Everyone needs a sense of shame, but no one needs to feel ashamed.
Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the madness with which you should be cleansed? Behold, I show you the Superman. He is this lightning, he is this madness.
What we call truths are just those errors that we cannot give up.
The Devil has the broadest perspectives for God; therefore, he keeps so far away from God – the Devil being the most ancient friend of wisdom.
Deep is the well of truth and long does it take to know what has fallen into its depths.
It seems to me that to take a book of mine into his hands is one of the rarest distinctions that anyone can confer upon himself. I even assume that he removes his shoes when he does so-not to speak of boots.
It is thus only this personal feeling of misery that we get rid of by acts of pity.
To regard states of distress in general as an objection, as something which must be abolished is the greatest nonsense on earth; having the most disastrous consequences, fatally stupid- almost as stupid as a wish to abolish bad weather – out of pity for the poor.
The good-they cannot create; they are always the beginning of the end.
If we make sacrifices in doing good or in doing ill, it does not alter the ultimate value of our actions; even if we stake our life in the cause, as martyrs do for the sake of our church : it is a sacrifice to our longing for power, or for the purpose of conserving our sense of power.
There is a stupid humility that is quite common and when a person is afflicted with it, he is once and for all disqualified for being a disciple of knowledge.
You want to be paid as well, you virtuous! You want reward for virtue, and heaven for earth, and eternity for your today?
Love ever your neighbour as yourselves – but first be such as love themselves.
That, however, is – mediocrity, though it be called moderation.
All philosophy is a form of confession.
Every man in creating the beautiful appearance of the dream worlds is a perfect artist.
Prejudice of the learned. – The learned judge correctly that people of all ages have believed they know what is good and evil, praise- and blameworthy. But it is a prejudice of the learned that we now know better than any other age.
One man runs to his neighbor because he is looking for himself, and another because he wants to loose himself. Your bad love of yourselves makes solitude a prison for you.
The body is a big sagacity, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a shepherd.
Everything is the same, nothing is worthwhile, the world is senseless, knowledge strangles.