Friedrich Nietzsche Pain Quotations

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.

One sticks to an opinion because he prides himself on having come to it on his own, and another because he has taken great pains to learn it and is proud to have grasped it: and so both do so out of vanity.

Read from a distant star, the majuscule script of our earthly existence would perhaps lead to the conclusion that the earth was the distinctively ascetic planet, a nook of disgruntled, arrogant creatures filled with a profound disgust with themselves, at the earth, at all life, who inflict as much pain on themselves as they possibly can out of pleasure in inflicting pain which is probably their only pleasure.

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

Only great pain is, as the teacher of great suspicion, the ultimate liberator of the spirit...I doubt whether such pain improves us-but I do know it deepens us.

Every step forward is made at the cost of mental and physical pain to someone.

When somebody dies we usually need reasons for consolation, not so much to alleviate our pain as to excuse ourselves for so readily feeling consoled.

Pain makes hens and poets cackle.

It is only great pain--that slow, sustained pain that takes its time, in which we are, as it were, burned with smoldering green firewood--that forces us philosophers to sink to our ultimate profundity and to do away with all the trust, everything good-natured, veil-imposing, mild and middling, on which we may have previously based our humanity. I doubt that such a pain makes us 'better'--but I know that it makes us deeper.

In pain there is as much wisdom as in pleasure: like the latter it is one of the best self preservatives of a species.

But not to perish from internal distress and doubt when one inflicts great suffering and hears the cry of suffering : that is great, that belongs to greatness.

Examine the life of the best and most productive men and nations, and ask yourselves whether a tree which is to grow proudly skywards can dispense with bad weather and storms. Whether misfortune and opposition, or every kind of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, distrust, severity, greed, and violence do not belong to the favourable conditions without which a great growth even of virtue is hardly possible?

There are few pains so grievous as to have seen, divined, or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and deteriorated

Who can attain to anything great if he does not feel in himself the force and will to inflict great pain?

Did you ever say yes to a pleasure? oh my friends, then you also said yes to all pain. all things are linked, entwined, in love with one another.

Modern science has as its object as little pain as possible, as long a life as possible - hence a sort of eternal blessedness, but of a very limited kind in comparison with the promises of religion.

Man, however, is the most courageous animal: thereby has he overcome every animal. With sound of triumph has he overcome every pain; human pain, however, is the sorest pain.

Good deeds shun the light as anxiously as evil deeds: the latter fear that disclosure will bring on pain (as punishment), while the former fear that disclosure will take away pleasure (that pure pleasure, that pleasure per se, which immediately ceases once the vanity's satisfaction is added).

The wheel and the brake have different duties, but also one in common: to hurt one another.

He who rejoices even at the stake triumphs not over pain but over the absence of pain where he had anticipated feeling it. A parable.

You have not yet suffered enough! For you suffer only from yourselves, you have not yet suffered from man.

O my brothers, am I then cruel? But I say: that which is falling should also be pushed!

You are treading the path to your greatness: no one shall follow you here! Your passage has effaced the path behind you, and above that path stands written: Impossibility.

But this word will I say to my enemies: What is all manslaughter in comparison with what you have done to me!

He who bears injustice alone is terrible to behold.

The ability to suffer is a small matter - weak women and even slaves can acheive virtuosity in that.

I have given a name to my pain, and call it "dog".

Pity is the most pleasant feeling in those who have not much pride, and have no prospect of great conquests: the easy prey - and that is what every sufferer is - is for them an enchanting thing.

Doing ill to those on whom we have to make our power felt; for pain is a far more sensitive means for that purpose than pleasure: pain always asks concerning the cause, while pleasure is inclined to keep within itself and not look backward.

But what if pleasure and pain should be so closely connected that he who wants the greatest possible amount of the one must also have the greatest possible amount of the other, that he who wants to experience the "heavenly high jubilation," must also be ready to be "sorrowful unto death"?

Does not the discipline of the scientific spirit just commence when one no longer harbours any conviction?

Illusions are certainly expensive amusements; but the destruction of illusions is still more expensive, if looked upon as an amusement, as it undoubtedly is by some people.

But are there many honest people who will admit that it is pleasing to give pain?

There is nothing for which men ask to be paid dearer than for humiliation.

One pays dearly for being immortal: one must die many times during his life.

The discipline of suffering, of great suffering - do you not know that it is this discipline alone that has produced all the elevations of humanity so far?

The preponderance of pain over pleasure is the cause of our fictitious morality and religion.

This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!

One unconsciously takes it for granted that doer and sufferer think and feel alike, and according to this supposition we measure the guilt of the one by the pain of the other.

Compulsion precedes morality, indeed morality itself is compulsion for a time, to which one submits for the avoidance of pain.

Insects sting, not from malice, but because they want to live. It is the same with critics; they desire our blood not our pain.