Friedrich Nietzsche quotes

 

(Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None).

1. The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.

2. I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.

3. Silence is worse; all truths that are kept silent become poisonous.

4. The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.

5. Become who you are!

6. There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

7. One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.

8. And once you are awake, you shall remain awake eternally.

9. Man is something that shall be overcome.... Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman -- a rope over an abyss... What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.

10. No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.

11. But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthword, downword, into the dark, the deep - into evil.

12. Of all that is written I love only what a man has written in his own blood.

13. You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted.

14. Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman--a rope over an abyss. 

16. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an OVER-GOING and a DOWN-GOING.

17. I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers, and arrows of longing for the other shore.

18. I love him who scatters golden words in advance of his deeds, and always does more than he promises: for he seeks his own down-going. 

19. I love all who are like heavy drops falling one by one out of the dark cloud that lowers over man: they herald the coming of the lightning, and succumb as heralds. 

20. I change too quickly: my today refutes my yesterday. When I ascend I often jump over steps, and no step forgives me that.

21. He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.

22. I have learned to walk: since then I have run. I have learned to fly: since then I do not have to be pushed in order to move.

23. One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.

24. He who obeys, does not listen to himself!

25. Untroubled, scornful, outrageous - that is how wisdom wants us to be: she is a woman and never loves anyone but a warrior.

26. You tell me: 'Life is hard to bear.' But if it were otherwise why should you have your pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening? Life is hard to bear: but do not pretend to be so tender! We are all of us pretty fine asses and asseses of burden!

27. Our faith in others betrays that we would rather have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer. And often with our love we want merely to overcome envy. And often we attack and make ourselves enemies, to conceal that we are vulnerable.

28. I want to speak to the despisers of the body. I would not have them learn and teach differently, but merely say farewell to their own bodies-- and thus become silent.

29. Disobedience- that is the nobility of slaves.

30. Human life is inexplicable, and still without meaning: a fool may decide its fate.

31. But in the loneliest desert happens the second metamorphosis: here the spirit becomes a lion; he will seize his freedom and be master in his own wilderness.

32. But the spirit of the lion says, ‘I will'.

33. But the thought is one thing, the deed is another, and another yet is the image of the deed. The wheel of causality does not roll between them.

34. Visiting the sick' is an orgasm of superiority in the contemplation of our neighbor's helplessness.

35. ...inability to lie is still far from being love to truth. Be on your guard! ... He who cannot lie, doth not know what truth is.

36. Foolish is my happiness, and foolish things will it speak: it is still too young—so have patience with it!

37. And when he invented his hell, that was his heaven on earth.

38. A little wisdom is indeed possible; but this blessed security have I found in all things, that they prefer--to DANCE on the feet of chance.

39. But like infection is the petty thought: it creeps and hides, and wants to be nowhere--until the whole body is decayed and withered by the petty infection..

40. He whom the flame of jealousy encompasses, will at last, like the scorpion, turn the poisoned sting against himself.

41. I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you have still chaos in you.

42. Are you a slave? Then you cannot be a friend. Are you a tyrant? Then you cannot have friends.

43. Creating—that is the great salvation from suffering, and life's alleviation. But for the creator to appear, suffering itself is needed, and much transformation.

44. He who knows the reader, does nothing for the reader.

45. I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgets himself, and all things are in him: thus all things become his going under.

46. Where one can no longer love, there one should pass by.

47. Three metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you: how the
spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.

48. He who maketh no secret of himself shocketh; so much reason have ye to fear nakedness! Aye, if ye were Gods, ye could then be ashamed of clothing!

49. The state, I call it, where all are poison-drinkers, the good and the bad: the state, where all lose themselves, the good and the bad: the state, where the slow suicide of all — is called "life."

50.Just see these superfluous ones! Sick are they always; they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper. They devour one another, and cannot even digest themselves.

51.Whoever does not believe himself always lies.

52. My soul is calm and clear, like the mountains in the morning. But they think I am cold, and a mocker with terrible jests.

53. So I ask my pride that it always go along with my wisdom. And when my wisdom leaves me one day alas - it loves to flyway - let my pride then fly with my folly.

54. Free, dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thought would I hear of, and not that thou hast escaped from a yoke.

55. Slow is the experience of all deep fountains: long have they to wait until they know what has fallen into their depths.

56. Love your enemies because they bring out the best in you.

57. Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded.

58. The more you let yourself go, the less others let you go.

59. He who cannot obey himself is commanded...

60. Knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion.

61. The world is beautiful, but has a disease called man.

62. I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.

63. Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.

64. Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.

65. It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.