Quotes From "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" By Friedrich Nietzsche

Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds. Friedrich Nietzsche

Ich lehre euch den Übermenschen. Der Mensch ist Etwas, das überwunden werden soll. Was habt ihr gethan, ihn zu überwinden? Was ist der Affe für en Menschen? Ein Gelächter oder eine schmerzliche Scham. Und ebendas soll der Mensch für den Übermenschen sein: ein Gelächter oder eine schmerzliche Scham. Ihr habt den Weg vom Wurme zum Menschen gemacht, und Vieles ist in euch noch Wurm. Einst wart ihr Affen, und auch jetzt ist der Mensch mehr Affe, als irgend ein Affe. Friedrich Nietzsche

You tell me: 'Life is hard to bear.' But if it were otherwise why should you have your pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening? Life is hard to bear: but do not pretend to be so tender! We are all of us pretty fine asses and asseses of burden! Friedrich Nietzsche

A light has dawned for me: I need companions, living ones, not dead companions and corpses which I carry with me wherever I wish. But I need living companions who follow me because they want to follow themselves– and who want to go where I want to go. Friedrich Nietzsche

It breaks my heart. Better than your words, your eye tells me all your peril. You are not yet free, you still search for freedom. Your search has fatigued you and made you too wakeful. You long for the open heights, your soul thirsts for the stars. But your bad instincts too thirst for freedom. Your fierce dogs long for freedom; they bark for joy in their cellar when your spirit aspires to break open all prisons. To me you are still a prisoner who imagines freedom: ah, such prisoners of the soul become clever, but also deceitful and base. Friedrich Nietzsche

The happiness of man is: I will. The happiness of woman is: he wills. ‘Behold, just now the world became perfect! ’–thus thinks every woman when she obeys out of entire love. And women must obey and find a depth for her surface. Surface is the disposition of woman: a mobile, stormy film over shallow water. Man’s disposition, however, is deep; his river roars in subterranean caves: woman feels his strength but does not comprehend it. Friedrich Nietzsche

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? . Friedrich Nietzsche

But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthword, downword, into the dark, the deep - into evil. Friedrich Nietzsche

I love the forest. Friedrich Nietzsche

One should hold fast one's heart; for when one letteth it go, how quickly doth one's head run away! Friedrich Nietzsche

My world has just become perfect, midnight is also noonday, pain is also joy, a curse is also a blessing, the night is also a sun — be gone, or you will learn: a wise man is also a fool. Friedrich Nietzsche

This world, the eternally imperfect, the eternal and imperfect image of a contradiction — an intoxicating joy to its imperfect creator — that is what I once thought the world. Friedrich Nietzsche

As if a round apple presented itself to my hand, a ripe, golden apple with a soft, cool, velvety skin - thus the world presented itself to me - as if a tree nodded to me, a wide-branching, strong-willed tree, bent for reclining and as a footstool for the way-weary: thus the world stood upon my headland - as if tender hands brought me a casket - a casket open for the delight of modest, adoring eyes: thus the world presented himself before me today - not so enigmatic as to frighten away human love, not so explicit as to put to sleep human wisdom - a good, human thing was the world to me today, this world of which so many evil things are said! . Friedrich Nietzsche

As yet hath his knowledge not learned to smile, and to be without jealously ; as yet hath his gushing passion not become calm in beauty. Friedrich Nietzsche

It is true: we love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving. There is always a certain madness in love. But also there is always a certain method in madness. Friedrich Nietzsche

The discerning one walketh amongst men as amongst animals. Friedrich Nietzsche

Sleep knocks on my eyes: they grow heavy. Sleep touches my mouth: it stays open. Truly, he comes to me on soft soles, the dearest of thieves, and steals my thoughts from me Friedrich Nietzsche

Alas, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the compassionate? And what in the world has caused more suffering than the follies of the compassionate? Woe to all lovers who cannot surmount pity! Thus spoke the Devil to me once: Even God has his Hell: it is his love for man. And I lately heard him say these words: God is dead; God has died of his pity for man. Friedrich Nietzsche

I and me are always too deeply in conversation: how could I endure it, if there were not a friend? The friend of the hermit is always the third one: the third one is the float which prevents the conversation of the two from sinking into the depth. Friedrich Nietzsche

Here all great emotions decay: here only little, dry emotions may rattle! Do you not smell already the slaughter-houses and cook-shops of the spirit? Does this city not reek of the fumes of slaughtered spirit? Do you not see the souls hanging like dirty, limp rags? — And they also make newspapers from these rags! Have you not heard how the spirit has here become a play with words? It vomits our repulsive verbal swill! — And they also make newspapers from this verbal swill. They pursue one another and do not know where. They inflame one another, and do not know why. They rattle their tins, they jingle their gold. They are cold and seek warmth in distilled waters; they are inflamed and seek coolness in frozen spirits; they are all ill and diseased with public opinion. All lusts and vices are at home here; but there are virtuous people here, too, there are many adroit, useful virtues. Friedrich Nietzsche

My Ego taught me a new pride, I teach it to men: No longer to bury the head in the sand of heavenly things, but to carry it freely, an earthly head which creates meaning for the earth! Friedrich Nietzsche

Remain true to the earth, my brethren, with the power of your virtue! Let your bestowing love and your knowledge be devoted to be the meaning of the earth!. .. Let it not fly away from the earthly and beat against eternal walls with its wings... . Lead, like me, the flown-away virtue back to the earth–yes, back to body and life: that it may give to the earth its meaning, a human meaning! Friedrich Nietzsche

It was suffering and incapacity that created all afterworlds - this, and that brief madness of bliss which is experienced only by those who suffer deeply. Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds. Friedrich Nietzsche

It is intoxicating joy for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and to forget himself. Friedrich Nietzsche

I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses. Friedrich Nietzsche

But one thing is the thought, another thing is the deed, and another thing is the idea of the deed. The wheel of causality doth not roll between them. Friedrich Nietzsche

And when he invented his hell, that was his heaven on earth. Friedrich Nietzsche

You go above and beyond them: but the higher you climb, the smaller you appear to the eye of envy. And he who flies is hated most of all. Friedrich Nietzsche

All history is the experimental refutation of the theory of the so-called moral order of things. Friedrich Nietzsche

When, however, you have an enemy, then do not requite him good for evil: for that would shame him. Instead, prove that he did some good for you. And rather be angry than put to shame! And when you are cursed, I do not like it that you want to bless. Rather curse a little also! And if you are done a great injustice, then quickly add five small ones. Hideous to behold is he who is obsessed with an injustice. Friedrich Nietzsche

Ah, brothers, this God which I created was human work and human madness, like all gods! He was human, and only a poor piece of man and Ego: this phantom came to me from my own fire and ashes, that is the truth! It did not come from the ‘beyond’! Friedrich Nietzsche

All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment… (…) Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman–a rope over an abyss… What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under… . Friedrich Nietzsche

You are treading your path of greatness: now it must call up all your courage that there is no longer a path behind you! You are treading your path of greatness: no one shall steal after you here! Your foot itself has extinguished the path behind you, and above that path stands written: Impossibility. Friedrich Nietzsche

The good life is that which succeeds in existing for the moment, without reference to past or future, without condemnation or selection, in a state of absolute lightness, and in the finished conviction that there is no difference therefore between the instant and eternity. Friedrich Nietzsche

I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go. Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died, and these sinners died with him. To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful thing, and to esteem the entrails of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth.. What is the greatest experience you can have? It is the hour of the great contempt. The hour when your happiness, too, arouses your disgust, and even your reason and your virtue. Friedrich Nietzsche

O happiness! O happiness! Wilt thou perhaps sing, O my soul? Thou liest in the grass. But this is the secret, solemn hour, when no shepherd playeth his pipe. Take care! Hot noontide sleepeth on the fields. Do not sing! Hush! The world is perfect. Do not sing, thou prairie-bird, my soul! Do not even whisper! Lo–hush! The old noontide sleepeth, it moveth its mouth: doth it not just now drink a drop of happiness–– An old brown drop of golden happiness, golden wine? Something whisketh over it, its happiness laugheth. Thus–laugheth a God. Hush! "For happiness, how little sufficeth for happiness! " Thus spoke I once and thought myself wise. But it was a blasphemy: that have I now learned. Wise fools speak better. The least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard's rustling, a breath, a whisk, an eye-glance–little maketh up the best happiness. Hush! . Friedrich Nietzsche