And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

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

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.

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

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in you.

Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Overman—a rope over an abyss.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under.

I love those who do not know how to live unless by going under, for they are the ones who cross over.

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

Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit.

He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.

I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance.

Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

The belly is the reason why man does not so readily take himself for a God.

In loneliness, the lonely one eats himself; in a crowd, the many eat him. Now choose.

Flee, my friend, into your solitude! I see you stung by poisonous flies. Flee where a rough, strong breeze blows!

Where the state ceases—there begins the human being who is not superfluous: there begins the song of necessity, the unique and irreplaceable melody.

The creator seeks companions, not corpses, nor herds and believers. The creator seeks fellow creators.

Are you a new strength and a new right? A first movement? A self-rolling wheel? Can you also compel stars to revolve around you?

Can you give yourself your own evil and your own good and hang your will above yourself like a law?

Can you be your own judge and the avenger of your own law? Terrible is it to be alone with the judge and the avenger of one's own law.

Many a one cannot loosen his own fetters, but is nevertheless his friend's emancipator.

Are you a slave? Then you cannot be a friend. Are you a tyrant? Then you cannot have friends.

Let your love of life be love to your highest hope; and let your highest hope be the highest thought of life!

To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying, but a mighty, human, all-too-human fundamental proposition.

He who cannot command himself should obey. And many a one can command himself, but still lacks much of self-obedience!

And life itself told me this secret: 'Behold,' it said, 'I am that which must always overcome itself.'

Only where there is life is there also will: not will to live, but—so I teach you—will to power!

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.

Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been injured.

One loves ultimately one's desires, not the thing desired.

The sick are the greatest danger for the healthy; it is not from the strongest that harm comes to the strong, but from the weakest.

It is not the strength, but the duration, of great sentiments that makes great men.

A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions—as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers, above all.

Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.

The charm of knowledge would be small if so much shame did not have to be overcome on the way to it.

The thought of suicide is a powerful solace: by means of it one gets through many a bad night.

In the end, one experiences only oneself.

Whoever reaches his ideal transcends it eo ipso.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

To live alone one must be a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both—a philosopher.

Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?

Out of life's school of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.

Help yourself: then everyone will help you. Principle of brother-love.

Formula for my happiness: A Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal.

To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult.

The doer alone learneth.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.

Every profound spirit needs a mask: even more, around every profound spirit a mask is continually growing.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

One must learn to love oneself—thus I teach—with a whole and healthy love: that one may endure oneself and not go wandering about.

My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity.

Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary—but love it.

For believe me, the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously!

Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas!

Live in conflict with your equals and with yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge!

I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful.

Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse.

Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.

What does your conscience say? 'You shall become who you are.'

Where are your greatest dangers? In compassion.

What do you love in others? My hopes.

Whom do you call bad? Him who always wants to put to shame.

What is the seal of liberation? No longer being ashamed in front of oneself.

Great debts do not make for gratitude, but for revenge; and if a little benefit is not forgotten, it becomes a gnawing worm.

It is the quietest words that bring on the storm. Thoughts that come on doves' feet guide the world.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

The spiritualization of sensuality is called love: it is a great triumph over Christianity.

One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one makes.

He who has a firm will molds the world to himself.

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

A snake that cannot shed its skin must die. So firms the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.

The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.

He who has nothing to hide does not need to speak.

No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.

There is an innocence in admiration: it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might one day be admired.

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man.

The tree that would grow to heaven must send its roots to hell.

The greatest events—they are not our loudest but our stillest hours.

Art is the proper task of life.

Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there stands a mighty commander, an unknown sage—he is called Self. In your body he dwells; he is your body.

I want to have my lions and my eagles about me, that I may always have hints and premonitions to know whether my strength increaseth or decreaseth.

Ten times a day must thou overcome thyself: that imparteth a fine fatigue, and is poppy-juice to the soul.

Ten times must thou reconcile again with thyself; for overcoming is bitterness, and badly sleepeth the unreconciled.

Ten truths a day must thou find; else thou seekest truth in the night, and thy soul remaineth hungry.

Ten times must thou laugh a day, and be cheerful; else thy stomach, the father of affliction, will disturb thee in the night.

To endure my solitude I was in need of war; I had to force myself into the open, to defend myself.

How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare? More and more that became for me the real measure of value.

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.

Fear is the mother of morality.

In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.

The mother of excess is not joy, but joylessness.

He who cannot lie does not know what truth is.

We praise or blame as one or the other affords more opportunity for our power of judgment to shine.

The voice of beauty speaks softly: it steals only into the most awakened souls.

I teach you the friend in whom the world standeth complete, a capsule of the good—the creating friend, who hath always a complete world to bestow.

Let your spirit and your virtue serve the sense of the earth, my brethren: and the value of all things shall be established by you anew!

Remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of other-worldly hopes!

You must learn to love yourself with a healthy, wholehearted love, so that you can bear being with yourself and not need to roam.

One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.

The wound is the place where the light enters you.

What you seek is seeking you.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.