Philosopher · German · 1844 – 1900 · 217 quotes
Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Philosopher · German · 1844 – 1900
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.
Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn't.
Whoever feels predestined to see and not to believe will find all believers too noisy and pushy: he guards against them.
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.
Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.
Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.
Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded.
Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier and simpler.
The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.
Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?
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.
In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.
We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.
Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.
Whoever despises himself nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.
To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
We have art in order not to die of the truth.
Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.
There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.
Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul.
And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.
When one has not had a good father, one must create one.
One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.
When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets.
Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.
Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.
Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.
I would believe only in a God that knows how to Dance.
There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice.
Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive.
If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
This is what is hardest: to close the open hand because one loves.
Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.
I love those who do not know how to live for today.
War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.
No one lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.
The "kingdom of Heaven" is a condition of the heart - not something that comes "upon the earth" or "after death."
Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.
An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.
All truth is simple... is that not doubly a lie?
He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.
We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.
