All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Twilight of the Idols
The vanity of others is only counter to our taste when it is counter to our vanity.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Beyond Good and Evil
Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, The Portable Nietzsche
Now the slave emerges as a freeman; all the rigid, hostile walls which either necessity or despotism has erected between men are shattered. Now that the gospel of universal harmony is sounded, each individual becomes not only reconciled to his fellow but actually one with him -- as though the veil of Maya had been torn apart and there remained only shreds floating before the vision of mystical Oneness.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Nietzsche Selections
Looking for work in order to be paid: in civilized countries today almost all men are at one in doing that. For all of them work is a means and not an end in itself. Hence they are not very refined in their choice of work, if only it pays well. But there are, if only rarely, men who would rather perish than work without any pleasure in their work. They are choosy, hard to satisfy, and do not care for ample rewards, if the work itself is not to be the reward of rewards. Artists and contemplative men of all kinds belong to this rare breed, but so do even those men of leisure who spend their lives hunting, traveling, or in love affairs and adventures. All of these desire work and misery only if it is associated with pleasure, and the hardest, most difficult work if necessary. Otherwise their idleness is resolute, even if it spells impoverishment, dishonor, and danger to life and limb. They do not fear boredom as much as work without pleasure.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, The Gay Science
Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself -- in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity -- is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense
Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Beyond Good and Evil
Where there have been powerful governments, societies, religions, public opinions, in short wherever there has been tyranny, there the solitary philosopher has been hated; for philosophy offers an asylum to a man into which no tyranny can force it way, the inward cave, the labyrinth of the heart.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Untimely Meditations
To learn to see -- to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to it; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides. This is the first preparatory schooling of intellectuality. One must not respond immediately to a stimulus; one must acquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Twilight of the Idols
Of what is great one must either be silent or speak with greatness.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, The Will to Power
All mankind is divided, as it was at all times and is still, into slaves and freemen; for whoever has not two-thirds of his day for himself is a slave, be he otherwise whatever he likes, statesman, merchant, official, or scholar.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Complete Works: The First Complete and Authorised English Translation, Volume 6
Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature -- is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality
Resentment, born of weakness, harms no one more than the weak person himself.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Ecce Homo
To stand in the midst of ... this whole marvelous uncertainty and rich ambiguity in existence without questioning, without trembling with the craving and the rapture of such questioning ... that is what I feel to be contemptible, and this is the feeling for which I look first in everybody. Some folly keeps persuading me that every human has this feeling just because he is human.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, attributed, The Gay Science
Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Twilight of the Idols
Keeping up appearances, living in borrowed finery, wearing masks, the drapery of convention, play-acting for the benefit of others and oneself ... the constant fluttering of human beings around the one flame of vanity is so much the rule and the law that there is virtually nothing which defies understanding so much as the fact that an honest and pure drive towards truth should ever have emerged in them. They are deeply immersed in illusions and dream-images; their eyes merely glide across the surface of things and see 'forms'; nowhere does their perception lead to truth.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, The Gay Science
Is it not thy piety itself which no longer letteth thee believe in a God?
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Thus Spake Zarathustra
Pity is the most agreeable feeling among those who have little pride and no prospects of great conquests.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, The Gay Science
Possessions are generally diminished by possession.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, The Gay Science
The first opinion that occurs to us when we are suddenly asked about a matter is usually not our own, but only the customary one, appropriate to our caste, position, or parentage; our own opinions seldom swim near the surface.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Human, All Too Human
A man far oftener appears to have a decided character from persistently following his temperament than from persistently following his principles.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Human, All Too Human
Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, The Will to Power
They vomit their gall and call it a newspaper.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Thus Spake Zarathustra
Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Beyond Good and Evil
At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Thoughts Out of Season
He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, A Nietzsche Reader
His world empire is still, as formerly, an under-world empire, a hospital, a subterranean empire, a Ghetto empire ... And he himself so pale, so weak, so décadent ... even the palest of the pale still became master over him.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, The Case of Wagner: The Twilight of the Idols
The creation of freedom for oneself and a sacred "No" even to duty -- for that, my brothers, the lion is needed.
