Even the pluckiest among us has but seldom the courage of what he really knows.
Courageous, unconcerned, scornful, coercive - so wisdom wisheth us; she is a woman, and ever loveth only a warrior.
To become the founder of a new religion one must be psychologically infallible in one's knowledge of a certain average type of souls who have not yet recognized that they belong together.
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.
Man is the only animal that must be encouraged to live.
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
Even the bravest only rarely have courage for what they really know.
A heart full of courage and cheerfulness needs a little danger from time to time, or the world gets unbearable.
Behind a remarkable scholar we not infrequently find an average human being, and behind an average artist we often find a very remarkable human being.
You lack the courage to be consumed in flames and to become ashes: so you will never become new, and never young again!
I teach you the Overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? ... The time has come for man to set himself a goal. The time has come to plant the seed to his highest hope.
He who has always spared himself much will in the end become sickly of so much consideration. Praised be what hardens!
Strideth over all mountains, and laugheth at all tragedies
One will seldom go wrong if one attributes extreme actions to vanity, average ones to habit, and pretty ones to fear.
The courage of all one really knows comes but late in life.
Everyone becomes brave when he observes one who despairs.
Live dangerously. Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius.
Tragedy is dead! Poetry itself died with it! Away, away with you, puny, stunted imitators! Away with you to Hades, and eat your fill of the old masters' crumbs!
I admire the courage and wisdom of Socrates in everything he did, said--and did not say.
Is not wounded vanity the mother of all tragedies?
Our sense of the tragic waxes and wanes with our sensuality.
It takes physical courage to indulge in wickedness. The "good" are too cowardly to do it.
Brave people may be persuaded to an action by representing it as being more dangerous than it really is.
The ordinary man is as courageous and invulnerable as a hero when he does not recognize any danger, when he has no eyes to see it.Conversely, the hero's only vulnerable spot is on his back, and so exactly where he has no eyes.
This is one of the stout-hearted old warriors: he is angry with civilization because he supposes that its aim is to make all goodthings--honors, treasures, beautiful women--accessible even to cowards.