He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.
I would believe only in a God that knows how to Dance.
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?
All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.
Love is not consolation. It is light.
In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.
The lie is a condition of life.
The bad gains respect through imitation, the good loses it especially in art.
art, being good & respect
Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.
The 'kingdom of Heaven' is a condition of the heart - not something that comes 'upon the earth' or 'after death.'
Stupid as a man, say the women: cowardly as a woman, say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unwomanly.
Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?
Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.
There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.
It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.
Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?
Fear is the mother of morality.
If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.
For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.
Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.
In music the passions enjoy themselves.
That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
The future influences the present just as much as the past.
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.
It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.
Mystical explanations are thought to be deep the truth is that they are not even shallow.
Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.
In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.
Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.
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.
The world itself is the will to power - and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power - and nothing else!
All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.
Rejoicing in our joy, not suffering over our suffering, makes someone a friend.
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.
This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.
Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
Some are made modest by great praise, others insolent.
Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.
'Evil men have no songs.' How is it that the Russians have songs?
There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.
Love matches, so called, have illusion for their father and need for their mother.
A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation.
Women are considered deep - why? Because one can never discover any bottom to them. Women are not even shallow.
Faith: not wanting to know what is true.
Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?
Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.
There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.
One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.
All truth is simple... is that not doubly a lie?
Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.
I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.
Art raises its head where creeds relax.
There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.
Go up close to your friend, but do not go over to him! We should also respect the enemy in our friend.
You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.
Whoever has provoked men to rage against him has always gained a party in his favor, too.
Genteel women suppose that those things do not really exist about which it is impossible to talk in polite company.
Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.
A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.
Love is blind friendship closes its eyes.
What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?
Today I love myself as I love my god: who could charge me with a sin today? I know only sins against my god but who knows my god?
When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets.
Woman was God's second mistake.
An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.
Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.
The doer alone learneth.
Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm.
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
There is not enough religion in the world even to destroy religion.
In the last analysis, even the best man is evil: in the last analysis, even the best woman is bad.
In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.
The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.
Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.
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.
When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.
When art dresses in worn-out material it is most easily recognized as art.
When one has not had a good father, one must create one.
A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.
Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.
The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.
A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.
Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good.
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.
All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.
He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.
I love those who do not know how to live for today.
Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.