Faith, Spirituality and Religion

Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?

There is not enough religion in the world even to destroy religion.

God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.

The 'kingdom of Heaven' is a condition of the heart - not something that comes 'upon the earth' or 'after death.'

What is it: is man only a blunder of God or God only a blunder of man?

Weariness, which seeketh to get to the ultimate with one leap, with a death-leap; a poor ignorant weariness, unwilling even to will any longer: that created all Gods and backworlds.

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

The strongest intimidation, by the way, is the invention of a hereafter with a hell everlasting.

The Church today is more likely to alienate than to seduce...

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’!

It was suffering and incapacity that created all afterworlds - this, and that brief madness of bliss which is experienced only by those who suffer deeply. Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.

Water is sufficient...the spirit moves over water.

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

Art as the single superior counter-force against all will to negation of life, art as the anti-Christian, anti-Buddhist, anti-Nihilist par excellence.

Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.

Dangerous Helpfulness. There are people who want to make men's lives more difficult for no other reason than afterwards to offer them their prescriptions for making life easier -- their Christianity, for example.

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

The word "Christianity" is already a misunderstanding; in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the cross.

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

What good is all this free-thinking, modernity, and turncoat flexibility if at some gut level you are still a Christian, a Catholic, and even a priest!

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.

It may be that until now there has been no more potent means for beautifying man himself than piety: it can turn man into so much art, surface, play of colors, graciousness that his sight no longer makes one suffer.---

As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies—but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters: other kinds of spirit hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.

There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.