Friedrich Nietzsche
Cues
Showing 20 of 20 cues
“I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who makes things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.”
“The snake that cannot shed its skin perishes. So do the spirits who are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be a spirit.”
“One can avoid opportunities for gratification of the drive [for pleasure], and through long and ever longer periods of non-gratification weaken it and make it wither away. Then, one can impose upon oneself strict regularity in its gratification: by thus imposing a rule upon the drive itself and enclosing its ebb and flow within firm time-boundaries, one has then gained intervals during which one is no longer troubled by it ...”
“I took myself in hand, I made myself healthy again ... I discovered life anew, including myself; I tasted all good and even little things, as others cannot easily taste them, I turned my will to health, to life, into a philosophy.”
“With all that which a person allows to appear, one may ask: what is it meant to hide? What should it divert the eyes from? ... How far does he deceive himself in this action?”
“To “give style” to one’s character - a great and rare art. It is practiced by those who survey all the strengths and weaknesses of their nature and then fit them into an artistic plan until every one of them appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye.”
“When someone fervently wants for a very long time to seem something, it will eventually be difficult for that person to be anything else. The profession of almost everyone, even of the artist, begins with hypocrisy, with an imitating from outside and a mimicking of what works effectively.”
“And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity - through him all things are ruined. Not by wrath, but by laughter do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity! I learned to walk; since then I have run. I have learned to fly: since then I do not have to be pushed in order to move. Now I am nimble, now I fly, now I see myself under myself, now a god dances within me.”
“The concept of greatness entails ... being able to be different.”
“He who has a why can bear almost any how.”
“What does your conscience say? ‘You shall become the person you are’.”
“Speak not of gifts, or innate talents! One can name all kinds of great men who were not very gifted. But they acquired greatness, became ‘geniuses’.”
“Examine the lives of the best and most fruitful people ... and ask yourself whether a tree that is supposed to grow to a proud height can dispense with bad weather and storms; whether misfortune and eternal resistance ... do not belong among the favorable conditions without which any great growth even of virtue is scarcely possible.”
“From such abysses [of suffering] one returns newborn, having shed one’s skin ... with a more delicate taste for joy, with a tenderer tongue for all good things, with merrier senses ... more childlike and yet a hundred times subtler than one has ever been before.”
“Man, the bravest of animals, and the one most accustomed to suffering, does not repudiate suffering as such; he desires it, he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose of suffering. The meaninglessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse that lay over mankind so far.”
“When I am among the many I live as the many do, and I do not think as I really think; after a time it always seems as though they want to banish me from myself and rob me of my soul ... I then require the desert, so as to grow good again.”
“And life confided the secret to me: behold, it said, I am that which must always overcome itself.”
“Nobody can build the bridge for you to walk across the river of life, no one but you yourself alone. There are, to be sure, countless paths and bridges and demi-gods which would carry you across this river; but only at the cost of yourself; you would pawn yourself and lose. There is in the world only one way, on which nobody can go, except you: where does it lead?”
Anti-dogmatic perspectivism
Treat even your own best theories and philosophies as perspectives and interpretations rather than absolute dogmas, remaining sceptical towards your own conclusions.
Nietzsche's apprentice storyteller
Nietzsche describes the would-be short-story writer who starts as a nobody, composes anecdotes daily and becomes an ardent observer of human psychology, labouring for years before showing his work.