Friedrich Neitzsche > Quotes

“Far too long hath there been a slave and a tyrant concealed in a woman. On that account woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knoweth only love.

In a woman's love there is injustice and blindness to all she doth not love.

And even in woman's conscious love, there is always surprise and lightening and night , along with the light.”
― Friedrich Neitzsche

“For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is—to live dangerously.”
― Friedrich Neitzsche

“And let each day be a loss to us on which we did not dance once!”
― Friedrich Neitzsche

“Are designations congruent with things? Is language the adequate expression of all realities?
It is only by means of forgetfulness that man can ever reach the point of fancying himself to possess a "truth" of the grade just indicated. If he will not be satisfied with truth in the form of tautology, that is to say, if he will not be content with empty husks, then he will always exchange truths for illusions.”
― Friedrich Neitzsche

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
― Friedrich Neitzsche

“I see thee follow thy path without scorn, without love, with unfathomable eyes, wet and sad as a plummet which has returned to the light insatiated out of every depth—what did it seek down there?—with a bosom that never sighs, with lips that conceal their loathing, with a hand which only slowly grasps: who art thou? what hast thou done?”
― Friedrich Neitzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“You run ahead? Are you doing it as a shepherd? Or as an exception? A third case would be as a fugitive. First question of conscience.

Are you genuine? Or merely an actor? A representative? Or that which is represented? In the end, perhaps you are merely a copy of an actor. Second question of conscience.

Twilight of the idols

Are you one who looks on? Or one who lends a hand? Or one who looks away and walks off? Third question of conscience.

Do you want to walk along? Or walk ahead? Or walk by yourself? One must know what one wants and that one wants. Fourth question of conscience.”
― Friedrich Neitzsche

“Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.”
― Friedrich Neitzsche

“He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.”
― Friedrich Neitzsche

“The genius of the heart, which imposes silence and attention on everything loud and self-conceited, which smoothes rough souls and makes them taste a new longing—to lie placid as a mirror, that the deep heavens may be reflected in them;—the genius of the heart, which teaches the clumsy and too hasty hand to hesitate, and to grasp more delicately; which scents the hidden and forgotten treasure, the drop of goodness and sweet spirituality under thick dark ice, and is a divining rod for every grain of gold, long buried and imprisoned in mud and sand; the genius of the heart, from contact with which every one goes away richer; not favoured or surprised, not as though gratified and oppressed by the good things of others; but richer in himself, newer than before, broken up, blown upon, and sounded by a thawing wind; more uncertain, perhaps, more delicate, more fragile, more bruised, but full of hopes which as yet lack names, full of a new will and current, full of a new ill-will and counter-current [...]”
― Friedrich Neitzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“We have seen how it is originally language which works on the construction of concepts, a labor taken over in later ages by science.”
― Friedrich Neitzsche

“the genius of the heart, which imposes silence and attention on everything loud and self-conceited, which smoothes rough souls and makes them taste a new longing—to lie placid as a mirror, that the deep heavens may be reflected in them;—the genius of the heart, which teaches the clumsy and too hasty hand to hesitate, and to grasp more delicately; which scents the hidden and forgotten treasure, the drop of goodness and sweet spirituality under thick dark ice, and is a divining- rod for every grain of gold, long buried and imprisoned in mud and sand; the genius of the heart, from contact with which every one goes away richer; not favoured or surprised, not as though gratified and oppressed by the good things of others; but richer in himself, newer than before, broken up, blown upon, and sounded by a thawing wind; more uncertain, perhaps, more delicate, more fragile, more bruised, but full of hopes which as yet lack names, full of a new will and current, full of a new ill-will and counter-current”
― Friedrich Neitzsche, Beyond Good and Evil