Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

People to whom their daily life appears too empty and monotonous easily grow religious; this is comprehensible and excusable, only they have no right to demand religious sentiments from those whose daily life is not empty and monotonous.

One had better put on gloves before handling the New Testament. The presence of so much filth makes it highly advisable.

The thousand mysteries around us would not trouble but interest us, if only we had cheerful, healthy hearts.

I can still stand on life's narrowest footing: but who would I be were I to show you this art. Would you like to see a ropedancer?

Sharp and mild, dull and keen, well known and strange, dirty and clean, where both the fool and wise are seen: All this am I, have ever been, - in me dove, snake and swine convene!

Foolish is my happiness, and foolish things will it speak: it is still too young—so have patience with it!

Spirit is the life that itself cuts into life: with its own torment it increases its own knowledge. Did you already know that?

Art depends upon the inexactitude of sight.

I call a lie: wanting not to see something one does see, wanting not to see something as one sees it... The most common lie is the lie one tells to oneself; lying to others is relatively the exception.

This is the fundamental idea of culture, insofar as it sets but one task for each of us: to further the production of the philosopher, of the artist, and of the saint within us and outside us, and thereby to work at the consummation of nature.

Pathetic attitudes are not in keeping with greatness.

If you know the why, you can live any how.

Kindliness, friendliness, the courtesy of the heart, are ever-flowing streams of non egoistic impulses, and have given far more powerful assistance to culture than even those much more famous demonstrations which are called pity, mercy, and self-sacrifice.

We ought to fear a man who hates himself, for we are at risk of becoming victims of his anger and revenge. Let us then try to lure him into self-love.

I consist of body and soul - in the worlds of a child. And why shouldn't we speak like children? But the enlightened, the knowledgealbe would say: I am body through and through, nothing more; and the soul is just a word for something on the body.

What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.

Once blasphemy again God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died, and thereupon those blasphemers died too.

So far no one had had enough courage and intelligence to reveal me to my dear Germans. My problems are new, my psychological horizon frighteningly comprehensive, my language bold and clear; there may well be no books written in German which are richer in ideas and more independent than mine.

We feign pity when we want to demonstrate our ascendancy over feelings of hostility: but usually in vain. Whenever we notice this,there is an accompanying surge in those hostile sensations.

What we do is never understood, but always merely praised or blamed.

Life is hard to bear: but do not affect to be so delicate! We are all of us fine sumpter asses and assesses.

I teach you the Overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? ... The time has come for man to set himself a goal. The time has come to plant the seed to his highest hope.

When a scholar of the old culture vows no longer to have anything to do with men who believe in progress, he is right. For the old culture has its greatness and goodness behind it, and an historical education forces one to admit that it can never again be fresh.

An artist chooses his subjects: that is the way he praises.

I would only believe in a god who could dance. And when I saw my devil I found him serious, thorough, profound, and solemn: it was the spirit of gravity—through him all things fall. Not by wrath does one kill but by laughter. Come, let us kill the spirit of gravity!

The people we keep standing in the anteroom of our favor either start fermenting or turn sour.

It is not enough to prove something, one also has to seduce or elevate people to it. That is why the man of knowledge should learns how to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that it sounds like folly!

Memory says, 'I did that.' Pride replies, 'I could not have done that.' Eventually, memory yields.

Just as soon as we notice that someone has to force himself to pay attention when dealing and talking with us, we have a valid demonstration that he does not love us or that he does not love us anymore.

Examine the life of the best and most productive men and nations, and ask yourselves whether a tree which is to grow proudly skywards can dispense with bad weather and storms. Whether misfortune and opposition, or every kind of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, distrust, severity, greed, and violence do not belong to the favourable conditions without which a great growth even of virtue is hardly possible?

Faith makes blessed. Consequently it lies.

Ten times must you laugh during the day, and be cheerful; otherwise your stomach, the father of affliction, will disturb you in the night.

Loving and perishing: it's been a rhyme all these eternities. The will to love: that is, also being willing to die.

Whoever possesses abundant joy must be a good man: but he is probably not the cleverest man, although he achieves exactly what it is that the cleverest man strives with all his cleverness to achieve.

This mother needs happy, reputable children, and that one needs unhappy ones: otherwise she cannot show her kindness as a mother.

Love your enemies because they bring out the best in you.

What is the strongest cure?--Victory.

Many a peacock hides his peacock tail from all eyes--and calls it his pride.

The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.

On the rare occasions when our dreams succeed and achieve perfection - most dreams are bungled - the are symbolic chains of scene and images in place of a narrative poetic language; they circumscribe our experiences or expectations or situations with such poetic boldness and decisiveness that in the morning we are always amazed when we remember our dreams.

Yes, life is a woman!

The mouth may lie, alright, but the face it makes nonetheless tells the truth.

The most unequivocal sign of contempt for man is to regard everybody merely as a means to one's own ends, or of no account whatever.

Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.

There are two types of genius; one which above all begets and wants to beget, and another which prefers being fertilized and giving birth.

Every tradition grows continually more venerable, and the more remote its origins, the more this is lost sight of. The veneration paid the tradition accumulates from generation to generation, until it at last becomes holy and excites awe.

Whoever thinks much and to good purpose easily forgets his own experiences, but not the thoughts which these experiences have called forth.

Let thy virtue be too high for the familiarity of names, and if thou must speak of it, be not ashamed to stammer about it.