Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

I am opposed to socialism because it dreams ingenuously of good, truth, beauty, and equal rights.

Nobody is more inferior than those who insist on being equal.

And if a friend does you wrong, then say: "I forgive you what you have done to me; that you have done it to YOURSELF, however--how could I forgive that!

However modest one may be in one's demand for intellectual cleanliness, one cannot help feeling, when coming into contact with the New Testament, a kind of inexpressible discomfiture: for the unchecked impudence with which the least qualified want to raise their voice on the greatest problems, and even claim to be judges of such things, surpasses all measure. The shameless levity with which the most intractable problems (life, world, God, purpose of life) are spoken of, as if they were not problems at all but simply things that these little bigots knew!

Having a talent is not enough: one must also have your permission to have it--right, my friends?

Even the bravest only rarely have courage for what they really know.

Existence begins in every instant.

We seldom break our leg so long as life continues a toilsome upward climb. The danger comes when we begin to take things easily and choose the convenient paths.

I love him who reserveth no share of spirit for himself, but wanteth to be wholly the spirit of his virtue: thus walketh he as spirit over the bridge.

The desire to create continually is vulgar and betrays jealousy, envy, ambition. If one is something one really does not need to make anything --and one nonetheless does very much. There exists above the ''productive'' man a yet higher species.

All preachers of morality, as also all theologians have a bad habit in common: all of them try to persuade man that he is very ill, and that a severe, final, radical cure is necessary.

The man who sees little always sees less than there is to see; the man who hears badly always hears something more than there is to hear.

THE SUFFERING OF GENIUS AND ITS VALUE. The artistic genius desires to give pleasure, but if his mind is on a very high plane he does not easily find anyone to share his pleasure; he offers entertainment but nobody accepts it. That gives him, in certain circumstances, a comically touching pathos; for he has no right to force pleasure on men. He pipes, but none will dance: can that be tragic?

When man does not have firm, calm lines on the horizon of his life- mountain and forest lines, as it were- then a man's innermost will becomes agitated, preoccupied, and wistful.

The most intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would find only disaster: in the labyrinth, in being hard with themselves and with others, in effort; their delight is self-mastery; in them asceticism becomes second nature, a necessity, as instinct.

God created woman. And boredom did indeed cease from that moment-but many other things ceased as well!

There are preachers of death: and the earth is full of those to whom desistance from life must be preached.

The golden fleece of self-sufficiency guards against cudgel- blows but not against pin-pricks.

Winter, a bad guest, sitteth with me at home; blue are my hands with his friendly handshaking

With sturdy shoulders, space stands opposing all its weight to nothingness. Where space is, there is being.

My humanity is a constant self-overcoming.

If we train our conscience, it kisses us while it hurts

Something might be true while being harmful and dangerous in the highest degree. Indeed, it might be a basic characteristic of existence that those who know it completely would perish, in which case the strength of a spirit should be measured according to how much of the 'truth' one could still barely endure- or to put it more clearly, to what degree one would require it to be thinned down, shrouded, sweetened, blunted, falsified.

Love is more afraid of change than destruction.

This is the crux of the moral pessimists: if they really wanted to promote their neighbor's redemption, then they would have to resolve themselves to spoiling existence for him, and thus to being his misfortune; out of pity, they would have to--become evil!

Ultimately, no one can extract from things, books included, more than he already knows.

O Voltaire! O humanity! O idiocy! There is something ticklish in "the truth," and in the SEARCH for the truth; and if man goes about it too humanely-"il ne cherche le vrai que pour faire le bien"-I wager he finds nothing!

The will to incessant creation is vulgar, betraying jealousy, envy, and ambition. Assuming that you are something, there is really nothing that you need to do-and yet you do a great deal. Above the "productive" man there is still a higher type.

All human life is sunk deep in untruth; the individual cannot pull it out of this well without growing profoundly annoyed with his entire past, without finding his present motives (like honor) senseless, and without opposing scorn and disdain to the passions that urge one on to the future and to the happiness in it.

The Christian church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie

Become who you are. Make what only you can make.

Inaction, letting be, neither creating nor destroying--that is my evil. And also the knower as one without desire.

It is a prejudice to think that morality is more favourable to the development of reason than immorality.

Metaphysical world.- It is true, there could be a metaphysical world; the absolute possibility of it is hardly to be disputed. We behold all things through the human head and cannot cut off this head; while the question nonetheless remains what of the world would still be there if one had cut it off.

Idleness is the parent of psychology.

We fear our neighbor's hostile mood because we are afraid that this mood will lead him to penetrate our secrets.

Whoever does not know how to find the way to his ideal lives more frivolously and impudently than the man without an ideal.

The snake that cannot shed its skin perishes.

Whoever commits to paper what he suffers becomes a melancholy author: but he becomes a serious author when he tells us what he suffered and why he now reposes in joy.

Christianity has the rancor of the sick at its very core-the instinct against the healthy, against health. Everything that is well-constructed, proud, gallant and, above all, beautiful gives offense to its ears and eyes.

Creation is the great redemption from suffering and all life's growing light. But the creator must be suffering if needed and accept much change.

Be generous in nature and thought; for this wins respect and gives confidence and power.

And many such good inventions are there, that they are like woman's breasts: useful at the same time, and pleasant.

Nobody is so constituted as to be able to live everywhere and anywhere; and he who has great duties to perform, which lay claim toall his strength, has, in this respect, a very limited choice. The influence of climate upon the bodily functionsextends so far, that a blunder in the choice of locality and climate is able not only to alienate a man from his actual duty, but also to withhold it from him altogether, so that he never even comes face to face with it.

All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.

Sometimes it just takes stronger eyeglasses to cure those who are in love--and someone with the ability to imagine a face or a figure twenty years older might perhaps pass through life quite undisturbed.

If one considers how much reason every person has for anxiety and timid self-concealment, and how three-quarters of his energy and goodwill can be paralyzed and made unfruitful by it, one has to be very grateful to fashion

Without passions you have no experience whatever.