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There Will Be But Few People Who, When At A Loss For Topics Of Conversation, Will Not Reveal The More Secret Affairs Of Their Friends.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
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There Will Be But

Friedrich Nietzsche
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There Will Be But Few People Who, When At A Loss For Topics Of Conversation, Will Not Reveal The More Secret Affairs Of Their Friends.

Understanding the Quote: "there will be but few people who, when at a loss for..."

This quote by Friedrich Nietzsche reflects deeply on the theme of loss. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Loss, People, Secret, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Friedrich Nietzsche interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche is celebrated for insightful thoughts on loss and people. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Loss
People
Secret
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. . . An Absurd Problem Came To The Surface: 'how Could God Permit That (crucifixion Of Jesus Christ)!' . . . The Deranged Reason Of The Little Community Found Quite A Frightfully Absurd Answer: God Gave His Son For Forgiveness, As A Sacrifice . . . The Sacrifice For Guilt, And Just In Its Most Repugnant And Barbarous Form - The Sacrifice Of The Innocent For The Sins Of The Guilty! What Horrifying Heathenism!
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We Have No Dreams At All Or Interesting Ones. We Should Learn To Be Awake The Same Way- Not At All Or In An Interesting Manner
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In Compassionate Men, Severity Is A Virtue.
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War Has Always Been The Grand Sagacity Of Every Spirit Which Has Grown Too Inward And Too Profound; Its Curative Power Lies Even In The Wounds One Receives.
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It Takes Physical Courage To Indulge In Wickedness. The "good" Are Too Cowardly To Do It.
Courage
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What A Dissimilarity We See In Walking, Swimming, And Flying. And Yet It Is One And The Same Motion: It Is Just That The Load- Bearing Capacity Of The Earth Differs From That Of The Water, And That That Of The Water Differs From That Of The Air! Thus We Should Also Learn To Fly As Thinkers--and Not Imagine That We Are Thereby Becoming Idle Dreamers!
Swimming
Air
Water
It Is Nothing But Fanaticism And Beautiful Soulism To Expect Very Much (or Even, Much Only) From Humanity When It Has Forgotten How To Wage War.
Beautiful
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One Lives For The Day, One Lives Very Fast, One Lives Very Irresponsibly: Precisely This Is Called "freedom."
Independent
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I Love Him Who Maketh His Virtue His Inclination And Destiny: Thus, For The Sake Of His Virtue, He Is Willing To Live On, Or Live No More.
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The Universe Without Music Would Be Madness.
Would Be
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The Enjoyment That All Morality Has Given Us To Now And That It Continues To Give Us--and So, What Has Kept It Going Up To Now--lies In Everyone's Right, Without Lengthy Investigation, To Praise And Blame. And Who Could Endure Life Without Praising And Blaming!
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Willing Sets You Free: That Is The True Doctrine Of Will And Freedom--thus Zarathustra Instructs You.
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I Know My Fate. One Day My Name Will Be Associated With The Memory Of Something Tremendous — A Crisis Without Equal On Earth, The Most Profound Collision Of Conscience, A Decision That Was Conjured Up Against Everything That Had Been Believed, Demanded, Hallowed So Far. I Am No Man, I Am Dynamite.
Memories
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In Loneliness, The Lonely One Eats Himself; In A Crowd, The Many Eat Him. Now Choose.
Lonely
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When Our Brain Feels Too Weak To Deal With Our Opponent's Objections, Our Heart Answers By Casting Suspicion On Their Underlying Motives.
Heart
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Mystical Explanations Are Thought To Be Deep; The Truth Is That They Are Not Even Shallow.
Truth
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One Pays Dearly For Being Immortal: One Must Die Many Times During His Life.
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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.
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It Is Inhuman To Bless Where One Is Cursed.
Bless
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After Coming Into Contact With A Religious Man I Always Feel I Must Wash My Hands.
Religious
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If You Buy The Why, The How Is Infinitely Bearable
Bearable
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Christianity Gave Eros Poison To Drink; He Did Not Die Of It, Certainly, But Degenerated To Vice.
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The Concepts "soul", "spirit" And Last Of All The Concept "immortal Soul" Were Invented In Order To Despise The Body, In Order To Make It Sick - "holy" - In Order To Cultivate An Attitude Of Appalling Disrespect For All Things In Life Which Deserve To Be Treated Seriously I.
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The Best Friend Will Probably Acquire The Best Wife, Because A Good Marriage Is Founded On The Talent For Friendship.
Friendship
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He Who Possesses Greatness Is Cruel Towards His Secondary Virtues And Considerations.
Greatness
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That Which An Age Considers Evil Is Usually An Unseasonable Echo Of What Was Formerly Considered Good - The Atavism Of An Old Ideal.
Echoes
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Among Human Beings There Is No Greater Banality Than Death. Second In Order, Because It Is Possible To Die Without Being Born, Comes Birth, And Next Comes Marriage.
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It Is Not To Everyone's Taste That Truth Should Be Pronounced Pleasant. But At Least Let No One Believe That Error Becomes Truth When It Is Pronounced Unpleasant.
Believe
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There Will Always Be Rocks In The Road Ahead Of Us. They Will Be Stumbling Blocks Or Stepping Stones; It All Depends On How You Use Them.
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To Our Strongest Impulse, To The Tyrant In Us, Not Only Our Reason But Also Our Conscience Yields.
Yield
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Was Aus Liebe Getan Wird, Geschieht Immer Jenseits Von Gut Und Böse. (what Is Done Out Of Love Always Takes Place Beyond Good And Evil.)
Evil
Done
Guts
Artists May Here Have A More Subtle Scent: They Know Only Too Well That It Is Precisely When They Cease To Act 'voluntarily' And Do Everything Of Necessity That Their Feeling Of Freedom, Subtlety, Fullness Of Power, Creative Placing, Disposing, Shaping Reaches Its Height - In Short, That Necessity And 'freedom Of Will' Are Then One In Them.
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Death Is Close Enough At Hand So We Do Not Need To Be Afraid Of Life.
Death
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If We Affirm One Moment, We Thus Affirm Not Only Ourselves But All Existence. For Nothing Is Self-sufficient, Neither In Us Ourselves Nor In Things; And If Our Soul Has Trembled With Happiness And Sounded Like A Harp String Just Once, All Eternity Was Needed To Produce This One Event - And In This Single Moment Of Affirmation All Eternity Was Called Good, Redeemed, Justified, And Affirmed.
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All Parties Attempt To Represent Important Things That Have Developed Outside Themselves As Unimportant, And Where They Fail In This They Assail Those Things All The More Bitterly The More Admirable They Are.
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I Have Not The Capability To Give You My Loyalty, Nor Do I Have The Vanity To Appear As If I Did.
Loyalty
Vanity
Giving
Those That Achieve Anything That Looks Beyond The Vision And Thinking Of Their Peers Provoke Jealousy And Hatred Disguised As The Ordinary.
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Everything That Is Profound Loves The Mask: The Profoundest Things Have A Hatred Even Of Figure And Likeness.
Profound
Hatred
Mask
Philosophers Are In The Habit Of Setting Themselves Before Life And Experience.
Philosophy
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We Pay Dearly For Immortality: We Die For It More Than Once During Our Lifetimes.
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There Is Nothing More Necessary Than Truth, And In Comparison With It Everything Else Has Only Secondary Value. This Absolute Will To Truth: What Is It? Is It The Will To Not Allow Ourselves To Be Deceived? Is It The Will Not To Deceive? One Does Not Want To Be Deceived, Under The Supposition That It Is Injurious, Dangerous, Or Fatal To Be Deceived.
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Historical Refutation As The Definitive Refutation.- In Former Times, One Sought To Prove That There Is No God - Today One Indicates How The Belief That There Is A God Arose And How This Belief Acquired Its Weight And Importance: A Counter-proof That There Is No God Thereby Becomes Superfluous.- When In Former Times One Had Refuted The 'proofs Of The Existence Of God' Put Forward, There Always Remained The Doubt Whether Better Proofs Might Not Be Adduced Than Those Just Refuted: In Those Days Atheists Did Not Know How To Make A Clean Sweep.
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Historical
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Every Power Draws Its Ultimate Consequences At Every Moment.
Responsibility
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The Great Poet Draws His Creations Only From Out Of His Own Reality.
Reality
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Posthumous Men-myself, For Example-are Not As Well Understood As Timely Ones, But We Are Listened To Better. More Precisely: We Are Never Understood-hence Our Authority.
Men
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When I Contemplated Purpose I Also Contemplated Chance And Foolishness.
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One Can Lie With The Mouth, But With The Accompanying Grimace One Nevertheless Tells The Truth.
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Mouths
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In The Stream.- Mighty Waters Draw Much Stone And Rubble Along With Them; Mighty Spirits Many Stupid And Bewildered Heads.
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The Noble Soul Reveres Itself
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We Often Refuse To Accept An Idea Merely Because The Tone Of Voice In Which It Has Been Expressed Is Unsympathetic To Us.
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Learn To Laugh At Yourselves As One Must Laugh!
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No One Is Such A Liar As The Indignant Man.
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One Sticks To An Opinion Because He Prides Himself On Having Come To It On His Own, And Another Because He Has Taken Great Pains To Learn It And Is Proud To Have Grasped It: And So Both Do So Out Of Vanity.
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Early In The Morning, At Break Of Day, In All The Freshness And Dawn Of One's Strength, To Read A Book -i Call That Vicious!
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There Are Preachers Of Death: And The Earth Is Full Of Those To Whom Desistance From Life Must Be Preached.
Earth
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Thus The Man Who Is Responsive To Artistic Stimuli Reacts To The Reality Of Dreams As Does The Philosopher To The Reality Of Existence; He Observes Closely, And He Enjoys His Observation: For It Is Out Of These Images That He Interprets Life, Out Of These Processes That He Trains Himself For Life.
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Why Couldn't The World That Concerns Us- Be A Fiction? And If Somebody Asked, 'but To Be A Fiction There Surely Belongs An Author?'- Couldn't One Answer Simply: 'why? Doesn't This "belongs" Perhaps Belong To The Fiction, Too?'
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People Who Wish To Numb Our Caution In Dealing With Them By Means Of Flattery Are Employing A Dangerous Expedient, Like A Sleeping Draught, Which, If It Does Not Put Us To Sleep, Keeps Us All The More Awake.
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The Coward Does Not Know What It Means To Be Alone: An Enemy Is Always Standing Behind His Chair.
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People
As Though "the Truth" Were Such An Innocent And Incompetent Creature As To Require Protectors!
Innocent
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I Teach You The Overman. Man Is Something That Shall Be Overcome. What Have You Done To Overcome Him? ... The Time Has Come For Man To Set Himself A Goal. The Time Has Come To Plant The Seed To His Highest Hope.
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The Perfect Woman Perpetrates Literature As She Perpetrates A Small Sin: As An Experiment, In Passing, Glancing Around To See Whether Anybody Notices--and To Make Sure That Somebody Notices.
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If We Have Injured Someone, Giving Him The Opportunity To Make A Joke About Us Is Often Enough To Provide Him Personal Satisfaction, Or Even To Win His Good Will.
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The Most Common Sort Of Lie Is The One Uttered To One's Self.
Lying
Self
Knowing Who You Are
Without Art We Would Be Nothing But Foreground And Live Entirely In The Spell Of That Perspective Which Makes What Is Closest At Hand And Most Vulgar Appear As If It Were Vast, And Reality Itself.
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Jealous Is Every Virtue Of The Others, And A Dreadful Thing Is Jealousy. Even Virtues May Succumb By Jealousy.
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Who Can Attain To Anything Great If He Does Not Feel In Himself The Force And Will To Inflict Great Pain? The Ability To Suffer Is A Small Matter: In That Line, Weak Women And Even Slaves Often Attain Masterliness. But Not To Perish From Internal Distress And Doubt When One Inflicts Great Suffering And Hears The Cry Of It That Is Great, That Belongs To Greatness.
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We Do Not Belong To Those Who Only Get Their Thought From Books, Or At The Prompting Of Books, -- It Is Our Custom To Think In The Open Air, Walking, Leaping, Climbing, Or Dancing On Lonesome Mountains By Preference, Or Close To The Sea, Where Even The Paths Become Thoughtful.
Book
Thoughtful
Thinking
Smooth Iceis Paradisefor Those Who Dance With Expertise.
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Expertise
The Visionary Lies To Himself, The Liar Only To Others.
Inspirational
Liars
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Is Life Not A Thousand Times Too Short For Us To Bore Ourselves?
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In Russia There Is An Emigration Of Intelligence: émigrés Cross The Frontier In Order To Read And To Write Good Books. But In Doing So They Contribute To Making Their Fatherland, Abandoned By Spirit, Into The Gaping Jaws Of Asia That Would Like To Swallow Our Little Europe.
Book
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If A Woman Seeks Education It Is Probably Because Her Sexual Apparatus Is Malfunctioning.
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The Free Man Is A Warrior.
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Whoever Aims Publicly At Great Things And At Length Perceives Secretly That He Is Too Weak To Achieve Them, Has Usually Also Insufficient Strength To Renounce His Aims Publicly, And Then Inevitably Becomes A Hypocrite.
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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.
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It Is Our Needs That Interpret The World; Our Drives And Their For And Against. Every Drive Is A Kind Of Lust To Rule; Each One Has Its Perspective That It Would Like To Compel All Other Drives To Accept As A Norm.
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In Order To Be Able Thus To Misjudge, And Thus To Grant Left-handed Veneration To Our Classics, People Must Have Ceased To Know Them. This, Generally Speaking, Is Precisely What Has Happened. For, Otherwise, One Ought To Know That There Is Only One Way Of Honoring Them, And That Is To Continue Seeking With The Same Spirit And With The Same Courage, And Not To Weary Of The Search.
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All That The World Most Needs Today, Is Combined In The Most Seductive Manner In His Art, — The Three Great Stimulants Of Exhausted People: Brutality, Artificiality And Innocence (idiocy).
Art
People
Brutality
However Modest One May Be In One's Demand For Intellectual Cleanliness, One Cannot Help Feeling, When Coming Into Contact With The New Testament, A Kind Of Inexpressible Discomfiture: For The Unchecked Impudence With Which The Least Qualified Want To Raise Their Voice On The Greatest Problems, And Even Claim To Be Judges Of Such Things, Surpasses All Measure. The Shameless Levity With Which The Most Intractable Problems (life, World, God, Purpose Of Life) Are Spoken Of, As If They Were Not Problems At All But Simply Things That These Little Bigots Knew!
Atheist
Voice
Judging
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Opponents
Tendencies
Caricatures
Faith Makes Blessed. Consequently It Lies.
Faith
Lying
Blessed
Socrates.- If All Goes Well, The Time Will Come When One Will Take Up The Memorabilia Of Socrates Rather Than The Bible As A Guide To Morals And Reason... The Pathways Of The Most Various Philosophical Modes Of Life Lead Back To Him... Socrates Excels The Founder Of Christianity In Being Able To Be Serious Cheerfully And In Possessing That Wisdom Full Of Roguishness That Constitutes The Finest State Of The Human Soul. And He Also Possessed The Finer Intellect.
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Pardon Me, My Friends, I Have Ventured To Paint My Happiness On The Wall.
Wall
Paint
Pardon Me
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Distance
Cities
Order
Bad Cooks - And The Utter Lack Of Reason In The Kitchen - Have Delayed Human Development Longest And Impaired It Most.
Food
Cooking
Kitchen
When One Thinks Profusely And Cleverly, Not Only His Face But His Body Too Takes On A Clever Appearance.
Clever
Thinking
Body
Something Unappeased, Unappeasable, Is Within Me.
Crude Men Who Feel Themselves Insulted Tend To Assess The Degree Of Insult As High As Possible, And Talk About The Offense In Greatly Exaggerated Language, Only So They Can Revel To Their Heart's Content In The Aroused Feelings Of Hatred And Revenge.
Revenge
Heart
Men
All Truth Is Crooked, Time Itself Is A Circle
Circles
Truth Is
Crooked
To Die Proudly When It Is No Longer Possible To Live Proudly. Death Of One's Own Free Choice, Death At The Proper Time, With A Clear Head And With Joyfulness, Consummated In The Midst Of Children And Witnesses: So That An Actual Leave-taking Is Possible While He Who Is Leaving Is Still There.
Death
Children
Fear
I Am Interested Only In The Relations Of A People To The Rearing Of The Individual Man, And Among The Greeks The Conditions Were Unusually Favourable For The Development Of The Individual; Not By Any Means Owing To The Goodness Of The People, But Because Of The Struggles Of Their Evil Instincts.with The Help Of Favourable Measures Great Individuals Might Be Reared Who Would Be Both Different From And Higher Than Those Who Heretofore Have Owed Their Existence To Mere Chance. Here We May Still Be Hopeful: In The Rearing Of Exceptional Men.
Struggle
Mean
Men
One Must Need To Be Strong, Otherwise One Will Never Become Strong.
Inspirational
Strong
Needs
Joy Wants The Eternity Of All Things, Wants Deep, Wants Deep Eternity.
Joy
Want
Eternity
Could Truth Perhaps Be A Woman Who Has Reasons For Not Permitting Her Reasons To Be Seen? Could Her Name Perhaps Be--to Speak Greek--baubo?... Oh, Those Greeks! They Understood How To Live: To Do That It Is Necessary To Stop Bravely At The Surface, The Fold, The Skin, To Adore The Appearance, To Believe In Forms, In Tones, In Words, In The Whole Olympus Of Appearance! Those Greeks Were Superficial--out Of Profundity!
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Believe
Names
It Seems To Me That To Take A Book Of Mine Into His Hands Is One Of The Rarest Distinctions That Anyone Can Confer Upon Himself. I Even Assume That He Removes His Shoes When He Does So-not To Speak Of Boots.
Book
Hands
Shoes
Emerson Is A Person Who Lives Instinctively On Ambrosia - And Leaves Everything Indigestible On His Plate.
Rich
Ambrosia
Plates
To Learn To See- To Accustom The Eye To Calmness, To Patience, And To Allow Things To Come Up To It; To Defer Judgment, And To Acquire The Habit Of Approaching And Grasping An Individual Case From All Sides. This Is The First Preparatory Schooling Of Intellectuality. One Must Not Respond Immediately To A Stimulus; One Must Acquire A Command Of The Obstructing And Isolating Instincts.
Eye
Firsts
Sides
So Long As The Spectator Has To Figure Out The Meaning Of This Or That Person, Or The Presuppositions Of This Or That Conflict Of Inclinations And Purposes, He Cannot Become Completely Absorbed In The Activities And Sufferings Of The Chief Characters Or Feel Breathless Pity And Fear.
Character
Long
Suffering
I Cook Every Chance In My Pot. And Only When It Is Cooked Through Do I Welcome It As My Food.
Chance
Welcome
Pot
In Everything One Thing Is Impossible: Rationality.
Impossible
Rationality
One Thing
Man Is A Rope Stretched Between The Animal And The Superman-a Rope Over An Abyss. A Dangerous Crossing, A Dangerous Wayfaring, A Dangerous Looking-back, A Dangerous Trembling And Halting
Animal
Men
Rope
Whom Do You Call Bad?--those Who Always Want To Induce Shame.
Want
Shame
Badness
The Surest Sign Of The Estrangement Of The Opinions Of Two Persons Is When They Both Say Something Ironical To Each Other And Neither Of Them Feels The Irony.
Two
Opinion
Irony
Our Shortcomings Are The Eyes With Which We See The Ideal.
Eye
Faults
Ideals
"ego," Sayest Thou, And Art Proud Of That Word. But The Greater Thing - In Which Thou Art Unwilling To Believe - Is Thy Body With Its Big Sagacity; It Saith Not "ego," But Doeth It.
Art
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Ego
For As Long As They Praise You, Never Forget That It Is Not Yet Your Own Path That You Walk, But Another Person's.
Long
Path
Never Forget
We Are Responsible To Ourselves For Our Own Existence; Consequently We Want To Be The True Helmsman Of This Existence And Refuse To Allow Our Existence To Resemble A Mindless Act Of Chance.
Want
Chance
Responsible
Some Men Have Sighed Over The Abduction Of Their Wives, But Many More Have Sighed Because No One Wanted To Abduct Theirs.
Husband
Men
Wife
One Must Renounce The Bad Taste Of Wishing To Agree With Many People.
People
Wish
Taste
Man Is At His Furthest Remove From The Animal As A Child, His Intellect Most Human. With His Fifteenth Year And Puberty He Comes Astep Closer To The Animal; With The Sense Of Possessions Of His Thirties (the Median Line Between Laziness And Greediness), Still Another Step. In His Sixtieth Year Of Life He Frequently Loses His Modesty As Well, Then The Septuagenarian Steps Up To Us As A Completely Unmasked Beast: One Need Only Look At The Eyes And The Teeth.
Children
Eye
Men
We Labour At Our Daily Work More Ardently And Thoughtlessly Than Is Necessary To Sustain Our Life Because It Is Even More Necessary Not To Have Leisure To Stop And Think. Haste Is Universal Because Everyone Is In Flight From Himself.
Thinking
Haste
Leisure
The Man Who Does Not Wish To Be One Of The Mass Only Needs To Cease To Be Easy On Himself.
Men
Wish
Doe
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Beast
Grows
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Hurt
Kissing
Train
Good Deeds Shun The Light As Anxiously As Evil Deeds: The Latter Fear That Disclosure Will Bring On Pain (as Punishment), While The Former Fear That Disclosure Will Take Away Pleasure (that Pure Pleasure, That Pleasure Per Se, Which Immediately Ceases Once The Vanity's Satisfaction Is Added).
Pain
Vanity
Light
Love As A Passion—it Is Our European Specialty—must Absolutely Be Of Noble Origin; As Is Well Known, Its Invention Is Due To The Provencal Poet-cavaliers, Those Brilliant, Ingenious Men Of The "gai Saber," To Whom Europe Owes So Much, And Almost Owes Itself.
Passion
Men
Europe
Whether In Conversation We Generally Agree Or Disagree With Others Is Largely A Matter Of Habit: The One Tendency Makes As Much Sense As The Other.
Matter
Habit
Tendencies
The Craving For Equality Can Express Itself Either As A Desire To Pull Everyone Down To Our Own Level (by Belittling Them, Excluding Them, Tripping Them Up) Or As A Desire To Raise Ourselves Up Along With Everyone Else (by Acknowledging Them, Helping Them, And Rejoicing In Their Success).
Desire
Levels
Tripping
Without The Errors Involved In The Assumptions Of Ethics, Man Would Have Remained An Animal. Thus Has He Taken Himself As Something Higher And Imposed Rigid Laws Upon Himself.
Taken
Animal
Men
The Spirit Of The Poet Craves Spectators... Even If Only Buffaloes.
Spirit
Poet
Spectators
Where The Good Begins.- Where The Poor Power Of The Eye Can No Longer See The Evil Impulse As Such Because It Has Become Too Subtle, Man Posits The Realm Of Goodness; And The Feeling That We Have Now Entered The Realm Of Goodness Excites All Those Impulses Which Had Been Threatened And Limited By The Evil Impulses, Like The Feeling Of Security, Of Comfort, Of Benevolence. Hence, The Duller The Eye, The More Extensive The Good. Hence The Eternal Cheerfulness Of The Common People And Of Children. Hence The Gloominess And Grief - Akin To A Bad Conscience - Of The Great Thinkers.
Children
Grief
Eye
Forgetting: That Is A Divine Capacity. And Whoever Aspires To The Heights And Wants To Fly Must Cast Off Much That Is Heavy And Make Himself Light--i Call It A Divine Capacity For Lightness.
Light
Flying
Want
As Is Well Known, The Priests Are The Most Evil Enemies—but Why? Because They Are The Most Impotent. It Is Because Of Their Impotence That In Them Hatred Grows To Monstrous And Uncanny Proportions, To The Most Spiritual And Poisonous Kind Of Hatred. The Truly Great Haters In World History Have Always Been Priests; Likewise The Most Ingenious Haters: Other Kinds Of Spirit Hardly Come Into Consideration When Compared With The Spirit Of Priestly Vengefulness.
Spiritual
Atheist
Evil
Art Is Essentially The Affirmation, The Blessing, And The Deification Of Existence.
Art
Blessing
Affirmation
Hope, In Its Stronger Forms, Is A Great Deal More Powerful Stimulans To Life Than Any Sort Of Realized Joy Can Ever Be. Man Must Be Sustained In Suffering By A Hope So High That No Conflict With Actuality Can Dash It - So High, Indeed, That No Fulfilment Can Satisfy It: A Hope Reaching Out Beyond This World.
Hope
Powerful
Men
Around The Hero Everything Turns Into A Tragedy, Around The Demigod, A Satyr-play, And Around God--what? Perhaps A "world"?
God
Hero
Play
We Must Take Precautions Against Being Prematurely Honed Sharp--since At The Same Time We Are Being Prematurely Honed Thin.
Precaution
Caution
Thinness
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.
Teacher
Learning
Light
When Good Friends Praise A Gifted Person He Often Appears To Be Delighted With Them Out Of Politeness And Goodwill, But In Reality He Feels Indifferent.
Good Friend
Reality
Praise
Love Is More Afraid Of Change Than Destruction.
Love Is
Confusion
Destruction
Ten Times Must You Laugh During The Day, And Be Cheerful; Otherwise Your Stomach, The Father Of Affliction, Will Disturb You In The Night.
Father
Night
Laughing
Be Careful, Lest In Casting Out Your Demon You Exorcise The Best Thing In You.
Inspirational
Philosophy
People
We Can Speak Very Much To The Purpose And Yet In Such A Way That The Whole World Cries Out In Contradiction: Namely, When We Are Not Speaking To The Whole World.
Way
Purpose
World
Morality In Europe Today Is Herd-morality
Europe
Today
Morality
I Have Exposed Myself And Am Not Ashamed To Stand There Naked. "shame" Is What We Call The Monster That Attached Itself To Men When They Aspired Beyond The Animals.
Animal
Men
Monsters
And This Do I Call Immaculate Perception Of All Things: To Want Nothing Else From Them, But To Be Allowed To Lie Before Them As A Mirror With A Hundred Facets.
Lying
Reality
Mirrors
The 'kingdom Of God' Is Not Something One Waits For; It Has No Yesterday Or Tomorrow, It Does Not Come 'in A Thousand Years' It Is An Experience Within A Heart; It Is Everywhere, It Is Nowhere.
Heart
Years
Yesterday
Every Virtue Inclines To Stupidity, Every Stupidity To Virtue; "stupid To The Point Of Sanctity," They Say In Russia, - Let Us Be Careful Lest Out Of Pure Honesty We Eventually Become Saints And Bores!
Honesty
Stupid
Russia
Sometimes It Just Takes Stronger Eyeglasses To Cure Those Who Are In Love--and Someone With The Ability To Imagine A Face Or A Figure Twenty Years Older Might Perhaps Pass Through Life Quite Undisturbed.
Love
Eyeglasses
Years
Man Is More Sensitive To The Contempt Of Others Than To Self-contempt.
Men
Self
Sensitive
The Most Spiritual Men, As The Strongest, Find Their Happiness Where Others Would Find Their Destruction: In The Labyrinth, In Hardness Against Themselves And Others, In Experiments. Their Joy Is Self-conquest: Asceticism Becomes In Them Nature, Need, And Instinct. Difficult Tasks Are A Privilege To Them; To Play With Burdens That Crush Others, A Recreation. Knowledge-a Form Of Asceticism. They Are The Most Venerable Kind Of Man: That Does Not Preclude Their Being The Most Cheerful And The Kindliest.
Crush
Spiritual
Men
The Way To Transmute Your Iron Duty Into Gold In Everyone's Eyes Is This: Always Deliver More Than You Promise.
Eye
Iron
Promise
About Sacrifice And The Offering Of Sacrifices, Sacrificial Animals Think Quite Differently From Those Who Look On: But They Have Never Been Allowed To Have Their Say.
Sacrifice
Animal
Thinking
Speaking Of Georges Bizet: His Music Has The Tang Of Sunny Climates, Their Bracing Air, Their Clearness. It Voices A Sensibility Hitherto Unknown To Us.
Music
Air
Voice
The Surest Aid In Combating The Male's Disease Of Self-contempt Is To Be Loved By A Clever Woman.
Clever
Self
Males
As A Result, Nature Is Something Entirely Different From What Comes To Mind When We Invoke Its Name.
Nature
Names
Mind
What Does Your Conscience Say? — 'you Should Become The Person You Are'.
Doe
Should
Persons
From The Sun Did I Learn This, When It Goeth Down, The Exuberant One: Gold Doth It Then Pour Into The Sea, Out Of Inexhaustible Riches, -so That The Poorest Fisherman Roweth Even With Golden Oars! For This Did I Once See, And Did Not Tire Of Weeping In Beholding It. - Like The Sun Will Also Zarathustra Go Down: Now Sitteth He Here And Waiteth, Old Broken Tables Around Him, And Also New Tables Half-written.
Sea
Broken
Gold
With Deep Men, As With Deep Wells, It Takes A Long Time For Anything That Falls Into Them To Hit Bottom. Onlookers, Who Almost Never Wait Long Enough, Readily Suppose That Such Men Are Callous And Unresponsive--or Even Boring.
Fall
Men
Long
There Is No More Dreary Or More Repulsive Creature Than The Man Who Has Evaded His Genius.
Men
Genius
He Man
The Domestication (the Culture) Of Man Does Not Go Deep--where It Does Go Deep It At Once Becomes Degeneration (type: The Christian). The 'savage' (or, In Moral Terms, The Evil Man) Is A Return To Nature--and In A Certain Sense His Recovery, His Cure From 'culture'.
Christian
Recovery
Men
What, If Some Day Or Night A Demon Were To Steal After You Into Your Loneliest Loneliness And Say To You: 'this Life As You Now Live It And Have Lived It, You Will Have To Live Once More And Innumerable Times More' ... Would You Not Throw Yourself Down And Gnash Your Teeth And Curse The Demon Who Spoke Thus? Or Have You Once Experienced A Tremendous Moment When You Would Have Answered Him: 'you Are A God And Never Have I Heard Anything More Divine.
Happiness
Loneliness
Sadness
'god Himself Cannot Exist Without Wise Men' - Luther Said, And Was Right. But 'god Can Exist Even Less Without Unwise Men' - That Good Old Luther Did Not Say.
Wise
Men
Luther
Mathematics Is Merely The Means To A General And Ultimate Knowledge Of Man.
Mean
Men
Mathematics
Man Is More Ape Than Many Of The Apes.
Men
Apes
You Say That I Should Be Your Teacher! See To It That I Am Your Pinion And Not Your Brake.
Teacher
Should
Brake
Everything That Is Ponderous, Vicious And Pompously Clumsy, All Long-winded And Wearying Kinds Of Style, Are Developed In Great Variety Among Germans.
Long
Style
Kind
And Let That Day Be Lost To Us On Which We Did Not Dance Once! And Let That Wisdom Be False To Us That Brought No Laughter With It!
Life
Dance
Laughter
It Is I, The Ungodly Zarathustra, Who Says:who Is More Ungodly Than I, That I May Rejoice In His Teaching?
Teaching
Religion
May
We Should Be A Mirror Of Being: We Are God In Miniature.
God
Mirrors
Should
Follow In The Footsteps Of Your Fathers' Virtue! How Could You Hope To Climb High Unless Your Fathers' Will Climbs With You?
Hope
Father
Heritage
Science Rushes Headlong, Without Selectivity, Without "taste," At Whatever Is Knowable, In The Blind Desire To Know All At Any Cost.
Science
Desire
Cost
The Sick Woman Especially: No One Surpasses Her In Refinements For Ruling, Oppressing, Tyrannising.
Sick
Sickness
Refinement
We Do Not Hate As Long As We Still Attach A Lesser Value, But Only When We Attach An Equal Or A Greater Value.
Hate
Long
Equal
Only Ideas Won By Walking Have Any Value.
Ideas
Walking
Values
When A Scholar Of The Old Culture Vows No Longer To Have Anything To Do With Men Who Believe In Progress, He Is Right. For The Old Culture Has Its Greatness And Goodness Behind It, And An Historical Education Forces One To Admit That It Can Never Again Be Fresh.
Believe
Greatness
Men
Well-meaning, Helpful, Good-natured Attitudes Of Mind Have Not Come To Be Honored On Account Of Their Usefulness, But Because They Are States Of Richer Souls That Are Capable Of Bestowing And Have Their Value In The Feeling Of The Plenitude Of Life.
Attitude
Soul
Feelings
Man Is Not Equally Moral At All Hours, This Is Well Known. If His Morality Is Judged To Be The Capability For Great Self-sacrificing Resolutions And Self-denial (which, When Continuous And Grown Habitual, Are Called Holiness)
Sacrifice
Men
Self
A Dionysian Life Task Needs The Hardness Of The Hammer And One Of Its First Essentials Is Without Doubt The Joy To Be Found Even In Destruction.
War
Joy
Doubt
How Lovely It Is That There Are Words And Sounds. Are Not Words And Sounds Rainbows And Illusive Bridges Between Things Which Are Eternally Apart?
Bridges
Rainbow
Lovely
Without Meaning, Without Substance, Without Aim: A Mere 'public Opinion'.
Public Opinion
Culture
Substance
To Have And To Want More That Is Life.
Want
Is It Better To Out-monster The Monster Or To Be Quietly Devoured?
Evil
Monsters
We Are Always In Our Own Company.
Company
Do Whatever You Will, But First Be Such As Are Able To Will.
Able
Firsts
If An Architect Wants To Strengthen A Decrepit Arch, He Increases The Load Laid Upon It, For Thereby The Parts Are Joined More Firmly Together.
Together
Arches
Want
When A Man Is Ill His Very Goodness Is Sickly.
Health
Men
Goodness
A Refined Nature Is Vexed By Knowing That Some One Owes It Thanks, A Coarse Nature By Knowing That It Owes Thanks To Some One.
Knowing
Thanks
Coarse
Every High Degree Of Power Always Involves A Corresponding Degree Of Freedom From Good And Evil.
Power
Evil
Degrees
When Anyone Apologizes To Us He Has To Do It Very Expertly: Otherwise We Might Easily Come To See Ourselves As The Guilty Party And Experience Unpleasant Feelings.
Party
Feelings
Might
What Is The Ape To Man? A Laughing-stock Or A Painful Embarrassment. And Just That Shall Man Be For The Superman: A Laughing-stock Or A Painful Embarrassment.
Men
Laughing
Apes
One Must Learn To Be A Sponge If One Wants To Be Loved By Hearts That Overflow.
Love
Heart
Want
Women And Egoistic Artists Entertain A Feeling Towards Science That Is Something Composed Of Envy And Sentimentality.
Women
Science
Artist
The Masters Have Been Done Away With; The Morality Of The Common Man Has Triumphed.
Men
Done
Morality
He Who Has Attained The Freedom Of Reason To Any Extent Cannot, For A Long Time, Regard Himself Otherwise Than As A Wanderer On The Face Of The Earth - And Not Even As A Traveler Towards A Final Goal, For There Is No Such Thing. But He Certainly Wants To Observe And Keep His Eyes Open To Whatever Actually Happens In The World; Therefore He Cannot Attach His Heart Too Firmly To Anything Individual; He Must Have In Himself Something Wandering That Takes Pleasure In Change And Transitoriness.
Heart
Eye
Long
Without Passions You Have No Experience Whatever.
Passion
Experience
Someone Who Does Not Write Books, Who Thinks A Lot, And Who Lives In Unsatisfying Society Will Usually Be A Good Letter- Writer.
Book
Writing
Thinking
The Will To Truth Is Merely The Longing For A Stable World.
Truth
World
Longing
Even Truthfulness Is But One Means To Knowledge, A Ladder--but Not The Ladder.
Knowledge
Mean
Ladders
No One Can Draw More Out Of Things, Books Included, Than He Already Knows. A Man Has No Ears For That To Which Experience Has Given Him No Access.
Book
Men
Ears
In Christianity Neither Morality Nor Religion Come Into Contact With Reality At Any Point.
Atheist
Fear
Reality
We Are So Fond Of Being Out Among Nature, Because It Has No Opinions About Us.
Inspirational
Opinion
Of All Evil I Deem You Capable: Therefore I Want Good From You. Verily, I Have Often Laughed At The Weaklings Who Thought Themselves Good Because They Had No Claws.
Evil
Want
Claws
There Is Such A Thing As A Hatred Of Lies And Dissimulation, Which Is The Outcome Of A Delicate Sense Of Humor; There Is Also The Selfsame Hatred But As The Result Of Cowardice, In So Far As Falsehood Is Forbidden By Divine Law. Too Cowardly To Lie.
Lying
Law
Hatred
One Had Better Put On Gloves Before Handling The New Testament. The Presence Of So Much Filth Makes It Highly Advisable.
Atheism
Gloves
Filth
If A Temple Is To Be Erected, A Temple Must Be Destroyed .
Temples
Ifs
Destroyed
The Best Way To Give Assistance To Those Who Are Deeply Embarrassed And To Calm Them Down Is To Praise Them Decisively.
Giving
Way
Calm
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