Top 2506 Quotes & Sayings by Friedrich Nietzsche - Page 40

Christianity is a metaphysics of the hangman.

"State," I call it, where they all drink poison, the good and the wicked; "state," where they all lose themselves, the good and the wicked; "state," where they all call their slow suicide-"life."

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

The dyed-in-the-wool teacher takes everything seriously only with respect to his students--himself included.

Childhood and youth are ends in themselves, not stages.

That grand drama in a hundred acts, which is reserved for the next two centuries of Europe-the most terrible, most questionable and perhaps also the most hopeful of all dramas.

History is nothing more than the belief in the senses, the belief in falsehood.

What doesn't kill you make you stronger.

In morality, man treats himself not as individuum but as dividuum.

It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable.

Active, successful natures act, not according to the maxim, "know thyself," but as if prompted by the commandment: will a self, and so become a self.

Ten truths must you find during the day; otherwise will you seek truth during the night, and your soul will have been hungry.

If a man have a strong faith he can indulge in the luxury of skepticism.

Books and drafts mean something quite different for different thinkers. One collects in a book the lights he was able to steal and carry home swiftly out of the rays of some insight that suddenly dawned on him, while another thinker offers us nothing but shadows - images in black and grey of what had built up in his soul the day before.

Good prose is written only face to face with poetry.

Human life is inexplicable, and still without meaning: a fool may decide its fate.

The so called unconscious inferences can be traced back to the all-preserving memory, which presents us with parallel experiences and hence already knows the consequences of an action. It is not anticipation of the effects; rather, it is the feeling: identical causes, identical effects . . .

When one rows it is not the rowing which moves the ship: rowing is only a magical ceremony by means of which one compels a demon to move the ship.

Was that life? Well then, once more!

At the bottom of all these noble races the beast of prey, the splendid blond beast, prowling about avidly in search of spoil and victory.

I am not bigoted enough for a system-and not even for my system.

In the end we love our desire and not what it is that we desire.

You lovers of knowledge! So what have you done out of your love of knowledge up to now? Have you already stolen and murdered so as to know how a thief and a murderer feels?

They're so cold, these scholars! May lightning strike their food so that their mouths learn how to eat fire!

Only ideas won by walking have any value.

No one dies of fatal truths nowadays: there are too many antidotes.

The relatives of a suicide hold it against him that out of consideration for their reputation he did not remain alive.

Let woman be a plaything, pure and fine, like a precious stone, illumined with the virtues of a world not yet come.

Good deeds shun the light as anxiously as evil deeds: the latter fear that disclosure will bring on pain (as punishment), while the former fear that disclosure will take away pleasure (that pure pleasure, that pleasure per se, which immediately ceases once the vanity's satisfaction is added).

...If I continued to harbour any hope for music it lay in the expectation that a musician might come who was sufficiently bold, subtle, malicious, southerly, superhealthy to confront that music and in an immortal fashion take revenge on it.

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.

Now know I well what people sought formerly above all else when they sought Teachers of virtue. Good sleep they sought for themselves, and poppy-head virtues to promote it! To all those be-lauded sages of the academic chairs, wisdom was sleep Without dreams: they knew no higher significance of life. Even at present, to be sure, there are some like this preacher of virtue, and not always so honorable: but their time is past. And not much longer do they stand: there they already lie. Blessed are those drowsy ones: for they shall soon nod to sleep.-Thus spoke Zarathustra.

To have to fight the instincts - that is the definition of decadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness equals instinct.

There are no limits to God's compassion with Paradises over their one universally felt want: he immediately created other animals besides. God's first blunder: Man didn't find the animals amusing, - he dominated them and didn't even want to be an 'animal.'

The criminal type is the type of the strong human being under unfavorable circumstances: a strong human being made sick.

Higher than "thou shalt" stands "I will" (the heroes), and higher than "I will" stands "I am" (the Greek gods).

Having become conscious of the truth he once perceived, man now sees only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence, he now understands the symbolic element in Ophelia's fate, he now recognizes the wisdom of the woodland god, Silenus: it nauseates him.

One should only question gods where none but gods can reply.

Perhaps no one as yet has been truthful enough about what "truthfulness" is.

Our drives are reducible to the will to power. The will to power is the ultimate fact at which we arrive.

One who has given up any hope of winning a fight or has clearly lost it wants his style in fighting to be admired all the more.

Among twelve apostles there must always be one who is as hard as stone, so that the new church may be built upon him.

The mouth may lie, alright, but the face it makes nonetheless tells the truth.

In affability there is no hatred of men, but for that very reason there is all too much contempt for men.

Many a peacock hides his peacock tail from all eyes--and calls it his pride.

Carlyle, a man of strong words and attitudes, a rhetorician out of necessity, constantly aroused by the craving for a strong faithas well as by the feeling of an incapacity for it (Min this respect a typical romantic!).... Fundamentally, Carlyle is an English atheist who makes it a point of honor not to be one.

Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live. The value for life is ultimately decisive.

To go on vegetating in cowardly dependence on physicians and machinations, after the meaning of life, the right to life, has been lost, that ought to prompt a profound contempt in society.

The weak and misbegotten shall perish: first principle of our brotherly love. And they shall be given every assistance.

He who bestows something great receives no gratitude; for in accepting it the recipient has already been weighed down too much.

The truthful man ends up realizing that he always lies.

A refined soul is distressed to know that someone owes it thanks; a crude soul, to know that it owes someone thanks.

When anyone apologizes to us he has to do it very expertly: otherwise we might easily come to see ourselves as the guilty party and experience unpleasant feelings.

The will to power can express itself only against resistances; it seeks that which resists it--this is the native tendency of theamoeba when it extends its pseudopodia and gropes around.

The problem of culture is seldom grasped correctly. The goal of a culture is not the greatest possible happiness of a people, noris it the unhindered development of all their talents; instead, culture shows itself in the correct proportion of these developments. Its aim points beyond earthly happiness: the production of great works is the aim of culture.

Antithesis is the narrow gateway through which error most prefers to worm its way towards truth.

Annoyance is a physical malady that is in no way cured just because the annoying situation that causes it is eliminated.

We must beware of one who is in a passion against us as of one who has once sought our life; for the fact that we still live is due to the absence of power to kill, - if looks could kill, we should have been dead long ago.

The gilded sheath of pity sometimes covers the dagger of envy.

They climb the mountain like beasts, stupid and sweating; it seems that no one bothered to tell them that there are beautiful vistas along the way.