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