Quotes About Existence

If ye believed more in life, then would ye devote yourselves less to the momentary. But for waiting, ye have not enough of capacity in you—nor even for idling! Everywhere

It is true: we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love. But there is always also some reason in madness.

And we had made a nice misuse of that 'empiricism', we had created the world on the basis of it as a world of causes, as a world of will, as a world of spirit.

The discovery of the laws of numbers was made on the basis of an error already predominant in the earliest times, that several things might be identical (but actually there are no identical things), or that there are at least things (but there is no 'thing'). The assumption of multiplicity is always presupposes that there is something that occurs multiple times: but this is precisely where error already holds sway, already we invent beings, unities that do not exist.

IF there were gods, how could I endure it to be no God!

In sum: the world might be far more valuable than we used to believe; we must see through the naiveté of our ideals, and while we thought that we had accorded it the highest interpretation, we may not have given our human existence a moderately fair value.

We invented the concept 'purpose': in reality purpose is lacking.…

Postojanje i svet izgledaju opravdani jedino kao estetski fenomen: u kom smislu nas upravo tragi?ki mit treba da ubedi kako su ?ak i rugoba i nesklad umetni?ka igra koju volja, u ve?itom preobilju svoje naslade, igra sa samom sobom.

At present I still possess the same affability towards everybody, I am even full of consideration for the lowliest of people: in all this there is not a grain of arrogance or of secret contempt. He whom I despise soon guesses that he is despised by me: my mere existence is enough to rouse indignation in all those who have bad blood in their veins.

What is great in the human is that it is a bridge and not a goal: what can be loved in the human is that it is a going-over and a going-under.

But when Zarathustra was alone, he addressed his heart thus: "Can it really be possible? This old holy man in his forest still hasn't received any notice that God is dead!

The properties of a thing are effects on other 'things': if one removes other 'things', then a thing has no properties, i.e., there is no thing without other things, i.e., there is no 'thing-in-itself.

What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?" the last man asks, and he blinks. Formerly all the world was insane, say the subtlest of them, and they blink. "We have invented happiness," say the last men, and they blink.

One has watched life badly if one has not also seen the hand that considerately--kills.

For a philosopher to see a problem in the value of life thus even constitutes an objection to him, a question-mark as to his wisdom, a piece of unwisdom.

Judgements, judgements of value, concerning life, for it or against it, can, in the end, never be true: they have value only as symptoms, they are worthy of consideration only as symptoms; in themselves such judgements are stupidities. One must by all means stretch out one's fingers and make the attempt to grasp this amazing finesse, that the value of life cannot be estimated.

Man is something that shall be overcome. Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman — a rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.

The life of the enemy . Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in the enemy's staying alive.

Wir haben den Begriff Zweck erfunden: in der Realität fehlt der Zweck... Man ist nothwendig, man ist ein Stück Verhängniss, man gehört zum Ganzen, man ist im Ganzen, - es giebt Nichts, was unser Sein richten, messen, vergleichen, verurtheilen könnte, denn das hiesse das Ganze richten, messen, vergleichen, verurtheilen... Aber es giebt Nichts ausser dem Ganzen!

Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that GOD IS DEAD!

This world, the eternally imperfect, an eternal contradiction's image and imperfect image—an intoxicating joy to its imperfect creator:—thus did the world once seem to me.

We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water," he wrote. "We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves.

All things are forms of the same universal reality that is simultaneously spiritual and material. The whole cosmos is a unity and the whole cosmos is alive.

Know it or not, man treads between twin abysses a tightrope that has neither beginning nor end.