Top 2506 Quotes & Sayings by Friedrich Nietzsche - Page 38

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.

To produce music is also in a sense to produce children.

Men submit from habit to everything that seeks power.

Denn was ist Freiheit? Dasz man den Willen zur Selbstverantwortlichkeit hat.

One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.

This demand follows from an insight that I was the first to articulate: that there are no moral facts.

The patient. The pine tree seems to listen, the fir tree to wait: and both without impatience: - they give no thought to the little people beneath them devoured by their impatience and their curiosity.

love as a passion—it is our European specialty—must absolutely be of noble origin; as is well known, its invention is due to the Provencal poet-cavaliers, those brilliant, ingenious men of the "gai saber," to whom Europe owes so much, and almost owes itself.

Woman learns how to hate in proportion as she forgets how to charm.

When Zarathustra was alone . . . he said to his heart: "Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that God is dead!"

And so while dreams are the individual man's play with reality, the sculptor's art is (in a broader sense) the play with dreams.

Every word is a prejudice.

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

It is only possible through the fact that sympathy for the general life and suffering of mankind is very weakly developed in the individual.

Chastity is a virtue with some, but with many it is almost a vice.

I am no man, I am dynamite.

Fall down seven times, stand up eight. - Chinese proverbWithout music, life would be a mistake.

The snake that cannot shed its skin perishes.

What? A great man? I only ever see the ape of his own ideal.

The degree and kind of a man's sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit.

Morality makes stupid.- Custom represents the experiences of men of earlier times as to what they supposed useful and harmful - but the sense for custom (morality) applies, not to these experiences as such, but to the age, the sanctity, the indiscussability of the custom. And so this feeling is a hindrance to the acquisition of new experiences and the correction of customs: that is to say, morality is a hindrance to the development of new and better customs: it makes stupid.

I have learned to walk: ever since, I let myself run. I have learned to fly: ever since, I do not want to be pushed before moving along.

Whoever has overthrown an existing law of custom has always first been accounted a bad man: but when, as did happen, the law could not afterwards be reinstated and this fact was accepted, the predicate gradually changed; - history treats almost exclusively of these bad men who subsequently became good men!

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 we know oman today is limited precisely by the extent to which we have regarded him as a machine.

Indeed, at hearing the news that 'the old god is dead', we philosophers and 'free spirits' feel illuminated by a new dawn; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, forebodings, expectation - finally the horizon seems clear again, even if not bright; finally our ships may set out again, set out to face any danger; every daring of the lover of knowledge is allowed again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; maybe there has never been such an 'open sea'.

God is dead, but considering the state the species man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown.

The strength required for the vision of the most powerful reality is not only compatible with the most powerful strength for action, for monstrous action, for crime - it even presupposes it.

Wherever Germany extends her sway, she ruins culture.

How much beer is in German intelligence?

Whatever we have words for, that we have already got beyond.

When a scholar of the old culture vows no longer to have anything to do with men who believe in progress, he is right. For the old culture has its greatness and goodness behind it, and an historical education forces one to admit that it can never again be fresh.

Which is it? Is man only a blunder of God? Or is God only a blunder of man?

As soon as a religion comes to dominate it has as its opponents all those who would have been its first disciples.

A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at five or six great men- yes, and then to get around them.

What I really want from Music: That it be cheerful and profound like an afternoon in October.

Sometimes we remain true to a cause simply because its opponents are unfailingly tasteless.

He who is usually self-sufficient becomes exceptionally vain and keenly alive to fame and praise when he is physically ill. The more he loses himself the more he has to endeavor to regain his position by means of the opinion of others.

Whether in conversation we generally agree or disagree with others is largely a matter of habit: the one tendency makes as much sense as the other.

It was modesty that invented the word "philosopher" in Greece and left the magnificent overweening presumption in calling oneselfwise to the actors of the spirit--the modesty of such monsters of pride and sovereignty as Pythagoras, as Plato.

When we have a great goal we are superior even to justice, not merely to our deeds and our judges.

If a man wishes to become a hero, then the serpent must first become a dragon: otherwise he lacks his proper enemy.

Do not be deceived! The busiest people harbor the greatest weariness, their restlessness is weakness--they no longer have the capacity for waiting and idleness.

The purpose of punishment is to improve those who do the punishing--that is the final recourse of those who support punishment.

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

But let me open up my heart to you completely, my friends: if there were gods, how could I bear not being a god! Hence, there areno gods. I drew this conclusion, to be sure--but now it draws me.

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

So far there has been no philosopher in whose hands philosophy has not grown into an apology for knowledge; on this point, at least, every one is an optimist, that the greatest usefulness must be ascribed to knowledge. They are all tyrannized over by logic, and this is optimism in its essence.

Envy and jealousy are the private parts of the human soul. Perhaps the comparison can be extended.

Yes, life is a woman!

The one seeks a midwife to deliver his thoughts, the other, someone to assist: thus a good conversation comes into being.

When a man reaches his maturity in understanding and in years, the feeling comes over him that his father was wrong to beget him.

In Bach there is still too much crude Christianity, crude Germanism, crude scholasticism; he stands on the threshold of European (modern) music, but he looks back from there to the Middle Ages.

Could truth perhaps be a woman who has reasons for not permitting her reasons to be seen? Could her name perhaps be--to speak Greek--Baubo?... Oh, those Greeks! They understood how to live: to do that it is necessary to stop bravely at the surface, the fold, the skin, to adore the appearance, to believe in forms, in tones, in words, in the whole Olympus of appearance! Those Greeks were superficial--out of profundity!

In his lonely solitude, the solitary man feeds upon himself; in the thronging multitude, the many feed upon him. Now choose.

Precisely this is godliness--that there are gods, but no God.

This mother needs happy, reputable children, and that one needs unhappy ones: otherwise she cannot show her kindness as a mother.

Freedom of opinion is like health; both are individual, and no good general conception can be set up of either of them.

For some natures, changing their opinions is just as much a requirement of cleanliness as changing their clothes: for others, however, it is merely a requirement of vanity.

And so do you suppose it must be a piece-work because it has been given to you (and could only be given to you) in pieces?