Quotes to inspire and reflect

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Under peaceful conditions, the warlike man attacks himself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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’!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Anything which] is a living thing and not a dying body... will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant - not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power... 'Exploitation'... belongs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which is after all the will of life.

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

All history is the experimental refutation of the theory of the so-called moral order of things.

Every means hitherto employed with the intention of making mankind moral has been thoroughly immoral.

Morality is the idiosyncrasy of decadents having the hidden desire to revenge themselves upon life – and being successful.

The rule: when energy, 'negative' as it may be, moves without resistance, it easily sublimates and becomes raw energy of power and presence; resistance to it makes it freeze in its current state. For this reason, morality not only does not help our sexuality develop but also forces it to stay as it is.

Morality negates life.

There is no such thing as moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena

Morality is neither rational nor absolute nor natural. World has known many moral systems, each of which advances claims universality; all moral systems are therefore particular, serving a specific purpose for their propagators or creators, and enforcing a certain regime that disciplines human beings for social life by narrowing our perspectives and limiting our horizons.

I deny morality as I deny alchemy.

One does not hate as long as one disesteems, but only when one esteems equal or superior

A moral system valid for all is basically immoral.

If thinking is your fate, revere this fate with divine honour and sacrifice to it the best, the most beloved

You go above and beyond them: but the higher you climb, the smaller you appear to the eye of envy. And he who flies is hated most of all.