Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

Pitch-black winter nights live in my bones.

I no longer want to walk on worn soles.

In loneliness, the lonely one eats himself; in a crowd, the many eat him. Now choose.

There is perhaps nothing so admirable in Christianity and Buddhism as their art of teaching even the lowest to elevate themselves by piety to a seemingly higher order of things, and thereby to retain their satisfaction with the actual world in which they find it difficult enough to live - this very difficulty being necessary.

There is one thing one has to have either a soul that is cheerful by nature, or a soul made cheerful by work, love, art, and knowledge.

He who recites dramatic works makes discoveries about his own character.

There would be no sunshine in society if the born flatterers, I mean the so-called amiable people, did not bring it in with them.

But anyone who has really made sacrifices knows that he wanted and got something in return perhaps something for something of himself - that he gave up in order to have more here or at least to feel that he has "more".

Human life is inexplicable, and still without meaning: a fool may decide its fate.

What then in the last resort are the truths of mankind? They are the irrefutable errors of mankind.

All things that are truly great are at first thought impossible.

I have forgotten my umbrella.

If we have our own why of life, we shall get along with almost any how. Man does not strive for pleasure; only the Englishman does.

I live in my own place - have never copied anyone even half, and at any master who lacks the grace - to laugh at himself - I laugh.

Loneliness is one thing, solitude another.

I love those who do not know how to live for today.

We operate with nothing but things which do not exist, with lines, planes, bodies, atoms, divisible time, divisible space - how should explanation even be possible when we first make everything into an image, into our own image!

In almost all sciences the fundamental knowledge is either found in earliest times or is still being sought.

You must await your thirst and allow it to become complete: otherwise you will never discover your spring, which can never be anyone else's!

As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies—but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters: other kinds of spirit hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.

Everything becomes and recurs eternally - escape is impossible!

Strong currents drag many stones and bushes along with them, strong intellects many dense and muddled minds.

One must not let oneself be misled: they say 'Judge not!' but they send to Hell everything that stands in their way.

Some people do not become thinkers simply because their memories are too good.

How good music and bad reasons sound when one marches against an enemy.

My philosophy is inverted Platonism: the further a thing is from true being, the purer, the lovelier, the better it is. Living inillusion as a goal!

there they laugh: they do not understand me; I am not the mouth for these ears.

You should seek your enemy, you should wage your war - a war for your opinions. And when your opinion is defeatedy our honesty should still cry triumph over that!

THE SLOW ARROW OF BEAUTY. The noblest kind of beauty is that which does not transport us suddenly, which does not make stormy and intoxicating impressions such a kind easily arouses disgust but that which slowly filters into our minds.

The doer is merely a fiction added to the deed ? the deed is everything.

Thou seekest disciples? Then thou seekest ciphers.

An educator never says what he himself thinks, but only that which he thinks it is good for those whom he is educating to hear.

Out of a brotherly love we occasionally embrace this or that somebody (because we cannot embrace everybody): but we must never letour somebody know it.

People who comprehend a thing to its very depths rarely stay faithful to it forever. For they have brought its depths into the light of day: and in the depths there is always much that is unpleasant to see.

Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.

Love of one is a piece of barbarism: for it is practised at the expense of all others. Love of God likewise.

A man who wills commands something within himself that renders obedience, or that he believes renders obedience.

Truth is a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, anthropomorphisms, in short a sum of human relations which have been subjected to poetic and rhetorical intensification, translation and decoration […]; truths are illusions of which we have forgotten that they are illusions, metaphors which have become worn by frequent use and have lost all sensuous vigour […]. Yet we still do not know where the drive to truth comes from, for so far we have only heard about the obligation to be truthful which society imposes in order to exist" from, "On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense".

The final reward of the dead - to die no more

Nobody can build the bridge for you to walk across the river of life, no one but you yourself alone. There are, to be sure, countless paths and bridges and demi-gods which would carry you across this river; but only at the cost of yourself; you would pawn yourself and lose. There is in the world only one way, on which nobody can go, except you: where does it lead? Do not ask, go along with it.

Our sense of the tragic waxes and wanes with our sensuality.

The essential thing ‘in heaven and earth’ is that there should be a long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.

Human existence basically is──a never to be completed imperfect tense.

Those things for which we find words, are things we have already overcome.

Every fact and every work exercises a fresh persuasion over every age and every new species of man. History always enunciates new truths.

If a woman possesses manly virtues, she is to be run away from; and if she does not possess them, she runs away herself.

I have given a name to my pain, and call it "dog".

Liberal institutions straightway cease being liberal the moment they are soundly established: Once this is attained, no more grievous and more thorough enemies of freedom exist than liberal institutions.