Quotes to inspire and reflect

Every select man strives instinctively for a citadel and a privacy, where he is FREE from the crowd, the many, the majority-- where he may forget "men who are the rule," as their exception;-- exclusive only of the case in which he is pushed straight to such men by a still stronger instinct, as a discerner in the great and exceptional sense.

So long as men praise you, you can only be sure that you are not yet on your own true path but on someone else's.

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

One in three all friends are:Brothers in distress,equals facing rivals,free men - facing death!

We no longer have a sufficiently high estimate of ourselves when we communicate. Our true experiences are not garrulous. They could not communicate themselves if they wanted to: they lack words. We have already grown beyond whatever we have words for. In all talking there lies a grain of contempt. Speech, it seems, was devised only for the average medium, communicable. The speaker has already vulgarized himself by speaking.

Hypocrisy has its place in the ages of strong belief: in which even when one is compelled to exhibit a different belief one does not abandon the belief on already has.

There are so many futures still to dawn!

To him who feels himself preordained to contemplation and not to belief, all believers are too noisy and obtrusive; he guards against them.

There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don’t ask, walk!

For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with himself, whether it be by means of this or that poetry or art; only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is constantly ready for revenge, and we others will be his victims, if only by having to endure his ugly sight.

Without forgetting it is quite impossible to live at all.

The wreckage of stars - I built a world from this wreckage.

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.

For fanaticism is the only form of willpower that even the weak and insecure can be brought to attain.

To leave is to suffer,to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

What do you consider the most humane? - To spare someone shame. What is the seal of liberation? - To no longer be ashamed in front of oneself.

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

Psychology has falsified love as surrender and altruism, while it is an appropriation or a bestowal following from a super-abundance of personality. Only the most complete persons can love. The depersonalized and objective are the worst lovers.

Our crime against criminals lies in the fact that we treat them like rascals.

We like to be out in nature so much because it has no opinion on us.

We have abolished the real world: what world is left? The apparent world perhaps? . . . But no! with the real world we have also abolished the apparent world.

We possess art lest we perish of the truth.

As yet hath his knowledge not learned to smile, and to be without jealously ; as yet hath his gushing passion not become calm in beauty.

To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.

We ought to face our destiny with courage.

The deepest and most sublime hatred is a hatred which creates ideals and transforms values—something whose like has never been seen on earth

One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one has given. One must have strong powers of imagination to be able to have pity. So closely is morality bound to the quality of the intellect.

Giving style” to one’s character - a great and rare art! It is exercised by those who see all the strengths and weaknesses of their own natures and then comprehend them in an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason and even weakness delights the eye.

This world, the eternally imperfect, the eternal and imperfect image of a contradiction – an intoxicating joy to its imperfect creator – that is what I once thought the world.

A promise to love someone forever, then, means, 'As long as I love you I will render unto you the actions of love; if I no longer love you, you will continue to receive the same actions from me, if for other motives.' Thus the illusion remains in the minds of one's fellow men that the love is unchanged and still the same.

It is not the victory of science that distinguishes our nineteenth century, but the victory of scientific method over science.

My world has just become perfect, midnight is also noonday, pain is also joy, a curse is also a blessing, the night is also a sun – be gone, or you will learn: a wise man is also a fool.

One should hold fast one's heart; for when one letteth it go, how quickly doth one's head run away!

What knows he of love who has not been obliged to despise just what he loved

Music heals all forms of misery

At a certain place in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, for example, he might feel that he is floating above the earth in a starry dome, with the dream of immortality in his heart; all the stars seem to glimmer around him, and the earth seems to sink ever deeper downwards.

We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

If something is to stay in the memory it must be burned in: only that which never ceases hurting stays in the memory.

How can a man become great if he does not feel in himself the force and the will to inflict great pain

Man has been reared by his errors: first he never saw himself other than imperfectly, second he attributed to himself imaginary qualities, third he felt himself in a false order of rank with animal and nature, fourth he continually invented new tables of values and for a time took each of them to be eternal and unconditional...If one deducts the effect of these four errors, one has also deducted away humanity, humaneness, and 'human dignity'.

And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"--how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be?

People have always wanted to 'improve' human beings; for the most part, this has been called morality.

Yet tell me, my brothers: if a goal for humanity is still lacking, is there not still lacking--humanity itself?

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 earthward, downward, into the dark, the deep - into evil.

But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!

Like a last signpost to the other path, Napoleon appeared, the most isolated and late-born man there has even been, and in him the problem of the noble ideal as such made flesh--one might well ponder what kind of problem it is; Napoleon this synthesis of the inhuman and the superhuman

The conviction reigns that it is only through the sacrifices and accomplishments of the ancestors that the tribe exists--and that one has to pay them back with sacrifices and accomplishments; one thus recognizes a debt that constantly grows greater, since these forebears never cease, in their continued existence as powerful spirits, to accord the tribe new advantages and new strength.