Every characteristic absence of spirituality, every piece of common vulgarity, is due to an inability to resist a stimulus - you have to react, you follow every impulse.
— The Anti-Christ/Ecce Homo/Twilight of the Idols/Other Writings
Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher and writer who began his career as a classical philologist. In 1869, at age 24, he was appointed Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Basel, but health problems led him to resign in 1879.
He then lived as an independent writer, often in solitude and financial insecurity, moving between Switzerland, Italy and southern France, and completed much of his core writing in the following decade. His work spans poetry, cultural criticism and philosophical essays, with a fondness for aphorisms and irony. In 1889, aged 44, he suffered a neurological collapse and lived his remaining 11 years in the care of his mother and later his sister. Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil are his most quoted works in our library.
He then lived as an independent writer, often in solitude and financial insecurity, moving between Switzerland, Italy and southern France, and completed much of his core writing in the following decade. His work spans poetry, cultural criticism and philosophical essays, with a fondness for aphorisms and irony. In 1889, aged 44, he suffered a neurological collapse and lived his remaining 11 years in the care of his mother and later his sister. Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil are his most quoted works in our library.
No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep awake all day.
— Thus Spoke Zarathustra
When we have to change an opinion about any one, we charge heavily to his account the inconvenience he thereby causes us.
— Beyond Good and Evil
Let your peace be a victory!
— Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.
— Twilight of the Idols
Of man there is little here: therefore do their women masculinize themselves. For only he who is man enough will save the woman in woman.
— Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Man is something that shall be overcome. 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.
— Thus Spoke Zarathustra
It is disgraceful for a philosopher to say: the good and the beautiful are one; if he adds 'also the true', one ought to beat him. Truth is ugly. We possess art lest we perish of the truth.
— The Will to Power
Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.
— Beyond Good and Evil
We have abolished the real world: what world is left? The apparent world perhaps? . . . But no! with the real world we have also abolished the apparent world.
— Twilight of the Idols/The Anti-Christ
The wreckage of stars - I built a world from this wreckage.
— Dithyrambs of Dionysus
There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don’t ask, walk!
— Schopenhauer as Educator
One in three all friends are: Brothers in distress, equals facing rivals, free men - facing death!
— The Gay Science
The discerning one walketh amongst men as amongst animals.
— Thus Spoke Zarathustra
The images of myth must be the daemonic guardians, omnipresent and unnoticed, which protect the growth of the young mind, and guide man's interpretation of his life and struggles.
— The Birth of Tragedy
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!
— Thus Spoke Zarathustra
[The] self overcoming of justice: one knows the beautiful name it has given itself--mercy...
— On the Genealogy of Morals/Ecce Homo
Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.
— Beyond Good and Evil
When the gratitude of many to one throws away all shame, we behold fame.
— The Gay Science
The surest way of ruining a youth is to teach him to respect those who think as he does more highly than those who think differently from him.
— Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality
But I need solitude--which is to say, recovery, return to myself, the breath of a free, light, playful air.
— On the Genealogy of Morals/Ecce Homo
In the end we are always rewarded for our good will, our patience, fair-mindedness, and gentleness with what is strange.
— The Gay Science
The Church today is more likely to alienate than to seduce...
— On the Genealogy of Morals/Ecce Homo
He who is a firstling is ever sacrificed.
— Thus Spoke Zarathustra