Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.

Whoever wants to set a good example must add a grain of foolishness to his virtue: then others can imitate and yet at the same time surpass the one they imitate-which human beings love to do.

Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.

In the world of high finance the shilling of the idle rich man can buy more than that of the poor, industrious man.

If you look long enough into the void, the void begins to look back through you.

At times, our strengths propel us so far forward we can no longer endure our weaknesses and perish from them.

We set no special value on the possession of a virtue until we percieve that it is entirely lacking in our adversary.

I am almost equal to a shadow.

The rising and falling of the scales of pride and humility sustain the brooding mind as well as the alternations of desire and peace of the soul.

Moral sensibilities are nowadays at such cross-purposes that to one man a morality is proved by its utility, while to another its utility refutes it.

The superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the superman is to be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, be true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not.

What is the vanity of the vainest man compared with the vanity which the most modest possesses when, in the midst of nature and the world, he feels himself to be man!

It is difficult to live among people because silence is so difficult.

The Greeks, with their truly healthy culture, have once and for all justified philosophy simply by having engaged in it, and having engaged in it more fully than any other people.

Belief in form, but disbelief in content - that's what makes an aphorism charming.

We must repay goodness and wickedness: but why exactly to the person who has done us a good or a wicked turn?

And if you are not a bird, then beware of coming to rest above an abyss.

Do not paint a picture either of God or the devil on your walls: this will ruin both your walls and the atmosphere.

What I understand by "philosopher": a terrible explosive in the presence of which everything is in danger.

The greater the obstacle the more glory in overcoming it. - What does not destroy makes me stronger.

It is only great pain--that slow, sustained pain that takes its time, in which we are, as it were, burned with smoldering green firewood--that forces us philosophers to sink to our ultimate profundity and to do away with all the trust, everything good-natured, veil-imposing, mild and middling, on which we may have previously based our humanity. I doubt that such a pain makes us 'better'--but I know that it makes us deeper.

Your enemy shall ye seek; your war shall ye wage, and for the sake of your thoughts! And if your thoughts succumb, your uprightness shall still shout triumph thereby!

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.

What is happening to me happens to all fruits that grow ripe. It is the honey in my veins that makes my blood thicker, and my soul quieter.

The thought of suicide is a great source of comfort: with it a calm passage is to be made across many a bad night.

No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.

Give me today, for once, the worst throw of your dice, destiny. Today I transmute everything into gold.

One should part from life as Odysseus parted from Nausicaa-blessing it rather than in love with it.

Those who are devoid of purpose will make the void their purpose.

There are slavish souls who carry their appreciation for favors done them so far that they strangle themselves with the rope of gratitude.

What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?

I am one thing, my writings are another.

Be careful when you cast out your demons that you don’t throw away the best of yourself.

If an architect wants to strengthen a decrepit arch, he increases the load laid upon it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together.

The hour when you say, "What does my happiness matter? It is poverty and filth, and a wretched complacency. Yet my happiness should justify existence itself!

What is new, however, is always evil, being that which wants to conquer and overthrow the old boundary markers and the old pieties; and only what is old is good. The good men are in all ages those who dig the old thoughts, digging deep and getting them to bear fruit - the farmers of the spirit. But eventually all land is depleted, and the ploughshare of evil must come again and again.

We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge - and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves - how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves? It has rightly been said: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also"; our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge are.

In every philosophical school, three thinkers succeed one another in the following way: the first produces out of himself the sapand seed, the second draws it out into threads and spins a synthetic web, and the third waits in this web for the sacrificial victims that are caught in it--and tries to live off philosophy.

Zarathustra was the first to consider the fight of good and evil the very wheel in the machinery of things: the transposition of morality into the metaphysical realm, as a force, cause, and end in itself, is his work. [...] Zarathustra created this most calamitous error, morality; consequently, he must also be the first to recognize it.

Physiologists should think before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength--life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results.

Take a chance and try my fare! It will grow on you, I swear; Soon it will taste good to you!

One has to take a somewhat bold and dangerous line with this existence: especially as, whatever happens, we are bound to lose it.

We believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things - metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities.

Only sick music makes money today.

Under conditions of peace the warlike man attacks himself.

Man... cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him.

Marriages that made out of love (so-called "love-matches") have error as their father and misery (necessity) as their mother.

When somebody dies we usually need reasons for consolation, not so much to alleviate our pain as to excuse ourselves for so readily feeling consoled.