He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.
You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.
I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.
One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.
We have art in order not to die of the truth.
It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.
God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.
This is what is hardest: to close the open hand because one loves.
There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.
I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.
Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.
In music the passions enjoy themselves.
The doer alone learneth.
Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul.
Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.
One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.
Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms - in themselves such judgments are stupidities.
The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.
Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.
Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions.
An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.
The aphorism in which I am the first master among Germans, are the forms of 'eternity'; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book - what everyone else does not say in a book.
The 'kingdom of Heaven' is a condition of the heart - not something that comes 'upon the earth' or 'after death.'
Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?
When one has finished building one's house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way - before one began.
Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
Faith: not wanting to know what is true.
One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.
One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.
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.
This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.
The word 'Christianity' is already a misunderstanding - in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.
There is in general good reason to suppose that in several respects the gods could all benefit from instruction by us human beings. We humans are - more humane.
There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.
Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.
Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man - the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.
I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his 'divine service.'
The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.
Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.
'Evil men have no songs.' How is it that the Russians have songs?
For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?
In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.
No one lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding; one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience; ultimately one must have one's experiences in common.
