Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.

To be the equal of one's opponent-this is the first condition of an honourable duel.

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.

I notice that Autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature.

The small force that it takes to launch a boat into the stream should not be confused with the force of the stream that carries it along: but this confusion appears in nearly all biographies.

Such men alone are my readers, my proper readers, my preordained readers. Of what account are the rest? The rest are simply... humanity. One must be superior to humanity in power, in loftiness of soul- in contempt.

Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.

Life, and you, and I, and all of us together became for a while interesing to ourselves once more.

That which does not destroy, strengthens.

All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down.

He who humbles himself wants to be exalted.

The soul must have its chosen sewers to carry away its ordure. This function is performed by persons, relationships, professions, the fatherland, the world, or finally, for the really arrogant - I mean our modern pessimists - by the Good God himself.

Wherever on earth the religious neurosis has appeared we find it tied to three dangerous dietary demands: solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence.

Youth is an unpleasant period; for then it is not possible or not prudent to be productive in any sense whatsoever.

But every soil becomes finally exhausted, and the ploughshare of evil must always come once more.

These four, however, seek the freedom of their will at the very point where they are most securely chained. It is as if the silkworm sought freedom of will in spinning. What is the reason?

He who is dissatisfied with himself is continually ready for revenge and we others will be his victims, if only in having always to endure his ugly sight. For the sight of the ugly makes one bad and gloomy.

Body am I entirely, and nothing else; and soul is only a word for something about the body.

One sticks to an opinion because he prides himself on having come to it on his own, and another because he has taken great pains to learn it and is proud to have grasped it: and so both do so out of vanity.

We pay dearly for immortality: we die for it more than once during our lifetimes.

The craving for equality can express itself either as a desire to pull everyone down to our own level (by belittling them, excluding them, tripping them up) or as a desire to raise ourselves up along with everyone else (by acknowledging them, helping them, and rejoicing in their success).

If Islam despises Christianity, it has a thousandfold right to do so: Islam at least assumes that it is dealing with men.

Sometimes all you need to do to win clever people over to a principle is to present it in the form of a shocking paradox.

Those with certain temperaments find no way to endure themselves except by striving towards going under.

Your highest thought, however, ye shall have it commanded unto you by me - and it is this: man is something that is to be surpassed.

Whether a man hides his bad qualities and vices or confesses them openly, his vanity wants to gain an advantage by it in both cases: just note how subtly he distinguishes between those he will hide his bad qualities from and those he will face honestly and candidly.

Free will without fate is no more conceivable than spirit without matter, good without evil.

The unlucky hand dealt to clear and precise writers is that people assume they are superficial and so do not go to any trouble inreading them: and the lucky hand dealt to unclear ones is that the reader does go to some trouble and then attributes the pleasure he experiences in his own zeal to them.

Only you must have worthy foes hate, but not enemies worthy of contempt. You must be proud of your enemy.

Close beside my knowledge lies my black ignorance.

One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.

To get into just those situations where sham virtues will not suffice, but rather where, as with the ropedancer on his rope, one either falls or stands--or gets down.

Men are cowards when it comes to the "eternally feminine": and the little women know it.

The woman and the genius do not work. Up to now, woman has been mankind's supreme luxury. In all those moments when we do our best, we do not work. Work is merely a means to these moments.

Contentment preserves one from catching cold. Has a woman who knew that she was well dressed ever caught a cold? No, not even when she had scarcely a rag on her back.

Nothing can be done about it: every master has but a single pupil--and he will not stay loyal to him--for he is also destined to become a master.

Let your love to life be love to your highest hope; and let your highest hope be the highest thought of life!

When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is usually something wrong with her sexuality.

The bad gains respect through imitation, the good loses it especially in art.

I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.

Childhood and youth are ends in themselves, not stages.

When one rows it is not the rowing which moves the ship: rowing is only a magical ceremony by means of which one compels a demon to move the ship.

A physician who treated me as a nervous case for a while said in the end "No! It is not a matter of your nerves; it is I who am nervous".

Let us beware of saying there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is no one to command, no one to obey, no one to transgress. When you realize there are no goals or objectives, then you realize, too, that there is no chance: for only in a world of objectives does the word chance have any meaning.

It is a terrible thought, to contemplate that an immense number of mediocre thinkers are occupied with really influential matters.

One hears but one does not seek; one takes -- one does not ask who gives; a thought flashes up like lightning, it comes of necessity and unfalteringly formed.

I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.

All names of good and evil are images; they do not speak out, they only hint. He is a fool who seeks knowledge from them.