Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.

Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms - in themselves such judgments are stupidities.

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.

Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.

There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.

To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding; one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience; ultimately one must have one's experiences in common.

The lie is a condition of life.

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.

Fear is the mother of morality.

Whoever has witnessed another's ideal becomes his inexorable judge and as it were his evil conscience.

On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.

Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.

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.

The bad gains respect through imitation, the good loses it especially in art.

He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.

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?

Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.

Woman was God's second mistake.

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

Some are made modest by great praise, others insolent.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.

The world itself is the will to power - and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power - and nothing else!

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

Genteel women suppose that those things do not really exist about which it is impossible to talk in polite company.

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.

The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.

There are slavish souls who carry their appreciation for favors done them so far that they strangle themselves with the rope of gratitude.

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

To forget one's purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.

Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.

There is nothing we like to communicate to others as much as the seal of secrecy together with what lies under it.

Art is the proper task of life.

When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.

It is the most sensual men who need to flee women and torment their bodies.

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.

The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.