All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.
Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.
Fear is the mother of morality.
I love those who do not know how to live for today.
That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
When one has not had a good father, one must create one.
Love is not consolation. It is light.
A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation.
In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.
An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.
Woman was God's second mistake.
For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.
The doer alone learneth.
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.
He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.
In music the passions enjoy themselves.
Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.
Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.
Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.
There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.
Mystical explanations are thought to be deep the truth is that they are not even shallow.
Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?
Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.
Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.
Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?
I would believe only in a God that knows how to Dance.
It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.
There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.
The bad gains respect through imitation, the good loses it especially in art.
art, being good & respect
A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.
Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm.
The 'kingdom of Heaven' is a condition of the heart - not something that comes 'upon the earth' or 'after death.'
Art raises its head where creeds relax.
The world itself is the will to power - and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power - and nothing else!
If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.
Stupid as a man, say the women: cowardly as a woman, say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unwomanly.
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.
Women are considered deep - why? Because one can never discover any bottom to them. Women are not even shallow.
Whoever has provoked men to rage against him has always gained a party in his favor, too.
Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.
You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.
The lie is a condition of life.
All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.
A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.
A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.
All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.
The future influences the present just as much as the past.
All truth is simple... is that not doubly a lie?
Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?
Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.
Love is blind friendship closes its eyes.
The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.
Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.
When art dresses in worn-out material it is most easily recognized as art.
One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.
'Evil men have no songs.' How is it that the Russians have songs?
Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.
Go up close to your friend, but do not go over to him! We should also respect the enemy in our friend.
The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.
This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.
Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good.
Faith: not wanting to know what is true.
In the last analysis, even the best man is evil: in the last analysis, even the best woman is bad.
Love matches, so called, have illusion for their father and need for their mother.
Today I love myself as I love my god: who could charge me with a sin today? I know only sins against my god but who knows my god?
Some are made modest by great praise, others insolent.
In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.
Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.
Genteel women suppose that those things do not really exist about which it is impossible to talk in polite company.
It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.
Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.
Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.
Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.
Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.
A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.
There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.
There is not enough religion in the world even to destroy religion.
When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets.
I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.
Rejoicing in our joy, not suffering over our suffering, makes someone a friend.
Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?