"Happiness: being able to forget or, to express in a more learned fashion."

"The bad gains respect through imitation, the good loses it especially in art."

"The 'kingdom of Heaven' is a condition of the heart - not something that comes 'upon the earth' or 'after death.'"

"I tell you: one must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you still have chaos in yourselves."

"Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves."

"Genteel women suppose that those things do not really exist about which it is impossible to talk in polite company."

"What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?"

"Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day."

"Music heals all forms of misery."

"If something is to stay in the memory it must be burned in: only that which never ceases hurting stays in the memory."

"A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation."

"There is no such thing as moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena."

"I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers, and arrows of longing for the other shore."

"The more you let yourself go the less others let you go."

"Philosophy is not suited for the masses, what they need is holiness."

"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives; who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?"

"Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless."

"Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood."

"Let your peace be a victory!"

"Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them."

"We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once."

"Man has been reared by his errors: first he never saw himself other than imperfectly, second he attributed to himself imaginary qualities, third he felt himself in a false order of rank with animal and nature, fourth he continually invented new tables of values and for a time took each of them to be eternal and unconditional...If one deducts the effect of these four errors, one has also deducted away humanity, humaneness, and 'human dignity'."

"What good is all this free-thinking, modernity, and turncoat flexibility if at some gut level you are still a Christian, a Catholic, and even a priest!"

"One is healthy when one can laugh at the earnestness and zeal with which one has been hypnotized by any single detail of one's life."

"Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs, he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter."

"The errors of great men are venerable because they are more fruitful than the truths of little men."

"Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself."

"To recognize untruth as a condition of life--that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way, and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil."

"Three metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you: how thespirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child."

"Gratitude pours forth continually, as if the unexpected had just happened-the gratitude of a convalescent-for convalescence was unexpected. The rejoicing of strength that is returning, of a reawakened faith in a tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, of a sudden sense and anticipation of a future, of impending adventures, of seas that are open again."

"A politician divides mankind into two classes: tools and enemies."

"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 way is upward, from the species across to the super-species. But the degenerate mind which says 'All for me' is a horror to us."

"One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one has given. One must have strong powers of imagination to be able to have pity. So closely is morality bound to the quality of the intellect."

"We set no special value on the possession of a virtue until we percieve that it is entirely lacking in our adversary."

"It is the most sensual men who need to flee women and torment their bodies."

"Hypocrisy has its place in the ages of strong belief: in which even when one is compelled to exhibit a different belief one does not abandon the belief on already has."

"The solitary speaks."One receives as a reward for much ennui , ill-humour and boredom, such as a solitude without friends, books, duties or passions must entail, one harvests those quarters of an hour of the deepest immersion in oneself and nature. He who completely entrenches himself against boredom also entrenches himself against himself: he will never get to drink the most potent refreshing draught from the deepest well of his own being."

"It is not the strength but the duration of great sentiments that makes great men."

"Whoever feels predestined to see and not to believe will find all believers too noisy and pushy: he guards against them."

"What do you consider the most humane? - To spare someone shame. What is the seal of liberation? - To no longer be ashamed in front of oneself."

"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?"

"And as long as you are in any way ashamed before yourself, you do not yet belong with us."

"If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."

"The wittiest authors raise the very slightest of smiles."

"Love is blind friendship closes its eyes."

"State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies; and this lie slips from its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people."

"Better know nothing than half-know many things."

"It is not a lack of love but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages."

"All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values."