Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

The hour-hand of life.

Human, all too human.

Life is hard to bear: but do not affect to be so delicate! We are all of us fine sumpter asses and assesses.

I feel all those human beings to be pernicious who can no longer oppose what they love: they thereby ruin the best things and people.

To regard states of distress in general as an objection, as something which must be abolished is the greatest nonsense on earth; having the most disastrous consequences, fatally stupid- almost as stupid as a wish to abolish bad weather - out of pity for the poor.

Death. The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a precious and fragrant drop of levity- and now you strange apothecary souls have turned it into an ill-tasting drop of poison that makes the whole of life repulsive.

Man is not equally moral at all hours, this is well known. If his morality is judged to be the capability for great self-sacrificing resolutions and self-denial (which, when continuous and grown habitual, are called holiness)

He who attains his ideal, precisely thereby surpasses it.

All preachers of morality, as also all theologians have a bad habit in common: all of them try to persuade man that he is very ill, and that a severe, final, radical cure is necessary.

One must cease letting oneself be eaten when one tastes best: that is known to those who want to be loved long.

Be your self! All you are now doing, thinking, desiring, is not you yourself.

Among human beings there is no greater banality than death. Second in order, because it is possible to die without being born, comes birth, and next comes marriage.

What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.

With sturdy shoulders, space stands opposing all its weight to nothingness. Where space is, there is being.

Even in the lust of knowledge I feel only my will's delight in begetting and becoming; and if there be innocence in my knowledge it is because my procreative will is in it.

Words are acoustical signs for concepts; concepts, however, are more or less definite image signs for often recurring and associated sensations, for groups of sensations. To understand one another, it is not enough that one use the same words; one also has to use the same words for the same species of inner experiences; in the end one has to have one's experiences in common.

Are you visiting women? Do not forget your whip

Nothing in life possesses value except the degree of power--assuming that life itself is the will to power.

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.

On the tree, Future, we build our nest; and in our solitude eagles shall bring us nourishment in their beaks!

Untroubled, scornful, outrageous - that is how wisdom wants us to be: she is a woman and never loves anyone but a warrior.

The people we keep standing in the anteroom of our favor either start fermenting or turn sour.

All idealism is falsehood in the face of necessity.

It has therewith come to be recognized that the history of moral valuations is at the same time the history of an error, the error of responsibility, which is based upon the error of the freedom of will.

Behind a remarkable scholar we not infrequently find an average human being, and behind an average artist we often find a very remarkable human being.

Praise is more obtrusive than a reproach.

Blessed are the sleepy ones: for they shall soon drop off.

The real question is: How much truth can I stand?

Clever people are never credited with their follies: what a deprivation of human rights!

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

It is very noble hypocrisy not to talk of one's self.

The State is the coldest of all cold monsters, and coldly it tells lies, and this lie drones on from its mouth: 'I, the State, am the people'.

You cannot learn to fly by flying. First you must learn to walk, to run, to climb, to dance.

Of all evil I deem you capable: therefore I want the good from you.

The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously.

Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.

Creating-that is the great salvation from suffering, and life's alleviation. But for the creator to appear, suffering itself is needed, and much transformation.

Let us beware of saying there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is no one to command, no one to obey, no one to transgress. When you realize there are no goals or objectives, then you realize, too, that there is no chance: for only in a world of objectives does the word chance have any meaning.

I cook every chance in my pot. And only when it is cooked through do I welcome it as my food.

The doctrine of equality! There exists no more poisonous poison: for it seems to be preached by justice itself, while it is the end of justice.

The tree that would grow to heaven must send its roots to hell.

Faced with a world of "modern ideas" which would like to banish everyone into a corner and a "specialty," a philosopher, if there could be a philosopher these days, would be compelled to establish the greatness of mankind, the idea of "greatness," on the basis of his own particular extensive range and multiplicity, his own totality in the midst of diversity.

Only idiots fail to contradict themselves three times a day.

Ah, how little you know of human happiness - you comfortable and benevolent people! For happiness and unhappiness are brother and sister - or even twins who grow up together - or in your case - remain small together!

Death is close enough at hand so we do not need to be afraid of life.

He who rejoices even at the stake triumphs not over pain but over the absence of pain where he had anticipated feeling it. A parable.

Reason is the cause of our falsification of the evidence of the senses. In so far as the senses show becoming, passing away, change, they do not lie.

The greatest progress that the human race has made lies in learning how to make correct inferences.

When one thinks profusely and cleverly, not only his face but his body too takes on a clever appearance.

Every high degree of power always involves a corresponding degree of freedom from good and evil.

Worldly Wisdom Do not stay in the field! Nor climb out of sight. The best view of the world Is from a medium height.

The man who sees little always sees less than there is to see; the man who hears badly always hears something more than there is to hear.

A high civilization is a pyramid: it can stand only on a broad base; its primary prerequisite is a strong and soundly consolidated mediocrity.

Living in a constant chase after gain compels people to expend their spirit to the point of exhaustion.

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

Wherever progress is to ensue, deviating natures are of greatest importance.

On the rare occasions when our dreams succeed and achieve perfection - most dreams are bungled - the are symbolic chains of scene and images in place of a narrative poetic language; they circumscribe our experiences or expectations or situations with such poetic boldness and decisiveness that in the morning we are always amazed when we remember our dreams.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

How can a man know himself? He is a thing dark and veiled; and if the hare has seven skins, man can slough off seventy times seven and still not be able to say: "this is really you, this is no longer outer shell.

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.