Quotes from Friedrich Nietzsche

One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

throw roses into the abyss and say: 'here is my thanks to the monster who didn't succeed in swallowing me alive.

One must give value to their existence by behaving as if ones very existence were a work of art.

If you know the why, you can live any how.

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthword, downword, into the dark, the deep - into evil.

My solitude doesn't depend on the presence or absence of people; on the contrary, I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company.

True, we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness.

Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'.

Remorse.-- Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second.

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster . . . when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you

To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities—I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not—that one endures.

Of all evil I deem you capable: Therefore I want good from you. Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.

The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.

No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.

There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

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.

What is the seal of liberation? Not to be ashamed in front of oneself.

He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.

One must pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while still alive.

The strength of a person's spirit would then be measured by how much 'truth' he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified.

The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.