Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

When I contemplated purpose I also contemplated chance and foolishness.

Marriages that made out of love (so-called "love-matches") have error as their father and misery (necessity) as their mother.

For the longest time, marriage has had a guilty conscience about itself. Should we believe it?--Yes, we should believe it.

To get into just those situations where sham virtues will not suffice, but rather where, as with the ropedancer on his rope, one either falls or stands--or gets down.

In being wildly natural we recover best from being unnatural, from being spiritual.

The most dangerous physicians are those born actors who imitate born physicians with a perfectly deceptive guile.

When one thinks profusely and cleverly, not only his face but his body too takes on a clever appearance.

What an age experiences as evil is usually an untimely reverberation echoing what was previously experienced as good--the atavismof an older ideal.

About what we neither know nor feel precisely while awake-whether we have a good or a bad conscience toward a certain person-our dreams instruct us fully and unambiguously.

After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries in a cave.

Each word of Heraclitus expresses the pride and the majesty of truth, but of truth grasped in intuitions rather than attained by the rope ladder of logic.

There are expressions and bulls-eyes of the spirit, there are epigrams, a little handful of words, in which a whole culture, a whole society is suddenly crystallized.

I will believe in the Redeemer when the Christians look a little more redeemed.

This world is the will to power and nothing besides!

Heraclitus was an opponent of all democratic parties.

But by my love and hope I beseech you: do not throw away the hero in your soul! Hold holy your highest hope!

Great men's errors are to be venerated as more fruitful than little men's truths.

In a friend one should have ones best enemy. You should be closest to him with your heart when you resist him.

One should adpot only those situations in which one is in no need of sham virtues, but rather, like the tight-rope dancer on his tight rope, in which one must either fall or stand--or escape.

Joy wants the eternity of all things, wants deep, wants deep eternity.

We should conserve evil just as we should conserve the forests. It is true that by thinning and clearing the forests the earth grew warmer.

Men seldom persevere in a vocation unless they believe or can convince themselves that it is fundamentally more important than anyother calling. Women are the same with their lovers.

What does it matter whether I am shown to be right! I am right too much!--And he who laughs best today will also laugh last.

Conversation with a friend will only bear good fruit of knowledge when both think only of the matter under consideration and forget that they are friends.

Those who are bent on revolutionizing society may be divided into those who seek something for themselves thereby and those who seek something for their children and grandchildren.

The perfect woman is a higher type of humanity than the perfect man, and also something much rarer. The natural history of animals furnishes grounds in support of this theory.

The masters have been done away with; the morality of the common man has triumphed.

Robinson had a servant even better than Friday: His name was Crusoe.

Society tames the wolf into a dog. And man is the most domesticated animal of all.

No more fiction, for now we calculate; but that we may calculate, we had to make fiction first.

By means of music the very passions, enjoy themselves.

That which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable echo of what was formerly considered good - the atavism of an old ideal.

Weariness is the shortest path to equality and fraternity-and finally liberty is bestowed by sleep.

The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive, which one cannot for a single instant dispense with in thought , for one would thereby dispense with man himself.

Oh great star! What would your happiness be if you did not have us to shine for?

And as long as you are in any way ashamed before yourself, you do not yet belong with us.

[Heraclitus had] a regal air of certainty.

Triumph depends on a roll of Fate's dice; the ultimate prize is a place in Heaven.

He who knoweth the reader, doeth nothing more for the reader. Another century of readers - and spirit itself will stink.

There are preachers of death: and the earth is full of those to whom desistance from life must be preached.

I love him who desireth not too many virtues. One virtue is more of a virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for one's destiny to cling to.

I love him who scattereth golden words in advance of his deeds, and always doeth more than he promiseth: for he seeketh his own down-going.

I love him whose soul is deep even in the wounding, and may succumb through a small matter: thus goeth he willingly over the bridge.

I love all who are like heavy drops falling one by one out of the dark cloud that lowereth over man: they herald the coming of the lightning, and succumb as heralds.

Alas! There cometh the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There cometh the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself.

Instruments and playthings are sense and spirit: behind them there is still the Self. The Self seeketh with the eyes of the senses, it hearkeneth also with the ears of the spirit.

He who climbeth on the highest mountains, laugheth at all tragic plays and tragic realities.

And if ye cannot be saints of knowledge, then, I pray you, be at least its warriors. They are the companions and forerunners of such saintship.

Your enemy shall ye seek; your war shall ye wage, and for the sake of your thoughts! And if your thoughts succumb, your uprightness shall still shout triumph thereby!

Man must become better and more evil.