Quotes, Quotations and Sayings

Speaking generally, punishment hardens and numbs, it produces obstinacy, it sharpens the sense of alienation and strengthens the power of resistance.

How good bad music and bad reasons sound when one marches against an enemy!

Woman was God's second mistake.

Plato was a bore.

Success has always been a great liar.

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

A soul that knows it is loved but does not itself love betrays its sediment: what is at the bottom comes up.

Some men are born posthumously.

Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.

Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?

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

You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

The desire to create continually is vulgar and betrays jealousy, envy, ambition. If one is something one really does not need to make anything --and one nonetheless does very much. There exists above the ''productive'' man a yet higher species.

I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer.

The only dance masters I could have were Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Walt Whitman and Nietzsche.

Early in the morning, at break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one's strength, to read a book --I call that vicious!

I should account as the foremost musician one who knew only the sadness of the most profound happiness, and no other sadness at all.

Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

Everything in woman hath a solution. It is called pregnancy.

The lie is a condition of life.

Has a woman who knew she was well-dressed ever caught a cold?

For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child.

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his ''divine service.''

The architect represents neither a Dionysian nor an Apollinian condition: here it is the mighty act of will, the will which moves mountains, the intoxication of the strong will, which demands artistic expression. The most powerful men have always inspired the architects; the architect has always been influenced by power.

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.

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

He turns all of his injuries into strengths, that which does not kill him makes him stronger, he is superman.

You gave him an opportunity of showing greatness of character and he did not seize it. He will never forgive you for that.

Life without music would be a mistake.

Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.

The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in the whole, in the building: posterity discovers it in the bricks with which he built and which are then often used again for better building: in the fact, that is to say, that building can be destroyed and nonetheless possess value as material.

And if your friend does evil to you, say to him, ''I forgive you for what you did to me, but how can I forgive you for what you did to yourself?''

The strongest knowledge (that of the total freedom of the human will) is nonetheless the poorest in successes: for it always has the strongest opponent, human vanity.

We find nothing easier than being wise, patient, superior. We drip with the oil of forbearance and sympathy, we are absurdly just, we forgive everything. For that very reason we ought to discipline ourselves a little; for that very reason we ought to cultivate a little emotion, a little emotional vice, from time to time. It may be hard for us; and among ourselves we may perhaps laugh at the appearance we thus present. But what of that! We no longer have any other mode of self-overcoming available to us: this is our asceticism, our penance.

In a friend one should have ones best enemy. You should be closest to him with your heart when you resist him.

One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.

The man loves danger and sport. That is why he loves woman, the most dangerous of all sports.

People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher --a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.

If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself.

The growth of wisdom may be gauged exactly by the diminution of ill temper.

Actual philosophers... are commanders and law-givers: they say ''thus it shall be!'', it is they who determine the Wherefore and Whither of mankind, and they possess for this task the preliminary work of all the philosophical laborers, of all those who have subdued the past -- they reach for the future with creative hand, and everything that is or has been becomes for them a means, an instrument, a hammer. Their ''knowing'' is creating, their creating is a law giving, their will to truth is -- will to power. Are their such philosophers today? Have there been such philosophers? Must there not be such philosophers?

''To give style'' to one's character -- a great and rare art! He exercises it who surveys all that his nature presents in strength and weakness and then moulds it to an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason, and even the weaknesses delight the eye.

The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

Women are considered deep -- why? Because one can never discover any bottom to them. Women are not even shallow.

A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.

The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.

I love those who do not know how to live for today.