Quotes to inspire and reflect

Only those thoughts which come from walking have any value

We have to cease to think, if we refuse to do it in the prison house of language; for we cannot reach further than the doubt which asks whether the limit we see is really a limit.

A thought comes when it will, not when I will.

A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us.

The misunderstanding of passion and reason, as if the latter were an independent entity and not rather a system of relations between various passions and desires; and as if every passion did not possess its quantum of reason

Writers whose thoughts are expressed with clarity and precision are assumed by readers to be superficial. Where the meaning is obscured, then readers give more attention and consider the fruit of their labour more valuable

The end of a melody is not its goal: but nonetheless, had the melody not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.

He who writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read, he wants to be learned by heart.

Early in the morning, at break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one’s strength, to read a book – I call that viciousness!

Sometimes, you have to love beyond yourself! And that's how you learn to love! That's why you had to drink the bitter glass of your love.

One sticks to an opinion because he prides himself on having come to it on his own, and another because he has taken great pains to learn it and is proud to have grasped it: and so both do so out of vanity.

Pity is the most agreeable feeling among those who have little pride and no prospects of great conquests.

The surest way of ruining a youth is to teach him to respect those who think as he does more highly than those who think differently from him.

When one is young, one venerates and despises without that art of nuances which constitutes the best gain of life, and it is only fair that one has to pay dearly for having assaulted men and things in this manner with Yes and No. Everything is arranged so that the worst of tastes, the taste for the unconditional, should be cruelly fooled and abused until a man learns to put a little art into his feelings and rather to risk trying even what is artificial — as the real artists of life do.

Everyone who has ever built anywhere a new heaven first found the power thereto in his own hell.

Men of profound sadness betray themselves when they are happy: they have a mode of seizing upon happiness as though they would choke and strangle it, out of jealousy--ah, they know only too well that it will flee from them!

Thus the man who is responsive to artistic stimuli reacts to the reality of dreams as does the philosopher to the reality of existence; he observes closely, and he enjoys his observation: for it is out of these images that he interprets life, out of these processes that he trains himself for life.

The solitary speaks."One receives as a reward for much ennui , ill-humour and boredom, such as a solitude without friends, books, duties or passions must entail, one harvests those quarters of an hour of the deepest immersion in oneself and nature. He who completely entrenches himself against boredom also entrenches himself against himself: he will never get to drink the most potent refreshing draught from the deepest well of his own being.

There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective "knowing"; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our "concept" of this thing, our "objectivity," be.

A: But why this solitude? - B: I am not at odds with anyone. But when I am alone I seem to see my friends in a clearer and fairer light than when I am with them; and when I loved and appreciated music the most, I lived far from it. It seems I need a distant perspective if I am to think well of things.

When the gratitude that many owe to one discards all modesty, then there is fame.

When the gratitude of many to one throws away all shame, we behold fame.

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.

Species do not grow more perfect: the weaker dominate the strong again and again - the reason being they are the great majority, and they are also cleverer.... Darwin forgot the mind (- that in English): the weak possess more mind. ... To acquire mind one must need mind - one loses it when one no longer needs it. He who possesses strength divests himself of mind.

[The] self overcoming of justice: one knows the beautiful name it has given itself--mercy...

Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.

The good life is that which succeeds in existing for the moment, without reference to past or future, without condemnation or selection, in a state of absolute lightness, and in the finished conviction that there is no difference therefore between the instant and eternity.

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.

Your only problem, perhaps, is that you scream without letting yourself cry.

One is fruitful only at the cost of being rich in contradictions.

A man far oftener appears to have a decided character from persistently following his temperament than from persistently following his principles.

That which now calls itself democracy differs from older forms of government solely in that it drives with new horses: the streets are still the same old streets, and the wheels are likewise the same old wheels.

The most common sort of lie is that by which a man deceives himself: the deception of others is a relatively rare offense.

Under peaceful conditions, the warlike man attacks himself.

Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.

This workshop where ideals are manufactured--it seems to me it stinks of so many lies

The great works are produced in such an ecstasy of love that they must always be unworthy of it, however great their worth otherwise.

The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.

This woman is beautiful and clever: but how much cleverer she would have become if she were not beautiful!

You are treading your path of greatness: now it must call up all your courage that there is no longer a path behind you!You are treading your path of greatness: no one shall steal after you here! Your foot itself has extinguished the path behind you, and above that path stands written: Impossibility.

We are noble, good, beautiful, and happy!

Ah, brothers, this God which I created was human work and human madness, like all gods!He was human, and only a poor piece of man and Ego: this phantom came to me from my own fire and ashes, that is the truth! It did not come from the ‘beyond’!

Books that teach us to dance: There are writers who, by portraying the impossible as possible, and by speaking of morality and genius as if both were high-spirited freedom, as if man were rising up on tiptoe and simply had to dance out of inner pleasure.

Masks. - There are women who, however you may search them, prove to have no content but are purely masks. The man who associates with such almost spectral, necessarily unsatisfied beings is to be commiserated with, yet it is precisely they who are able to arouse the desire of the man most strongly: he seeks for her soul - and goes on seeking.

When, however, you have an enemy, then do not requite him good for evil: for that would shame him. Instead, prove that he did some good for you. And rather be angry than put to shame! And when you are cursed, I do not like it that you want to bless. Rather curse a little also! And if you are done a great injustice, then quickly add five small ones. Hideous to behold is he who is obsessed with an injustice.

Yet the same thing happens to the notions of morality. They are devised, at the start, as measures of expediency, and then given divine sanction in order to lend them authority.

Whatever they may think and say about their "egoism", the great majority nonetheless do nothing for their ego their whole life long: what they do is done for the phantom of their ego which has formed itself in the heads of those around them and has been communicated to them.

Morality is just a fiction used by the herd of inferior human beings to hold back the few superior men.