Quotes from Friedrich Nietzsche

What makes heroic? – To go to meet simultaneously one's greatest sorrow and one's greatest hope.

Precisely the least thing, the gentlest, lightest, the rustling of a lizard, a breath, a moment, a twinkling of the eye - little makes up the quality of the best happiness. Soft!

A Path to Equality. — A few hours' mountain climbing make of a rogue and a saint two fairly equal creatures. Tiredness is the shortest path to equality and fraternity — and sleep finally adds to them liberty.

The world itself is a filthy monster.

Have you understood me? Dionysus versus Christ.

O Mensch! Gib acht! Was spricht, die tiefe Mitternacht? Ich schlief, ich schlief -, Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht: - Die Welt ist tief, Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht. Tief ist ihr Weh -, Lust - tiefer noch als Herzeleid: Weh spricht: Vergeh! Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit -, - Will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit!

Everything straight lieth," murmured the dwarf, contemptuously. "All truth is crooked; time itself is a circle.

Men were considered free only so that they might be considered guilty - could be judged and punished: consequently, every act had to be considered as lying within the consciousness.

Should not the giver be thankful that the receiver received? Is not giving a need? Is not receiving mercy?

Ja volim onog ?ija se duša rasipa, koji ne?e da mu kažu hvala, niti sam kaže hvala: jer on uvek daje i ne?e da se sa?uva.

It was as if his apostasy from the faith of his fathers, filling him with the fiery zeal of the convert, and particularly of the convert to heresy, had blinded him to every other element in the gigantic self-delusion of civilized man.

Thus says the fool: Association with men spoils the character, especially when one has none.

Even the wisest among you is only a conflict and hybrid of plant and ghost.

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

Insight into the origin of a work concerns the physiologists and vivisectionists of the spirit; never the aesthetic man, the artist!

While every aristocratic morality springs from a triumphant affirmation of its own demands, the slave morality says no from the very outset to what is outside itself, different from itself, and not itself: and this no is its creative deed.

Out of love alone shall my despising and my warning bird fly up, not out of swamp. (...) Where one can no longer love, there one should pass by.

You lonely of today, you withdrawing ones, one day you shall be a people: from you that have chosen yourselves a chosen people shall grow and from them the overman.

With thunder and heavenly fireworks must one speak to indolent and somnolent senses. But beauty's voice speaketh gently: it appealeth only to the most awakened souls

Having a talent is not enough; one also requires your permission for it--right, my friends?

Pe cine ur??te oare femeia cel mai mult? — AÅŸa gr?it-a fierul c?tre magnet: «Pe tine te ur?sc cel mai mult, c?ci tu m-atragi, îns? nu eÅŸti destul de tare s? m? Å£ii.»

The slave revolt in morality begins when 'ressentiment' itself becomes creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of natures that are denied the true reaction, that of deeds, and compensate themselves with an imaginary revenge. While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is outside, what is different, what is not itself; and this No is its creative deed.

But what if pleasure and pain should be so closely connected", Nietzsche asked in his book The Gay Science, "that he who wants the greatest possible amount of one must also have the greatest possible amount of the other?

I caught this insight on the way and quickly seized the rather poor words that were closest to hand to pin it down lest it fly away again. And now it has died of these arid words and shakes and flaps in them-- and I hardly know anymore when I look at it how I could ever have felt so happy when I caught this bird.