Friedrich Nietzsche
Saturday, 12 October 2024
Published in 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche was quoted to say The Gay Science was the most personal of all his books. It contains more poems than any of Nietzsche's other published works.
To find everything profound - that is an inconvenient trait. It makes one strain one's eyes all the time, and in the end one finds more than one might have wished.
The Gay Science (1882). Sec. 158
Nietzsche Quotes
Speaking in a parable. -A Jesus Christ was possible only in a Jewish landscape - I mean one over which the gloomy and sublime thunder cloud of the wrathful Yahweh was brooding continually. Only here was the rare and sudden piercing of the gruesome and perpetual general day-night by a single ray of the sun experienced as if it were a miracle of "love" and the ray of unmerited "grace." Only here could Jesus dream of his rainbow and his ladder to heaven on which God descended to man. Everywhere else good weather and sunshine were considered the rule and everyday occurrences.
The Gay Science, s.137
Nietzsche Quotes
What is now decisive against Christianity is our taste, no longer our reasons.
The Gay Science (1882). Sec. 132
Nietzsche Quotes
The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.
The Gay Science (1882). Sec. 130
Nietzsche Quotes
Mystical explanations are considered deep; the truth is, they are not even shallow.
The Gay Science (1882). Sec. 126
Nietzsche Quotes
After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries in a cave - a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. -And we- we still have to vanquish his shadow, too.
The Gay Science, s.108
Nietzsche Quotes
What are man's truths ultimately? Merely his irrefutable errors.
The Gay Science, s.265
Nietzsche Quotes
God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him.
The Gay Science (1882). Sec. 125
Nietzsche Quotes
Morality is herd instinct in the individual.
The Gay Science (1882). Sec. 116
Nietzsche Quotes
The greatest danger that always hovered over humanity and still hovers over it is the eruption of madness - which means the eruption of arbitrariness in feeling, seeing and hearing, the enjoyment of the mind's lack of discipline, the joy in human unreason. Not truth and certainty are the opposite of the world of the madman, but the universality and the universal binding force of a faith; in sum, the non-arbitrary character of judgements... Thus the virtuous intellects are needed - oh, let me use the most unambiguous word - what is needed is virtuous stupidity, stolid metronomes for the slow spirit, to make sure that the faithful of the great shared faith stay together and continue their dance... We others are the exception and the danger - and we need eternally to be opposed. - Well, there actually are things to be said in favor of the exception, provided that it never wants to become the rule.
The Gay Science, s. 76
Nietzsche Quotes
We are always in our own company.
The Gay Science (1882). Sec. 166
Nietzsche Quotes
The greatest weight.-- 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; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!" Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?... Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?
The Gay Science, s.341
Nietzsche Quotes
To what extent can truth endure incorporation? That is the question; that is the experiment.
The Gay Science (1882). Sec. 110
Nietzsche Quotes
Is it not clear that with all this we are bound to feel ill at ease in an age that likes to claim the distinction of being the most humane, the mildest, and the most righteous age that the sun has ever seen? It is bad enough that precisely when we hear these beautiful words we have the ugliest suspicions. What we find in them is merely an expression - and a masquerade - of a profound weakening, of weariness, of old age, of declining energies. What can it matter to us what tinsel the sick may use to cover up their weakness? Let them parade it as their virtue; after all, there is no doubt that weakness makes one mild, oh so mild, so righteous, so inoffensive, so "humane"!
The Gay Science (1882). Sec. 377
Nietzsche Quotes
For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is - to live dangerously.
The Gay Science, section 283
Nietzsche Quotes
Friedrich Nietzsche Quote of the Day
Saturday, 12 October 2024If the Christian dogmas of a revengeful God, universal sinfulness, election by divine grace and the danger of eternal damnation were true, it would be a sign of weak-mindedness and lack of character not to become a priest, apostle or hermit and, in fear and trembling, to work solely on one's own salvation; it would be senseless to lose sight of one's eternal advantage for the sake of temporal comfort. If we may assume that these things are at any rate believed true, then the everyday Christian cuts a miserable figure; he is a man who really cannot count to three, and who precisely on account of his spiritual imbecility does not deserve to be punished so harshly as Christianity promises to punish him.Human, all too Human, p. 116, RJ Hollingdale transl.
