my self, the breath of a free, light, playful air.