Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

All signs of superhuman nature appear in man as illness or insanity.

In a friend one should have ones best enemy. You should be closest to him with your heart when you resist him.

What is the difference between someone who is convinced and one who is deceived? None, if he is well deceived.

In the end things must be as they are and have always been--the great things remain for the great, the abysses for the profound, the delicacies and thrills for the refined, and, to sum up shortly, everything rare for the rare.

In order to acquire intellect one must need it. One loses it when it is no longer necessary.

About sacrifice and the offering of sacrifices, sacrificial animals think quite differently from those who look on: but they have never been allowed to have their say.

Some die too young, some die too old; the precept sounds strange, but die at the right age.

God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers- at bottom merely a gross prohibition for us: you shall not think!

He who has attained the freedom of reason 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 traveler towards a final goal, for there is no such thing. But he certainly wants to observe and keep his eyes open to whatever actually happens in the world; therefore he cannot attach his heart too firmly to anything individual; he must have in himself something wandering that takes pleasure in change and transitoriness.

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

We can destroy only as creators

What do you believe in?--In this, that the weights of all things must be determined anew.

Completely true to nature!' - what a lie: / How could nature ever be constrained into a picture? / The smallest bit of nature is infinite! / And so he paints what he likes about it. / And what does he like? He likes what he can paint!

Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.

Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer, than into the dreams of a lustful woman?

Nobody thanks a witty man for politeness when he puts himself on a par with a society in which it would not be polite to show one's wit.

I feel all those human beings to be pernicious who can no longer oppose what they love: they thereby ruin the best things and people.

And you tell me, friends, that there is no disputing taste and tasting? But all life is a dispute over taste and tasting!

One receives as reward for much ennui, despondency, boredom -such as a solitude without friends, books, duties, passions must bring with it -those quarter-hours of profoundest contemplation within oneself and nature. He who completely entrenches himself against boredom also entrenches himself against himself: he will never get to drink the strongest refreshing draught from his own innermost fountain.

Style ought to prove that one believes in an idea; not only that one thinks it but also feels it.

Marriage marks the end of many short follies - being one long stupidity.

The good displeases us when we are not up to it.

The misunderstanding of passion and reason, as if the latter were an independent entity and not rather a system of relations between various passions and desires; and as if every passion did not possess its quantum of reason.

Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman — a rope over an abyss.

I climb upon the highest mountains, laughing at all tragedies - whether real or imaginary.

Death. The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a precious and fragrant drop of levity- and now you strange apothecary souls have turned it into an ill-tasting drop of poison that makes the whole of life repulsive.

The most dangerous physicians are those born actors who imitate born physicians with a perfectly deceptive guile.

How far is truth susceptible of embodiment? That is the question, that is the experiment.

Either one does not dream, or one does so interestingly. One should learn to spend one's waking life in the same way: not at all, or interestingly.

Heraclitus was an opponent of all democratic parties.

After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries in a cave.

The state lies in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it says, it lies-and whatever it has, it has stolen.

Behind a remarkable scholar we not infrequently find an average human being, and behind an average artist we often find a very remarkable human being.

He who possesses greatness is cruel towards his secondary virtues and considerations.

What was silent in the father speaks in the son, and often I found in the son the unveiled secret of the father.

Where do your greatest dangers lie?--In pity.

We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we can live - by positing bodies, lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content; without these articles of faith nobody could now endure life. But that does not prove them. Life is no argument. The conditions of life might include error.

Man is something that is to be surpassed.

When gods die, they always die many sorts of death.

In the mountains, the shortest way is from peak to peak: but for that you must have long legs

You want to make him interested in you? Then pretend to be embarrassed in his presence-

The people we have employed in an undertaking that has turned out badly should be doubly rewarded.

One never perishes through anybody but oneself.

Love, too, has to be learned.

Men were considered "free" only so that they might be considered guilty - could be judged and punished: consequently, every act had to be considered as willed, and the origin of every act had to be considered as lying within the consciousness (and thus the most fundamental psychological deception was made the principle of psychology itself).

whatever is profound loves masks; what is most profound even hates image and parable.

Three metamorphoses of the spirit I relate to you: how the spirit becomes a camel; and the camel, a lion; and the lion, finally, a child.

The most spiritual men, as the strongest, find their happiness where others would find their destruction: in the labyrinth, in hardness against themselves and others, in experiments. Their joy is self-conquest: asceticism becomes in them nature, need, and instinct. Difficult tasks are a privilege to them; to play with burdens that crush others, a recreation. Knowledge-a form of asceticism. They are the most venerable kind of man: that does not preclude their being the most cheerful and the kindliest.