H G > H's Quotes

“At a certain place in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, for example, he might feel that he is floating above the earth in a starry dome, with the dream of immortality in his heart; all the stars seem to glimmer around him, and the earth seems to sink ever deeper downwards.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

“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.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

“People are always angry at anyone who chooses very individual standards for his life; because of the extraordinary treatment which that man grants to himself, they feel degraded, like ordinary beings.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

“It is obvious that my head does not stand properly on my shoulders; for it is well known that everyone else knows better than I what I should do and not do: only I, poor rogue, do not know what I should be at. Are we not all like statues with the wrong heads on them? Isn't that so, my dear neighbor? - But no, you, precisely you, are the exception.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

“I am no man, I am dynamite”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

“The more thoroughly a person understands life, the less he will mock, though in the end he might still mock the "thoroughness of his understanding.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

“Among the things that can drive a thinker to despair is the knowledge that the illogical is necessary for man and that much good comes from it. It is so firmly lodged in the passions, in speech, in art, in religion, and generally in everything which endows life with value, that one cannot extricate it without doing irreparable harm to these beautiful things. Only the very naive are capable of thinking that the nature of man can be transformed into a purely logical one; but, if there were degrees of approximation to this goal, how much would not have to vanish along this path! Even the most rational man needs nature again from time to time, that is, his illogical basic attitude to all things.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

“We are so fond of being out among Nature, because it has no opinions about us.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human

“We are primordially illogical and hence unjust beings and can recognise this fact: this is one of the greatest and most baffling discords of existence.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human A Book for Free Spirits

“Man’s complete lack of responsibility, for his behavior and for his nature, is the bitterest drop which the man of knowledge must swallow.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

“Main deficiency of active people. Active men are usually lacking in higher activity-I mean individual activity. They are active as officials, businessmen, scholars, that is, as generic beings, but not as quite particular, single and unique men. In this respect they are lazy.
It is the misfortune of active men that their activity is almost always a bit irrational. For example, one must not inquire of the money-gathering banker what the purpose for his restless activity is: it is irrational. Active people roll like a stone, conforming to the stupidity of mechanics.
Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

“It is precisely he who is becoming who cannot endure the state of becoming.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

“It is not part of the nature of the free spirit that his views are more correct, but rather that he has released himself from tradition, be it successfully or unsuccessfully. Usually, however, he has truth, or at least the spirit of the search for truth, on his side: he demands reasons, while others demand faith.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

“We should not let ourselves be burned to death for our opinions: we are not sure enough of them for that. But perhaps for the right to possess our opinions and to change them.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

“But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I thought: I cannot bear this world a moment longer. Then, child, make another.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment's carelessness. If I had ever believed it, I no longer did.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I would say, some people are like constellations that only touch the earth for a season.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“So many years I had spent as a child sifting his bright features for his thoughts, trying to glimpse among them one that bore my name. But he was a harp with only one string, and the note it played was himself.

“You have always been the worst of my children,” he said. “Be sure to not dishonor me.”

“I have a better idea. I will do as I please, and when you count your children, leave me out.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“A golden cage is still a cage.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“When I was born, the word for what I was did not exist.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“You cannot know how frightened gods are of pain. There is nothing more foreign to them, and so nothing they ache more deeply to see.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“We are sorry, we are sorry.

Sorry you were caught, I said. Sorry that you thought I was weak, but you were wrong.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“But of course I could not die. I would live on, through each scalding moment to the next. This is the grief that makes our kind choose to be stones and trees rather than flesh.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“They do not care if you are good. They barely care if you are wicked. The only thing that makes them listen is power.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Then I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow. I would have done that toil a thousand times to keep such power in my hands.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I stepped into those woods and my life began.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe