Quotes from Friedrich Nietzsche

The great end of art is to strike the imagination with the power of a soul that refuses to admit defeat even in the midst of a collapsing world.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

How little is required for pleasure! The sound of a bagpipe - without music, life would be an error.

We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.

Life without music is no life at all.

Real dancers are the ones who can hear the music in their soul.

Speaking of Georges Bizet: His music has the tang of sunny climates, their bracing air, their clearness. It voices a sensibility hitherto unknown to us.

When I seek another word for 'music', I never find any other word than 'Venice'

It is the music in our conscience, the dance in our spirit, to which Puritan litanies, moral sermons, and goody goodness won't chime.

In Bach there is still too much crude Christianity, crude Germanism, crude scholasticism; he stands on the threshold of European (modern) music, but he looks back from there to the Middle Ages.

To produce music is also in a sense to produce children.

He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures.

I notice that Autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature.

The poison by which the weaker nature is destroyed is strengthening to the strong individual and he does not call it poison.

We are so fond of being out among nature, because it has no opinions about us.

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

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

As a result, nature is something entirely different from what comes to mind when we invoke its name.

Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity.

Learn to see - accustoming the eye to calm, to patience, to letting-things-come-to-it; learning to defer judgment, to encircle and encompass the question on all sides.

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

Foolish is my happiness, and foolish things will it speak: it is still too young—so have patience with it!

He who does not desire much more from things than knowledge of them easily makes peace with his soul.