In the dark, time feels different than when it is light.
No, life has not disappointed me. On the contrary, I find it truer, more desirable and mysterious every year -- ever since the day when the great liberator came to me: the idea that life could be an experiment of the seeker for knowledge -- and not a duty, not a calamity, not trickery.
Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life.
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.
It is the good war that hallows every cause.
He who strays from the customary becomes a sacrifice to the extraordinary; he who keeps to the customary becomes its slave. He iscondemned to perish in either case.
It is obvious that all sense has gone out of modern marriage; which is, however, no objection to marriage but to modernity.
We pay dearly for immortality: we die for it more than once during our lifetimes.
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 most intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would find only disaster: in the labyrinth, in being hard with themselves and with others, in effort; their delight is self-mastery; in them asceticism becomes second nature, a necessity, as instinct.
The world is a work of art that gives birth to itself.
Whoever gives advice to a sick person acquires a feeling of superiority over him, whether the advice be accepted or rejected.
The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.
Socialism is the phantastic younger brother of despotism, which it wants to inherit. Socialism wants to have the fullness of state force which before only existed in despotism. ... However, it goes further than anything in the past because it aims at the formal destruction of the individual ... who ... can be used to improve communities by an expedient organ of government.
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.
Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.
Our greatest experiences are our quietest moments.
The hour-hand of life.
Philosophers are not honest enough in their work, although they make a lot of virtuous noise when the problem of truthfulness is touched even remotely. They all pose as if they had discovered and reached their real opinions through the self-development of a cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic...; while at bottom it is an assumption, a hunch, indeed a kind of "inspiration" most often a desire of the heart that has been filtered and made abstract that they defend with reasons they have sought after the fact.
Not infrequently, we encounter copies of important human beings; and here, too, as in the case of paintings, most people prefer the copies to the originals.
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'.
To forget one's purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.
There is sense in hoping for recognition in a distant future only when we take it for granted that mankind will remain essentially unchanged, and that whatever is great is not for one age only but will be looked upon as great for all time.
Speaking generally, punishment hardens and numbs, it produces concentration, it sharpens the consciousness of alienation, it strengthens the power of resistance.
We come to recognize that playfulness, as a philosophical stance, can be very serious indeed; and moreover, that it possesses an unfailing capacity to arouse ridicule and hostility in those among us who crave certainty, reverence, and restraint.
Art depends upon the inexactitude of sight.
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!
All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down.
What is the task of higher education? To make a man into a machine. What are the means employed? He is taught how to suffer being bored.
How much disgruntled heaviness, lameness, dampness, how much beer is there in the German intelligence.
Together we will take the road that leads into the West, And far away will find a land where both our hearts may rest.
Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.
No artist tolerates reality.
A moral system valid for all is basically immoral.
Foolish is my happiness, and foolish things will it speak: it is still too young—so have patience with it!
One should not wish to enjoy where one does not give joy.
The usual false conclusions of mankind are these: a thing exists, therefore it has a right to exist.
There cannot be any 'story' without a fall - all stories are ultimately about the fall - at least not for human minds as we know them and have them.
To learn from our enemies is the best pathway to loving them: for it makes us grateful to them.
Learn to laugh at yourselves as one must laugh!
Woman is essentially unpeaceful, like the cat, however well she may have trained herself to present an appearance of peace.
It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!
In loneliness, the lonely one eats himself; in a crowd, the many eat him. Now choose.
Good prose is written only face to face with poetry.
Who is better, they who promote truth over happiness, or happiness over truth?
The life of the enemy . Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in the enemy's staying alive.
And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.
We have no dreams at all or interesting ones. We should learn to be awake the same way- not at all or in an interesting manner
Whoever is related to me in the height of his aspirations will experience veritable ecstasies of learning; for I come from heights that no bird ever reached in its flight, I know abysses into which no foot ever strayed.
The strongest have their moments of fatigue.
The rights a man arrogates to himself are related to the duties he imposes on himself, to the tasks to which he feels equal. The great majority of men have no right to existence, but are a misfortune to higher men.
It needs but one foe to breed a war, and those who have not swords can still die upon them.
Ultimately we've only got humanity to work with. It's only clay we've got.
There are highly gifted spirits who are always infertile simply because, owing to a weakness in temperament, they are too impatient to wait out their pregnancy to term.
I have never had much confidence in my own work, and even now when I am assured (still much to my grateful surprise) that it has value for other people, I feel diffident, reluctant as it were to expose my world of imagination to possibly contemptuous eyes and ears.
Women's modesty generally increases with their beauty.
Few other griefs amid the ill chances of this world have more bitterness and shame for a man's heart than to behold the love of a lady so fair and brave that cannot be returned.
As long as you still experience the stars as something "above you", you lack the eye of knowledge.
If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.
Untroubled, scornful, outrageous - that is how wisdom wants us to be: she is a woman and never loves anyone but a warrior.
