Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher, cultural critic and philologist whose work has exerted a profound influence on modern intellectual history.
Here is a collection of Friedrich Nietzsche most inspiring quotes: Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes about Life, Love, Madness, Music and Darkness. Nietzsche Quotes On Knowledge, Intelligence, Wisdom, Existentialism and Life Purpose. Quotes and sayings on Friendship, Trust, Hatred, Love, Lack of Love, Marriage, Friends and Enemies by Friedrich Nietzsche.
Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes and Sayings
Without music, life would be a mistake.
Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.
Man is the cruelest animal.
The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.
It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.
He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.
The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.
That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.
In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.
I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.
There are no facts, only interpretations.
Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings — always darker, emptier and simpler.
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.
It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!
When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.
I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.
The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.
You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.
In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.
The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
The liar is a person who uses the valid designations, the words, in order to make something which is unreal appear to be real.
Thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!
It is precisely facts that do not exist, only interpretations.
There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how you use them.
I was in darkness, but I took three steps and found myself in paradise. The first step was a good thought, the second, a good word; and the third, a good deed.
Nobody is more inferior than those who insist on being equal.
Enjoy life. This is not a dress rehearsal.
The tree that would grow to heaven must send its roots to hell.
Our greatest experiences are our quietest moments.
No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
Do you want to have an easy life? Then always stay with the herd and lose yourself in the herd.
In loneliness, the lonely one eats himself; in a crowd, the many eat him. Now choose.
One can promise actions, but not feelings, for the latter are involuntary. He who promises to love forever or hate forever or be forever faithful to someone is promising something that is not in his power.
The world is beautiful, but has a disease called man.
If you know the why, you can live any how.
He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures.
My solitude doesn't depend on the presence or absence of people; on the contrary, I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company.
Love your enemies because they bring out the best in you.
So long as men praise you, you can only be sure that you are not yet on your own true path but on someone else's.
I and me are always too deeply in conversation.
The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.
Faith: not wanting to know what the truth is.
Art is the proper task of life.
A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions—as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.
What does your conscience say? — 'You should become the person you are'.
Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.
Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.
There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.
Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.
The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.
Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.
Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.
Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.
The voice of beauty speaks softly; it creeps only into the most fully awakened souls.
We have art in order not to die of the truth.
Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.
One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.
You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?
They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.
All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.
To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.
One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.
All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
Stupidity in a woman is unfeminine.
One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.
A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us.
A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.
After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.
Silence is worse; all truths that are kept silent become poisonous.
There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.
That which is done out of love is always beyond good and evil.
Become who you are!
In truth, there was only one Christian and he died on the cross.
Hope, in reality, is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.
All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down.
Is it better to out-monster the monster or to be quietly devoured?
The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.
I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.
Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.
He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.
Invisible threads are the strongest ties.
Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?
Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders.
To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.
And once you are awake, you shall remain awake eternally.
When you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at you.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.
Throw roses into the abyss and say: 'here is my thanks to the monster who didn't succeed in swallowing me alive.'
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.
All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.
One must give value to their existence by behaving as if ones very existence were a work of art.
Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.
Be careful when you cast out your demons that you don't throw away the best of yourself.
But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthword, downword, into the dark, the deep - into evil.
Live dangerously.
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 also always some reason in madness.
The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts to speak.
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.
I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous — a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.
Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'.
One must not let oneself be misled: they say 'Judge not!' but they send to Hell everything that stands in their way.
I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage
Love is blind. Friendship closes its eyes.
Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second.
Only sick music makes money today.
Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.
I am one thing, my writings are another.
For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.
I obviously do everything to be 'hard to understand' myself
He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster.... when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you.
One loves ultimately one's desires, not the thing desired.
Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not.
The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is called man.
There is an innocence in admiration: it occurs in one who has not yet realized that they might one day be admired.
The spiritualization of sensuality is called love: it is a great triumph over Christianity.
The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.
What is the truth, but a lie agreed upon.
No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.
They call you heartless; but you have a heart and I love you for being ashamed to show it.
There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.
In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.
Of all evil I deem you capable: Therefore I want good from you. Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.
Without forgetting it is quite impossible to live at all.
Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.
He who cannot put his thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of dispute.
At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.
The text has disappeared under the interpretation.
What is the seal of liberation? Not to be ashamed in front of oneself.
I hate who steals my solitude, without really offer me in exchange company.
He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.
You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted.
The end of a melody is not its goal: but nonetheless, had the melody not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.
Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.
One must pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while still alive.
I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.
As long as you still experience the stars as something 'above you', you lack the eye of knowledge.
Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.
A thought comes when it will, not when I will.
A bad conscience is easier to cope with than a bad reputation.
The real world is much smaller than the imaginary.
Close beside my knowledge lies my black ignorance.
I change too quickly: my today refutes my yesterday. When I ascend I often jump over steps, and no step forgives me that.
Your only problem, perhaps, is that you scream without letting yourself cry.
Love, too, has to be learned.
Sensuality often hastens the 'Growth of Love' so much that the roots remain weak and are easily torn up.
The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.
The world itself is the will to power - and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power - and nothing else!
The life of the enemy. Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in the enemy's staying alive.
The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.
You say 'I' and you are proud of this word. But greater than this- although you will not believe in it - is your body and its great intelligence, which does not say 'I' but performs 'I'.
All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.
There is an old illusion. It is called good and evil.
The most spiritual human beings, assuming they are the most courageous, also experience by far the most painful tragedies: but it is precisely for this reason that they honor life, because it brings against them its most formidable weapons.
If a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which always recurs.
Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.
It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.
Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.
It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right - especially when one is right.
We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.
To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities — I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not — that one endures.
Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man - the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.
It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.
Art raises its head where creeds relax.
Everyone who has ever built anywhere a new heaven first found the power thereto in his own hell.
A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.
Truths are illlusions which we have forgotten are illusions.
Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.
A politician divides mankind into two classes: tools and enemies.
For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child.
Of all that is written I love only what a man has written in his own blood.
Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.
The real man wants two different things: danger and play. Therefore he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.
In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.
Love brings to light a lover's noble and hidden qualities-his rare and exceptional traits: it is thus liable to be deceptive of his normal qualities.
The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.
He who obeys, does not listen to himself!
What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.
The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.
There are slavish souls who carry their appreciation for favors done them so far that they strangle themselves with the rope of gratitude.
I am not upset that you lied to me, I am upset that from now on I cannot believe you.
What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.
Most people are far too much occupied with themselves to be malicious.
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?
You say, it's dark. And in truth, I did place a cloud before your sun. But do you not see how the edges of the cloud are already glowing and turning light.
When one has finished building one's house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way - before one began.
Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.
To forget one's purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.
Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen. Few in pursuit of the goal.
Love is not consolation. It is light.
Knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion.
No one lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total absence in our opponent.
Go up close to your friend, but do not go over to him! We should also respect the enemy in our friend.
Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of something it must be profound. It is so timid and dislikes going into the water.
If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.
If we train our conscience, it kisses us while it hurts.
Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.
The vanity of others runs counter to our taste only when it runs counter to our vanity.
I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.
Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?
I am a pure-blooded Polish nobleman without a single drop of bad blood - certainly not German blood.
A joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling.
The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.
Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.
War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.
Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.
Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.
He who possesseth little is so much the less possessed. Blessed be moderate poverty!
Rejoicing in our joy, not suffering over our suffering, makes someone a friend.
I have learned to walk: since then I have run. I have learned to fly: since then I do not have to be pushed in order to move. Now I am nimble, now I fly, now I see myself under myself, now a god dances within me.
Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions.
There is no such thing as moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.
A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.
In the end things must be as they are and have always been - the great things remain for the great, the abysses for the profound, the delicacies and thrills for the refined, and, to sum up shortly, everything rare for the rare.
What really raises one's indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.
There is a certain right by which we many deprive a man of life, but none by which we may deprive him of death; this is mere cruelty.
We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.
From which stars have we fallen to meet each other here?
When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets.
Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach honesty.
Convictions are prisons.
The overman... Who has organized the chaos of his passions, given style to his character, and become creative. Aware of life's terrors, he affirms life without resentment.
You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.
I fear you close by; I love you far away.
At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.
Pardon me, my friends, I have ventured to paint my happiness on the wall.
No one dies of fatal truths nowadays: there are too many antidotes.
The pure soul is a pure lie.
As soon as a religion comes to dominate it has as its opponents all those who would have been its first disciples.
A moral system valid for all is basically immoral.
We labour at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life because it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.
One has to take a somewhat bold and dangerous line with this existence: especially as, whatever happens, we are bound to lose it.
The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness.
Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.
Every profound spirit needs a mask: even more, around every profound spirit a mask is continually growing.
In the mountains of truth, you never climb in vain.
To live alone one must be either a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both - a philosopher.
I love him who seeks to create over and beyond himself and thus perishes.
But I need solitude - which is to say, recovery, return to myself, the breath of a free, light, playful air.
One is fruitful only at the cost of being rich in contradictions.
And if a friend does you wrong, then say: 'I forgive you what you have done to me; that you have done it to YOURSELF, however - how could I forgive that!'
I hate you most because you attract, but are not strong enough to pull me to you.
No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There may be countless trails and bridges and demigods who would gladly carry you across; but only at the price of pawning and forgoing yourself. There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don't ask, walk!
Untroubled, scornful, outrageous - that is how wisdom wants us to be: she is a woman and never loves anyone but a warrior.
When one has not had a good father, one must create one.
In music the passions enjoy themselves.
The desire for a strong faith is not the proof of a strong faith, rather the opposite. If one has it one may permit oneself the beautiful luxury of skepticism: one is secure enough, fixed enough for it.
The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.
Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.
There is a false saying: 'How can someone who can't save himself save others?' Supposing I have the key to your chains, why should your lock and my lock be the same?
No one talks more passionately about his rights than he who in the depths of his soul doubts whether he has any.
This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.
Happiness is the feeling that power increases - that resistance is being overcome.
I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you have still chaos in you.
If we possess a why of life we can put up with almost any how.
Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive.
You tell me: 'Life is hard to bear.' But if it were otherwise why should you have your pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening? Life is hard to bear: but do not pretend to be so tender! We are all of us pretty fine asses and asseses of burden!
To find everything profound - that is an inconvenient trait. It makes one strain one's eyes all the time, and in the end one finds more than one might have wished.
I love the great despisers because they are the great adorers.
No artist tolerates reality.
The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously.
What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure - as a mere automaton of duty?
That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts.
Some men are born posthumously.
The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more you need to seduce the senses to it.
To recognize untruth as a condition of life - that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.
It is not conflict of opinions that has made history so violent but conflict of belief in opinions, that is to say conflict of convictions.
In the end we are always rewarded for our good will, our patience, fair-mindedness, and gentleness with what is strange.
My humanity is a constant self-overcoming.
Those you cannot teach to fly, teach to fall faster.
Oh great star! What would your happiness be if you did not have us to shine for?
Belief means not wanting to know what is true.
The greatest cure for love is still that time honoured medicine - love returned.
Success has always been a great liar.
Love of one is a piece of barbarism: for it is practised at the expense of all others. Love of God likewise.
Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good.
Art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence.
A person must have one or the other. Either a cheerful disposition by nature, or a disposition made cheerful by art and knowledge.
Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.
But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!
A man far oftener appears to have a decided character from persistently following his temperament than from persistently following his principles.
The maturity of man - that means, to have reacquired the seriousness that one had as a child at play.
Those who hear not the music think the dancers mad.
Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.
The wreckage of stars - I built a world from this wreckage.
one does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood.
My formula for happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal.
I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. the will to a system is a lack of integrity.
Every attainment, every step forward in knowledge, follows from courage, from hardness against oneself, from cleanliness in relation to oneself.
Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
What was silent in the father speaks in the son, and often I found in the son the unveiled secret of the father.
We ought to face our destiny with courage.
I notice that Autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature.
How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare?
I am no man, I am dynamite.
He who delights in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
The higher man is distinguished from the lower by his fearlessness and his readiness to challenge misfortune.
Man does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does that.
What is happening to me happens to all fruits that grow ripe. It is the honey in my veins that makes my blood thicker, and my soul quieter.
My genius is in my nostrils.
How much truth can a spirit bear, how much truth can a spirit dare?... that became for me more and more the real measure of value.
Digressions, objections, delight in mockery, carefree mistrust are signs of health.
He who despises himself esteems himself as a self-despiser.
Though I may seem at times somewhat distant from you, through the gray mist of philology, I am never far, my thoughts always circle around you.
One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.
Every talent must unfold itself in fighting.
Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn't.
Do not stay in the field! Nor climb out of sight. The best view of the world Is from a medium height.
I love those who do not know how to live, except by going under, for they are those who cross over.
I overcame myself, the sufferer; I carried my own ashes to the mountains; I invented a brighter flame for myself.
Even the most beautiful scenery is no longer assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some distant coast attracts our avarice: possessions are generally diminished by possession.
Are you a slave? Then you cannot be a friend. Are you a tyrant? Then you cannot have friends.
Whoever thought that he had understood something of me had merely construed something out of me, after his own image.
All that is rare is for the rare.
Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth... Through words and concepts we shall never reach beyond the wall off relations, to some sort of fabulous primal ground of things.
Ten truths must you find during the day; otherwise will you seek truth during the night, and your soul will have been hungry.
There are terrible people who, instead of solving a problem, bungle it and make it more difficult for all who come after. Whoever can't hit the nail on the head should, please, not hit at all.
And to me also, who appreciate life, the butterflies, and soap-bubbles, and whatever is like them amongst us, seem most to enjoy happiness.
When we have to change our mind about a person, we hold the inconvenience he causes us very much against him.
All truth is simple... is that not doubly a lie?
Here the ways of men divide. If you wish to strive for peace of soul and happiness, then believe; if you wish to be a disciple of truth, then inquire.
The great periods of our life occur when we gain the courage to rechristen what is bad about us as what is best.
The noble soul reveres itself.
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.
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