The tree that would grow to heaven must send its roots to hell.
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?
We labour at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life because it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.
The real question is: How much truth can I stand?
My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it – all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary – but love it.
There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how you use them.
In loneliness, the lonely one eats himself; in a crowd, the many eat him. Now choose.
Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.
When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.
He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.
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 essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.
In revenge and in love, woman is more barbarous than man.
I and me are always too deeply in conversation.
What is wrong with Christianity is that it refrains from doing all those things that Christ commanded should be done.
Perhaps no philosopher is more correct than the cynic. The happiness of the animal, that thorough cynic, is the living proof of cynicism.
You know a moment is important when it is making your mind go numb with beauty.
If one seeks relief from unbearable pressure, one is to eat hashish.
When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
The deeper minds of all ages have had pity for animals.