Friedrich Nietzsche

And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

Man is something that shall be overcome. Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman — a rope over an abyss.

In heaven all the interesting people are missing.

We have art so that we shall not die of reality.

The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.

One must shed the bad taste of wanting to agree with many. 'Good' is no longer good when one's neighbor mouths it. And how should there be a 'common good'! The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common always has little value. In the end it must be as it is and always has been: great things remain for the great, abysses for the profound, nuances and shudders for the refined, and, in brief, all that is rare for the rare.

Morality, insofar as it condemns for its own sake, and not out of regard for the concerns, considerations, and contrivances of life, is a specific error with which one ought to have no pity – an idiosyncrasy of degenerates which has caused immeasurable harm.

Untroubled, scornful, outrageous – that is how wisdom wants us to be: she is a woman and never loves anyone but a warrior.

But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!

You have evolved from worm to man, but much within you is still worm. Once you were apes, yet even now man is more of an ape than any of the apes.

I tell you: one must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you still have chaos in yourselves.

Of all that is written I love only what a man has written in his own blood.

You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?

Silence is worse; all truths that are kept silent become poisonous.

One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.

But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests.

In truth, man is a polluted river. One must be a sea to receive a polluted river without becoming defiled. I bring you the Superman! He is that sea; in him your great contempt can be submerged.

No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.

Women are considered profound. Why? Because we never fathom their depths. But women aren't even shallow.

Love to one only is a barbarity, for it is exercised at the expense of all others. Love to God also!