Quote collection
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"Along the journey we commonly forget its goal. Almost every vocation is chosen and entered upon as a means to a purpose but is ultimately continued as a final purpose in itself. Forgetting our objectives is the most frequent stupidity in which we indulge ourselves."
"Against war one might say that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished malicious. In its favor, that in producing these two effects it barbarizes, and so makes the combatants more natural. For culture it is a sleep or a wintertime, and man emerges from it stronger for good and for evil."
"In music the passions enjoy themselves."
"So long as the spectator has to figure out the meaning of this or that person, or the presuppositions of this or that conflict of inclinations and purposes, he cannot become completely absorbed in the activities and sufferings of the chief characters or feel breathless pity and fear."
"Democratic institutions form a system of quarantine for tyrannical desires."
"Every attainment, every step forward in knowledge, follows from courage, from hardness against oneself, from cleanliness in relation to oneself."
"Through searching out origins, one becomes a crab. The historian looks backwards, and finally he also believes backwards."
"From whatever you wish to know and measure you must take your leave, at least for a time. Only when you have left the town can yousee how high its towers rise above the houses."
"Only the most acute and active animals are capable of boredom."
"If you wish to understand a philosopher, do not ask what he says, but find out what he wants"
"Love forgives the lover even his lust."
"Women's modesty generally increases with their beauty."
"The same relation exists between merchant and pirate, who for a long period are one and the same person: where the one function appears to them inadvisable, they exercise the other."
"Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches - he has made music sick."
"Thinking about suicide is a potent consolation: it helps us to get through many a bad night."
"This crown to crown the laughing man, this rose-wreath crown: I myself have set this crown upon my head, I myself have pronounced my laughter holy."
"We are franker towards others than towards ourselves."
"The patient. The pine tree seems to listen, the fir tree to wait: and both without impatience: - they give no thought to the little people beneath them devoured by their impatience and their curiosity."
"Human, all too human."
"When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live."