Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

The desire to create continually is vulgar and betrays jealousy, envy, ambition. If one is something one really does not need to make anything --and one nonetheless does very much. There exists above the ''productive'' man a yet higher species.

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

Life is fountain of joy; but where the rabble also gather to drink, all wells are poisoned.

When a man is ill his very goodness is sickly.

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?

Ah, there are so many things betwixt heaven and earth of which only the poets have dreamed!

Strength is the morality of the man who stands out from the rest, and it is mine.

We must be cruel as well as compassionate: let us guard against becoming poorer than nature is!

Whatever is gold does not glitter. A gentle radiance belongs to the noblest metal.

We have art so that we shall not die of reality.

Those you cannot teach to fly, teach to fall faster.

That lies should be necessary to life is part and parcel of the terrible and questionable character of existence.

The vanity of others runs counter to our taste only when it runs counter to our vanity.

Unconsciously we seek the principles and opinions which are suited to our temperament, so that at last it seems as if these principles and opinions had formed our character and given it support and stability.

It is obvious that all sense has gone out of modern marriage; which is, however, no objection to marriage but to modernity.

Strideth over all mountains, and laugheth at all tragedies

An important species of pleasure, and therewith the source of morality, arises out of habit.

Without passions you have no experience whatever.

What the philosopher is seeking is not truth, but rather the metamorphosis of the world into man.

One who is always deeply involved in what he is doing is above all embarrassment.

Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?

Many die too late, and some die too early. Yet strangers soundeth the precept: "Die at the right time!"

Happiness is a fata morgana. the only way to not end up unhappy is to not long for happiness.

And if ye cannot be saints of knowledge, then, I pray you, be at least its warriors. They are the companions and forerunners of such saintship.

When I contemplated purpose I also contemplated chance and foolishness.

The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die.

I was in darkness, but I took three steps and found myself in paradise. The first step was a good thought, the second, a good word; and the third, a good deed.

All idealists imagine that the causes they serve are fundamentally better than any other causes in the world, and they refuse to believe that if their cause is to flourish at all it requires precisely the same foul-smelling manure that is necessary to all other human undertakings.

The child as a monument to the passion of two people; the will to oneness in two.

We take a fancy to something: and scarcely have we thoroughly taken a fancy to it when that tyrant in us calls out: "Give me thatin sacrifice"--and we give it.

Women's modesty generally increases with their beauty.

I am interested only in the relations of a people to the rearing of the individual man, and among the Greeks the conditions were unusually favourable for the development of the individual; not by any means owing to the goodness of the people, but because of the struggles of their evil instincts.With the help of favourable measures great individuals might be reared who would be both different from and higher than those who heretofore have owed their existence to mere chance. Here we may still be hopeful: in the rearing of exceptional men.

You may have enemies whom you hate, but not enemies whom you despise. You must be proud of your enemy: then the success of your enemy shall be your success too.

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.

Pity aims just as little at the pleasure of others as malice at the pain of others Per-Se.

Your educators can only be your liberators.

Consider the cattle, grazing as they pass you by. They do not know what is meant by yesterday or today, they leap about, eat, rest, digest, leap about again, and so from morn till night and from day to day, fettered to the moment and its pleasure or displeasure, and thus neither melancholy nor bored. [...] A human being may well ask an animal: 'Why do you not speak to me of your happiness but only stand and gaze at me?' The animal would like to answer, and say, 'The reason is I always forget what I was going to say' - but then he forgot this answer too, and stayed silent.

From the Sun I learned this: when he goes down, overrich; he pours gold into the sea out of inexhaustible riches, so that even the poorest fisherman still rows with golden oars. For this I once saw and I did not tire of my tears as I watched it.

Art is the great stimulus to life.

Willing sets you free: that is the true doctrine of will and freedom--thus Zarathustra instructs you.

They devour each other and cannot even digest themselves.

Everyone who has ever built anywhere a "new heaven" first found the power thereto in his own hell.

And if you are not a bird, then beware of coming to rest above an abyss.

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.

No one can draw more out of things, books included, than he already knows. A man has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access.

Mothers easily become jealous of their sons' friends when they are particularly successful. As a rule a mother loves herself in her son more than she does the son himself.

Look not into the sun! Even the moon is too bright for your nocturnal eyes!

The most general deficiency in our sort of culture and education is gradually dawning on me: no one learns, no one strives towards, no one teaches--enduring loneliness.

Our writing equipment takes part in forming our thoughts.

Brave people may be persuaded to an action by representing it as being more dangerous than it really is.

Insects sting, not from malice, but because they want to live. It is the same with critics; they desire our blood not our pain.

The world is beautiful, but has a disease called man.

Love your enemies because they bring out the best in you.

Some people throw a bit of their personality after their bad arguments, as if that might straighten their paths and turn them into right and good arguments-just as a man in a bowling alley, after he has let go of the ball, still tries to direct it with gestures.

Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.

Pitch-black winter nights live in my bones.

A very popular error: having the courage of one's convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one's convictions.

A living being seeks, above all, to discharge its strength. Life is will to power.

It is only those who know how to feel that "this is not good" who devise improvements.

Few serve truth in truth because only few have the pure will to be just, and of those again very few have the strength to be just.