Quotes from Friedrich Nietzsche

Everything in proximity to the hero becomes tragedy; everything in proximity to the demigod becomes satyr-play; and everything in proximity to God becomes...what? world perhaps?

inability to lie is still far from being love to truth. Be on your guard! ... He who cannot lie, doth not know what truth is.

What is good? - All that heightens the feelings of power, the will to power, power itself in man. What is bad? - All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? - The feeling that power increases - that a resistance is overcome.

Against the censurers of brevity. - Something said briefly can be the fruit of much long thought: but the reader who is a novice in this field, and has as yet reflected on it not at all, sees in everything said briefly something embryonic, not without censuring the author for having served him up such immature and unripened fare.

A man recovers best from his exceptional nature - his intellectuality - by giving his animal instincts a chance.

What have we in common with the rosebud, which trembles because a drop of dew is lying upon it?

When we have to change an opinion about any one, we charge heavily to his account the inconvenience he thereby causes us.

Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is that they are not even superficial.

Every acquisition, every step forward in knowledge is the result of courage, of severity toward oneself, of cleanliness with respect to oneself.

For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with himself, whether it be by means of this or that poetry or art; only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is constantly ready for revenge, and we others will be his victims, if only by having to endure his ugly sight.

When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is usually something wrong with her sexuality.

The tension of the soul in unhappiness, which cultivates its strength; its horror at the sight of the great destruction; its inventiveness and bravery in bearing, enduring, interpreting, exploiting unhappiness, and whatever in the way of depth, mystery, mask, spirit, cleverness, greatness the heart has been granted - has it not been granted them through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering?

What is life? Life - that is: continually shedding something that wants to die. Life - that is: being cruel and inexorable against everything about us that is growing old and weak -and not only about us. Life - that is, then: being without reverence for those who are dying, who are wretched, who are ancient? Constantly being a murderer? -And yet old Moses said: Thou shalt not kill.

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

Every habit makes our hand more witty, and out wit more handy.

But like infection is the petty thought: it creeps and hides, and wants to be nowhere--until the whole body is decayed and withered by the petty infection... Thus spoke Zarathustra.

throw roses into the abyss and say: 'here is my thanks to the monster who didn't succeed in swallowing me alive.

It is a pity that there was no Dostoevsky living near this most interesting decadent [Jesus], I mean someone with an eye for the distinctive charm that this sort of mixture of sublimity, sickness, and childishness has to offer.

It is a new step towards independence, once a man dares to express opinions that bring disgrace on him if he entertains them; then even his friends and acquaintances begin to grow anxious. The man of talent must pass through this fire, too; afterwards he is much more his own person.

It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable; it is precisely thereby that it attracts the more subtle minds. It seems that the hundred-times-refuted theory of the free will owes its persistence to this charm alone; some one is always appearing who feels himself strong enough to refute it.

It was suffering and incapacity that created all afterworlds - this, and that brief madness of bliss which is experienced only by those who suffer deeply. Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.

The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.

It is intoxicating joy for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and to forget himself.

When Zarathustra had spoken these words, he again looked at the people, and was silent. There they stand, said he to his heart; there they laugh: they do not understand me; I am not the mouth for these ears.