All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.
It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.
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.
That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.
When one has not had a good father, one must create one.
In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.
Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier and simpler.
We have art in order not to die of the truth.
The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.
Go up close to your friend, but do not go over to him! We should also respect the enemy in our friend.
The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.
I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.
We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.
On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.
There are no facts, only interpretations.
Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.
You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.
Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.
One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.
Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.
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.
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?
Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.
Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.
It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.
A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.
He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.
All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.
Fear is the mother of morality.
Art is the proper task of life.
One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.
To forget one's purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.
Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.
For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.
The future influences the present just as much as the past.
Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.
What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.
What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.
The doer alone learneth.
Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.
Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
Success has always been a great liar.
Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions.
When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.
In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.
Do whatever you will, but first be such as are able to will.
Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.
Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.
At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.
He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.
Idleness is the parent of psychology.
Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.
There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.
We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value.
I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.
Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good.
This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.
If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself.
No one lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.
In the last analysis, even the best man is evil: in the last analysis, even the best woman is bad.
Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.
Love matches, so called, have illusion for their father and need for their mother.
Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.
For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child.
The world itself is the will to power - and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power - and nothing else!
The bad gains respect through imitation, the good loses it especially in art.
To be ashamed of one's immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one's morality.
One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.
Genteel women suppose that those things do not really exist about which it is impossible to talk in polite company.
The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.
Whoever despises himself nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.
The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.
When art dresses in worn-out material it is most easily recognized as art.
Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.
Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm.
The lie is a condition of life.
What? You seek something? You wish to multiply yourself tenfold, a hundredfold? You seek followers? Seek zeros!
One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.
Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.
In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.
Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.
Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded.
Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.
Whoever has provoked men to rage against him has always gained a party in his favor, too.
What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.
Not necessity, not desire - no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything - health, food, a place to live, entertainment - they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.
It is good to express a thing twice right at the outset and so to give it a right foot and also a left one. Truth can surely stand on one leg, but with two it will be able to walk and get around.
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.
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.
In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.
In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.
You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.
There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice.
There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.
When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets.
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.
Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.
Man...cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him.
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.
Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.
War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.
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.
When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
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.
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