Friedrich Nietzsche

Reckoned physiologically, everything ugly weakens and afflicts man. It recalls decay, danger, impotence; he actually suffers a loss of energy in its presence. The effect of the ugly can be measured with a dynamometer. Whenever man feels in any way depressed, he senses the proximity of something ugly. His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride - they decline with the ugly, they increase with the beautiful.

Do not paint a picture either of God or the devil on your walls: this will ruin both your walls and the atmosphere.

We are, all of us, growing volcanoes that approach the hour of their eruption, but how near or distant that is, nobody knows- not even God.

A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.

Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions.

Do you call yourself Free? It is your ruling thought that I would hear, and not that you have escaped from a yoke.

One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.

If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself.

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.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

Germany is a great nation only because its people have so much Polish blood in their veins.

You may lie with your mouth, but with the mouth you make as you do so you none the less tell the truth.

A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.

The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.

Every true faith is infallible. It performs what the believing person hopes to find in it. But it does not offer the least support for the establishing of an objective truth. Here the ways of men divide. If you want to achieve peace of mind and happiness, have faith. If you want to be a disciple of truth, then search.

One must give value to their existence by behaving as if ones very existence were a work of art.

The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.

The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more must you allure the senses to it.