Top 2506 Quotes & Sayings by Friedrich Nietzsche - Page 41

A woman does not want the truth; what is truth to women? From the beginning, nothing has been more alien, repugnant, and hostile to woman than the truth - her great art is the lie, her highest concern is mere appearance and beauty.

In order to be able thus to misjudge, and thus to grant left-handed veneration to our classics, people must have ceased to know them. This, generally speaking, is precisely what has happened. For, otherwise, one ought to know that there is only one way of honoring them, and that is to continue seeking with the same spirit and with the same courage, and not to weary of the search.

There is something laughable about the sight of authors who enjoy the rustling folds of long and involved sentences: they are trying to cover up their feet.

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.

Love brings to light the lofty and hidden characteristics of the lover--what is rare and exceptional in him: to that extent it caneasily be deceptive with respect to what is normal in him.

The soul must have its chosen sewers to carry away its ordure. This function is performed by persons, relationships, professions, the fatherland, the world, or finally, for the really arrogant - I mean our modern pessimists - by the Good God himself.

Only with the ultimate knowledge of all things will man have come to know himself. For things are but the boundaries of man.

The aphorism, the apothegm, in which I am the first among the Germans to be a master, are the forms of “eternity”; it is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book — what everyone else does not say in a book.

For it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified.

How do you expect to learn to dance when you have not even learned to walk! And above the dancer is still the flyer and his bliss.

Assuming that rapture is nature's play with man, the Dionysian artist's creative activity is the play with rapture.

Let that day be lost to us on which we did not dance once!

O, what nowadays does science not conceal! How much, at least, it is meant to conceal!

Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 153

The stronger becomes master of the weaker, in so far as the latter cannot assert its degree of independence here there is no mercy, no forbearance, even less a respect for "laws.

These four, however, seek the freedom of their will at the very point where they are most securely chained. It is as if the silkworm sought freedom of will in spinning. What is the reason?

It is no doubt possible to fly--but first you must know how to dance like an angel.

I teach you the Overman. Man is something which shall be surpassed.

It is so little true that martyrs offer any support to the truth of a cause that I am inclined to deny that any martyr has ever had anything to do with the truth at all.

The reason adultery is immoral is that it might lead to marriage.

The charm of knowledge would be small indeed, were it not that there is so much shame to be overcome on the way to it.

Mathematics is merely the means to a general and ultimate knowledge of man.

Today a man of knowledge might well feel as though he were God transformed into an animal.

The consequences of our actions take hold of us, quite indifferent to our claim that meanwhile we have 'improved.

At heart I am a warrior.

Thus the man who is responsive to artistic stimuli reacts to the reality of dreams as does the philosopher to the reality of existence; he observes closely, and he enjoys his observation: for it is out of these images that he interprets life, out of these processes that he trains himself for life.

A few hours' mountain climbing make of a rogue and a saint two fairly equal creatures. Tiredness is the shortest path to equality and fraternity - and sleep finally adds to them liberty.

I teach the No to all that makes weak--that exhausts. I teach the Yes to all that strengthens, that stores up strength, that pride.

Noble and wise men once believed in the music of the spheres: noble and wise men still continue to believe in the "moral significance of existence." But one day even this sphere-music will no longer be audible to them! They will wake up and take note that their ears were dreaming.

Every word has its fragrance: there is a harmony and a disharmony of fragrances, and hence of words.

We no longer love our knowledge enough once we have passed it on.

It is difficult to preach, this morality of mediocrity! It may never admit what it is and what it wants! It must speak about restraint and worth and duty and love of one's neighbor.

A reader is doubly guilty of bad manners against an author when he praises his second book at the expense of his first (or vice versa) and then expects the author to be grateful for what he has done.

The arrogance that accompanies merit offends us even more than the arrogance of people who are lacking in merit: since merit itself offends us.

The condition that gives birth to a rule is not the same as the condition to which the rule gives birth.

Time, space, and causality are only metaphors of knowledge, with which we explain things to ourselves.

What verse is for the poet, dialectical thinking is for the philosopher. He grasps for it in order to get hold of his own enchantment, in order to perpetuate it.

Verily, I do not like them, the merciful who feel blessed in their pity: they are lacking too much in shame. If I must pity, at least I do not want it known; and if I do pity, it is preferably from a distance.

The hour-hand of life.

It is not enough to prove something, one also has to seduce or elevate people to it. That is why the man of knowledge should learns how to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that it sounds like folly!

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

Not joy is the mother of dissipation, but joylessness.

I listened for the echo, and I heard only praise —

Systems of morals are only a sign-language of the emotions.

I desire that your conjectures should not reach beyond your creative will. Could you create a god? Then do not speak to me of any gods.

The priest knows, as every one knows, that there is no longer any "God," or any "sinner," or any "Saviour" that "free will" and the "moral order of the world" are lies : serious reflection, the profound self conquest of the spirit, allow no man to pretend that he does not know it.

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

The ascetic makes a necessity of virtue.

Verily, I do not want to be like the ropemakers: They drag out their threads and always walk backwards.

I believe only in French culture and consider everything in Europe that calls itself 'culture' a misunderstanding, not to speak of German culture.

Perhaps man will rise ever higher as soon as he ceases to flow out into a god.

Every god-man created his own god: and there is no worse enmity on earth than that between gods.

Generally speaking, the greater a woman's beauty, the greater her modesty.

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.

Wherever primitive man put up a word, he believed he had made a discovery. How utterly mistaken he really was! He had touched a problem, and while supposing he had solved it, he had created and obstacle to its solution. Now, with every new knowledge we stumble over flint-like and petrified words and, in so doing, break a leg sooner than a word.

Morality in Europe today is herd-morality

The Germans are incapable of any conception of greatness: proof Schumann.

The Antichrist, Section 7

A 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.

How did reason come into the world? As is fitting, in an irrational manner, by accident. One will have to guess at it as at a riddle.