It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.
Amor Fati – “Love Your Fate”, which is in fact your life.
Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.
Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not.
The spiritualization of sensuality is called love: it is a great triumph over Christianity.
He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.
Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?
The overman…Who has organized the chaos of his passions, given style to his character, and become creative. Aware of life’s terrors, he affirms life without resentment.
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.
The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?
Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive.
It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!
When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.
I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance.
The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.
The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.
I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage
Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.
All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.
If a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which always recurs.
You say, it’s dark. And in truth, I did place a cloud before your sun. But do you not see how the edges of the cloud are already glowing and turning light.
The life of the enemy . Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in the enemy’s staying alive.
As soon as a religion comes to dominate it has as its opponents all those who would have been its first disciples.
One has to take a somewhat bold and dangerous line with this existence: especially as, whatever happens, we are bound to lose it.
In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering among innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge.
Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.
A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at five or six great men- yes, and then to get around them.
Try for once to justify the meaning of your existence as it were a posteriori by setting yourself an aim, a goal… an exalted and noble ‘to this end.’ Perish in pursuit of this and only this
You may lie with your mouth, but with the mouth you make as you do so you none the less tell the truth.
I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you have still chaos in you.
All modern philosophizing is political, policed by governments, churches, academics, custom, fashion, and human cowardice, all off which limit it to a fake learnedness.
One must reach out and try to grasp this astonishing finesse, that the value of lif cannot be estimated.
The maturity of man—that means, to have reacquired the seriousness that one had as a child at play
All that exists is just and unjust and is equally justified in both respects.
Popular medicine and popular morality belong together and ought not to be evaluated so differently as they still are: both are the most dangerous pseudo-sciences.
Three metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you: how thespirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.
Ah, ye brethren, that God whom I created was human work and human madness, like all the Gods!
Plus d’un qui n’a pu liberer ses propres chaines a su pourtant en liberer son ami.
Dove la moralità è troppo forte l’intelletto perisce.
A soul that knows it is loved but does not itself love betrays its sediment: what is at bottom comes up.”―Epigrams and Interludes, Section 79
The man consummatig his life dies his death triumphantly,surrounded by men filled with hope and making solmn vows, thus one should learn to die.Friedrich Nietzsche – thus spoke zarathustra.
The more thoroughly a person understands life, the less he will mock, though in the end he might still mock the “thoroughness of his understanding.
A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions–as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.
Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.
No one dies of fatal truths nowadays: there are too many antidotes.
How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare?
There is no pre-established harmony between the furtherance of truth and the well-being of mankind.
Sometimes it is harder to accede to a thing than it is to see its truth.
…inability to lie is still far from being love to truth. Be on your guard! … He who cannot lie, doth not know what truth is.
Einer hat immer Unrecht: aber mit zweien beginnt die Wahrheit. Einer kann sich nicht beweisen: aber zweie kann man bereits nicht widerlegen.
It was a subtle refinement of God to learn Greek when he wished to write a book – and that he did not learn it better.
Whoever extolleth him as a God of love, doth not think highly enough of love itself. Did not that God want also to be judge? But the loving one loveth irrespective of reward and requital.
You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted.
The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.
Happiness: being able to forget or, to express in a more learned fashion.
One thing a man must have: either a naturally light disposition or a disposition lightened by art and knowledge.
O sky above me, you modest, glowing sky! O you, my happiness before sunrise! Day is coming: so let us part!
Sensuality often hastens the “Growth of Love” so much that the roots remain weak and are easily torn up.
Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
There is a certain right by which we many deprive a man of life, but none by which we may deprive him of death; this is mere cruelty.
Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.
Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.
We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.
The desire for a strong faith is not the proof of a strong faith, rather the opposite. If one has it one may permit oneself the beautiful luxury of skepticism: one is secure enough, fixed enough for it.
A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.
All I need is a sheet of paperand something to write with, and thenI can turn the world upside down.
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.
The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts to speak.
It is not the strength, but the duration, of great sentiments that makes great men.
In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.
I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.
Is man merely a mistake of God’s? Or God merely a mistake of man?
In truth,there was only one christian and he died on the cross.
There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.
Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.
The believer in magic and miracles reflects on how to impose a law on nature–: and, in brief, the religious cult is the outcome of this reflection.
Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.
It may be that until now there has been no more potent means for beautifying man himself than piety: it can turn man into so much art, surface, play of colors, graciousness that his sight no longer makes one suffer.—
What good is all this free-thinking, modernity, and turncoat flexibility if at some gut level you are still a Christian, a Catholic, and even a priest!
Knowledge kills action action requires the veils of illusion.
Ultimately, nobody can get more out of things, including books, than he already knows.
They’re so cold, these scholars!May lightning strike their foodso that their mouths learn howto eat fire!
In large States public education will always be extremely mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is at best only mediocre.
It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right –especially when one is right.
Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.
Deeds need time, even after they are done, in order to be seen or heard.
None of the people have any real interest in a science, who only begin to be enthusiastic about it when they themselves have made discoveries in it.
Do you love tragedies and everything that breaks the heart?
All good things are powerful stimulants to life, even a good book written against life.
Every characteristic absence of spirituality, every piece of common vulgarity, is due to an inability to resist a stimulus – you have to react, you follow every impulse.
Thus I spoke, more and more softly; for I was afraid of my own thoughts and the thoughts behind my thoughts.
No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep awake all day.
Most people are far too much occupied with themselves to be malicious.
When we have to change an opinion about any one, we charge heavily to his account the inconvenience he thereby causes us.
How good music and bad reasons sound when one marches against an enemy.
Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.
Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.
philosophy is not suited for the masses, what they need is holiness.
We set no special value on the possession of a virtue until we percieve that it is entirely lacking in our adversary.
Of man there is little here: therefore do their women masculinize themselves. For only he who is man enough will save the woman in woman.
A real man wants two things: danger and play. Therefore he wants woman as the most dangerous plaything. Man shall be educated for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior: all else is folly.
Man is something that shall be overcome.Man is a rope,tied between beast and overman – a rope over an abyss.What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.
Love’s cruel notion. – Every great love brings with it the cruel idea of killingthe object of that love, so that he may be removed once and for all fromthe wicked game of change: for love dreads change more than it doesdestruction.
It is disgraceful for a philosopher to say: the good and the beautiful are one; if he adds ‘also the true’, one ought to beat him. Truth is ugly. We possess art lest we perish of the truth.
Is the world really beautified by the fact that man thinks it beautiful? He has humanized it, that is all.
In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.
The word “Christianity” is already a misunderstanding; in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the cross.
Dangerous Helpfulness. There are people who want to make men’s lives more difficult for no other reason than afterwards to offer them their prescriptions for making life easier — their Christianity, for example.
Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.
There have been two great narcotics in European civilisation: Christianity and alcohol.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
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.
Our way is upward, from the species across to the super-species. But the degenerate mind which says ‘All for me’ is a horror to us.
You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.
For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.
Art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence.
That is an artist as I love artists, modest in his needs: he really wants only two things, his bread and his art – panem et Circen.
[N]othing is more easily corrupted than an artist.
Art as the single superior counter-force against all will to negation of life, art as the anti-Christian, anti-Buddhist, anti-Nihilist par excellence.
The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.
All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.
But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthword, downword, into the dark, the deep – into evil.
But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!
People have always wanted to ‘improve’ human beings; for the most part, this has been called morality.
Yet tell me, my brothers: if a goal for humanity is still lacking, is there not still lacking–humanity itself?
And granted that your imperative, “living according to Nature,” means actually the same as “living according to life”–how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be?
How can a man become great if he does not feel in himself the force and the will to inflict great pain
If something is to stay in the memory it must be burned in: only that which never ceases hurting stays in the memory.
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.
One should hold fast one’s heart; for when one letteth it go, how quickly doth one’s head run away!
Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.
What knows he of love who has not been obliged to despise just what he loved
It is not the victory of science that distinguishes our nineteenth century, but the victory of scientific method over science.
My world has just become perfect, midnight is also noonday, pain is also joy, a curse is also a blessing, the night is also a sun – be gone, or you will learn: a wise man is also a fool.
This world, the eternally imperfect, the eternal and imperfect image of a contradiction – an intoxicating joy to its imperfect creator – that is what I once thought the world.
One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one has given. One must have strong powers of imagination to be able to have pity. So closely is morality bound to the quality of the intellect.
The deepest and most sublime hatred is a hatred which creates ideals and transforms values—something whose like has never been seen on earth
As yet hath his knowledge not learned to smile, and to be without jealously ; as yet hath his gushing passion not become calm in beauty.
To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.
We have abolished the real world: what world is left? The apparent world perhaps? . . . But no! with the real world we have also abolished the apparent world.
In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
Our crime against criminals lies in the fact that we treat them like rascals.
We like to be out in nature so much because it has no opinion on us.
The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.
What do you consider the most humane? – To spare someone shame. What is the seal of liberation? – To no longer be ashamed in front of oneself.
To leave is to suffer,to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
For fanaticism is the only form of willpower that even the weak and insecure can be brought to attain.
The wreckage of stars – I built a world from this wreckage.
Without forgetting it is quite impossible to live at all.
It is true: we love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.There is always a certain madness in love. But also there is always a certain method in madness.
There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don’t ask, walk!
To him who feels himself preordained to contemplation and not to belief, all believers are too noisy and obtrusive; he guards against them.
Hypocrisy has its place in the ages of strong belief: in which even when one is compelled to exhibit a different belief one does not abandon the belief on already has.
…throw roses into the abyss and say: ‘here is my thanks to the monster who didn’t succeed in swallowing me alive.
I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.
One in three all friends are:Brothers in distress,equals facing rivals,free men – facing death!
So long as men praise you, you can only be sure that you are not yet on your own true path but on someone else’s.
The discerning one walketh amongst men as amongst animals.
This book belongs to the most rare of men. Perhaps not one of them is yet alive. First the day after tomorrow must come for me. Some men are born posthumously.
Sleep knocks on my eyes: they grow heavy. Sleep touches my mouth: it stays open.Truly, he comes to me on soft soles, the dearest of thieves, and steals my thoughts from me
Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders.
The existence of forgetting has never been proved: we only know that some things do not come to our mind when we want them to.
The beast lives unhistorically; for it ‘goes into’ the present, like a number, without leaving any curious remainder.
He who cannot put his thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of dispute.
Water is sufficient…the spirit moves over water.
The sedentary life…is the real sin against the holy spirit.
The images of myth must be the daemonic guardians, omnipresent and unnoticed, which protect the growth of the young mind, and guide man’s interpretation of his life and struggles.
And how does one basically recognize good development? In that a well-developed man does our senses good: that he is carved from wood which is hard, delicate, and sweet-smelling, all at the same time.
if we possess a why of life we can put up with almost any how.
My Ego taught me a new pride, I teach it to men: No longer to bury the head in the sand of heavenly things, but to carry it freely, an earthly head which creates meaning for the earth!
He who doesn’t know how to put his will into things at least puts a meaning into them: that is, he believes there is a will in them already.
We suffer from the malady of words, and have no trust in any feeling that is not stamped with its special word.
To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying but an ancient, mighty, human, all-too-human principle [….] Without cruelty there is no festival.
What really arouses indignation against suffering is not suffering as such but the senselessness of suffering…
It is intoxicating joy for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and to forget himself.
The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.
One loves ultimately one’s desires, not the thing desired.
In the end one loves one’s desire and not what is desired.
I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.
There is an old illusion. It is called good and evil.
Was aus Liebe getan wird, geschieht immer jenseits von Gut und Böse. (What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.)
When man no longer regards himself as evil he ceases to be so!
Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.
State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies; and this lie slips from its mouth: ‘I, the state, am the people.
Every Profound thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood
But one thing is the thought, another thing is the deed, and another thing is the idea of the deed. The wheel of causality doth not roll between them.
The consequences of our actions take hold of us, quite indifferent to our claim that meanwhile we have ‘improved.
A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow.
Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.
The crowd of influences streaming on the young soul is so great, the clods of barbarism and violence flung at him so strange and overwhelming, that an assumed stupidity is his only refuge.
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.
And when he invented his hell, that was his heaven on earth.
If thinking is your fate, revere this fate with divine honour and sacrifice to it the best, the most beloved
You go above and beyond them: but the higher you climb, the smaller you appear to the eye of envy. And he who flies is hated most of all.
One does not hate as long as one disesteems, but only when one esteems equal or superior
One does not hate as long as one has a low esteem of someone, but only when one esteems him as an equal or a superior.
A moral system valid for all is basically immoral.
There is no such thing as moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena
Morality is the idiosyncrasy of decadents having the hidden desire to revenge themselves upon life – and being successful.
All history is the experimental refutation of the theory of the so-called moral order of things.
Every means hitherto employed with the intention of making mankind moral has been thoroughly immoral.
Morality is just a fiction used by the herd of inferior human beings to hold back the few superior men.
This woman is beautiful and clever: but how much cleverer she would have become if she were not beautiful!
The great works are produced in such an ecstasy of love that they must always be unworthy of it, however great their worth otherwise.
The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.
Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.
This workshop where ideals are manufactured–it seems to me it stinks of so many lies
The most common sort of lie is that by which a man deceives himself: the deception of others is a relatively rare offense.
Under peaceful conditions, the warlike man attacks himself.
A man far oftener appears to have a decided character from persistently following his temperament than from persistently following his principles.
That which now calls itself democracy differs from older forms of government solely in that it drives with new horses: the streets are still the same old streets, and the wheels are likewise the same old wheels.
One is fruitful only at the cost of being rich in contradictions.
Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity.
Your only problem, perhaps, is that you scream without letting yourself cry.
After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.
[The] self overcoming of justice: one knows the beautiful name it has given itself–mercy…
Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.
At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.
When the gratitude of many to one throws away all shame, we behold fame.
When the gratitude that many owe to one discards all modesty, then there is fame.
The person who fights monsters should make sure that in the process, he does not become a monster himself. Because when you stare down at an abyss, the abyss stares back at you.
Men of profound sadness betray themselves when they are happy: they have a mode of seizing upon happiness as though they would choke and strangle it, out of jealousy–ah, they know only too well that it will flee from them!
Everyone who has ever built anywhere a new heaven first found the power thereto in his own hell.
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
The surest way of ruining a youth is to teach him to respect those who think as he does more highly than those who think differently from him.
One sticks to an opinion because he prides himself on having come to it on his own, and another because he has taken great pains to learn it and is proud to have grasped it: and so both do so out of vanity.
Pity is the most agreeable feeling among those who have little pride and no prospects of great conquests.
Early in the morning, at break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one’s strength, to read a book – I call that viciousness!
Sometimes, you have to love beyond yourself! And that’s how you learn to love! That’s why you had to drink the bitter glass of your love.
The end of a melody is not its goal: but nonetheless, had the melody not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.
He who writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read, he wants to be learned by heart.
Writers whose thoughts are expressed with clarity and precision are assumed by readers to be superficial. Where the meaning is obscured, then readers give more attention and consider the fruit of their labour more valuable
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
A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us.
We have to cease to think, if we refuse to do it in the prison house of language; for we cannot reach further than the doubt which asks whether the limit we see is really a limit.
Only those thoughts which come from walking have any value
There are many good inventions on earth, some useful, some pleasing: for their sake, the earth is to be loved. And there is such a variety of well-invented things that the earth is like the breasts of a woman: useful as well as pleasing.
Your bad love of yourselves makes solitude a prison to you.
But I need solitude–which is to say, recovery, return to myself, the breath of a free, light, playful air.
Believe me, friend Hellishnoise: the greatest events—they are not our loudest but our stillest hours.
Healthy introspection, without undermining oneself; it is a rare gift to venture into the unexplored depths of the self, without delusions or fictions, but with an uncorrupted gaze.
Solitude is a virtue for us, since it is a sublime inclination and impulse to cleanliness which shows that contact between people, “society”, inevitably makes things unclean. Somewhere, sometime, every community makes people—“base.
Where solitude endeth, there beginneth the market-place; and where the market-place beginneth, there beginneth also the noise of the great actors, and the buzzing of the poison-flies.
In the end we are always rewarded for our good will, our patience, fair-mindedness, and gentleness with what is strange.
Physician, heal thyself: then wilt thou also heal thy patient. Let it be his best cure to see with his eyes him who maketh himself whole.
The Church today is more likely to alienate than to seduce…
Let the young soul survey its own life with a view of the following question: ‘What have you truly loved thus far? What has ever uplifted your soul, what has dominated and delighted it at the same time?
I tell you: one must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you still have chaos in yourselves.
All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
The vanity of others runs counter to our taste only when it runs counter to our vanity.
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby becomes a monster.
In practice it is death that works soseductively behind the image of its brother, sleep
The strongest intimidation, by the way, is the invention of a hereafter with a hell everlasting.
The higher man is distinguished from the lower by his fearlessness and his readiness to challenge misfortune.
I obviously do everything to be “hard to understand” myself
A man who wills commands something within himself that renders obedience, or that he believes renders obedience.
to have to combat one’s instincts—that is the formula for decadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness and instinct are one.
It is invisible hands that torment and bend us the worst
What is familiar is what we are used to; and what we are used to is most difficult to ‘Know’ – that is, to see as a problem; that is, to see as strange, as distant, as ‘outside us’.
Even now man is more of an ape than any of the apes.
The body is a big sagacity, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a shepherd.
The power of gradually losing all feeling of strangeness or astonishment, and finally being pleased at anything, is called the historical sense or historical culture.
One should part from life as Ulysses parted from Nausicaa– blessing it rather than in love with it.
Equality before the enemy -that is the main condition to fight a fair duel. Where you have contempt, you cannot wage war; where you are in command, where you can see someone beneath you, you should not wage war.
… a thing can only live through a pious illusion.
You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
Women are still cats and birds. Or at the best, cows.
In comparison with the spirit of priestly revenge all the remaining spirits are hardly worth considering.
This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.
The good men of every age are those who go to the roots of the old thoughts and bear fruit with them.
He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.
Even the most beautiful scenery is no longer assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some distant coast attracts our avarice: possessions are generally diminished by possession.
What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure – as a mere automaton of duty?
Did you ever say yes to a pleasure? oh my friends, then you also said yes to all pain. all things are linked, entwined, in love with one another.
Weariness, which seeketh to get to the ultimate with one leap, with a death-leap; a poor ignorant weariness, unwilling even to will any longer: that created all Gods and backworlds.
Some of them will, but most of them are willed. Some of them are genuine, but most of them are bad actors.
One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.
No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.
One must not let oneself be misled: they say ‘Judge not!’ but they send to Hell everything that stands in their way.
You say ‘I’ and you are proud of this word. But greater than this- although you will not believe in it – is your body and its great intelligence, which does not say ‘I’ but performs ‘I’.
I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. the will to a system is a lack of integrity.
Pure logic is the impossibility by means of which science is maintained.
Youth’s longing misconceived inconsistency.Those whom I deemedChanged to my kin, the friends of whom I dreamed,Have aged and lost our old affinity:One has to change to stay akin to me.
The man who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself.
We have to be careful that in throwing out the devil, we don’t throw out the best part of ourselves.
What is Genius?- To aspire to a lofty aim and to will the means to that aim.
A bad conscience is easier to cope with than a bad reputation.
We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total absence in our opponent.
When virtue has slept it will arise more vigorous.
When virtue has slept, it will arise again all the fresher.
Oh, my friends, that your self be in your deed as the mother is in her child – let that be your word concerning virtue!
And he who would not languish among men, must learn to drink out of all glasses; and he who would keep clean among men, must know how to wash himself even with dirty water.
The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a sacred Yes.
Should not the giver be thankful that the receiver received? Is not giving a need? Is not receiving mercy?
And as long as you are in any way ashamed before yourself, you do not yet belong with us.
Be careful when you cast out your demons that you don’t throw away the best of yourself.
It is the evening that questions thus from within me.
Around the hero, everything becomes a tragedy.Around God, everything becomes what? a world?
Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.
What does our great historical hunger signify, our clutching about us of countless cultures, our consuming desire for knowledge, if not the loss of myth, of a mythic home, the mythic womb?
Perhaps no one has yet been truthful enough about what ‘truthfulness’ is.
Even on this level, it is at bottom not deception [men] hate but the dire, inimical consequences of certain kinds of deception
Every kind of contempt for sex, every impurification of it by means of the concept “impure”, is the crime par excellence against life–is the real sin against the holy spirit of life
Visiting the sick’ is an orgasm of superiority in the contemplation of our neighbor’s helplessness
What? A great man? I only ever see the ape of his own ideal.
There is an innocence in admiration: it occurs in one who has not yet realized that they might one day be admired.
To vigorous men intimacy is a matter of shame–and something precious.
With hard men intimacy is a thing of shame- and something precious.
Still am I the richest and most to be envied – I, the lonesomest one!
I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers, and arrows of longing for the other shore.
The wittiest authors raise the very slightest of smiles.
Every habit makes our hand more witty, and out wit more handy.
And if your friend does evil to you, say to him, ”I forgive you for what you did to me, but how can I forgive you for what you did to yourself?
Generally speaking, punishment makes men hard and cold; it concentrates; it sharpens the feeling of alienation; it strengthens the power of resistance
Almost everything we call “higher culture” is based on the spiritualization of cruelty.
Science and art have that in common that everyday things seem to them new and attractive.
Let that day be lost to us on which we did not dance once I
In architecture the pride of man his triumph over gravitation his will to power assume a visible form. Architecture is a sort of oratory of power by means of forms.
Either you reach a higher point today or you exercise your strength in order to be able to climb higher tomorrow.
Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?
Courage is the best slayer-courage which attacketh for in every attack there is the sound of triumph.
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Speaking generally punishment hardens and numbs it produces concentration it sharpens the consciousness of alienation it strengthens the power of resistance.
Insanity in individuals is rare – but in groups parties nations and epochs it is the rule.
When a hundred men stand together each of them loses his mind and gets another one.
In Heaven all the interesting people are missing.
Necessity is not an established fact but an interpretation.
He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance one cannot fly into flying.
There are no eternal facts as there are no absolute truths.
The errors of great men are venerable because they are more fruitful than the truths of little men.
Family love is messy clinging and of an annoying and repetitive pattern like bad wallpaper.
A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still.
A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still.
A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still.
A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still.
A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still.
A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still.
A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still.
A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still.
Women can form a friendship with a man very well but to preserve it a slight physical antipathy most probably helps.
Sometimes we owe a friend to the lucky circumstance that we give him no cause for envy.
A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still.
What is it: is man only a blunder of God or God only a blunder of man?
He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.
Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen few in pursuit of the goal.
The abdomen is the reason why man does not easily take himself for a god.
Should not the giver be thankful that the receiver received? Is not giving a need? Is not receiving mercy?
To do great things is difficult but to command great things is more difficult.
It is not the strength but the duration of great sentiments that makes great men.
It is not a lack of love but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.
The historian looks backward. In the end he also believes backward.
Everyone who has ever built anywhere a “new heaven” first found the power thereto in his own hell.
Strong hope is a much greater stimulant of life than any single realized joy could be.
The more you let yourself go the less others let you go.
Not to he who is offensive to us are we most unfair but to he who does not concern us at all.
Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups parties nations and epochs it is the ru)e.
For every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing.
For every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing.
For every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing.
For every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing.
For every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing.
For every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing.
For every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing.
For every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing.
Man alone suffers so excruciatingly in the world that he was compelled to invent laughter.
I understand by ‘freedom of spirit’ something quite definite – the unconditional will to say No where it is dangerous to say No.
He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.
In the true man there is a child concealed – who wants to play.
Love your enemies because they bring out the best in you.
The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.
I teach you beyond Man (superman). Man is something that shall be surpassed. What have you done to surpass him?
The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good thing for the first time.
A woman may very well form a friendship with a man but for this to endure it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.
Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose.
For every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing.
We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.
When one has not had a good father one must create one.
A politician divides mankind into two classes: tools and enemies.
Wherever I found a living creature there I found the will to power.
The more you let yourself go the less others let you go.
The more you let yourself go the less others let you go.
The more you let yourself go the less others let you go.
The more you let yourself go the less others let you go.
The more you let yourself go the less others let you go.
The more you let yourself go the less others let you go.
The more you let yourself go the less others let you go.
The more you let yourself go the less others let you go.
One is healthy when one can laugh at the earnestness and zeal with which one has been hypnotized by any single detail of one’s life.
Strong hope is a much greater stimulant of life than any single realized joy could be.
Strong hope is a much greater stimulant of life than any single realized joy could be.
Strong hope is a much greater stimulant of life than any single realized joy could be.
Strong hope is a much greater stimulant of life than any single realized joy could be.
Strong hope is a much greater stimulant of life than any single realized joy could be.
Strong hope is a much greater stimulant of life than any single realized joy could be.
Strong hope is a much greater stimulant of life than any single realized joy could be.
Strong hope is a much greater stimulant of life than any single realized joy could be.
The relatives of a suicide always take it in bad part that he did not remain alive out of consideration for the family dignity.
Profundity of thought belongs to youth clarity of thought to old age.
He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance one cannot fly into flying.
When virtue has slept she will get up more refreshed.
Sleeping is no mean art. For its sake one must stay awake all day.
Belief in form but disbelief in content – that’s what makes an aphorism charming.
Has a woman who knew that she was well dressed ever caught a cold?
As an artist, a man has no home in Europe save in Paris.
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?
Go up close to your friend, but do not go over to him! We should also respect the enemy in our friend.
The bad gains respect through imitation, the good loses it especially in art.
The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.
You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.
We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.
A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.
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.
The ‘kingdom of Heaven’ is a condition of the heart – not something that comes ‘upon the earth’ or ‘after death.’
Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches – he has made music sick.
When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.
He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance one cannot fly into flying.
God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.
There is not enough religion in the world even to destroy religion.
All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.
Women are considered deep – why? Because one can never discover any bottom to them. Women are not even shallow.
Genteel women suppose that those things do not really exist about which it is impossible to talk in polite company.
Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.
Stupid as a man, say the women: cowardly as a woman, say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unwomanly.
When one has not had a good father, one must create one.
Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.
In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.
I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.
The world itself is the will to power – and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power – and nothing else!
What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.
There are people who want to make men’s lives more difficult for no other reason than the chance it provides them afterwards to offer their prescription for alleviating life; their Christianity, for instance.
Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?
There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.
Today I love myself as I love my god: who could charge me with a sin today? I know only sins against my god but who knows my god?
I would believe only in a God that knows how to Dance.
It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.
To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience ultimately one must have one’s experiences in common.
On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.
And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.
In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.
Mystical explanations are thought to be deep the truth is that they are not even shallow.
We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.
Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.
There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.
One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.
Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.
It is good to express a thing twice right at the outset and so to give it a right foot and also a left one. Truth can surely stand on one leg, but with two it will be able to walk and get around.
All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.
All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.
The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.
The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.
Germany is a great nation only because its people have so much Polish blood in their veins.
If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.
For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.
Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.
A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.
Rejoicing in our joy, not suffering over our suffering, makes someone a friend.
In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.
There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.
Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?
When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.
Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.
A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.
Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.
Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.
The future influences the present just as much as the past.
All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.