Quotes by Friedrich Nietzsche

We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

At a certain place in Beethovens 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.

Music heals all forms of misery

One should hold fast ones heart; for when one letteth it go, how quickly doth ones head run away!

Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.

What knows he of love who has not been obliged to despise just what he loved

It is not the victory of science that distinguishes our nineteenth century, but the victory of scientific method over science.

My world has just become perfect, midnight is also noonday, pain is also joy, a curse is also a blessing, the night is also a sun – be gone, or you will learn: a wise man is also a fool.

This world, the eternally imperfect, the eternal and imperfect image of a contradiction – an intoxicating joy to its imperfect creator – that is what I once thought the world.

as if a round apple presented itself to my hand, a ripe, golden apple with a soft, cool, velvety skin - thus the world presented itself to me - as if a tree nodded to me, a wide-branching, strong-willed tree, bent for reclining and as a footstool for the way-weary: thus the world stood upon my headland - as if tender hands brought me a casket - a casket open for the delight of modest, adoring eyes: thus the world presented himself before me today - not so enigmatic as to frighten away human love, not so explicit as to put to sleep human wisdom - a good, human thing was the world to me today, this world of which so many evil things are said!

A promise to love someone forever, then, means, As long as I love you I will render unto you the actions of love; if I no longer love you, you will continue to receive the same actions from me, if for other motives. Thus the illusion remains in the minds of ones fellow men that the love is unchanged and still the same.

One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one has given. One must have strong powers of imagination to be able to have pity. So closely is morality bound to the quality of the intellect.

Giving style” to one’s character - a great and rare art! It is exercised by those who see all the strengths and weaknesses of their own natures and then comprehend them in an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason and even weakness delights the eye.

We ought to face our destiny with courage.

Do not make passion an argument for truth! - O you good-natured and even noble enthusiasts, I know you! You want to win your argument against us, but also against yourself, and above all against yourself!and a subtle and tender bad conscience so often incites you against your enthusiasm! How ingenious you then become in the outwitting and deadening of this conscience! How you hate the honest, the simple, the pure, how you avoid their innocent eyes! That knowing better whose representatives they are and whose voice you hear all too loudly within you, how it casts doubt on your belief- how you seek to make it suspect as a bad habit, as a sickness of the age, as neglect and infection of your own spiritual health! You drive yourself to the point of hating criticism, science, reason! You have to falsify history so that it may bear witness for you, you have to deny virtues so that they shall not cast into the shade those of your idols and ideals! Coloured pictures where what is needed is rational grounds! Ardour and power of expression! Silvery mists! Ambrosial nights! You understand how to illuminate and how to obscure, and how to obscure with light! And truly, when your passion rises to the point of frenzy, there comes a moment when you say to yourself: now I have conquered the good conscience, now I am light of heart, courageous, self-denying, magnificent, now I am honest! How you thirst for those moments when your passion bestows on you perfect self-justification and as it were innocence; when in struggle, intoxication, courage, hope, you are beside yourself and beyond all doubting; when you decree: he who is not beside himself as we are can in no way know what and where truth is! How you thirst to discover people of your belief in this condition - it is that of intellectual vice - and ignite your flame at their torch! Oh your deplorable martyrdom! Oh your deplorable victory of the sanctified lie! Must you inflict so much suffering upon yourself? - Must you?

The deepest and most sublime hatred is a hatred which creates ideals and transforms values—something whose like has never been seen on earth

As yet hath his knowledge not learned to smile, and to be without jealously ; as yet hath his gushing passion not become calm in beauty.

To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.

We have abolished the real world: what world is left? The apparent world perhaps? . . . But no! with the real world we have also abolished the apparent world.