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...

Our crime against criminals lies in the fact that we treat them like rascals.

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

And just look at these men: their eye saith it – they know nothing better on earth than to be with a woman.Filth is at the bottom of their souls; and alas! If their filth hath spirit in it!

Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.

It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right –especially when one is right.

It is always as it was between Achilles and Homer: one person has the experience, the sensation, the other describes it. A real writer only gives words to the affects and experiences of others; he is an artist in divining a great deal from the little that he has felt. Artist are by no means...

We possess art lest we perish of the truth.

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

To leave is to suffer,to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

Examine the lives of the best and more fruitful men and peoples, and ask yourselves whether a tree, if it is to grow proudly into the sky, can do without bad weather and storms: whether unkindness and opposition from without, whether some sort of hatred, envy, obstinacy, mistrust, severity, greed and violence do not belong...

The discerning one walketh amongst men as amongst animals.

That the other suffers has to be learned; and it can never be learned fully.

It was suffering and incapacity that created all afterworlds – this, and that brief madness of bliss which is experienced only by those who suffer deeply. 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...

Did you ever say yes to a pleasure? oh my friends, then you also said yes to all pain. all things are linked, entwined, in love with one another.

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

Without myth, however, every culture loses its healthy creative natural power: it is only a horizon encompassed with myth that rounds off to unity a social movement.

Without the errors which are active in every psychical pleasure and displeasrue a humanity would never have come into existence–whose fundamental feeling is and remains that man is the free being in a world of unfreedom, the external miracle worker whether he does good or ill, the astonishing exception, the superbeast and almost-god, the meaning...

People have always wanted to ‘improve’ human beings; for the most part, this has been called morality.

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...

One loves ultimately one’s desires, not the thing desired.

Every talent must unfold itself in fighting.

O my brothers, I dedicate and direct you to a new nobility: you shall become procreators and cultivators and sowers of the future — verily, not to a nobility that you might buy like shopkeepers and with shopkeepers’ gold: for whatever has its price has little value. Not whence you came shall henceforth constitute your...

Everything goes, everything comes back; eternally rolls the wheel of being. Everything dies, everything blossoms again; eternally runs the year of being. Everything breaks, everything is joined anew; eternally the same House of Being is built. Everything parts, everything greets every other thing again; eternally the ring of being remains faithful to itself. In every...

Todo el que disfruta cree que lo que importa del árbol es el fruto, cuando en realidad es la semilla.He aquí la diferencia entre los que creen y los que disfrutan.

When virtue has slept, it will arise again all the fresher.

We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total absence in our opponent.

What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure – as a mere automaton of duty?

One should part from life as Ulysses parted from Nausicaa– blessing it rather than in love with it.

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,”...

Every past is worth condemning.

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

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.

A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow.

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.

Invisible threads are the strongest ties.

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.

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.

It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!