We must mediterraneanize music.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, and philologist whose work has exerted a profound influence on modern intellectual history.
The self is always hateful.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
The man is nothing, the work is everything.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
To understand all is to despise all.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
One can only think and write while sitting.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
One must kill the passions.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
Art for art's sake.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
It is unworthy of great hearts to spread the turmoil they feel.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
[Attempt at a] critique of Christianity.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
[To make a] critique of philosophy as a nihilistic movement.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
[To make a] critique of the most harmful type of ignorance, morality.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
[The] philosophy of the eternal return.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
[The concept of] the will to power.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
The value of a thing sometimes lies not in what one gains by obtaining it, but in what one pays for it, in what it costs.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize With a Hammer
To instinctively choose what is harmful to us, to be seduced by 'disinterested' motives, that is almost the formula for decadence.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize With a Hammer
It is all over with man when he becomes altruistic.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize With a Hammer
To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize With a Hammer
One ought, out of love for life, to want a different kind of death, free, conscious, not accidental, not a surprise.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize With a Hammer
The abyss between man and man, [...] the multiplicity of types, the will to be, to stand out, what I call the pathos of distance, is characteristic of every strong age.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize With a Hammer
For what is freedom? It is to have the will to take personal responsibility, it is to tenaciously maintain the distances that separate us [...].
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize With a Hammer
One must need to be strong, otherwise one never becomes strong.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize With a Hammer
We live for today, we live very fast, we live very irresponsibly: that is precisely what is called freedom.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize With a Hammer
If you want an end, you must also want the means. If you want slaves, you are a fool to raise them as masters.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize With a Hammer
Great men, like great epochs, are explosive materials in which a tremendous force is accumulated.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize With a Hammer
The criminal type is the type of the strong man placed in unfavorable conditions, a strong man who has become sick.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize With a Hammer
The doctrine of equality! But there is no more venomous poison, for it seems to be preached by justice itself, whereas it is the end of all justice.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize With a Hammer
That no use can be made of them is perhaps the very essence of greatness.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize With a Hammer
My pride is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book—what everyone else does not say in a book...
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize With a Hammer
To write better means at the same time to think better; to discover things that are ever more worthy of being communicated and to truly know how to communicate them.
1879
Source: The Wanderer and his Shadow
The gait of one's sentences indicates if the author is tired.
1879
Source: The Wanderer and his Shadow
Never read anything by those arrogant polymaths and muddled minds who have the most horrible flaw, that of the logical paradox.
1879
Source: The Wanderer and his Shadow
The grand style is born when the beautiful wins victory over the enormous.
1879
Source: The Wanderer and his Shadow
In all works of art there must be something like bread, in order for them to bring together different effects [...].
1879
Source: The Wanderer and his Shadow
I no longer want to read an author where you can tell he wanted to make a book. I will only read those whose ideas unexpectedly became a book.
1879
Source: The Wanderer and his Shadow
He who puts on paper what he suffers becomes a sad author; but he becomes a grave author if he tells us what he suffered and why he now rests in joy.
1879
Source: The Wanderer and his Shadow
To correct style is to correct thought, and nothing more!
1879
Source: The Wanderer and his Shadow
To want to show more feeling for a thing than one really has destroys style. [...] All great art has, rather, the opposite inclination.
1879
Source: The Wanderer and his Shadow
To dance in chains: to face difficulties, then to spread over them the illusion of ease—that is the master stroke that [artists] want to show us.
1879
Source: The Wanderer and his Shadow
The more joyful and self-assured the mind becomes, the more a person unlearns loud laughter; in its place, an intellectual smile constantly appears [...].
1879
Source: The Wanderer and his Shadow
Mediocrity is the happiest mask the superior spirit can wear, because the great majority [...] does not suspect it is a disguise.
1879
Source: The Wanderer and his Shadow
Not every end is a goal. The end of the melody is not its goal; and yet, if the melody has not reached its end, it has not reached its goal. A symbol.
1879
Source: The Wanderer and his Shadow
Forgetting one's intentions is the most common form of stupidity.
1879
Source: The Wanderer and his Shadow
One must not [...] scorn or mock what one proposes to abolish for good, but rather place it respectfully on ice [...], considering that ideas have a very tenacious life.
1879
Source: The Wanderer and his Shadow
There is no more dangerous error than to mistake the effect for the cause: I call that the true perversion of reason.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
Every proposition formulated by religion and morality contains this error; priests and moral legislators are the promoters of this perversion of reason.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
His virtue is the consequence of his happiness...
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
When a people perishes, degenerates physiologically, vices and luxury [...] are the consequence.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
Everything that is good comes from instinct — and is, therefore, light, necessary, free.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
The 'inner world' is full of mirages and deceptive lights: the will is one of these mirages.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
The self has become a legend, a fiction, a play on words: it has completely ceased to think, feel, and want!...
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
To trace something unknown back to something known is alleviating, soothing, and satisfying to the mind, and it also produces a feeling of power.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
Any explanation is better than a lack of explanation.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
The instinct for causality thus depends on the feeling of fear that produces it.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
Morality and religion belong entirely to the physiology of error.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
The doctrine of the will has been invented essentially for the purpose of punishment, that is, with the intention of finding guilt.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
Christianity is a metaphysics of the hangman...
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
No one is responsible for man's being there at all [...]. The fatality of his being is not to be separated from the fatality of all that has been and all that will be.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
One is necessary, one is a piece of destiny, one belongs to the whole, one is in the whole—there is nothing which could judge, measure, compare, or condemn our being [...].
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
I carried keys with me, the rustiest of all keys; and with them I knew how to open the most creaking of doors.
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
Even when the long twilight and mortal weariness come, you will not disappear from our sky, you affirmer of life!
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
If you take away a hunchback's hump, you take away his spirit at the same time.
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
Truly, my friends, I walk among men as among fragments and limbs of men!
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
How could I bear to be a man, if man were not also a poet, a solver of riddles, and a redeemer of chance!
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
To redeem what is past, and to transform every 'it was' into 'thus I willed it!' — that alone I would call redemption!
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
All 'that was' is a fragment, a riddle, and a dreadful accident — until the creative will adds: 'But thus I willed it!'
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
It is difficult to live among men, because it is so difficult to be silent. Especially for a talkative person.
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
It is not the height: it is the slope that is terrible!
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
He who does not want to die of thirst among men must learn to drink from every glass; and he who wants to remain pure among men must learn to wash himself with dirty water.
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
Is not wounded vanity the mother of all tragedies? But where pride is wounded, something better than it grows.
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
I have found the wickedness of men to be below its reputation.
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
To accomplish great things is difficult: but what is more difficult still is to command great things.
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
It is the most silent words that bring the storm. Thoughts that come on doves' feet guide the world.
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
He who wants to become a child must also overcome his youth.
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
One must never ask if truth is useful, if it may become a destiny for someone...
1888
Source: The Antichrist (Nietzsche)
We are sick of this modernity—sick of this unhealthy peace, of this cowardly compromise, of all this virtuous uncleanliness of the modern yes and no.
1888
Source: The Antichrist (Nietzsche)
Here is the formula for our happiness: a yes, a no, a straight line, a goal...
1888
Source: The Antichrist (Nietzsche)
What is good? — All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself.
1888
Source: The Antichrist (Nietzsche)
What is bad? — All that is rooted in weakness.
1888
Source: The Antichrist (Nietzsche)
What is happiness? — The feeling that power increases — that a resistance is overcome.
1888
Source: The Antichrist (Nietzsche)
The weak and the failures shall perish: first principle of our love of man. And they should be helped to perish!
1888
Source: The Antichrist (Nietzsche)
'Progress' is merely a modern idea, which is to say, a false idea.
1888
Source: The Antichrist (Nietzsche)
Life itself is to me an instinct for growth, for duration, for accumulation of forces, for power: where the will to power is lacking there is decline.
1888
Source: The Antichrist (Nietzsche)
Pity stands in opposition to the tonic emotions which heighten our vitality: it has a depressive effect. We lose strength when we feel pity.
1888
Source: The Antichrist (Nietzsche)
A virtue must be our own invention, our most personal defense and necessity: in any other sense it is merely a danger.
1888
Source: The Antichrist (Nietzsche)
What is more ruinous than to work, think, feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal choice, without pleasure, as an automaton of 'duty'?
1888
Source: The Antichrist (Nietzsche)
It is, in itself, a matter of profound indifference whether a thing be true, but it is of the highest importance whether it is believed to be true.
1888
Source: The Antichrist (Nietzsche)
When one places the center of gravity of life not in life but in the 'beyond'—in nothingness—one has deprived life of its center of gravity altogether.
1888
Source: The Antichrist (Nietzsche)
Christianity is an insurrection of everything that crawls, against that which is elevated: the gospel of the 'lowly' makes low.
1888
Source: The Antichrist (Nietzsche)
Here is the most difficult thing: to close the open hand out of love, and to preserve modesty in giving.
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
My doctrine is in danger, the tares want to call themselves wheat.
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
I have lost my friends; the hour has come to seek those I have lost!
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
My happiness is foolish and it will speak only follies: it is still too young — so be patient with it!
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
I am bruised by my happiness: may all who suffer be my physicians!
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
For too long solitude has possessed me: thus I have unlearned silence.
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
I have become entirely like a mouth [...] I want to hurl my words into the valleys.
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
How could a river not find its way to the sea at last?
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
There is indeed a lake in me, a solitary lake which is sufficient to itself; but the torrent of my love carries it along [...] to the sea!
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
My spirit no longer wants to run on worn-out soles.
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
All language speaks too slowly for me: — I leap into your chariot, storm!
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
How I now love everyone to whom I can speak! My enemies, too, contribute to my bliss.
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
In truth, my happiness and my freedom surge forth like a storm!
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
May my lioness wisdom learn to roar with tenderness!
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
My wild wisdom was conceived on the lonely mountains [...] upon your love, it would like to shelter what it holds most dear!
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Idleness is the mother of all psychology. What? Is psychology then a... vice?
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
The most courageous among us only rarely has the courage to affirm what he truly knows...
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
To live alone one must be a beast or a god - says Aristotle. The third case is missing: one must be both, one must be - a philosopher...
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
Wisdom sets limits, even for knowledge.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
What does not kill me makes me stronger.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
Do not commit cowardice with regard to your actions! [...] A guilty conscience is indecent.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
If one has one's 'why?' of life, one can get along with almost any 'how?'.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
I am wary of all systematisers and I avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
Without music, life would be a mistake.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
Only thoughts that come to you while walking are of any value.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
I searched for great men, and I always found only the apes of their own ideal.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
Formula for my happiness: a yes, a no, a straight line, a goal...
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
The "apparent world" is the only real one: the "true world" is merely added by a lie...
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
To attack passion at its root is to attack life at its root...
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
No one is responsible for the fact that man exists [...]. One is necessary, one is a piece of destiny, one belongs to the whole, one is in the whole.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
For the poet and the wise man, all things are familiar and sanctified, all events useful, all days sacred, all men divine.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
The final writing [of The Gay Science was] completed, in a single month, [...] during 'the most beautiful of all Januaries'.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
Nietzsche calls his volume 'the gift of this single month'.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
The point being in the rhyme, or at least in the consonance and the choice of words, the idea vanishes as soon as the terms are changed.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
One must not sacrifice the idea to the necessity of rhyme.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
Vogelfrei means both 'free as a bird' and 'outlaw'.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
You look up when you long for elevation. And I look down because I am elevated. Who among you can laugh and be elevated at the same time?
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
I am a traveler and a mountain climber, [...] I do not like the plains and it seems I cannot stay still for long.
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
One ends up living only what is within oneself.
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
The time is past when accidents could still happen to me; and what could still befall me that is not already my own?
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
And if from now on all ladders fail you, you must know how to climb on your own head: how else would you want to climb higher?
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
Blessed be that which makes one hard! I do not praise the land where butter and honey flow!
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
To see many things one must learn to look away from oneself: — this hardness is necessary for all who climb mountains.
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
Love is the danger of the loneliest; love for anything, provided it lives!
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
Courage also kills dizziness at the edge of abysses: and where would man not be at the edge of abysses? Even to look — is that not to look into abysses?
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
All truth is curved, time itself is a circle.
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
Where one can no longer love, one should — pass by!
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
There is much hidden strength and goodness that are never guessed; the most delicate dishes find no connoisseurs.
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
He who wants to learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance: one cannot learn to fly straight away!
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
'This — is now my way, — where is yours?' [...] For the way — the way does not exist.
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
Man is something that must be overcome.
1883-1885
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1898 Edition)
Tradition states [...] that Tragedy arose from the tragic chorus, and was originally only chorus and nothing but chorus.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
The true spectator [...] must always be fully aware that what is before him is a work of art, and not an empirical reality.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
The spectator without a spectacle is an absurd concept.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
The introduction of the chorus is the decisive act by which war was loyally and openly declared on all naturalism in art.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
With our current veneration for the natural and the real, we have [...] reached the antipodes of idealism, that is, the region of wax museums.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
The satyr, as a Dionysian chorist, lives in a religious reality recognized under the sanction of myth and cult.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
The satyr, this imaginary natural entity, is to civilized man what Dionysian music is to civilization.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
Metaphysical consolation [...] the thought that life, at the bottom of things, despite the variability of appearances, remains imperturbably powerful and full of joy.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
He had contemplated with a penetrating eye the dreadful cataclysms of what is called world history, and recognized the cruelty of nature.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
Art saves him, and through art — life wins him back.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
Knowledge kills action; for action, the mirage of illusion is necessary — this is what Hamlet teaches us.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
It is true knowledge, the vision of the horrible truth, that annihilates any impulse, any motive for action.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
Under the influence of contemplated truth, man now perceives everywhere only the horror and absurdity of existence.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
In this imminent peril of the will, art approaches as a saving god, bringing the helping balm.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
Art alone has the power to transmute this disgust [...] with existence into ideal images, by means of which life is made possible.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
Carefree, mocking, violent—thus wisdom wants us. She is a woman, and she will never love any but a warrior.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
[...] the essential character of the human will, its horror vacui: it needs a goal—and it will rather will nothingness than not will at all.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
Between chastity and sensuality there is not necessarily an opposition; every good marriage, every serious passion of the heart is above this opposition.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
An artist [...] only reaches the final summit of his greatness when he knows how to look down on himself and his art—when he knows how to laugh at himself.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
One will certainly do well to separate the artist from his work to such an extent that it will not be possible to take him as seriously as his work.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
A perfect and complete artist is forever separated from the 'real' [...] and then he sometimes makes the attempt to cross over into a world forbidden to him, the real world, to want to be real.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
Beauty is a promise of happiness.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
Every animal, the philosophical beast like any other, strives instinctively for an optimum of favorable conditions under which it can fully release its power and achieve its maximum feeling of power.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
A married philosopher belongs in comedy, that is my thesis.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
One recognizes the philosopher by his avoidance of three shiny and noisy things: fame, princes, and women; which is not to say that they do not come to him.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
All good things were once bad things; every original sin has become an original virtue.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
Man is sicker, more uncertain, more changeable [...] he is the sick animal par excellence: where does this come from? Assuredly, he has dared more, innovated more, defied more, provoked destiny more than all the other animals combined.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
The sick are the greatest danger for the healthy; it is not from the strongest that the misfortunes of the strong come, but from the weakest.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
"I am suffering: someone must be to blame for it"—thus reasons every sick sheep.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds included) as he digests his meals, even when he has had to swallow tough morsels.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
All that exists is just and unjust, and in both cases equally justifiable.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
all individuals are comic as individuals and, therefore, not tragic.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
the state of individuation as the source and primordial origin of all evil.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
From this Dionysus's smile the gods were born; from his tears, men.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
it is the fate of every myth to degenerate gradually into a so-called historical reality [...].
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
this is how religions are accustomed to die: when [...] the feeling for myth perishes, to be replaced by religion's tendency to seek historical foundations.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
With tragedy, the Hellene lost faith in his own immortality; [...] not only faith in an ideal past, but also faith in an ideal future.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
Why should the artist feel obliged to submit to a power which has its strength only in numbers?
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
[The] supreme dogma [of aesthetic Socratism] is roughly this: 'To be beautiful, everything must be rational' [...].
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
'Virtue is knowledge; one sins only out of ignorance; the virtuous man is the happy man.' These three principles of optimism are the death of tragedy.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
Perhaps [...] that which is not comprehensible to me is not thereby the incomprehensible? Perhaps there is a realm of wisdom from which the logician is banished?
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
[The illusion that] thought, following the thread of causality, can penetrate the deepest abysses of Being, and that it has the power not only to know but even to correct existence.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
Lessing, the most honest theoretical man, dared to say that he took more delight in the search for truth than in truth itself.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
science, spurred by its powerful illusion, speeds irresistibly to its limits, where its optimism [...] is wrecked and shattered.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
The metaphysical joy in the tragic is a translation of the instinctively unconscious Dionysian wisdom into the language of the symbol.
1872
Source: The Birth of Tragedy
What is the first and last requirement of a philosopher for himself? To overcome his time and to place himself 'outside of time'.
1888
Source: The Case of Wagner
I am [...] a child of this age, I mean a decadent: with this difference, that I have realized it and have put myself on the defensive.
1888
Source: The Case of Wagner
If one has seen clearly the symptoms of decadence, one will also understand the essence of morality—one will understand what is hidden beneath its most sacred names [...]: impoverished life, the will to perish, the great weariness. Morality is the negation of life...
1888
Source: The Case of Wagner
The philosopher [...] must be the bad conscience of his time—that is why he must know his time.
1888
Source: The Case of Wagner
'All that is good is light, all that is divine runs on delicate feet': the first thesis of my Aesthetics.
1888
Source: The Case of Wagner
Has it been noticed that music sets the mind free? That it gives wings to thought? That one becomes more of a philosopher the more one is a musician?
1888
Source: The Case of Wagner
Love [...] is of all feelings the most selfish, and consequently, when wounded, the least generous.
1888
Source: The Case of Wagner
The danger for the artist, for the man of genius [...] the danger lies in woman: loving women are their ruin.
1888
Source: The Case of Wagner
To consider what is harmful as harmful, to be able to forbid oneself something harmful, is still a sign of youth, of vital force. The exhausted person feels attracted to what is harmful[...]
1888
Source: The Case of Wagner
What characterizes all literary decadence? The fact that life no longer resides in the whole. The word becomes sovereign [...], the page comes to life at the expense of the whole—the whole is no longer a whole.
1888
Source: The Case of Wagner
One is an actor when one has an advantage over the rest of humanity: it is to have realized that what must produce an impression of truth does not have to be true.
1888
Source: The Case of Wagner
Wagner's music, if stripped of the protection of theatrical taste, [...] is simply bad music, perhaps the worst music ever made.
1888
Source: The Case of Wagner
Aesthetics is inextricably linked to these biological premises: there is an aesthetic of decadence, there is a classical aesthetic—the 'beautiful in itself' is a chimera, like all idealism.
1888
Source: The Case of Wagner
One does not refute Christianity; one does not refute a disease of the eyes.
1888
Source: The Case of Wagner
Modern man represents, from a biological point of view, a contradiction of values; he sits between two chairs, he says yes and no in the same breath.
1888
Source: The Case of Wagner
Every philosophy also hides a philosophy; every opinion is also a retreat, every word a mask.
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
Man [...] invented the good conscience to finally enjoy his soul as a simple thing.
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
All of morality is a long, audacious falsification, by which a pleasure in the sight of the soul becomes possible.
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
A philosopher: [...] who often runs away from himself, is often afraid of himself… but is too curious not to 'always come back to himself'.
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
If a man [born to rule] feels compassion, well! that compassion has value! But what does the compassion of those who suffer matter!
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
There is today [...] a veritable cult of suffering.
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
The gods are mockers: it even seems they cannot help but laugh during sacred ceremonies.
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
[The genius of the heart] polishes rough souls and gives them a new desire to savor [...] to be still, like a mirror, so that the deep sky may be reflected in them.
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
I often ponder ways to make him [man] stronger, more wicked, and more profound than he is.
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
We men, we are—more human [than the gods].
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
We immortalize what can no longer live or fly for long, only things that are weary and worn out!
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
If you were once young, here you are—so much younger now!
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
They are no longer friends, they are—what am I saying?—ghosts of friends!
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
Only he who transforms himself remains my kinsman.
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
I have never reflected on questions that are not questions, I have never wasted myself.
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
To hold in honor something that does not succeed, precisely because it has not succeeded—that would be much more in keeping with my morality.
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
God [...] is, in short, nothing but a clumsy prohibition: Thinking is forbidden!
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
The German spirit is an indigestion; it can never be done with anything.
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
Sit as little as possible; do not trust any idea that was not born in the open air and of free movement.
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
All prejudices come from the intestines.
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
Genius is conditioned by dry air, by a clear sky [...].
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
It is not doubt, it is certainty that drives one mad.
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
I know of no reading more heart-rending than Shakespeare: how a man must have suffered to have such a need to play the clown!
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
The world is poor for one who has never been sick enough to taste this 'heavenly delight'.
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
To refrain from seeing certain things, from hearing them, from letting them approach you—the first command of wisdom [...].
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
First thing in the morning [...] to read a book then, I call that a vice!
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
To become what one is, one must not have the slightest notion of what one is.
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
I know no other way of dealing with great tasks than play.
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
My formula for human greatness is amor fati. [...] One must not only bear what is necessary [...] one must also love it...
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
The artist clearly understood the mission that was addressed only to him, to restore to myth its virile nature and to deliver music, to force it to speak.
1876
Source: Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (trans. Baumgartner)
Where are you, you who suffer as I do, and whose needs are my own? [...] The solitary individual thirsted for the community.
1876
Source: Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (trans. Baumgartner)
A musician who writes and thinks was then nonsense to everyone; they cried out: he is a theorist who wants to transform art with subtle ideas, let him be stoned!
1876
Source: Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (trans. Baumgartner)
...nothingness is surely preferable to something repugnant!
1876
Source: Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (trans. Baumgartner)
[The artist] sees suffering as part of the essence of things, and, having become less personal, so to speak, he bears his share of suffering more patiently.
1876
Source: Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (trans. Baumgartner)
Through his art, [the artist] no longer speaks to a public or a people, but only to himself, [...] necessary for such a grandiose dialogue.
1876
Source: Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (trans. Baumgartner)
If art is [...] only the power to communicate to others what one has felt oneself, [...] the artist's greatness must consist precisely in this superhuman communicability of his nature.
1876
Source: Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (trans. Baumgartner)
Myth is not based on a thought [...], but is itself a thought; it gives an idea of the world, but through a series of facts, actions, and sufferings.
1876
Source: Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (trans. Baumgartner)
In real life, passion is rarely eloquent; in spoken drama it is forced to be so in order to manifest itself in any way.
1876
Source: Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (trans. Baumgartner)
One could say [of the artist] that he has given a voice to everything in nature that had hitherto refused to speak; he does not believe in the necessary existence of anything mute.
1876
Source: Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (trans. Baumgartner)
Never is [the artist] more himself than when difficulties accumulate and he can act in gigantic conditions with the noble joy of a legislator.
1876
Source: Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (trans. Baumgartner)
In the face of the work [...], one thinks neither of what is interesting, nor of what is entertaining, [...] nor of art in general; one only feels what is necessary about it.
1876
Source: Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (trans. Baumgartner)
Passion is better than stoicism and hypocrisy; that being honest, even in evil, is better than losing oneself out of respect for conventional morality.
1876
Source: Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (trans. Baumgartner)
He who wants to be free must become so through himself, and freedom is for no one a miraculous gift falling effortlessly from the hands of the gods.
1876
Source: Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (trans. Baumgartner)
Who among you, knowing and seeing that power is evil, would be ready to renounce power?
1876
Source: Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (trans. Baumgartner)
The economy of goodness is the dream of the most adventurous utopians.
1878
Source: Human, All Too Human (Part 1)/Complete Text
One will find much more happiness in the world than somber eyes see, [...] if only one does not forget those moments of good cheer with which every day in every human life is rich [...].
1878
Source: Human, All Too Human (Part 1)/Complete Text
The thirst for pity is a thirst for self-enjoyment, and this at the expense of one's fellow human beings.
1878
Source: Human, All Too Human (Part 1)/Complete Text
When a man for a very long time wants [...] to appear to be something, it becomes difficult for him in the end to be anything else.
1878
Source: Human, All Too Human (Part 1)/Complete Text
Men believe in the truth of all that is obviously believed with force.
1878
Source: Human, All Too Human (Part 1)/Complete Text
Why do men [...] tell the truth? [...] because it is easier, as lying requires invention, dissimulation, and memory.
1878
Source: Human, All Too Human (Part 1)/Complete Text
In morality, man treats himself not as an individuum, but as a dividuum.
1878
Source: Human, All Too Human (Part 1)/Complete Text
One can promise actions, but not feelings, for the latter are involuntary.
1878
Source: Human, All Too Human (Part 1)/Complete Text
To have a thought of revenge, without the strength or courage to carry it out, is to drag along a chronic illness, a poisoning of the body and soul.
1878
Source: Human, All Too Human (Part 1)/Complete Text
[...] Hope: it is in truth the worst of evils, because it prolongs the torments of men.
1878
Source: Human, All Too Human (Part 1)/Complete Text
The ascetic makes a virtue of necessity.
1878
Source: Human, All Too Human (Part 1)/Complete Text
When virtue has slept, it will rise fresher.
1878
Source: Human, All Too Human (Part 1)/Complete Text
Most men are far too busy with themselves to be wicked.
1878
Source: Human, All Too Human (Part 1)/Complete Text
There is a right that allows us to take a man's life, but there is none that allows us to take his death from him: that is pure cruelty.
1878
Source: Human, All Too Human (Part 1)/Complete Text
Good actions are sublimated evil actions: evil actions are good actions crudely, foolishly performed.
1878
Source: Human, All Too Human (Part 1)/Complete Text
As an aesthetic phenomenon, existence is still bearable to us [...].
1882
Source: The Gay Science
We must also be able to place ourselves above morality [...], but also to be able to soar and play above it!
1882
Source: The Gay Science
God is dead: but, given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
Let us beware of saying that there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is no one who commands, no one who obeys, no one who transgresses.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
Life is not an argument; among the conditions of life might be error.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
We have left the land and have gone aboard! We have broken the bridge behind us—better still, we have broken the land behind us!
1882
Source: The Gay Science
God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!
1882
Source: The Gay Science
This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering—it has not yet reached the ears of men.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
The Christian resolve to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
He who knows that he is profound strives for clarity; he who would like to seem profound to the crowd strives for obscurity.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
What, in the end, are man's truths? — They are his irrefutable errors.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
What does your conscience say? — 'You must become who you are.'
1882
Source: The Gay Science
What is the seal of realized liberty? — To be no longer ashamed of oneself.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things [...]. Amor fati: let that be my love from now on.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
We have reconquered the good courage to err, to try, to take things provisionally [...] We have the right to experiment with ourselves!
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
In one man, passion unleashes the wild beast, horrible and intolerable; another is raised by it to a height, a breadth, and a splendor of attitude that make his customary existence seem petty.
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
Truth must be able to fight, and have an opposition, and one must be able to rest from it from time to time in the non-true—otherwise it would become for us boring, tasteless, and powerless.
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
Open your theatrical eye, the great third eye that looks at the world through the other two.
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
What good is a thinker who does not know how to escape from his own virtues on occasion!
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
One must fear the one who hates himself, for we will be the victims of his anger and his revenge. Let us then be careful to lead him to love himself!
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
To hear daily what is said about us, or even to seek to discover what is thought of us, ends up annihilating the strongest man.
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
To everything a man lets become visible, one can ask: what does he want to hide? From what does he want to avert his gaze? What prejudice does he want to evoke?
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
Certain losses communicate to the soul a sublimity that makes it abstain from all complaint and walk in silence, like tall black cypresses.
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
The snake that cannot shed its skin perishes. Likewise, spirits who are prevented from changing their opinions cease to be spirits.
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
The higher we rise, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
One can act with one's instincts like a gardener and [...] cultivate the seeds of anger, pity, subtlety, vanity, to make them productive [...]. All this is open to us: but how many know that it is open to us?
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
Loyal to ourselves and to whatever is our friend; brave in the face of the enemy; generous to the vanquished; polite—always: thus the four cardinal virtues would have us be.
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
Mastery is reached when one neither makes a mistake nor hesitates in the execution.
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
Where do we want to go? Do we want to cross the sea? Where is this powerful passion, which for us outweighs all other passions, taking us?
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
O high noon of life! [...] Restless happiness, standing and listening; I await friends, ready night and day.
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
What kingdom could be vaster than mine? And of my honey—who has tasted it?...
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
What I am, friends—would I not be that for you?
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
Could I be another? A stranger to myself? [...] A fighter who has too often had to overcome himself?
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
Wounded and halted by his own victory?
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
I learned to dwell where no one dwells, in the arid zones, forgetting man, God, blasphemy, and prayer.
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
Here, in this kingdom of ice and rocks, one must be a hunter and like the chamois.
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
Your hope remains strong: for new friends keep your gates open! And leave the old ones!
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
If you were once young, you are now—young in a better way!
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
Who can read the faded signs that love once inscribed there?
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
They are no longer friends, they are—what am I saying?—ghosts of friends!
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
Only he who transforms himself remains my kin.
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
O high noon of life, O second youth!
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
It was noon, when one became two…
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
The world laughs, the black curtain is torn, light has united with darkness…
1886
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
The idea that 'the criminal deserves punishment because he could have acted differently' is in fact a very late form of human judgment; whoever places it at the beginning of history misunderstands the psychology of primitive humanity.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
For the longest period of human history, the wrongdoer was not punished because he was held responsible [...] rather, punishment was meted out from anger at some harm done.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
The compensation [of punishment] therefore consists of a warrant for and a right to cruelty.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
The moral conceptual world of 'guilt,' 'conscience,' 'duty,' 'sacredness of duty' has its origin [in the law of obligations]; in its beginnings, [...] it was watered extensively and abundantly with blood.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more so — this is a hard truth, but an old, mighty, human, all-too-human one.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
Without cruelty there is no festival: thus the oldest and longest history of man teaches us — and in punishment too there is so much that is festive!
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
The darkening of the sky over man has always increased in proportion to the shame man has felt at the sight of man.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
What is revolting about suffering is not suffering in itself, but the meaninglessness of suffering.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
If the power of a community grows, its penal law will always become milder; as soon as any weakening manifests, the harsher forms of penalty reappear.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
Justice [...] ends, like everything excellent in this world, by destroying itself. This self-destruction of justice [...] is called grace.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
The active, aggressive, even violently aggressive man is still a hundred times closer to justice than the 'reactive' man.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
Only that which has no history can be defined.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
Punishment tames man, but it does not make him 'better'; one might with more reason assert the opposite.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
I regard bad conscience as the profound illness that man was bound to contract when he found himself finally enclosed within the walls of society and of peace.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
All instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn inward — this is what I call the internalization of man: thus it was that man first developed what was later called his 'soul'.
1887
Source: On the Genealogy of Morality
Tropical harvest, last harvest!…
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
[...] now for serious matters.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
We must Mediterraneanize music.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
Wagner is a neurotic.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
The self is always hateful.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
The man is nothing, the work is everything.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
To understand all is to despise all.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
One can only think and write while seated.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
One must kill the passions.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
It is unworthy of great hearts to spread the turmoil they feel.
1888
Source: Twilight of the Idols
A 'scientific' interpretation of the world [...] could therefore be one of the most stupid, that is to say the most meaningless, of all possible interpretations of the world.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
An essentially mechanical world would be an essentially meaningless world!
1882
Source: The Gay Science
It is impossible for us to see around our own corner: it is a hopeless curiosity that wants to know what other kinds of intellects and perspectives there might be.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
The world [...] has once again become infinite for us: insofar as we cannot refute the possibility that it contains infinite interpretations.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
We modern men are cautious [...] about ultimate convictions; our mistrust lies in wait against the deceptions of conscience inherent in any strong belief.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
Then the pace of life slows down, it becomes thick and heavy with honey—all the way to long rests, to the faith in the long rest...
1882
Source: The Gay Science
We children of the future, how could we be at home in this today!
1882
Source: The Gay Science
We 'conserve' nothing, we do not want to return to any past, we are not in any way 'liberal', we do not work for 'progress' [...].
1882
Source: The Gay Science
For any strengthening, for any elevation of the 'man' type, a new kind of enslavement is necessary.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
We will draw what is thrown at us into our depths—for we are deep, we do not forget—and we become clear again...
1882
Source: The Gay Science
To consider our morality from a distance [...], one must act like the traveler who wants to know the height of a city's towers: for that, he leaves the city.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
One must be very light to push one's will to knowledge [...] and to create for oneself eyes that can encompass thousands of years.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
One wants not only to be understood when one writes, but certainly also not to be understood. Every distinguished mind [...] thus chooses its audience.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
We need [...] a new health, a health that is more robust, sharper, more enduring, more audacious, and more joyful than any health has been hitherto.
1882
Source: The Gay Science
The eternal Folly mixes us into it!...
1882
Source: The Gay Science
Some are born posthumously.
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
One cannot find more in things, including books, than one already knows.
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
You must never have spared yourself; hardness must be part of your habits to be joyful and in good spirits amidst hard truths.
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
'Reason' at any price appears as a dangerous power, a power that undermines life.
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
Love—its means is war, and its foundation is the mortal hatred of the sexes.
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
The affirmation of life even in its strangest and hardest problems [...]—this is what I have called Dionysian.
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
Knowledge of reality, approval of reality, are for the strong as great a necessity as for the weak [...] the flight from reality—the 'ideal'...
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
Where you see ideal things, I see... human, alas! all too human things!
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
The ideal is not refuted—it is frozen.
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
One hears, one does not seek; one takes, one does not ask who gives. Like a flash of lightning, a thought flares up, with necessity [...].
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
One pays dearly for being immortal: one must die several times while still alive.
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
The imperative 'become hard!', the fundamental certainty that all creators are hard, this is the true distinctive sign of a Dionysian nature.
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
Man would rather will nothingness than not will at all...
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
The preaching of chastity is a public incitement to anti-nature.
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
The devil is merely the idleness of God on every seventh day...
1888
Source: Ecce Homo
To have many great inner experiences and to rest upon them and above them with an intellectual eye—this is what makes men of culture who assign a rank to their people.
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
Loyalty, generosity, the shame of a good reputation: these three things united in a single feeling—this is what we call noble, distinguished[...]
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
The great superiority of noble birth is that it allows one to bear poverty better.
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
What was once done 'for the will of God,' is now done for the will of money, that is, for the sake of what now gives the highest feeling of power and the best conscience.
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
Let us remove the idea of sin from the world—and let us not fail to send the idea of punishment after it!
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
Would we not yet have the right to say: every 'guilty' person is a sick person?
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
Shame on having a price for which one ceases to be a person to become a screw!
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
We no longer want causes to be sins and effects to be executioners.
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
There is nothing good, nothing beautiful, nothing sublime, nothing evil in itself, but rather states of soul which make us attribute such qualifiers to things outside of ourselves.
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
As soon as one animal sees another it measures itself in spirit against it [...]. It follows that almost every man comes to know himself only in relation to his strength of attack and defense.
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
Independence (called 'freedom of thought' in its weakest dose) is the form of renunciation that the dominating spirit finally accepts—he who has long sought what he could dominate and has found nothing other than himself.
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
It is not need, it is not desire—no, it is the love of power that is the demon of men. Give them everything [...] they will remain unhappy and capricious, for the demon waits and waits, it wants to be satisfied.
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
The historian does not have to deal with events as they actually happened, but only as they are supposed to have happened: for it is thus that they have produced their effect.
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
Fear has advanced the general knowledge of men more than love, for fear wants to guess who the other is, what he knows, what he wants [...]. On the other hand, love is secretly inclined to see in the other things as beautiful as possible [...].
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)
Beware of systematisers! [...] in wanting to fill a system and to round off the horizon all around it, they have to try to present their weak qualities in the same style as their strong ones.
1881
Source: Dawn (Nietzsche)