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Quotes by German Authors
"A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends."
"The world itself is the will to power - and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power - and nothing else!"
"Genius too does nothing but learn first how to lay bricks then how to build, and continually seek for material and continually form itself around it.Every activity of man is amazingly complicated, not only that of the genius: but none is a 'miracle."
"Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions."
"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."
"In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play."
"Whoever feels predestined to see and not to believe will find all believers too noisy and pushy: he guards against them."
"It is the most sensual men who need to flee women and torment their bodies."
"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."
"A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation."
"Genteel women suppose that those things do not really exist about which it is impossible to talk in polite company."
"The bad gains respect through imitation, the good loses it especially in art."
"The desire for a strong faith is not the proof of a strong faith, rather the opposite. If one has it one may permit oneself the beautiful luxury of skepticism: one is secure enough, fixed enough for it."
"No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself."
"From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become; from what the ancients did, what poetry must be."
"Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?"
"What is familiar is what we are used to; and what we are used to is most difficult to 'Know' - that is, to see as a problem; that is, to see as strange, as distant, as 'outside us'."
"Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement."
"A thinking man never be a party man."
"Novels tend to end as the Paternoster begins: with the kingdom of God on earth."
"Petnaest srećnih godina su kratke - odgovorih. Petnaest nesrećnih godina su duge i pružaju čoveku mnogo iskustva."
"Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you."
"There is nothing we like to communicate to others as much as the seal of secrecy together with what lies under it."
"Shared joys make a friend not shared sufferings."
"Without music, life would be a mistake."
"Fear is the mother of morality."
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
"An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris."
"Most people are far too much occupied with themselves to be malicious."
"After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands."
"I love those who do not know how to live for today."
"And how does one basically recognize good development? In that a well-developed man does our senses good: that he is carved from wood which is hard, delicate, and sweet-smelling, all at the same time."
"Who art thou then, O my soul!" (and here [Zarathustra] became frightened, for a sunbeam shot down from heaven upon his face.""O heaven above me," said he sighing, and sat upright, "thou gazest at me? Thou hearkenest unto my strange soul?When wilt thou drink this drop of dew that fell down upon all earthly things-when wilt thou drink this strange soul--When, thou well of eternity! thou joyous, awful, noontide abyss! when wilt thou drink my soul back into thee?"
"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."
"How can a man become great if he does not feel in himself the force and the will to inflict great pain."
"One sticks to an opinion because he prides himself on having come to it on his own, and another because he has taken great pains to learn it and is proud to have grasped it: and so both do so out of vanity."
"It is not the strength, but the duration, of great sentiments that makes great men."
"Great intellects are skeptical."
"A man who wills commands something within himself that renders obedience, or that he believes renders obedience."
"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?"
"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."
"Let your peace be a victory!"
"Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless."
"When art dresses in worn-out material it is most easily recognized as art."
"They are now informing me that not only are they better than the powerful, the masters of the world whose spittle they have to lick (not from fear, not at all from fear! but because God orders them to honour those in authority) " not only are they better, but they have a "better time, or at least will have a better time one day. But enough! enough! I can't bear it any longer. Bad air! Bad air! This workshop where ideals are fabricated " it seems to me just to stink of lies."
"There are people who want to make men's lives more difficult for no other reason than the chance it provides them afterwards to offer their prescription for alleviating life; their Christianity, for instance."
"In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad."
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