Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche Quotes (267 Quotes)

A good author possesses not only his own intellect, but also that of his friends.

He is wholly without envy, but there is not merit therein for he wants to conquer a land which no one yet possessed and hardly any one has ever seen.

We artists We moon-struck and God-struck ones We death-silent, untiring wanderers on heights which we do not see as heights, but as our plains, as our places of safety

When a woman turns to scholarship there is usually something wrong with her sexual opportunities

I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible. . . .

What a time experiences as evil is usually an untimely echo of what was formerly experienced as good-the atavism of a more ancient ideal.

I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty - I call it the one mortal blemish of mankind

After all, what would be beautiful if the contradiction had not first become conscious of itself, if the ugly had not first said to itself I am ugly

Have you noticed there are no interesting people in heaven -- Just a hint to the girls as to where they can find their salvation.

This life as you live it now and have lived it, you will have to live again and again, times without number, and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and all the unspeakably small and great in your life must return to you and everything in the same series and sequence -- and in the same way this spider and this moonlight among the trees, and this same way this moment and I myself. The eternal hour glass of existence will be turned again and again -- and you with it, you dust of dust

One begins to mistrust very clever people when they become embarrassed

He who writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read, he wants to be learned by heart.

Anything which is a living and not a dying body . . . will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant -- not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power.

Without music, life would be a mistake.... I would only believe in a God who knew how to dance.

That which needs to be proved cannot be worth much

This has given me the greatest trouble and still does to realize that what things are called is incomparably more important than what they are. The reputation, name, and appearance, the usual measure and weight of a thing, what it counts for -- originally almost always wrong and arbitrary, thrown over things like a dress and altogether foreign to their nature and even to their skin -- all this grows from generation unto generation, merely because people believe in it, until it gradually grows to be part of the thing and turns into its very body what at first was appearance becomes in the end, almost invariably, the essence and is effective as such.

Madness is something rare in individuals -- but in groups, parties, peoples, ages it is the rule.

The spiritualization of sensuality is called love it is a great triumph over Christianity.

That roguish and cheerful vice, politeness.

No, life has not disappointed me. On the contrary, I find it truer, more desirable and mysterious every year -- ever since the day when the great liberator came to me the idea that life could be an experiment of the seeker for knowledge -- and not a duty, not a calamity, not trickery.

Courageous, untroubled, mocking and violent-that is what Wisdom wants us to be. Wisdom is a woman, and loves only a warrior.

Women can form a friendship with a man very well but to preserve it - to that end a slight physical antipathy must probably help.

Amor Fati Love Your Fate, which is in fact your life.

Smooth iceis paradisefor those who dance with expertise.

I could not believe in a god that could not dance.

Here the ways of men part if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire

Vanity is the polite mask of pride.

It was the sick and dying who despised the body and the earth and invented the things of heaven and the redeeming drops of blood but even these sweet and dismal poisons they took from the body and the earth

Men have hitherto treated women like birds which have strayed down to them from the heights as something more delicate, more fragile, more savage, stranger, sweeter, soulful - but as something which has to be caged up so that it shall not fly away

If you wish to understand a philosopher, do not ask what he says, but find out what he wants

That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts. There is always a kind of contempt in the act of speaking.

One should not go into church if one wants to breathe pure air

To show pity is felt as a sign of contempt because one has clearly ceased to be an object of fear as soon as one is pitied.

Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that the laws of nature are constantly broken for their sakes

What is happiness The feeling that power increases - that resistance is being overcome

Science and art have that in common that everyday things seem to them new and attractive

Enduring habits I hate.... Yes, at the very bottom of my soul I feel grateful to all my misery and bouts of sickness and everything about me that is imperfect, because this sort of thing leaves me with a hundred backdoors through which I can escape from enduring habits.

When a man is in love he endures more than at other times he submits to everything

To become wise, one must wish to have certain experiences and run, as it were, into their gaping jaws. This, of course, is very dangerous many a wise guy has been swallowed.

For a tree to become tall it must grow tough roots among the rocks.

There is no pre-established harmony between the furthering of truth and the well-being of humanity.

At times, our strengths propel us so far forward we can no longer endure our weaknesses and perish from them.

Of all writings I love only that which is written with blood. Write with blood and you will discover that blood is spirit.

Thoughts that come with doves' footsteps guide the world.

The falseness of an opinion is not, for us, any objection to it. The question is how far it is life furthering, life preserving, species preserving and perhaps species creating.

Men after death are understood worse than men of the present, but heard better

The god on the cross is a curse on life, a signpost to seek redemption from life Dionysus cut to pieces is a promise of life it will be eternally reborn and return again from destruction

Whoever does not know how to lay his will into things at least lays some meaning into them - that means he has the faith that they already obey some will

We advance our race by creating truth and imposing it on the world.

In the mountains the shortest route is from peak to peak, but for that you must have long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks and those to whom they are spoken should be big and tall of stature.