Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
The happiness of man is: I will. The happiness of woman is: he wills. 'Behold , just now the world ... entire love. And woman must obey and find a depth for her surface. Surface is the disposition of woman: a mobile, stormy film over shallow water. Man's disposition, however, is deep; his river roars in subterranean caves: woman feels his strength but does not comprehend it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote explores the different ways men and women experience happiness and love, highlighting a contrast between their dispositions and emotional depths.
In this quote, Nietzsche reflects on the nature of happiness in men and women, suggesting a dichotomy where men find fulfillment in their willpower while women find theirs in their partner's desires. He describes women's emotional experiences as surface-level, often turbulent, while portraying men as having a deeper, more powerful emotional core that women can sense but may not fully understand. This distinction comments on broader themes of gender dynamics and the complexities of love and relationships.
Themes
HappinessGenderRelationshipsLoveEmotionsDepth
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a discussion about gender roles in modern relationships.
More from Friedrich Nietzsche
All quotes →That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness — as if happiness sat on the throne. Often, mud sits on the throne — and often the throne also on mud. Mad they all appear to me, clambering monkeys and overardent. Foul smells their idol, the cold monster: foul, they smell to me altogether, these idolators.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
Reason is the cause of our falsification of the evidence of the senses. In so far as the senses show becoming, passing away, change, they do not lie.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
The anarchist and the Christian have a common origin.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
Similar quotes
She [Evelina] is not, indeed, like most modern young ladies; to be known in half an hour; her modest worth, and fearful excellence, require both time and encouragement to show themselves.
Fanny BurneyRead
As he took her hand she saw him look her over from head to foot, a gesture she recognized and that made her feel at home, but gave her always a faint feeling of superiority to whoever made it. If her person was property she could exercise whatever advantage was inherent in its ownership.
F. Scott FitzgeraldRead
He breathed out the bitter air that makes women doubt everything, and I breathed it in, as I had always done. I expelled my dust, the powder of everything I had destroyed with doubt, and he pulled it into his lungs.
Miranda JulyRead
What interests me is why men think of women as witches. It's because they're so fascinating and exasperating, so other.
John UpdikeRead
When we have an experience -- hearing a particular sonata, making love with a particular person, watching the sun set from a particular window of a particular room -- on successive occasions, we quickly begin to adapt to it, and the experience yields less pleasure each time. Psychologists call this habituation, economists call it declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage
Daniel GilbertRead
I do not think I responded immediately, for it took me a moment or two to fully digest these words of Miss Kenton. Moreover, as you might appreciate, their implications were such as to provoke a certain degree of sorrow within me. Indeed- why should I not admit it? - at that moment, my heart was breaking.
Kazuo IshiguroRead