"When Zarathustra was alone, however, he said to his heart: "Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that God is dead!""

"The fall of our footsteps ringeth too hollow through their streets. And just as at night, when they are in bed and hear a man abroad long before sunrise, so they ask themselves concerning us: Where goeth the thief? Go not to men, but stay in the forest! Go rather to the animals! Why not be like me- a bear amongst bears, a bird amongst birds?" "And what doeth the saint in the forest?" asked Zarathustra. The saint answered: "I make hymns and sing them; and in making hymns I laugh and weep and mumble: thus do I praise God. With singing, weeping, laughing, and mumbling do I praise the God who is my God.""

"Du grosses Gestirn! Was wäre dein Glück, wenn du nicht Die hättest, welchen du leuchtest!"

"Just as youth and childhood have value in and of themselves ... so too do unfinished thoughts have their own value."

"Every great phenomenon is followed by degeneration, particularly in the realm of art. The model of the great man stimulates vainer natures to imitate him outwardly or to surpass him; in addition, all great talents have the fateful quantity of stifling many weaker forces and seeds, and seem to devastate the nature around them. The most fortunate instance in the development of an art is when several geniuses reciprocally keep each other in check; in this kind of a struggle, weaker and gentler natures are generally also allowed air and light."

"Art renders the sight of life bearable by laying over it the gauze of impure thinking."

"What do we long for when we see beauty? To be beautiful. We think much happiness must be connected with it. But that is an error."

"In each ascetic morality, man prays to one part of himself as a god and also finds it necessary to diabolify the rest."

"There is not enough love and kindness in the world to permit us to give any of it away to imaginary beings."

"Without blind disciples, no man or his work has ever gained great influence."

"Christianity came into being in order to lighten the heart; but now it has to burden the heart first, in order to be able to lighten it afterwards. Consequently it will perish."

"When we hear the old bells ringing out on a Sunday morning, we ask ourselves: can it be possible? This is for a Jew, crucified two thousand years ago, who said he was the son of God. The proof for such a claim is wanting."

"The thinking of men who believe in magic and miracles is bent on imposing a law on nature; and in short, religious worship is the result of this thinking."

"Between good and evil actions there is no difference in type; at most a difference in degree. Good actions are sublimated evil actions; evil actions are good actions become coarse and stupid."

"No life without pleasure, the struggle for pleasure is the struggle for life."

"If one does not know how painful an action is, it cannot be malicious; thus the child is not malicious or evil to an animal: he examines and destroys it like a toy."

"Is Schadenfreude devilish ... Is the knowledge, then, that another person is suffering because of us supposed to make immoral the same thing about which we would otherwise feel no responsibility?"

"Socrates and Plato were right: whatever man does, he always acts for the good; that is, in a way which seems to him good (useful) according to the degree of his intellect, the prevailing measure of his rationality."

"[W]e all still suffer from too slight a regard for our own personal needs; it has been poorly developed."

"Unusquisque tantum juris habet, quantum potentia valere creditur - Each has as much right as his power is assessed to be."

"[T]he initial character of justice is barter."

"Wer sich selbst erniedrigt, will erhoehet werden."

"Man lobt oder tadelt, je nachdem das Eine oder das Andere mehr Gelegenheit giebt, unsere Urtheilskraft leuchten zu lassen."

"Die meisten Menschen sind viel zu sehr mit sich beschaeftigt, um boshaft zu sein."

"Die Menschen schaemen sich nicht, etwas Schmutziges zu denken, aber wohl, wenn sie sich vorstellen, dass man ihnen diese schmutzigen Gedanken zutraue."

"Wenn die Tugend geschlafen hat, wird sie frischer aufstehen."

"[I]t is automatically assumed that the perpetrator and sufferer think and feel the same, and the guilt of one is therefore measured by the pain of the other."

"Man wird selten irren, wenn man extreme Handlungen auf Eitelkeit, mittelmaessige auf Gewoehnung und kleinliche auf Furcht zurueckfuehrt."

"In truth, [hope] is the most evil of evils because it prolongs man's torment."

"Er erregte erst Anstoss, dann Verdacht, wurde allmaehlich geradezu erfehmt und in die Acht der Gesellschaft erklaert, bis endlich die Justiz sich eines so verworfenen Wesens erinnerte, bei Gelegenheiten, wo sie sonst kein Auge hatte, oder dasselbe zudrueckte."

"If looks could kill, we would long ago have been done for."

"Esteeming humble truths. It is the sign of a higher culture to esteem more highly the little, humble truths, those discovered by a strict method, rather than the gladdening and dazzling errors that originate in metaphysical and artistic ages and men. At first, one has scorn on his lips for humble truths [-] But truths that are hard won, certain, enduring, and therefore still of consequence for all further knowledge are the higher;..."

"[V]ielleicht die allermeisten Menschen haben, um ihre Selbstachtung und eine gewisse Tuechtigkeit im Handeln bei sich aufrecht zu erhalten, durchaus noethig, alle ihnen bekannten Menschen in ihrer Vorstellung herabzusetzen und zu verkleinern."

"Die Leidenschaft will nicht warten"

"Man kann Handlungen versprechen, aber keine Empfindungen; denn diese sind unwillkuerlich. Wer jemandem verspricht, ihn immer zu lieben oder immer zu hassen oder ihm immer treu zu sein, verspricht Etwas, das nicht in seiner Macht steht."

"Isn't it clear that, in all these cases [of selflessness] man is loving something of himself, a thought, a longing, an offspring, more than something else of himself, that he is thus dividing up his being and sacrificing one part for the other?"

"Einer der gewoehnlichen Fehlschluesse ist der: weil Jemand wahr und aufrichtig gegen uns ist, so sagt er die Wahrheit."

"Aber wird es viele Ehrliche geben, welche zugestehen, dass es Vergnuegen macht, wehe zu thun?"

"das Mitleiden, welches Jene dann aeussern, ist insofern eine Troestung fuer die Schwachen und Leidenden, als sie daran erkennen, doch wenigstens noch Eine Macht zu haben, trotz aller ihrer Schwaeche: die Macht, wehe zu thun."

"Freilich solle man Mitleiden bezeugen, aber sich hueten, es zu haben: denn die Ungluecklichen seien nun einmal so dumm, dass bei ihnen das Bezeugen von Mitleid das groesste Gut von der Welt ausmache."

"Der Grund, wesshalb der Maechtige dankbar ist, ist dieser. Sein Wohlthaeter hat sich durch seine Wohlthat an der Sphaere des Maechtigen gleichsam vergriffen und sich in sie eingedraengt: nun vergreift er sich zur Vergeltung wieder an der Sphaere des Wohlthaeters durch den Act der Dankbarkeit. Es ist eine mildere Form der Rache."

"Die Menschen, welche jetzt grausam sind, muessen uns als Stufen frueherer Culturen gelten, welche uebrig geblieben sind: das Gebirge der Menschheit zeigt hier einmal die tieferen Formationen, welche sonst versteckt liegen, offen. ... Sie zeigen uns, was wir Alle waren, und machen uns erschrecken: aber sie selber sind so wenig verantwortlich, wie ein Stueck Granit dafuer, dass es Granit ist."

"Die Kuerze des menschlichen Lebens verleitet zu manchen irrthuemlichen Behauptungen ueber die Eigenschaften des Menschen."

"Ohne die Irrthuemer, welche in den Annahmen der Moral liegen, waere der Mensch Thier geblieben. So aber hat er sich als etwas Hoeheres genommen und sich strengere Gesetze auferlegt. Er hat desshalb einen Hass gegen die der Thierheit naeher gebliebenen Stufen."

"Esteeming Humble Truths. It is the sign of a higher culture to esteem more highly the little, humble truths, those discovered by a strict method, rather than the gladdening and dazzling error that originate in metaphysical and artistic ages and men. At first, one has scorn on his lips for humble truths, as if they could offer no match for the others: they stand so modest, simple, sober, even apparently discouraging, while the other truths are so beautiful, splendid, enchanting, or even enrapturing. But truths that are hard won, certain, enduring, and therefore still of consequence for all further knowledge are the higher; to keep to them i many and shows bravery, simplicity, restraint. Eventually, not only the individual, but all mankind will be elevated to this manliness when men finally grow accustomed to the greater esteem for durable, lasting knowledge and have lost all belief in sinpiration and a seemingly miraculous communication of truths."

"It is still a long way from this morbid isolation, from the desert of these experimental years, to that enormous, overflowing certainty and health which cannot do without even illness itself, as an instrument and fishhook of knowledge; to that mature freedom of the spirit which is fully as much self-mastery and discipline of the heart, and which permits paths to many opposing ways of thought. It is a long way to inner spaciousness and cosseting of a superabundance which precludes the danger and the sprit might lose itself on its own paths and fall in love and stay put, intoxicated, in some nook; a long way to that excess of vivid healing, reproducing, reviving power, the very sign of great health, an excess that gives free spirit the dangerous privilege of being permitted to live experimentally."

"Enough, I am still alive; and life has not been devised by morality: it wants deception, it lives on deception - but wouldn't you know it?"

"Aphorism 1, Preface"

"Often enough, and always with great consternation, people have told me that there is something distinctive in all my writings, from The Birth of Tragedy to the most recently published Prologue to a Philosophy of the Future. All of them, I have been told, contains snares and nets for careless birds, and almost , unperceived challenge to reverse one's habitual estimations esteemed habits. 'What's that? Everything is only-human, all too human?"

"Der Irrthum hat den Menschen so tief, zart, erfinderisch gemacht, eine solche Bluethe, wie Religionen und Kuenste, herauszutreiben. Das reine Erkennen waere dazu ausser Stande gewesen."