Quotes from The Portable Nietzsche

“Sensuality often hastens the "Growth of Love" so much that the roots remain weak and are easily torn up.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from The Portable Nietzsche

“God is dead, but considering the state the species man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from The Portable Nietzsche

“Can you give yourself your own evil and your own good and hang your own will over yourself as a law? Can you be your own judge and avenger of your law? Terrible it is to be alone with the judge and avenger of one's own law. Thus is a star thrown out into the void and into the icy breath of solitude. Today you are still suffering from the many being one: today your courage and your hopes are still whole. But the time will come when solitude will make you weary, when your pride will double up and your courage gnash its teeth. And you will cry, "I am alone!" The time will come when that which seems high to you will no longer be in sight, and that which seems low will be all-too-near; even what seems sublime to you will frighten you like a ghost And you will cry, "All is false!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from The Portable Nietzsche

“Oh, my friends, that your self be in your deed as the mother is in her child - let that be your word concerning virtue!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from The Portable Nietzsche

“Misunderstanding of the dream. In the ages of crude primeval culture man believed that in dreams he got to know another real world; here is the origin of all metaphysics.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from The Portable Nietzsche

“if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire. .”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from The Portable Nietzsche

“Thereby men do not flee from being deceived as much as from being damaged by deception: what they hate at this stage is basically not the deception but the bad, hostile consequences of certain kinds of deceptions. In a similarly limited way man wants the truth: he desires the agreeable life-preserving consequences of truth, but he is indifferent to pure knowledge, which has no consequences; he is even hostile to possibly damaging and destructive truths.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from The Portable Nietzsche

“Nothing avails: every master has but one disciple, and that one becomes unfaithful to him, for he too is destined for mastership.   [408]”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from The Portable Nietzsche

“truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins. We still do not know where the urge for truth comes from; for as yet we have heard only of the obligation imposed by society that it should exist: to be truthful means using the customary metaphors—in moral terms: the obligation to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie herd-like in a style obligatory for all. . . .”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from The Portable Nietzsche

“It is all in vain; the torture of the unfulfilled law cannot be overcome.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from The Portable Nietzsche

“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.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from The Portable Nietzsche

“To educate educators! But the first ones must educate themselves! And for these I write. (VII,”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from The Portable Nietzsche

“Of inference, all are capable; of judgment, only a few.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from The Portable Nietzsche

“For, believe me, the secret of the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from The Portable Nietzsche

“Resigned that those surrounding him had no idea who he was, and invariably kind to his social and intellectual inferiors, he sometimes felt doubly hurt that those who ought to have understood him really had less respect for him than his most casual acquaintances.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from The Portable Nietzsche

“Preparatory men. I welcome all signs that a more manly, a warlike, age is about to begin, an age which, above all, will give honor to valor once again. For this age shall prepare the way for one yet higher, and it shall gather the strength which this higher age will need one day - this age which is to carry heroism into the pursuit of knowledge and wage wars for the sake of thoughts and their consequences. To this end we now need many preparatory valorous men who cannot leap into being out of nothing - any more than out of the sand and slime of our present civilisation and metropolitanism: men who are bent on seeking for that aspect in all things which must be overcome; men characterised by cheerfulness, patience, unpretentiousness, and contempt for all great vanities, as well as by magnanimity in victory and forbearance regarding the small vanities of the vanquished; men possessed of keen and free judgement concerning all victors and the share of chance in every victory and every fame; men who have their own festivals, their own weekdays, their own periods of mourning, who are accustomed to command with assurance and are no less ready to obey when necessary, in both cases equally proud and serving their own cause; men who are in greater danger, more fruitful, and happier! For, believe me, the secret of the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously! Build your cities under Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors, as long as you cannot be rulers and owners, you lovers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be satisfied to live like shy deer, hidden in the woods! At long last the pursuit of knowledge will reach out for its due: it will want to rule and own, and you with it!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from The Portable Nietzsche

“Here he seeks out his last master: he wants to fight him and his last god; for ultimate victory he wants to fight with the great dragon. Who is the great dragon whom the spirit will no longer call lord and god? “Thou shalt” is the name of the great dragon. But the spirit of the lion says, “I will.” “Thou shalt” lies in his way, sparkling like gold, an animal covered with scales; and on every scale shines a golden “thou shalt.” Values, thousands of years old, shine on these scales; and thus speaks the mightiest of all dragons: “All value of all things shines on me. All value has long been created, and I am all created value. Verily, there shall be no more ‘I will.’ ” Thus speaks the dragon. My brothers, why is there a need in the spirit for the lion? Why is not the beast of burden, which renounces and is reverent, enough?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from The Portable Nietzsche

“I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in yourselves.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from The Portable Nietzsche

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