Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

He who has always spared himself much will in the end become sickly of so much consideration. Praised be what hardens!

For let us not underestimate the Christian: the Christian, false to the point of innocence, is far above the ape-regarding Christians, a well known theory of descent becomes a mere compliment.

Scholars who become politicians are usually assigned the comic role of having to be the good conscience of state policy.

Strong hope is a much greater stimulant of life than any single realised joy could be.

All modern philosophizing is political, policed by governments, churches, academics, custom, fashion, and human cowardice, all off which limit it to a fake learnedness.

The beating of drums, which delights young writers who serve a party, sounds to him who does not belong to the party line like a rattling of chains, and excites sympathy rather than admiration.

A man who has depths in his shame meets his destiny and his delicate decisions upon paths which few ever reach . . .

The way to transmute your iron duty into gold in everyone's eyes is this: always deliver more than you promise.

Books for all the world are always foul-smelling books: the smell of small people clings to them.

Mothers easily become jealous of their sons' friends when they are particularly successful. As a rule a mother loves herself in her son more than she does the son himself.

The ascetic makes a necessity of virtue.

Man is more sensitive to the contempt of others than to self-contempt.

Whenever the truth is uncovered, the artist will always cling with rapt gaze to what still remains covering even after such uncovering; but the theoretical man enjoys and finds satisfaction in the discarded covering and finds the highest object of his pleasure in the process of an ever happy uncovering that succeeds through his own efforts.

Thus the will to power strives towards oppositions, towards displeasure. There is a will to suffering at the foundation of all organic life (contrary to "happiness" as "goal").

Men inadvertently comport themselves with nobility when they have grown accustomed to wanting nothing from others and always giving to them.

Beauty is for the artist something outside all orders of rank, because in beauty opposites are tamed; the highest sign of power, namely power over opposites; moreover, without tension: - that violence is no longer needed: that everything follows, obeys, so easily and so pleasantly - that is what delights the artist's WILL TO POWER.

No artist tolerates reality.

You shall not steal! You shall not kill! Such words were once called holy; before them people bowrd their knees and heads, and removed their shoes. But I ask you: where have there ever been better thieves and killers in the world than such holy words have been? Is there not in all of life itself - robbing and killing? And when such words were called holy, was not truth itself thereby - killed?

The radical hostility, the deadly hostility against sensuality, is always a symptom to reflect on: it entitles us to suppositions concerning the total state of one who is excessive in this manner.

if we possess a why of life we can put up with almost any how.

At the beginning of a marriage ask yourself whether this woman will be interesting to talk to from now until old age. Everything else in marriage is transitory: most of the time is spent in conversation.

Ah, there are so many things betwixt heaven and earth of which only the poets have dreamed!

Whoever is related to me in the height of his aspirations will experience veritable ecstasies of learning; for I come from heights that no bird ever reached in its flight, I know abysses into which no foot ever strayed.

I enquire now as to the genesis of a philologist and assert the following: 1. A young man cannot possibly know what Greeks and Romans are. 2. He does not know whether he is suited for finding out about them.

There are the spiritually consumptive ones: hardly are they born when they begin to die, and long for doctrines of lassitude and renunciation.

Our salvation lies not in knowing, but in creating!

When our brain feels too weak to deal with our opponent's objections, our heart answers by casting suspicion on their underlying motives.

We criticize a thinker more acutely when he advances a proposition that is disagreeable to us; and yet it would be more reasonableto do so when his proposition is agreeable to us.

Every day I count wasted in which there has been no dancing.

In what does the objective measure of value lie? In the quantum of enhanced and organized power alone, in accordance with what occurs in all occurrence, a will to increase.

What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment. And just that shall man be for the superman: a laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment.

Man, a hybrid of plant and ghost.

The individual has always to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

It is only those who know how to feel that "this is not good" who devise improvements.

All contempt for the sexual life, all denigration under the concept 'impure" is the essential crime against Life- against the Holy Spirit of Life".

Let man fear woman when she loves: then she makes any sacrifice, and everything else seems without value to her

The broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast, are the increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery of the desires; so it is that punishment tames man, but does not make him "better.".

Man is something to be surpassed.

We forget our guilt when we have confessed it to another, but the other does not usually forget it.

Whoever gives advice to the sick gains a sense of superiority over them, no matter whether his advice is accepted or rejected. That is why sick people who are sensitive and proud hate their advisors even more than their illnesses.

It is only when we have ceased to be the followers of our followers that we comprehend how meaningless followers are.

It is I, the ungodly Zarathustra, who says:Who is more ungodly than I, that I may rejoice in his teaching?

In short, then, the religious cult is based upon the representations of sorcery between man and man, and the sorcerer is older than the priest.

Great things demand that we either remain silent about them or speak in a great manner: in a great manner, that is-cynically and with innocence.

I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.

He who has attained intellectual emancipation to any extent cannot, for a long time, regard himself otherwise than as a wanderer on the face of the earth and not even as a traveller towards a final goal, for there is no such thing.

Of all writings I love only that which is written with blood. Write with blood: and you will discover that blood is spirit.