The Aphorisms of Friedrich Nietzsche
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(( 1 ))
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We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.
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There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
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The most spiritual human beings, assuming they are the most courageous, also experience by far the most painful tragedies: but it is precisely for this reason that they honor life, because it brings against them its most formidable weapons.
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The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.
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The aphorism in which I am the first master among Germans, are the forms of "eternity"; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book - what everyone else does not say in a book.
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Perhaps I know why it is man alone who laughs: He alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.
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One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
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Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.
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It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.
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Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
(( 2 ))
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I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his "divine service."
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Distrust everyone in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!
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Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.
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Believe me! The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously!
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All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.
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A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
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Whoever battles with monsters had better see that it does not turn him into a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
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What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.
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What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.
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We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.
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"To give style" to one's character - a great and rare art! He exercises it who surveys all that his nature presents in strength and weakness and then moulds it to an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason, and even the weaknesses delight the eye.
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Thoughts are the shadows of our sensations - always darker, emptier, simpler than these.
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This secret spoke Life herself unto me: "Behold," said she, "I am that which must ever surpass itself."
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There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.
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There are no facts, only interpretations.
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The word "Christianity" is already a misunderstanding - in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.
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The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.
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The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.
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The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.
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The "kingdom of Heaven" is a condition of the heart - not something that comes "upon the earth" or "after death."
(( 4 ))
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Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
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Only sick music makes money today.
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Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.
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Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man - the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.
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Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter.
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Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good.
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Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms - in themselves such judgments are stupidities.
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It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.
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Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?
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Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?
(( 5 ))
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In music the passions enjoy themselves.
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I would believe only in a God that knows how to Dance.
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He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
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He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?
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Fear is the mother of morality.
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Enduring habits I hate... Yes, at the very bottom of my soul I feel grateful to all my misery and bouts of sickness and everything about me that is imperfect, because this sort of thing leaves me with a hundred backdoors through which I can escape from enduring habits.
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Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul.
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Art raises its head where creeds relax.
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Art is the proper task of life.
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And be on they guard against the good and the just! They would fain curcify those who devise their own virtue - they hate the lonesome ones.
(( 6 ))
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All in all, punishment hardens and renders people more insensible; it concentrates; it increases the feeling of estrangement; it strengthens the power of resistance.
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You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.
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Women can form a friendship with a man very well; but to preserve it - to that end a slight physical antipathy must probably help.
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Women are considered deep - why? Because one can never discover any bottom to them. Women are not even shallow.
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Woman was God's second mistake.
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Without music, life would be a mistake.
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Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.
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Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
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Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'.
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When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
(( 7 ))
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When one has not had a good father, one must create one.
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When one has finished building one's house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way - before one began.
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When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets.
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When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.
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When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.
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When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.
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What then in the last resort are the truths of mankind? They are the irrefutable errors of mankind.
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What someone is, begins to be revealed when his talent abates, when he stops showing us what he can do.
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What really raises one's indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.
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What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.
(( 8 ))
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We must be physicists in order to be creative since so far codes of values and ideals have been constructed in ignorance of physics or even in contradiction to physics.
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We have art in order not to die of the truth.
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War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.
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Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated.
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Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.
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To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding; one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience; ultimately one must have one's experiences in common.
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To forget one's purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.
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To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.
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To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death of one's own free choice, death at the proper time, with a clear head and with joyfulness, consummated in the midst of children and witnesses: so that an actual leave-taking is possible while he who is leaving is still there.
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This is what is hardest: to close the open hand because one loves.
(( 9 ))
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This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.
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There is in general good reason to suppose that in several respects the gods could all benefit from instruction by us human beings. We humans are - more humane.
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There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.
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There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.
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The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.
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The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
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The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.
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The newspaper reader says: this party will ruin itself if it makes errors like this. My higher politics says: a party which makes errors like this is already finished - it is no longer secure in its instincts.
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The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
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The lie is a condition of life.
(( 10 ))
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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
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The growth of wisdom may be gauged exactly by the diminution of ill temper.
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The future influences the present just as much as the past.
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The doer alone learneth.
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The desire to create continually is vulgar and betrays jealousy, envy, ambition. If one is something one really does not need to make anything --and one nonetheless does very much. There exists above the "productive" man a yet higher species.
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The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.
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That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
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Success has always been a great liar.
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Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.
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Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.
(( 11 ))
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Precisely the least, the softest, lightest, a lizard's rustling, a breath, a flash, a moment - a little makes the way of the best happiness.
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Plato was a bore.
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Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.
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People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.
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Out of damp and gloomy days, out of solitude, out of loveless words directed at us, conclusions grow up in us like fungus: one morning they are there, we know not how, and they gaze upon us, morose and gray. Woe to the thinker who is not the gardener but only the soil of the plants that grow in him.
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Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.
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One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.
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One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.
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One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.
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One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.
(( 12 ))
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On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.
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Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.
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Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.
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Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.
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Not necessity, not desire - no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything - health, food, a place to live, entertainment - they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.
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No one lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
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Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.
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Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.
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Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.
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Love matches, so called, have illusion for their father and need for their mother.
(( 13 ))
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Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.
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Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.
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It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.
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It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!
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It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.
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In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.
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In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.
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In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
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In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.
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In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.
(( 14 ))
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In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.
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If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
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If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.
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If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself.
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Idleness is the parent of psychology.
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I wish to be at any time hereafter only a yea-sayer!
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I love those who do not know how to live for today.
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I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.
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I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.
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Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
(( 15 ))
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He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.
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He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.
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He who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how.
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He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.
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He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.
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Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm.
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God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.
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For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child.
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For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.
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Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.
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Faith: not wanting to know what is true.
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Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions.
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Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.
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Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.
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'Evil men have no songs.' How is it that the Russians have songs?
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Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?
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Courageous, untroubled, mocking and violent-that is what Wisdom wants us to be. Wisdom is a woman, and loves only a warrior.
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Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it but degenerated into vice.
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Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.
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Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.
(( 17 ))
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At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.
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At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.
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Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.
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Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive.
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And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.
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And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
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An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.
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Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.
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Altered opinions do not alter a man's character (or do so very little); but they do illuminate individual aspects of the constellation of his personality which with a different constellation of opinions had hitherto remained dark and unrecognizable.
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All truth is simple... is that not doubly a lie?
(( 18 ))
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All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
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All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.
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All of life is a dispute over taste and tasting.
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All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.
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Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.
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After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.
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A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.
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A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation.
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