Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

When one thinks profusely and cleverly, not only his face but his body too takes on a clever appearance.

The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more must you allure the senses to it.

Art is the great stimulus to life.

When a man is ill his very goodness is sickly.

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.

Instinct. When the house burns one forgets even lunch. Yes, but one eats it later in the ashes.

Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose.

If a man wishes to become a hero, then the serpent must first become a dragon: otherwise he lacks his proper enemy.

He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.

The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.

What is not intelligible to me is not necessarily unintelligent

I change too quickly: my today refutes my yesterday. When I ascend I often jump over steps, and no step forgives me that.

A reader is doubly guilty of bad manners against an author when he praises his second book at the expense of his first (or vice versa) and then expects the author to be grateful for what he has done.

I am no man, I am dynamite.

Energy wasted on negative ends.

Why does man not see things? He is himself standing in the way: he conceals things.

Yet for all that, there is nothing in me of a founder of a religion--religions are affairs of the rabble; I find it necessary to wash my hands after I have come into contact with religious people.

What is the truth, but a lie agreed upon.

Ultimately one loves one's desires and not that which is desired.

Whoever has character also has his typical experience, which returns over and over again.

He who attains his ideal, precisely thereby surpasses it.

In solitude the lonely man is eaten up by himself, among crowds by the many.

You lack the courage to be consumed in flames and to become ashes: so you will never become new, and never young again!

I presume that you are compassionate: to be without pity means to be sick in body and spirit. But one should have spirit in abundance, so as to be permitted to be compassionate! For your pity is detrimental to you and to everyone.

Love ever your neighbour as yourselves - but first be such as love themselves.

The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die.

One can also be undignified and flattering toward a virtue.

The value of life itself cannot be estimated.

Every relationship that does not raise us up pulls us down, and vice versa; this is why men usually sink down somewhat when they take wives while women are usually somewhat raised up. Overly spiritual men require marriage every bit as much as they resist it as bitter medicine.

It is the powerful who know how to honour, it is their art, their domain for invention.

The scaffolding must be removed once the house is built.

The overman...Who has organized the chaos of his passions, given style to his character, and become creative. Aware of life's terrors, he affirms life without resentment.

Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.

We no longer love our knowledge enough once we have passed it on.

The sick woman especially: no one surpasses her in refinements for ruling, oppressing, tyrannising.

The best way to give assistance to those who are deeply embarrassed and to calm them down is to praise them decisively.

Around the hero everything turns into a tragedy, around the demigod, a satyr-play, and around God--what? perhaps a "world"?

Great men's errors are to be venerated as more fruitful than little men's truths.

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

In art the end does not sanctify the means: but sacred means employed here can sanctify the end.

Sometimes it is harder to accede to a thing than it is to see its truth.

No one is such a liar as the indignant man.

The earth is like the breasts of a woman: useful as well as pleasing.

What saved me then? Nothing but pregnancy. And each time after I had given birth to my work my life hung suspended by a thin thread.

Curiosity creeps into the houses of the unfortunate and the needy under the name of duty or of pity.

For both parties in a controversy, the most disagreeable way of retaliating is to be vexed and silent; for the aggressor usually regards the silence as a sign of contempt.

It is very noble hypocrisy not to talk of one's self.

Knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion.