We sleepwalkers of the dayWe artistsWe who conceal naturalnessWe who are moon- and God-struckWe untiring wanderers, silent as death, on heights that we see not as heights but as our plains, as our safety.-Friedrich Nietzsche
We have forsaken the land and gone to seaWe have destroyed the bridge behind us – more so, we have demolished the land behind usNow, little ship, look outBeside you is the ocean; it is true, it does not always roar, and at times it lies there like silk and gold and dreams of goodness. But there will be hours when you realize that it is infinite and that there is nothing more awesome than infinity.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of something it must be profound. It is so timid and dislikes going into the water.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Tags:
nietzsche, citation, author, philosopher, meaning
The strongest and most evil spirits have so far done the most to advance humanity: again and again they relumed the passions that were going to sleep—all ordered society puts the passions to sleep—and they reawakened again and again the sense of comparison, of contradiction, of the pleasure in what is new, daring, untried; they compelled men to pit opinion against opinion, model against model.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Only great pain, the long, slow pain that takes its time... compels us to descend to our ultimate depths... I doubt that such pain makes us "better"; but I know it makes us more profound... In the end, lest what is most important remain unsaid: from such abysses, from such severe sickness, one returns newborn, having shed one's skin... with merrier senses, with a second dangerous innocence in joy, more childlike and yet a hundred times subtler than one has ever been before.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Only great pain is the ultimate liberator of the spirit….I doubt that such pain makes us ‘better’; but I know that it makes us more profound.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
One pays dearly for any kind of mastery on earth, where perhaps one pays too dearly for everything; one is master of one's trade at the price of also being its victim.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Lightning and thunder require time, the light of the stars requires time, deeds require time even after they are done, before they can be seen and heard.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
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.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
if you are unwilling to endure your own suffering even for an hour, and continually forestall all possible misfortune, if you regard as deserving of annihilation, any suffering and pain generally as evil, as detestable, and as blots on existence, well, you have then, besides your religion of compassion, yet another religion in your heart (and this is perhaps the mother of the former)-the religion of smug ease. Ah, how little you know of the happiness of man, you comfortable and good-natured onesFor happiness and misfortune are brother and sister, and twins, who grow tall together, or, as with you, remain small together-Friedrich Nietzsche
I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforthI do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.-Friedrich Nietzsche
How foolish it would be to suppose that one only needs to point out this origin and this misty shroud of delusion in order to destroy the world that counts for real, so-called 'reality.' We can destroy only as creators. -- But let us not forget this either: it is enough to create new names and estimations and probabilities in order to create in the long run new 'things.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Here and there on earth there is probably a kind of continuation of love; in which this greedy desire of two people for each other gives way to a new desire and greed, a shared higher thirst for an ideal above them. But who knows such love? who has experienced it? Its true name is friendship
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Gratitude pours forth continually, as if the unexpected had just happened—the gratitude of a convalescent—for convalescence was unexpected…. The rejoicing of strength that is returning, of a reawakened faith in a tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, of a sudden sense and anticipation of a future, of impending adventures, of seas that are open again.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
For nothing is more democratic than logic; it is no respecter of persons and makes no distinction between crooked and straight noses.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
For believe me— the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerouslyBuild your cities on the slopes of VesuviusSend your ships into uncharted seasLive at war with your peers and yourselvesBe robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledgeSoon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deerAt long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: — it will want to rule and possess, and you with it-Friedrich Nietzsche
Examine the lives of the best and more fruitful men and peoples, and ask yourselves whether a tree, if it is to grow proudly into the sky, can do without bad weather and storms: whether unkindness and opposition from without, whether some sort of hatred, envy, obstinacy, mistrust, severity, greed and violence do not belong to the favouring circumstances without which a great increase even in virtue is hardly possible. The poison which destroys the weaker nature strengthens the stronger – and he does not call it poison, either.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Tags:
philosopher, friedrich, nietzsche, author, text
Either one does not dream, or one does so interestingly. One should learn to spend one's waking life in the same way: not at all, or interestingly.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Egoism is the law of perspective applied to feelings: what is closest appears large and weighty, and as one moves farther away size and weight decrease.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Books and drafts mean something quite different for different thinkers. One collects in a book the lights he was able to steal and carry home swiftly out of the rays of some insight that suddenly dawned on him, while another thinker offers us nothing but shadows - images in black and grey of what had built up in his soul the day before.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
