Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
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Very early in my life I took the question of the relation of art to truth seriously: even now I stand in holy dread in the face of this discordance. My first book was devoted to it. The Birth of Tragedy believes in art on the background of another belief.
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Without myth, however, every culture loses its healthy creative natural power: it is only a horizon encompassed with myth that rounds off to unity a social movement.
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Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life's nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in "another" or "better" life.
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Our vanity would have just that which we do best count as that which is hardest for us. The origin of many a morality.
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Humility has the toughest hide.
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Creating-that is the great salvation from suffering.
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Those things for which we find words, are things we have already overcome.
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People press toward the light not in order to see better but in order to shine better.--We are happy to regard the one before whomwe shine as light.
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On all the walls, wherever walls exist, I will inscribe this eternal indictment of Christianity--I have letters to make even blindmen see.... I call Christianity the single great curse, the single great innermost depravity, the single great instinct of revenge, for which no means is poisonous, secretive, subterranean, small enough--I call it mankind's single immortal blemish.... And we reckon time from the dies nefastus with which this calamity arose--following Christianity's first day!--Why not following its last day, instead?--Following today?--Transvaluation of all values!
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A book is made better by good readers and clearer by good opponents.
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The surest sign that two people no longer speak the same language is that both say ironic things to one another but that neither senses the irony.
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The person lives most beautifully who does not reflect upon existence.
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Willing sets you free: that is the true doctrine of will and freedom--thus Zarathustra instructs you.
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So far there has been no philosopher in whose hands philosophy has not grown into an apology for knowledge; on this point, at least, every one is an optimist, that the greatest usefulness must be ascribed to knowledge. They are all tyrannized over by logic, and this is optimism in its essence.
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What is life? A continuous praise and blame.
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We have no organ at all for knowledge, for truth: we know (or believe or imagine) precisely as much as may be useful in the interest of the human herd, the species: and even what is here called usefulness is in the end only a belief, something imagined and perhaps precisely that most fatal piece of stupidity by which we shall one day perish.
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The inclination to self-depreciation, to freely accepting being robbed, being duped, and being swindled, could be the modesty of a god among men.
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Your soul will be dead even before your body: fear nothing further.
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Giving style” to one’s character - a great and rare art! It is exercised by those who see all the strengths and weaknesses of their own natures and then comprehend them in an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason and even weakness delights the eye.
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We only hear questions that we are able to answer.
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Mediocrity is the most effective mask a superior spirit can wear, because to the great majority, which is to say, to the mediocre,it will not suggest a disguise:--and yet it is precisely for their sake that he puts it on--so as not to arouse them, and, indeed, not infrequently to avoid this out of pity and benevolence.
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This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light on the stars requires time; deeds though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars - and yet they have done it themselves.
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In almost all sciences the fundamental knowledge is either found in earliest times or is still being sought.
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Many find their heart when they have lost their head.