Ethics and Morality

hitherto we have been permitted to seek beauty only in the morally good - a fact which sufficiently accounts for our having found so little of it and having had to seek about for imaginary beauties without backbone! - As surely as the wicked enjoy a hundred kinds of happiness of which the virtuous have no inkling, so too they possess a hundred kinds of beauty: and many of them have not yet been discovered.

It is disgraceful for a philosopher to say: the good and the beautiful are one; if he adds 'also the true', one ought to beat him. Truth is ugly. We possess art lest we perish of the truth.

We set no special value on the possession of a virtue until we percieve that it is entirely lacking in our adversary.

Philosophy is not suited for the masses, what they need is holiness.

When we have to change an opinion about any one, we charge heavily to his account the inconvenience he thereby causes us.

Most people are far too much occupied with themselves to be malicious.

Every characteristic absence of spirituality, every piece of common vulgarity, is due to an inability to resist a stimulus - you have to react, you follow every impulse.

It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right --especially when one is right.

A degree of culture, and assuredly a very high one, is attained when man rises above superstitions and religious notions and fears, and, for instance, no longer believes in guardian angels or in original sin, and has also ceased to talk of the salvation of his soul.

Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.

Whoever extolleth him as a God of love, doth not think highly enough of love itself. Did not that God want also to be judge? But the loving one loveth irrespective of reward and requital.

If one shifts the center of gravity of life out of life into the “Beyond” – into nothingness – one has deprived life as such of its center of gravity. The great lie of personal immortality destroys all rationality, all naturalness of instinct, all that is salutary, all that is life-furthering.

Ah, ye brethren, that God whom I created was human work and human madness, like all the Gods!

Popular medicine and popular morality belong together and ought not to be evaluated so differently as they still are: both are the most dangerous pseudo-sciences.

All that exists is just and unjust and is equally justified in both respects.

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.

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

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.

Fear is not a lasting teacher of duty.

No legacy is so rich as honesty.

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

You've got to love what's loveable and hate what's hateable. It takes brains to see the difference.

A fool flatters himself, a wise man flatters the fool.

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.