In a note of 1886-7 Nietzsche writes:
"The whole idealism of humanity…is on the point of tipping into nihilism – into the belief in absolute valuelessness, that is, meaninglessness…
The annihilation of ideals, the new wasteland, the new arts of enduring it, we amphibians.
This process must be endured and persisted with: there is no going back, there should be no ardent rush forwards."
For those who want to spend some of their time with one of the brightest minds of all time, I hope you enjoy it.
1- A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.
2- After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.
3- All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
4- All truth is simple... is that not doubly a lie?
5- And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
6- At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.
7- Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.
8- Every church is a stone on the grave of a god-man: it does not want him to rise up again under any circumstances.
9- Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions.
10- Faith: not wanting to know what is true
11- Fear is the mother of morality.
12- Go up close to your friend, but do not go over to him! We should also respect the enemy in our friend.
13- He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.
14- He who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how.
15- I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.
16- I love those who do not know how to live for today.
17- I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.
18- If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.
19- In everything one thing is impossible: rationality
20- In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.
21- In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
22- In music the passions enjoy themselves
23- In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.
24- Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes
25- Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.
26- Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.
27- One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.
28- One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
29- One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly
30- Perhaps I know why it is man alone who laughs: He alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter
31- Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.
32- Rejoicing in our joy, not suffering over our suffering, makes someone a friend.
33- Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.
34- That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
35- The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.
36- The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.
37- The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.
38- The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends
39- The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.
40- The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
41- There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.
42- There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.
43- There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
44- There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings
45- This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver
46- Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate
47- We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.
48- Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil
49- Without music, life would be a mistake.
50- Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.