Quotes to inspire and reflect

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

Because we have for millenia made moral, aesthetic, religious demands on the world, looked upon it with blind desire, passion or fear, and abandoned ourselves to the bad habits of illogical thinking, this world has gradually become so marvelously variegated, frightful, meaningful, soulful, it has acquired color - but we have been the colorists: it is the human intellect that has made appearances appear and transported its erroneous basic conceptions into things.

The life of the enemy . Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in the enemy's staying alive.

As soon as a religion comes to dominate it has as its opponents all those who would have been its first disciples.

What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force.

You say, it's dark. And in truth, I did place a cloud before your sun. But do you not see how the edges of the cloud are already glowing and turning light.

It is a self-deception of philosophers and moralists to imagine that they escape decadence by opposing it. That is beyond their will; and, however little they acknowledge it, one later discovers that they were among the most powerful promoters of decadence.

If a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which always recurs.

All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.

I am one thing, my writings are another.

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage

Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.

The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.

The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance.

When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.

A joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling.

It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!

To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities—I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not—that one endures.

Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive.

The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.

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 the pen?

He who has attained the freedom of reason to any extent cannot, for a long time, regard himself otherwise than as a wanderer on the face of the earth - and not even as a traveler towards a final goal, for there is no such thing. But he certainly wants to observe and keep his eyes open to whatever actually happens in the world; therefore he cannot attach his heart too firmly to anything individual; he must have in himself something wandering that takes pleasure in change and transitoriness.

In the end things must be as they are and have always been--the great things remain for the great, the abysses for the profound, the delicacies and thrills for the refined, and, to sum up shortly, everything rare for the rare.

The overman...Who has organized the chaos of his passions, given style to his character, and become creative. Aware of life's terrors, he affirms life without resentment.

Art is the proper task of life.

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.

Love, too, has to be learned.

Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not.

The spiritualization of sensuality is called love: it is a great triumph over Christianity.

Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.

One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.

Fear is not a lasting teacher of duty.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

No legacy is so rich as honesty.

I'll give you my phone number. When you worried, call me! I make you happy.

You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don't make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can't take their eyes off you.

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time…

It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living.

It is not that I'm so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.

Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly; devils fall because of their gravity.

A gift is pure when it is given from the heart when we expect nothing in return.

There are occasions and causes, why and wherefore in all things.

If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change.

If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.

You pray in your distress and in your need; you might also pray in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.

If we live truly, we shall see truly.