Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

Without music, life would be a mistake.

Even the pluckiest among us has but seldom the courage of what he really knows.

It is not your sin - it is your moderation that cries to heaven; your very sparingness in sin cries to heaven!

The discipline of suffering, of great suffering - do you not know that it is this discipline alone that has produced all the elevations of humanity so far?

A philosophical mythology lies concealed in language, which breaks out again at every moment, no matter how cautious we may be.

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

Better know nothing than half-know many things.

All rejection and negation indicates a deficiency in fertility: fundamentally, if only we were good plowland we would allow nothing to go unused, and in every thing, event, and person we would welcome manure, rain, or sunshine.

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.

I was in darkness, but I took three steps and found myself in paradise. The first step was a good thought, the second, a good word; and the third, a good deed.

I am interested only in the relations of a people to the rearing of the individual man, and among the Greeks the conditions were unusually favourable for the development of the individual; not by any means owing to the goodness of the people, but because of the struggles of their evil instincts.With the help of favourable measures great individuals might be reared who would be both different from and higher than those who heretofore have owed their existence to mere chance. Here we may still be hopeful: in the rearing of exceptional men.

Woman learns how to hate in proportion as she forgets how to charm.

That which needs to be proved cannot be worth much.

You implanted your highest goal into the heart of those passions: then they became your virtues and joys.

Robinson had a servant even better than Friday: His name was Crusoe.

I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars for going down and being sacrifices, but sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth of the Superman may hereafter arrive.

To our strongest impulse, to the tyrant in us, not only our reason but also our conscience yields.

Linguistic danger to spiritual freedom.- Every word is a prejudice.

Well-meaning, helpful, good-natured attitudes of mind have not come to be honored on account of their usefulness, but because they are states of richer souls that are capable of bestowing and have their value in the feeling of the plenitude of life.

However much we may feel for the misery of someone close to us, we always act with some artificiality in their presence. We hold-back from telling them everything we think, often because we do not genuinely mean what we say; or because we take a pleasure in their plight, thankful that we are not affected.

These small things - nutrition, place, climate, recreation, the whole casuistry of selfishness - are inconceivably more important than everything one has taken to be important so far.

Love forgives the lover even his lust.

Sleep is no mean art.

All religions bear traces of the fact that they arose during the intellectual immaturity of the human race - before it had learned the obligations to speak the truth. Not one of them makes it the duty of its god to be truthful and understandable in his communications.

There are the terrible ones who carry about in themselves the beast of prey, and have no choice except lusts or self-laceration. And even their lusts are self-laceration.

He who bestows something great receives no gratitude; for in accepting it the recipient has already been weighed down too much.

Whatever is gold does not glitter. A gentle radiance belongs to the noblest metal.

Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.

There is always some madness in love.

For the longest time, marriage has had a guilty conscience about itself. Should we believe it?--Yes, we should believe it.

Amor Fati – “Love Your Fate”, which is in fact your life.

Consider the cattle, grazing as they pass you by. They do not know what is meant by yesterday or today, they leap about, eat, rest, digest, leap about again, and so from morn till night and from day to day, fettered to the moment and its pleasure or displeasure, and thus neither melancholy nor bored. [...] A human being may well ask an animal: 'Why do you not speak to me of your happiness but only stand and gaze at me?' The animal would like to answer, and say, 'The reason is I always forget what I was going to say' - but then he forgot this answer too, and stayed silent.

A degree of culture, and assuredly a very high one, is attained when man rises above superstitions and religious notions and fears, and, for instance, no longer believes in guardian angels or in original sin, and has also ceased to talk of the salvation of his soul.

In the dark, time feels different than when it is light.

Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.

Where there is the tree of knowledge, there is always Paradise: so say the most ancient and most modern serpents.

When I was twelve years old I thought up an odd trinity: namely, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Devil. My inference wasthat God, in contemplating himself, created the second person of the godhead; but that, in order to be able to contemplate himself, he had to contemplate, and thus to create, his opposite.--With this I began to do philosophy.

When we have to change our mind about a person, we hold the inconvenience he causes us very much against him.

One must cease letting oneself be eaten when one tastes best: that is known to those who want to be loved long.

We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total absence in our opponent.

It is our taste that decides against Christianity now, no longer our reasons.

...the only psychologist from whom I have anything to learn.

There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.

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.

Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.

Death is close enough at hand so we do not need to be afraid of life.

Triumph depends on a roll of Fate's dice; the ultimate prize is a place in Heaven.

The doer alone learneth.