Quotes from Human, All Too Human

“Stupidity in a woman is unfeminine.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“He who cannot put his thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of dispute.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“Most people are far too much occupied with themselves to be malicious.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“And so, onwards... along a path of wisdom, with a hearty tread, a hearty confidence.. however you may be, be your own source of experience. Throw off your discontent about your nature. Forgive yourself your own self. You have it in your power to merge everything you have lived through- false starts, errors, delusions, passions, your loves and your hopes- into your goal, with nothing left over.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“The one necessary thing.— A person must have one or the other. Either a cheerful disposition by nature, or a disposition made cheerful by art and knowledge.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“At a certain place in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, for example, he might feel that he is floating above the earth in a starry dome, with the dream of immortality in his heart; all the stars seem to glimmer around him, and the earth seems to sink ever deeper downwards.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“It is not conflict of opinions that has made history so violent but conflict of belief in opinions, that is to say conflict of convictions.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“Marriage as a long conversation. - When marrying you should ask yourself this question: do you believe you are going to enjoy talking with this woman into your old age? Everything else in a marriage is transitory, but most of the time that you're together will be devoted to conversation.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“No one dies of fatal truths nowadays: there are too many antidotes.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“A man far oftener appears to have a decided character from persistently following his temperament than from persistently following his principles.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“He who speaks a bit of a foreign language has more delight in it than he who speaks it well; pleasure goes along with superficial knowledge.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“In reality, hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs man’s torments.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“The complete irresponsibility of man for his actions and his nature is the bitterest drop which he who understands must swallow.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“We set no special value on the possession of a virtue until we percieve that it is entirely lacking in our adversary.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“Language as putative science. -

The significance of language for the evolution of culture lies in this, that mankind set up in language a separate world beside the other world, a place it took to be so firmly set that, standing upon it, it could lift the rest of the world off its hinges and make itself master of it. To the extent that man has for long ages believed in the concepts and names of things as in aeternae veritates he has appropriated to himself that pride by which he raised himself above the animal: he really thought that in language he possessed knowledge of the world. The sculptor of language was not so modest as to believe that he was only giving things designations, he conceived rather that with words he was expressing supreame knowledge of things; language is, in fact, the first stage of occupation with science. Here, too, it is the belief that the truth has been found out of which the mightiest sources of energy have flowed. A great deal later - only now - it dawns on men that in their belief in language they have propagated a tremendous error. Happily, it is too late for the evolution of reason, which depends on this belief, to be put back. - Logic too depends on presuppositions with which nothing in the real world corresponds, for example on the presupposition that there are identical things, that the same thing is identical at different points of time: but this science came into existence through the opposite belief (that such conditions do obtain in the real world). It is the same with mathematics, which would certainly not have come into existence if one had known from the beginning that there was in nature no exactly straight line, no real circle, no absolute magnitude.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“In conversation we are sometimes confused by the tone of our own voice, and mislead to make assertions that do not at all correspond to our opinions.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“Socialism itself can hope to exist only for brief periods here and there, and then only through the exercise of the extremest terrorism. For this reason it is secretly preparing itself for rule through fear and is driving the word “justice” into the heads of the half-educated masses like a nail so as to rob them of their reason… and to create in them a good conscience for the evil game they are to play.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“Ages of happiness. - An age of happiness is quite impossible, because men want only to desire it but not to have it, and every individual who experiences good times learns to downright pray for misery and disquietude. The destiny of man is designed for happy moments - every life has them - but not for happy ages. Nonetheless they will remain fixed in the imagination of man as 'the other side of the hill' because they have been inherited from ages past: for the concepts of the age of happiness was no doubt acquired in primeval times from that condition of which, after violent exertion in hunting and warfare, man gives himself up to repose, stretches his limbs and hears the pinions of sleep rustling about him. It is a false conclusion if, in accordance with that ancient familiar experience, man imagines that, after whole ages of toil and deprivation, he can then partake of that condition of happiness correspondingly enhanced and protracted.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“الحلم وقد أسىء فهمه:
إن أصل كل ميتا فيزيقا هو كون الإنسان، فى الأزمنة الأولى لحضارة لما تزل بدائية، قد اعتقد أنه اكتشف فى الحلم عالما حقيقيا ثانيا. لولا الحلم لما وجد الناس أدنى سبب لتقسيم العالم إلى قسمين. إن انفصال الروح والجسد يرتبط هو كذلك بأقدم تصور للحلم تماما مثل فرضية صورة جسدية للروح، كما يرتبط به إجمالا أصل كل اعتقاد فى الأرواح، وربما أصل الإيمان بالآلهة. "إن الميت يظل حيا، لأنه يظهر للأحياء فى الحلم.": هذا هو الاستدلال الذى ساد فيما مضى طيلة ألفيات.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“When we hear the ancient bells growling on a Sunday morning we ask ourselves: Is it really possible! This, for a jew, crucified two thousand years ago, who said he was God's son? The proof of such a claim is lacking. Certainly the Christian religion is an antiquity projected into our times from remote prehistory; and the fact that the claim is believed - whereas one is otherwise so strict in examining pretensions - is perhaps the most ancient piece of this heritage. A god who begets children with a mortal woman; a sage who bids men work no more, have no more courts, but look for the signs of the impending end of the world; a justice that accepts the innocent as a vicarious sacrifice; someone who orders his disciples to drink his blood; prayers for miraculous interventions; sins perpetrated against a god, atoned for by a god; fear of a beyond to which death is the portal; the form of the cross as a symbol in a time that no longer knows the function and ignominy of the cross -- how ghoulishly all this touches us, as if from the tomb of a primeval past! Can one believe that such things are still believed?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“One thing a man must have: either a naturally light disposition or a disposition lightened by art and knowledge.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“None of the people have any real interest in a science, who only begin to be enthusiastic about it when they themselves have made discoveries in it.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“Our crime against criminals lies in the fact that we treat them like rascals.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“The Hour-Hand of Life --- Life consists of rare, isolated moments of the greatest significance, and of innumerably many intervals, during which at best the silhouettes of those moments hover about us. Love, springtime, every beautiful melody, mountains, the moon, the sea – all these speak completely to the heart but once, if in fact they ever do get a chance to speak completely. For many men do not have those moments at all, and are themselves intervals and intermissions in the symphony of real life.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“The free spirit again draws near to life - slowly, to be sure, almost reluctantly, almost mistrustfully. It again grows warmer about him, yellower as it were; feeling and feeling for others acquire depth, warm breezes of all kind blow across him. It seems to him as if his eyes are only now open to what is close at hand. he is astonished and sits silent: where had he been? These close and closest things: how changed they seem! what bloom and magic they have acquired!

He looks back gratefully - grateful to his wandering, to his hardness and self-alienation, to his viewing of far distances and bird-like flights in cold heights. What a good thing he had not always stayed "at home," stayed "under his own roof" like a delicate apathetic loafer! He had been -beside himself-: no doubt about that.

Only now does he see himself - and what surprises he experiences as he does so! What unprecedented shudders! What happiness even in the weariness, the old sickness, the relapses of the convalescent! How he loves to sit sadly still, to spin out patience, to lie in the sun! Who understands as he does the joy that comes in winter, the spots of sunlight on the wall!

They are the most grateful animals in the world, also the most modest, these convalescents and lizards again half-turned towards life: - there are some among them who allow no day to pass without hanging a little song of praise on the hem of its departing robe. And to speak seriously: to become sick in the manner of these free spirits, to remain sick for a long time and then, slowly, slowly, to become healthy, by which I mean "healthier," is a fundamental cure for all pessimism.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“Against the censurers of brevity. - Something said briefly can be the fruit of much long thought: but the reader who is a novice in this field, and has as yet reflected on it not at all, sees in everything said briefly something embryonic, not without censuring the author for having served him up such immature and unripened fare.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

“Truth as Circe. - Error has transformed animals into men; is truth perhaps capable of changing man back into an animal?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Human, All Too Human

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

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