Quotes from Friedrich Nietzsche

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

all that is rare is for the rare.

I and me are always too deeply in conversation: how could I endure it, if there were not a friend? The friend of the hermit is always the third one: the third one is the float which prevents the conversation of the two from sinking into the depth.

Being human is a complicated gig. So give that ol' dark night of the soul a hug. Howl the eternal yes! [N.B. this is obviously a humorous paraphrase]

The best of all things is something entirely outside your grasp: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best thing for you is to die soon.

The great periods of our life occur when we gain the courage to rechristen what is bad about us as what is best.

How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare?

Though I may seem at times somewhat distant from you, through the gray mist of philology, I am never far, my thoughts always circle around you.

Is man one of God's blunders, or is God one of man's blunders?

Man does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does that.

I overcame myself, the sufferer; I carried my own ashes to the mountains; I invented a brighter flame for myself.

My conception of freedom. — The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it — what it costs us. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions.

I consist of body and soul - in the worlds of a child. And why shouldn't we speak like children? But the enlightened, the knowledgealbe would say: I am body through and through, nothing more; and the soul is just a word for something on the body.

Are you a slave? Then you cannot be a friend. Are you a tyrant? Then you cannot have friends.

Digressions, objections, delight in mockery, carefree mistrust are signs of health...

But in the loneliest desert happens the second metamorphosis: here the spirit becomes a lion; he will seize his freedom and be master in his own wilderness.

Well-meaning, helpful, good-natured attitudes of mind have not come to be honored on account of their usefulness, but because they are states of richer souls that are capable of bestowing and have their value in the feeling of the plenitude of life.

Every talent must unfold itself in fighting.

Worldly Wisdom Do not stay in the field! Nor climb out of sight. The best view of the world Is from a medium height.

Ten truths must you find during the day; otherwise will you seek truth during the night, and your soul will have been hungry.

And to me also, who appreciate life, the butterflies, and soap-bubbles, and whatever is like them amongst us, seem most to enjoy happiness.

Under peaceful conditions a warlike man sets upon himself.

For truth to tell, dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education: dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with pen- that one must learn how to write

Man, the bravest of animals, and the one most accustomed to suffering, does not repudiate suffering as such; he desires it, he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose of suffering. The meaninglessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse that lay over mankind so far.