Quotes from Friedrich Nietzsche

What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure - as a mere automaton of duty?

To find everything profound - that is an inconvenient trait. It makes one strain one's eyes all the time, and in the end one finds more than one might have wished.

Some men are born posthumously.

To recognize untruth as a condition of life--that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.

Belief means not wanting to know what is true.

In the end we are always rewarded for our good will, our patience, fair-mindedness, and gentleness with what is strange.

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

A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow.

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

The one necessary thing .— A person must have one or the other. Either a cheerful disposition by nature, or a disposition made cheerful by art and knowledge.

In loneliness, the lonely one eats himself; in a crowd, the many eat him. Now choose.

Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good.

One sticks to an opinion because he prides himself on having come to it on his own, and another because he has taken great pains to learn it and is proud to have grasped it: and so both do so out of vanity.

Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

The maturity of man—that means, to have reacquired the seriousness that one had as a child at play

But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!

Memory says, 'I did that.' Pride replies, 'I could not have done that.' Eventually, memory yields.

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, daß er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.

I have forgotten my umbrella.

one does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood.

I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. the will to a system is a lack of integrity.

Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.

Close beside my knowledge lies my black ignorance.