That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

I caught this insight on the way and quickly seized the rather poor words that were closest to hand to pin it down lest it fly away again. And now it has died of these arid words and shakes and flaps in them– and I hardly know anymore when I look at it how I...

You say, it’s dark. And in truth, I did place a cloud before your sun. But do you not see how the edges of the cloud are already glowing and turning light.

All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks, in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.

Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.

Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?

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

Without music, life would be a mistake.

There is a certain right by which we many deprive a man of life, but none by which we may deprive him of death; this is mere cruelty.

Popular medicine and popular morality belong together and ought not to be evaluated so differently as they still are: both are the most dangerous pseudo-sciences.

Excess of strength alone is proof of strength

Their [philosophers] thinking is, in fact, far less a discovery than a re-recognizing, a remembering, a return and a home-coming to a far-off, ancient common-household of the soul, out of which those ideas formerly grew: philosophizing is so far a kind of atavism of the highest order.

I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance.

Einer hat immer Unrecht: aber mit zweien beginnt die Wahrheit. Einer kann sich nicht beweisen: aber zweie kann man bereits nicht widerlegen.

No one dies of fatal truths nowadays: there are too many antidotes.

One thing a man must have: either a naturally light disposition or a disposition lightened by art and knowledge.

The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.

Healthy introspection, without undermining oneself; it is a rare gift to venture into the unexplored depths of the self, without delusions or fictions, but with an uncorrupted gaze.

Pure logic is the impossibility by means of which science is maintained.

Dove la moralità è troppo forte l’intelletto perisce.

Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.

Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.

Is man merely a mistake of God’s? Or God merely a mistake of man?

In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.

To recognize untruth as a condition of life–that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.

Try for once to justify the meaning of your existence as it were a posteriori by setting yourself an aim, a goal… an exalted and noble ‘to this end.’ Perish in pursuit of this and only this

Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.

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

The Thought of Death. It gives me a melancholy happiness to live in the midst of this confusion of streets, of necessities, of voices: how much enjoyment, impatience and desire, how much thirsty life and drunkenness of life comes to light here every moment! And yet it will soon be so still for all these...

The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts to speak.

Every past is worth condemning.

Die Sinnlichkeit übereilt oft das Wachsthum der Liebe, so dass die Wurzel schwach bleibt und leicht auszureissen ist.

The Church today is more likely to alienate than to seduce…

He who writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read, he wants to be learned by heart.

Water is sufficient…the spirit moves over water.

Success has always been the greatest liar – and the “work” itself is a success; the great statesman, the conqueror, the discoverer is disguised by his creations, often beyond recognition; the “work,” whether of the artist or the philosopher, invents the man who has created it, who is supposed to have create it; “great men,”...

Invisible threads are the strongest ties.

But how can we venture to reprove or praise the universe! Let us beware of attributing to it heartlessness and unreason or their opposites: it is neither perfect nor beautiful nor noble, and has no desire to become any of these; it is by no means striving to imitate mankind! It is quite impervious to...

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.

Sometimes, you have to love beyond yourself! And that’s how you learn to love! That’s why you had to drink the bitter glass of your love.

The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.

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.

Your only problem, perhaps, is that you scream without letting yourself cry.

Everyone who has ever built anywhere a new heaven first found the power thereto in his own hell.

base.

I and me are always too deeply in conversation: how could I endure it,if there were not a friend?The friend of the hermit is always the third one: the third one is the float which prevents the conversation of the two from sinking into the depth.

When the gratitude that many owe to one discards all modesty, then there is fame.

We are noble, good, beautiful, and happy!

That which now calls itself democracy differs from older forms of government solely in that it drives with new horses: the streets are still the same old streets, and the wheels are likewise the same old wheels.

Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.