Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

They're so cold, these scholars! May lightning strike their food so that their mouths learn how to eat fire!

Do ask yourself why you, the individual, exist, and if you can get no other answer try for once to justify the meaning of your existence as it were a posteriori by setting before yourself an aim, a goal, a 'to this end', an exalted and noble 'to this end'.

There are ages in which the rational man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of intuition, the other with scorn for abstraction. The latter is just as irrational as the former is inartistic.

Woman is essentially unpeaceful, like the cat, however well she may have trained herself to present an appearance of peace.

Nothing ever succeeds which exuberant spirits have not helped to produce.

Resistance - that is the distinction of the slave. Let your distinction be obedience. Let your commanding itself be obeying!

Instruments and playthings are sense and spirit: behind them there is still the Self. The Self seeketh with the eyes of the senses, it hearkeneth also with the ears of the spirit.

A vocation makes us unthinking; that is its greatest blessing. For it is a bulwark behind which we are permitted to withdraw whencommonplace doubts and cares assail us.

Of what is great one must either be silent or speak with greatness. With greatness--that means cynically and with innocence.

The same passions in man and woman nonetheless differ in tempo; hence man and woman do not cease misunderstanding one another.

one does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood.

Thinking evil is making evil.

There are highly gifted spirits who are always infertile simply because, owing to a weakness in temperament, they are too impatient to wait out their pregnancy to term.

There is sense in hoping for recognition in a distant future only when we take it for granted that mankind will remain essentially unchanged, and that whatever is great is not for one age only but will be looked upon as great for all time.

It was Christianity, with its heartfelt resentment against life, that first made something unclean of sexuality: it threw filth on the origin, on the essential fact of our life.

One should not understand this compulsion to construct concepts, species, forms, purposes, laws ('a world of identical cases') as if they enabled us to fix the real world; but as a compulsion to arrange a world for ourselves in which our existence is made possible:-we thereby create a world which is calculable, simplified, comprehensible, etc., for us.

The relatives of a suicide hold it against him that out of consideration for their reputation he did not remain alive.

In being wildly natural we recover best from being unnatural, from being spiritual.

Speaking is a beautiful folly; with that man dances over all things.

All idealism is falsehood in the face of necessity.

The god on the cross is a curse on life, a signpost to seek redemption from life; Dionysus cut to pieces is a promise of life: it will be eternally reborn and return again from destruction

Do whatever you will, but first be such as are able to will.

Love brings to light a lover's noble and hidden qualities-his rare and exceptional traits: it is thus liable to be deceptive of his normal qualities.

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.

How much truth can a spirit bear, how much truth can a spirit dare? ... that became for me more and more the real measure of value.

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

Cows sometimes wear an expression resembling wonderment arrested on its way to becoming a question. In the eye of superior intelligence, on the other hand, lies the nil admirari spread out like the monotony of a cloudless sky.

In laughter all that is evil comes together, but is pronounced holy and absolved by its own bliss.

I understand by 'freedom of spirit' something quite definite - the unconditional will to say No, where it is dangerous to say No.

Generally speaking, the greater a woman's beauty, the greater her modesty.

To think historically is almost the same thing now as if in all ages history had been made according to theory.

One is most dishonest to one's god: he is not allowed to sin.

In order to be somebody you have to hold even your shadow in high regard.

The higher man is distinguished from the lower by his fearlessness and his readiness to challenge misfortune.

And so, onwards... along a path of wisdom, with a hearty tread, a hearty confidence.. however you may be, be your own source of experience. Throw off your discontent about your nature. Forgive yourself your own self. You have it in your power to merge everything you have lived through- false starts, errors, delusions, passions, your loves and your hopes- into your goal, with nothing left over.

No victor believes in chance.

Just as bones, tissues, intestines, and blood vessels are enclosed in a skin that makes it possible to bear the sight of a human being, so the agitations and passions of the soul are wrapped up in vanity: it is the soul's skin.

I love him who desireth not too many virtues. One virtue is more of a virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for one's destiny to cling to.

What doesn't kill you make you stronger.

All philosophy is a form of confession.

Every habit makes our hand more witty and our wit less handy.

I love him who loveth his virtue: for virtue is the will to down-going, and an arrow of longing.

You I advise not to work, but to fight. You I advise not to peace, but to victory. Let your work be a fight, let your peace be a victory!

That which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable echo of what was formerly considered good - the atavism of an old ideal.

For this remains as I have already pointed out the essential difference between the two religions of decadence : Buddhism promises nothing, but actually fulfils; Christianity promises everything, but fulfils nothing.

Be careful who you choose as your enemy because that's who you become most like.

I do not give alms; I am not poor enough for that.

if a person wishes to achieve peace of mind and happiness then they should acquire faith, but if they want to be a disciple of truth, which can be "frightening and ugly,” then they need to search.