Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

“What if, some day or night, a demon were to steal after you in your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again—and you with it, speck of dust!”... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.”

“La madurez del hombre es haber vuelto a encontrar la seriedad con la que jugaba cuando era niño.”

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

“Even the most beautiful scenery is no longer assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some distant coast attracts our avarice: possessions are generally diminished by possession.”

“no one talks more passionately about his rights than he who in the depths of his soul doubts whether he has any”

“It is a terrible thought, to contemplate that an immense number of mediocre thinkers are occupied with really influential matters.”

“My formula for happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal.”

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

“Suppose a human being has thus put his ear, as it were, to the heart chamber of the world will and felt the roaring desire for existence pouring from there into all the veins of the world, as a thundering current or as the gentlest brook, dissolving into a mist—how could he fail to break suddenly? How could he endure to perceive the echo of innumerable shouts of pleasure and woe in the "wide space of the world night," enclosed in the wretched glass capsule of the human individual, without inexorably fleeing toward his primordial home, as he hears this shepherd's dance of metaphysics? But if such a work could nevertheless be perceived as a whole, without denial of individual existence; if such a creation could be created without smashing its creator—whence do we take the solution of such a contradiction?”

“In music the passions enjoy themselves.”

“A thought comes when it will, not when I will.”

“We would not let ourselves be burned to death for our opinions: we are not sure enough of them for that.”

“Als 'ein Frevel, als ein Raub an der göttlichen Natur' erscheine hier die Aneignung des Feuers, der erste Schritt 'jeder aufsteigenden Kultur', und diesen 'arischen Mythus', der 'den heroischen Drang' darstelle, 'über den Bann der Individuation hinauszuschreiten', stellt er den 'semitischen Sündenfallmythus [entgegen], in welchem die Neugierde, die lügnerische Vorspiegelung, die Verführbarkeit, die Lüsternheit [...] als der Ursprung des übels angesehen wurde'.”

“There is an innocence in admiration: it occurs in one who has not yet realized that they might one day be admired.”

“Remain faithful to the earth, my brothers, with the power of your virtue. Let your gift-giving love and your knowledge serve the meaning of the earth. Thus I beg and beseech you. Do not let them fly away from earthly things and beat with their wings against eternal walls. Alas, there has always been so much virtue that has flown away. Lead back to the earth the virtue that flew away, as I do—back to the body, back to life, that it may give the earth a meaning, a human meaning.”

“There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.”

“Is it better to out-monster the monster or to be quietly devoured?”

“Aphorisms should be peaks – and those who are addressed, tall and lofty. The air thin and pure, danger near, and the spirit full of gay sarcasm: these go well together.”

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

“Consider the cattle, grazing as they pass you by. They do not know what is meant by yesterday or today, they leap about, eat, rest, digest, leap about again, and so from morn till night and from day to day, fettered to the moment and its pleasure or displeasure, and thus neither melancholy nor bored. [...] A human being may well ask an animal: 'Why do you not speak to me of your happiness but only stand and gaze at me?' The animal would like to answer, and say, 'The reason is I always forget what I was going to say' - but then he forgot this answer too, and stayed silent.”

“Wir haben den Begriff "Zweck" erfunden: in der Realität fehlt der Zweck... Man ist nothwendig, man ist ein Stück Verhängniss, man gehört zum Ganzen, man ist im Ganzen, - es giebt Nichts, was unser Sein richten, messen, vergleichen, verurtheilen könnte, denn das hiesse das Ganze richten, messen, vergleichen, verurtheilen... Aber es giebt Nichts ausser dem Ganzen!”

“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.”

“Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach honesty.”

“The life of the enemy . Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in the enemy's staying alive.”

“I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.”

“A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us.”

“دوست مي دارم آناني را كه براي فرو شدن و فرا شدن نخست فراپشت ستارگان از پي دليل نميگردند، بل خويش را فداي زمين ميكنند تا زمين روزي از آن ابر انسان شود”

“We laugh at a man who, stepping out of his room at the very minute when the sun is rising, says, “It is my will that the sun shall rise”; or at him who, unable to stop a wheel, says, “I wish it to roll”; or, again, at him who, thrown in a wrestling match, says, “Here I lie, but here I wish to lie.” But, joking apart, do we not act like one of these three persons whenever we use the expression “I wish”?”

“ridendo dicere severum. (tr. Through what is laughable say what is somber.)”

“Cada dia en que no bailemos, al menos una vez, debemos considerarlo perdido. Y cada verdad que no venga acompañada de al menos una risa, debera considerarse mentira.”

“Success has always been a great liar”

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”

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