Friedrich Nietzsche Lit Quotations

A little wisdom is indeed possible; but this blessed security have I found in all things, that they prefer--to DANCE on the feet of chance.

But the thought is one thing, the deed is another, and another yet is the image of the deed. The wheel of causality does not roll between them.

Pity is the most agreeable feeling among those who have little pride and no prospects of great conquests.

It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.

Genteel women suppose that those things do not really exist about which it is impossible to talk in polite company.

To be ashamed of one's immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one's morality.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.

His (the theologian) basic instinct of self preservation forbids him to respect reality at any point or even to let it get a word in.

Master-morality and Slave-morality.

Pity aims just as little at the pleasure of others as malice at the pain of others Per-Se.

Reality is captured in the categorical nets of Language only at the expense of fatal distortion.

Whether we immoralists do any harm to virtue?-Just as little as anarchists do to princes. It is only because they have been shot at that they once again sit securely on their thrones. Moral: we must shoot at morals.

Although you have so far demonstrated little faith in my ability to pay, I yet hope to demonstrate that I am somebody who pays his debts-for example, to you.

Rash actions are seldom committed in isolation. With the first rash action we always do too much. So we usually go on to commit asecond one--and then we do too little.

Higher than "thou shalt" stands "I will" (the heroes), and higher than "I will" stands "I am" (the Greek gods).

The enjoyment that all morality has given us to now and that it continues to give us--and so, what has kept it going up to now--lies in everyone's right, without lengthy investigation, to praise and blame. And who could endure life without praising and blaming!

In those days it was possible for a Greek to flee from an over-abundant reality as though it were but the tricky scheming off the imagination-and to flee, not like Plato into the land of eternal ideas, into the workshop off the world-creator, feasting one's eyes on the unblemished unbreakable archetypes, but into the rigor mortis off the coldest emptiest concept off all, the concept of being.

Strength is the morality of the man who stands out from the rest, and it is mine.

The doctrine of equality! ... But there is no more venomous poison in existence: for it appears to be preached by justice itself, when it is actually the end of justice ... "Equality to the equal; inequality to the unequal" that would be true justice speaking: and its corollary, "never make the unequal equal".

Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.

In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.

The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

One must shed the bad taste of wanting to agree with many. "Good" is no longer good when one's neighbor mouths it. And how should there be a "common good"! The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common always has little value. In the end it must be as it is and always has been: great things remain for the great, abysses for the profound, nuances and shudders for the refined, and, in brief, all that is rare for the rare.

This is the crux of the moral pessimists: if they really wanted to promote their neighbor's redemption, then they would have to resolve themselves to spoiling existence for him, and thus to being his misfortune; out of pity, they would have to--become evil!

In morality, man treats himself not as individuum but as dividuum.

Respectability offends my taste.

When a man has just been greatly honored and has eaten a little he is the most generous.

Whatever is gold does not glitter. A gentle radiance belongs to the noblest metal.

That whatever a man says, promises, or resolves in passion he must stick to later on when he is cold and sober--this demand is among the heaviest burdens that weigh on humankind.

Men inadvertently comport themselves with nobility when they have grown accustomed to wanting nothing from others and always giving to them.

Whether a man hides his bad qualities and vices or confesses them openly, his vanity wants to gain an advantage by it in both cases: just note how subtly he distinguishes between those he will hide his bad qualities from and those he will face honestly and candidly.

Learn to laugh at yourselves as one must laugh!

He who humbles himself wants to be exalted.

Scholars who become politicians are usually assigned the comic role of having to be the good conscience of state policy.

Logic, too, also rests on assumptions that do not correspond to anything in the real world, e.g., on the assumption that there areequal things, that the same thing is identical at different points in time: but this science arose as a result of the opposite belief (that such things actually exist in the real world). And it is the same with mathematics, which would certainly never have arisen if it had been understood from the beginning that there is no such thing in nature as a perfectly straight line, a true circle, and absolute measure.

We pay dearly for immortality: we die for it more than once during our lifetimes.

Time, space, and causality are only metaphors of knowledge, with which we explain things to ourselves.

Men are cowards when it comes to the "eternally feminine": and the little women know it.

Where the past is venerated the clean and those who clean things up should be kept out. Piety is never happy without a little dust, dirt, and rubbish.

All that the world needs most today, is combined in the most deductive manner in his art; the three great stimulants of exhausted people: brutality, artificiality, and innocence (idiocy).

Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose.

The trodden worm curls up. This testifies to its caution. It thus reduces its chances of being trodden upon again. In the language of morality: Humility.

He who delights in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

Above all, there is no exception to this rule: that the idea of political superiority always resolves itself into the idea of psychological superiority.

Humility has the toughest hide.

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.

It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right --especially when one is right.

All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

Our sense of the tragic waxes and wanes with our sensuality.

Parasitism is the only practice of the church; with its ideal of anaemia, its holiness, draining all blood, all love, all hope for life; the beyond as the will to negate every reality; the cross as the mark of recognition for the most subterranean conspiracy that ever existed-against health, beauty, whatever has turned out well, courage, spirit, graciousness of the soul, against life itself.

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

There are more idols than realities in the world: that is my "evil eye" for this world, which is also my "evil ear"..

Truly, whoever possesses little is that much less possessed: praised be a little poverty!

A little health now and again is the ailing person's best remedy.

Unpleasant, even dangerous, qualities can be found in every nation and every individual: it is cruel to demand that the Jew be an exception. In him, these qualities may even be dangerous and revolting to an unusual degree; and perhaps the young stock-exchange Jew is altogether the most disgusting invention of mankind.

Our vanity would have just that which we do best count as that which is hardest for us. The origin of many a morality.

Sit as little as possible. Give no credence to any thought that was not born outdoors while moving about freely.

Fear is the mother of morality.

I hate who steals my solitude, without really offer me in exchange company.

When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is usually something wrong with her sexuality.

A moral system valid for all is basically immoral.

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.

Solitude makes us tougher towards ourselves and tenderer towards others. In both ways it improves our character.

Without art we would be nothing but foreground and live entirely in the spell of that perspective which makes what is closest at hand and most vulgar appear as if it were vast, and reality itself.

The parasites live where the great have little secret sores.

When one speaks of humanity, the idea is fundamental that this is something which separates and distinguishes man from nature. In reality, however, there is no such separation: "natural" qualities and those called truly "human" are inseparably grown together. Man, in his highest and noblest capacities, is wholly nature and embodies its uncanny dual character. Those of his abilities which are terrifying and considered inhuman may even be the fertile soil out of which alone all humanity can grow in impulse, deed, and work.

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

What Europe owes to the Jews? - Many things, good and bad, and above all one thing of the nature both of the best and the worst: the grand style in morality, the fearfulness and majesty of infinite demands, of infinite significations, the whole Romanticism and sublimity of moral questionableness - and consequently just the most attractive, ensnaring, and exquisite element in those iridescences and allurements to life, in the aftersheen of which the sky of our European culture, its evening sky, now glows - perhaps glows out.

The quality of a marriage is proven by its ability to tolerate an occasional "exception.

Whoever regards human beings as a herd and flees them as swiftly as he can will no doubt be overtaken by them and impaled on theirhorns.

The humanity of famous intellectuals lies in being wrong with gracious courtesy when dealing with those who are not famous.

In our own presence, we all pretend to be simpler than we are: thus we take a break from our fellow human beings.

The perfect woman perpetrates literature as she perpetrates a small sin: as an experiment, in passing, glancing around to see whether anybody notices--and to make sure that somebody notices.

Morality is: the mediocre are worth more than the exceptions ... I abhore Christianity with a deadly hatred.

Morality in Europe today is herd-morality

That roguish and cheerful vice, politeness.

Almost two thousand years, and no new god!

Wherever on earth the religious neurosis has appeared we find it tied to three dangerous dietary demands: solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence.

The man who sees little always sees less than there is to see; the man who hears badly always hears something more than there is to hear.

The great poet draws his creations only from out of his own reality.

A nation usually renews its youth on a political sick-bed, and there finds again the spirit which it had gradually lost in seeking and maintaining power.

Liberalism is the transformation of mankind into cattle.

The vain.- We are like shop windows in which we are continually arranging, concealing or illuminating the supposed qualities other ascribe to us - in order to deceive ourselves.

There are men who desire power simply for the sake of the happiness it will bring; these belong chiefly to political parties.

In solitude there grows what anyone brings into it, the inner beast too. Therefore solitude is inadvisable to many.

'He who seeks may easily get lost himself. It is a crime to go apart and be alone.' Thus speaks the herd.

One man runs to his neighbor because he is looking for himself, and another because he wants to loose himself. Your bad love of yourselves makes solitude a prison for you.

He who possesseth little is so much the less possessed. Blessed be moderate poverty!

Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good.

When you gaze long into the Abyss of Sustainability, the Abyss of Sustainability also gazes into you.

The inability to lie is far from the love of truth.

Virtues are dangerous as vices insofar as they are allowed to rule over one as authorities and not as qualities one develops oneself.

On the tree, Future, we build our nest; and in our solitude eagles shall bring us nourishment in their beaks!

Only individuals have a sense of responsibility.

Let us not underestimate the privileges of the mediocre. As one climbs higher, life becomes ever harder, the coldness increases, responsibility increases.

Every power draws its ultimate consequences at every moment.

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