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