Quote collection
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"A certain sense of cruelty towards oneself and others is Christian; hatred of those who think differently; the will to persecute. Mortal hostility against the masters of the earth, against the 'noble', that is also Christian; hatred of mind, of pride, courage, freedom, libertinage of mind, is Christian; hatred of the senses, of joy in general, is Christian."
"I am driven out of fatherlands and motherlands. Thus I now love only my children's land, yet undiscovered, in the farthest sea; for this I bid my sails search and search."
"The strongest have their moments of fatigue."
"Something unappeased, unappeasable, is within me."
"Really unreflective people are now inwardly without Christianity, and the more moderate and reflective people of the intellectual middle class now possess only an adapted, that is to say marvelously simplified Christianity. A god who in his love arranges everything in a manner that in the end will be best for us; a god who gives to us and takes from us our virtue and our happiness, so that as a whole all is meet and fit and there is no reason for us to take life sadly, let alone exclaim against it; in short, resignation and modest demands elevated to godhead"
"Some die too young, some die too old; the precept sounds strange, but die at the right age."
"In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point."
"Man is very well defended against himself... The actual fortress is inaccessible, even invisible to him, unless his friends and enemies play the traitor and conduct him in by a secret path."
"Everything good is the transmutation of something evil: every god has a devil for a father."
"The most unequivocal sign of contempt for man is to regard everybody merely as a means to one's own ends, or of no account whatever."
"It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that physics, too, is only an interpretation and exegesis of the world (to suit us, if I may say so!) and not a world-explanation."
"Crude men who feel themselves insulted tend to assess the degree of insult as high as possible, and talk about the offense in greatly exaggerated language, only so they can revel to their heart's content in the aroused feelings of hatred and revenge."
"Behind a remarkable scholar we not infrequently find an average human being, and behind an average artist we often find a very remarkable human being."
"Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth."
"Will, pure will, without the troubles and complexities of intellect - how happy! how free!"
"A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends."
"People press toward the light not in order to see better but in order to shine better.--We are happy to regard the one before whomwe shine as light."
"Man, full of emptiness and torn apart with homesickness for the desert has had to create from within himself an adventure, a torture-chamber, an unsafe and hazardous wilderness- this fool, this prisoner consumed with longing and despair, became the inventor of 'bad conscience'."
"That every will must consider every other will its equal would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness."
"I awoke you from your sleep because I saw that you were having a nightmare. And now you are cross and say to me: "What are we supposed to do now? Everything is still night!" You ingrates! You should go to sleep again and dream better."