In heaven all the interesting people are missing.
When you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
Preaching morals is as easy as giving reasons for morals is difficult.
I demand from a book harmony as unity and moderation; that determines the choice of words, the type and number of metaphors, the development and conclusion.
What have we in common with the rosebud, which trembles because a drop of dew is lying upon it?
Pity is the most agreeable feeling among those who have little pride and no prospects of great conquests.
Whoever gives advice to the sick gains a sense of superiority over them, no matter whether his advice is accepted or rejected. That is why sick people who are sensitive and proud hate their advisors even more than their illnesses.
Nothing succeeds if prankishness has no part in it.
Man is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art.
We ‘conserve' nothing; neither do we want to return to any past; we are by no means ‘liberal'; we are not working for ‘progress'; we don't need to plug our ears to the marketplace's sirens of the future: what they sing – ‘equal rights', ‘free society', ‘no more masters and no servants' – has no allure for us.
I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.
Do you deserve truth? You sure seek it, but do you deserve it? If you want to see real things burning you first have to reach up to the height of the fire.
All of life is a dispute over taste and tasting.
One should only speak where one cannot remain silent, and only speak of what one has conquered —the rest is all chatter, literature, bad breeding.
Giving style to one's character - a great and rare art! It is exercised by those who see all the strengths and weaknesses of their own natures and then comprehend them in an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason and even weakness delights the eye.
Every church is a stone on the grave of a god-man: it does not want him to rise up again under any circumstances.
From the practice of wise men.—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.
The rest is abortion and not-yet-science: which is to say metaphysics, theology, psychology, epistemology.
I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. the will to a system is a lack of integrity.
The way the Americans strive for gold; and their breathless haste in working - the true vice of the new world.
We want to be poets of our life — first of all in the smallest most everyday matters.
What was silent in the father speaks in the son, and often I found in the son the unveiled secret of the father.
Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.
The human being first put values into things, in order to preserve itself—it created a meaning for things, a human's meaning! Therefore it calls itself 'human'—that is: the evaluator.
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.
Do you believe that the sciences could have taken shape and become great if the magicians, the alchemists, the astrologers and the witches had not proceeded them? They who had the first to create, through their promises and deceitful pretences, the thirst, the hunger and taste for hidden and forbidden powers!
Men were thought of as ‘free' so that they could become guilty: consequently, every action had to be thought of as willed, the origin of every action as lying in the consciousness.
There is little of man here; therefore their women strive to be mannish. For only he who is man enough will release the woman in woman.
For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.
There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.
What is the seal of liberation? Not to be ashamed in front of oneself.
Creating—that is the great salvation from suffering, and life's alleviation. But for the creator to appear, suffering itself is needed, and much transformation.
I love those that know not how to live except as down-goers, for they are the over-goers.
Human society: it is an attempt—so I teach—a long seeking: it seeketh however the ruler!— —An attempt, my brethren! And NO "contract"! Destroy, I pray you, destroy that word of the soft-hearted and half-and-half!
Women can form a friendship with a man very well; but to preserve it, a slight physical antipathy most probably helps.
Whenever a great thinker wants to make of himself a binding institution for future mankind, one may be certain that he is past the peak of his powers and is very weary, very close to the setting of his sun.
Not through enmity does enmity come to an end; enmity comes to an end through friendship.
Is he a poet? Or a genuine one? An emancipator? Or a subjugator? A good one? Or an evil one?
He who is a firstling is ever sacrificed.
Injury makes one prudent,' says the proverb; insofar as it makes one prudent it also makes one bad. Fortunately, it frequently makes people stupid.
In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein.
Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded.
Marriage as a long conversation. - When marrying you should ask yourself this question: do you believe you are going to enjoy talking with this woman into your old age? Everything else in a marriage is transitory, but most of the time that you're together will be devoted to conversation.
How does one become stronger? By deciding slowly; and by holding firmly to the decision once it is made. Everything else follows of itself.
Or is it this: To feed on the acorns and grass of knowledge, and for the sake of truth to suffer hunger in one's soul?
Had Nietzsche lived to be burned at the stake by outraged Mississippi Methodists, it would have been a glorious day for his doctrines.
My conception of freedom. — The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it — what it costs us. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions.
A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still.
