Friedrich Nietzsche

“Woman was God’s second mistake. ”

“Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.”

“After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.”

“Is man one of God’s blunders, or is God one of man’s blunders?”

“Alas, where is there still a sea in which one could drown: thus our lament resounds – across shallow swamps. ”

“The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is called man.”

“I am one thing, my writings are another.”

“Often they descended to their grave with an ironic smile – for what was there left of them to bury! Only the dross, refuse, vanity, animality that had always weighed them down and that was now consigned to oblivion after having for long been the object of their contempt. But one thing will live, the monogram of their most essential being, a work, an act, a piece of rare enlightenment, a creation: it will live because posterity cannot do without it. In this transfigured form, fame is something more than the tastiest morsel of our egoism, as Schopenhauer called it: it is the belief in the solidarity and continuity of the greatness of all ages and a protest against the passing away of generations and the transitoriness of things.”

“But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!”

“The great epochs of life come when we gain the courage to re-christen our evil as what is best in us”

“Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'.”

“Stupidity in a woman is unfeminine.”

“There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths. ”

“The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.”

“Die Einsamkeit macht uns härter gegen uns und sehnsüchtiger gegen die Menschen, in beiden verbessert sie den Charakter.”

“Ähnlichseherei und Gleichmacherei sind das Merkmal schwacher Augen.”

“Das Leben besteht aus seltenen einzelnen Momenten von höchster Bedeutsamkeit und unzählig vielen Intervallen, in denen uns besten Falls die Schattenbilder jener Momente umschweben. Die Liebe, der Frühling, jede schöne Melodie, das Gebirge, der Mond, das Meer - Alles redet nur einmal ganz zum Herzen: wenn es überhaupt je ganz zu Worte kommt. Denn viele Menschen haben jene Momente gar nicht und sind selber Intervalle und Pausen in der Symphonie des wirklichen Lebens.”

“In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering among innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge.”

“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?”

“This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light on the stars requires time; deeds though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars - and yet they have done it themselves.”

“A joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling.”

“At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.”

“To find everything profound - that is an inconvenient trait. It makes one strain one's eyes all the time, and in the end one finds more than one might have wished.”

“Even when in the deepest distress, the actor ultimately cannot cease to think of the impression he and the whole scenic effect is making, even for example at the burial of his own child; he will weep over his own distress and the ways in which it expresses itself, as his own audience. The hypocrite who always plays one and the same role finally ceases to be a hypocrite; for example priests, who as young men are usually conscious or unconscious hypocrites, finally become natural and then really are priests without any affectation; or if the father fails to get that far then perhaps the son does so, employing his father's start and inheriting his habits. If someone obstinately and for a long time wants to appear something it is int he end hard for him to be anything else. The profession of almost every man, even that of the artist, begins with hypocrisy, with an imitation from without, with a copying of what is most effective. He who is always wearing a mask of a friendly countenance must finally acquire a power over benevolent moods without which the impression of friendliness cannot be obtained - and finally these acquire power over him, he is benevolent.”

“Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?”

“Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.”

“The secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is - to live dangerously.”

“I have forgotten my umbrella. ”

“Cuida que tu reposo y tu contemplación no sean como los del perro delante de una canicería. El miedo no le deja avanzar, el deseo le impide retroceder y abre unos ojos tan grandes como bocas.”

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

“Become who you are!”

“Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.”

“I love him who seeks to create over and beyond himself and thus perishes.”

“Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings -- always darker, emptier and simpler.”

“You say that a good cause will even sanctify war! I tell you, it is the good war that sanctifies every cause!”

“It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.”

“You may lie with your mouth, but with the mouth you make as you do so you none the less tell the truth.”

“Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders.”

“Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.”

“All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.”

“God is dead, but considering the state the species man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown.”

“Living in a constant chase after gain compels people to expend their spirit to the point of exhaustion in continual pretense and overreaching and anticipating other. Virtue has come to consist of doing something in less time that someone else. Hours in which honesty is permitted have become rare, and when they arrive one is tired and does not only want to "let oneself go" but actually wishes to stretch out as long and wide and ungainly as one happens to be... Soon we may well reach the point where people can no longer give in to the desire for a vita contemplativa (that is, taking a walk with ideas and friends) without self-contempt and a bad conscience.”

“True, we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness.”

“A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.”

“Man is the cruelest animal.”

“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. ”

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

“The spiritualization of sensuality is called love: it is a great triumph over Christianity.”

“And if you are not a bird, then beware of coming to rest above an abyss.”

“The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.”