Friedrich Nietzsche

One will seldom go wrong if one attributes extreme actions to vanity, average ones to habit, and pretty ones to fear.

Religious War has signified the greatest advance of the masses so far, for it proves that the masses have begun to treat concepts with respect.

Those you cannot teach to fly, teach to fall faster.

For both parties in a controversy, the most disagreeable way of retaliating is to be vexed and silent; for the aggressor usually regards the silence as a sign of contempt.

He who lives as children live - who does not struggle for his bread and does not believe that his actions possess any ultimate significance - remains childlike.

Democratic institutions form a system of quarantine for tyrannical desires.

It is very noble hypocrisy not to talk of one's self.

We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total absence in our opponent.

The complete irresponsibility of man for his actions and his nature is the bitterest drop which he who understands must swallow.

All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.

Even the most beautiful scenery is no longer assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some distant coast attracts our avarice: possessions are generally diminished by possession.

I love him who wants to create over and beyond himself and thus perishes.

In a man devoted to knowledge, pity seems almost ridiculous, like delicate hands on a cyclops.

Man is not equally moral at all hours, this is well known. If his morality is judged to be the capability for great self-sacrificing resolutions and self-denial (which, when continuous and grown habitual, are called holiness)

The end of a melody is not its goal; but nonetheless, if the melody had not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.

At a certain place in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, for example, he might feel that he is floating above the earth in a starry dome, with the dream of immortality in his heart; all the stars seem to glimmer around him, and the earth seems to sink ever deeper downwards.

With the strength of his spiritual sight and insight the distance, and as it were the space, around man continually expands: his world grows deeper, ever new stars, ever new images and enigmas come into view.

In song and dance, man forgets how to walk and speak and is on the way into flying into the air, dancing... his very gestures express enchantment.

At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.

I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.

All truth is simple... is that not doubly a lie?