Friedrich Nietzsche - Existence Quotes

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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.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

Friedrich Nietzsche
All that exists that can be denied deserves to be denied; and being truthful means: to believe in an existence that can in no way be denied and which is itself true and without falsehood.

Friedrich Nietzsche
That lies should be necessary to life is part and parcel of the terrible and questionable character of existence.

Friedrich Nietzsche
One has to take a somewhat bold and dangerous line with this existence: especially as, whatever happens, we are bound to lose it.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Many other such substitutes for war will be discovered, but perhaps precisely thereby it will become more and more obvious that such a highly cultivated and therefore necessarily enfeebled humanity as that of modern Europe not only needs wars, but the greatest and most terrible wars, consequently occasional relapses into barbarism, lest, by the means of culture, it should lose its culture and its very existence.

Friedrich Nietzsche
What is wanted - whether this is admitted or not - is nothing less than a fundamental remolding, indeed weakening and abolition of the individual: one never tires of enumerating and indicating all that is evil and inimical, prodigal, costly, extravagant in the form individual existence has assumed hitherto, one hopes to manage more cheaply, more safely, more equitably, more uniformly if there exist only large bodies and their members.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Only as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence and the world eternally justified.

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

Friedrich Nietzsche
For out of fear and need each religion is born, creeping into existence on the byways or reason.

Friedrich Nietzsche
I am afraid that old women are more skeptical in their most secret heart of hearts than any man: they believe in the superficiality of existence as in its essence, and all virtue and profundity is to them merely a veil over this "truth," a most welcome veil over a pudendum--and so a matter of decency and modesty, and nothing else.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Art approaches as a saving sorceress, expert at healing. She alone knows how to turn these nauseous thoughts about the horror or absurdity of existence into notions with which one can live.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Man's task is simple. He should cease letting his existence be a thoughtless accident.

Friedrich Nietzsche
As soon as we are shown the existence of something old in a new thing, we are pacified.

Friedrich Nietzsche
It is not things, but opinions about things that have absolutely no existence, which have so deranged mankind!

Friedrich Nietzsche
Noble and wise men once believed in the music of the spheres: noble and wise men still continue to believe in the "moral significance of existence." But one day even this sphere-music will no longer be audible to them! They will wake up and take note that their ears were dreaming.

Friedrich Nietzsche
The hour when you say, "What does my happiness matter? It is poverty and filth, and a wretched complacency. Yet my happiness should justify existence itself!

Friedrich Nietzsche
The pride connected with knowing and sensing lies like a blinding fog over the eyes and senses of men, thus deceiving them concerning the value of existence. For this pride contains within itself the most flattering estimation of the value of knowing. Deception is the most general effect of such pride, but even its most particular effects contain within themselves something of the same deceitful character.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Read from a distant star, the majuscule script of our earthly existence would perhaps lead to the conclusion that the earth was the distinctively ascetic planet, a nook of disgruntled, arrogant creatures filled with a profound disgust with themselves, at the earth, at all life, who inflict as much pain on themselves as they possibly can out of pleasure in inflicting pain which is probably their only pleasure.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Mathematics would certainly have not come into existence if one had known from the beginning that there was in nature no exactly straight line, no actual circle, no absolute magnitude.

Friedrich Nietzsche
The rights a man arrogates to himself are related to the duties he imposes on himself, to the tasks to which he feels equal. The great majority of men have no right to existence, but are a misfortune to higher men.

Friedrich Nietzsche
The doctrine of equality!... But there is no more venomous poison in existence: for it appears to be preached by justice itself, when it is actually the end of justice... "Equality to the equal; inequality to the unequal" that would be true justice speaking: and its corollary, "never make the unequal equal".

Friedrich Nietzsche
Try for once to justify the meaning of your existence as it were a posteriori by setting yourself an aim, a goal... an exalted and noble 'to this end.' Perish in pursuit of this and only this

Friedrich Nietzsche
I want to teach men the sense of their existence, which is the Superman, the lightning out of the dark cloud man.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Whom do I hate most among the rabble of today? The socialist rabble, the chandala apostles, who undermine the instinct, the pleasure, the worker's sense of satisfaction with his small existence–who make him envious, who teach him revenge. The source of wrong is never unequal rights but the claim of equal rights.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus the man who is responsive to artistic stimuli reacts to the reality of dreams as does the philosopher to the reality of existence; he observes closely, and he enjoys his observation: for it is out of these images that he interprets life, out of these processes that he trains himself for life.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Whoever is completely and wholly an artist is to all eternity separated from the "real," the actual; on the other hand, one can understand how he may sometimes weary to the point of desperation of the eternal "unreality" and falsity of his innermost existence- and that then he may well attempt what ia most forbidden him, to lay hold of actuality, for once actually to be.

Friedrich Nietzsche
From experience. That something is irrational is no argument against its existence, but rather a condition for it.

Friedrich Nietzsche
The secret of realizing the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships out into uncharted seas! Live in conflict with your equals and with yourselves! Be robbers and ravagers as soon as you ca not be rulers and owners, you men of knowledge! The time will soon past when you could be content to live concealed int he woods like timid deer!

Friedrich Nietzsche