I am afraid that old women are more skeptical in their most secret heart of hearts than any man: they believe in the superficiality of existence as in its essence, and all virtue and profundity is to them merely a veil over this "truth," a most welcome veil over a pudendum--and so a matter of decency and modesty, and nothing else.
Friedrich NietzscheAll things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
Friedrich NietzscheYe are ugly? Well then, my brethren, take the sublime about you, the mantle of the ugly!
Friedrich NietzscheEvery virtue inclines to stupidity, every stupidity to virtue; "stupid to the point of sanctity," they say in Russia, - let us be careful lest out of pure honesty we eventually become saints and bores!
Friedrich NietzscheOne does well to put on gloves when reading the New Testament. The proximity of so much uncleanliness almost forces one to do this.
Friedrich NietzscheYou tell me: 'Life is hard to bear.' But if it were otherwise why should ou have your pride in the morning nad your resignation in the evening?
Friedrich NietzscheThinking about suicide is a potent consolation: it helps us to get through many a bad night.
Friedrich NietzscheIf a man wishes to rid himself of a feeling of unbearable oppression, he may have to take hashish.
Friedrich NietzscheHere the ways of men divide. If you wish to strive for peace of soul and happiness, then believe; if you wish to be a disciple of truth, then inquire.
Friedrich NietzscheWhen one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident. Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole. It stands or falls with faith in God.
Friedrich NietzscheUnderneath the reality in which we live and have our being, another altogether different reality lies concealed.
Friedrich NietzscheThe vain.- We are like shop windows in which we are continually arranging, concealing or illuminating the supposed qualities other ascribe to us - in order to deceive ourselves.
Friedrich NietzscheYet tell me, my brothers: if a goal for humanity is still lacking, is there not still lacking--humanity itself?
Friedrich NietzscheNo one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.
Friedrich NietzscheIf married couples did not live together, happy marriages would be more frequent.
Friedrich NietzscheThe secret of realizing the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships out into uncharted seas! Live in conflict with your equals and with yourselves! Be robbers and ravagers as soon as you ca not be rulers and owners, you men of knowledge! The time will soon past when you could be content to live concealed int he woods like timid deer!
Friedrich NietzscheIt is the business of the very few to be independent; it is a privilege of the strong.
Friedrich NietzscheA good aphorism is too hard for the tooth of time, and is not worn away by all the centuries, although it serves as food for every epoch.
Friedrich NietzscheThe elimination of the will altogether and the switching off of the emotions all and sundry, is tantamount to the elimination of reason: intellectual castration.
Friedrich NietzscheA person unlearns arrogance when he knows he is always among worthy human beings; being alone fosters presumption. Young people are arrogant because they always associate with their own peers, those who are all really nothing but who would like to be very important.
Friedrich NietzscheWe become aware, however, that all customs, even the hardest, grow pleasanter and milder with time, and that the severest way of life may become a habit and therefore a pleasure.
Friedrich NietzscheBut eternal liveliness is what counts: what does "eternal life" matter, or life at all?
Friedrich Nietzsche[Heraclitus had] the highest form of pride [stemming] from a certainty of belief in the truth as grasped by himself alone. He brings this form, by its excessive development, into a sublime pathos by involuntary identification of himself with his truth.
Friedrich NietzscheHow little is required for pleasure! The sound of a bagpipe - without music, life would be an error.
Friedrich NietzscheWe do not by any means think it desirable that the kingdom of righteousness and peace should be established on earth (because under any circumstances it would be the kingdom of the profoundest mediocrity and Chinaism); we rejoice in all men, who like ourselves love danger, war and adventure, who do not make compromises, nor let themselves be captured, conciliated and stunted; we count ourselves among the conquerors; we ponder over the need of a new order of things, even of a new slavery for every strengthening and elevation of the type "man" also involves a new form of slavery.
Friedrich NietzscheIt is not in how one soul approaches another but in how it withdraws that I knowr its affinity and solidarity with the other.
Friedrich NietzscheWhat is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.
Friedrich NietzscheA change of values - that means, a change of the creators of values. He who has to be a creator always has to destroy.
Friedrich NietzscheEvery true faith is infallible. It performs what the believing person hopes to find in it. But it does not offer the least support for the establishing of an objective truth. Here the ways of men divide. If you want to achieve peace of mind and happiness, have faith. If you want to be a disciple of truth, then search.
Friedrich NietzscheI want to teach men the sense of their existence, which is the Superman, the lightning out of the dark cloud man.
Friedrich Nietzsche