Quotes About Existence

Lucrurile supreme trebuie s? aib? o alt? origine, una proprie lor, - ele nu ar putea lua naÅŸtere din aceast? lume efemer?, înÅŸel?toare, iluzorie ÅŸi mizer?, din aceast? harababur? de am?giri ÅŸi pofte!

No matter how strongly a thing may be believed, strength of belief is no criterion of truth.' But what is truth? Perhaps a kind of belief that has become a condition of life?

Friedrich Nietzsche

Something might be true, even if it were also harmful and dangerous in the highest degree; indeed, it might be part of the essential nature of existence that to understand it completely would lead to our own destruction. The strength of a person's spirit would then be measured by how much truth he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he 'needs' to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified.

life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results thereof.

Nobody is responsible for being here in the first place, for being constituted in such and such a way, for being in these circumstances, in this environment. The fatality of our essence cannot be separated from the fatality of all that was and will be.

Even the slightest trace of piety in us ought to make us feel that a God who cures a headcold at the right moment or tells us to get into a coach just as a downpour is about to start is so absurd a God he would have to be abolished even if he existed.

the bowels of existence do not speak unto man, except as man.

Many die too late, and some die too early. Yet strange soundeth the precept: "Die at the right time!

Friedrich Nietzsche

The invention of the laws of number has as its basis the primordial and prior-prevailing delusion that many like things exist (although in point of fact there is no such thing is a duplicate), or that, at least, there are things (but there is no "thing"). The assumption of plurality always presupposes that something exists which manifests itself repeatedly, but just here is where the delusion prevails; in this very matter we feign realities, unities, that have no existence.

Man would sooner have the void for his purpose than be void of purpose

Intense hope is a much stronger stimulant to life than any single instance of happiness which actually occurs.

Hat man sein Warum des Lebens, so verträgt man sich fast mit jedem Wie. Der Mensch strebt nicht nach Glück; nur der Engländer tut das.

A man whose sense of shame has some profundity encounters his destinies and delicate decisions, too, on paths which few ever reach and of whose mere existence his closest intimates must not know: his mortal danger is concealed from their eyes, and so is his regained sureness of life.

Nihilism stands at the door: whence comes this uncanniest of all guests?

In every age the wisest have passed the identical judgement on life: it is worthless.

That mountain there! That cloud there! What is 'real' about those? Try taking away the phantasm and the entire human contribution, you sober realists! Yes, if only you could do that! If you could forget your heritage, your past, your training – your entire humanity and animality! For us there is no 'reality' – nor for you either, you sober ones.

The intellect, as a means for the preservation of the individual, unfolds its chief powers in simulation; for this is the means by which the weaker, less robust individuals preserve themselves, since they are denied the chance of waging the struggle for existence with horns or the fangs of beasts of prey.

Religion is a form of gratitude. A man is grateful for his own existence: to that end he needs a god.

a thing can only live through a pious illusion.

A nihilist is a man who judges of the world as it is that it ought not to be, and of the world as it ought to be that it does not exist. According to this view, our existence (action, suffering, willing, feeling) has no meaning: the pathos of 'in vain' is the nihilists' pathos – at the same time, as pathos, an inconsistency on the part of the nihilists.

Apart from the ascetic ideal, man, the human animal, had no meaning so far. His existence on earth contained no goal; "why man at all? – was a question without an answer…

Alternar el amor con el odio distingue por largo tiempo el estado interior de un hombre que quiera ser libre en su juicio sobre la vida. Por fin, cuando toda la mesa de su alma está cubierta con notas de la experiencia, no tendrá para la existencia desprecio, ni odio ni tampoco amor; morará muy por encima de ella, dirigiéndole semejante a la Naturaleza, tendrá en el pensamiento, bien el verano, bien el otoño.