Thus Spoke Zarathustra Quotes

I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.

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

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.

The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.

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. Lonely one, you are going the way to yourself! And your way goes past yourself, and past your seven devils! You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?.

And once you are awake, you shall remain awake eternally.

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

But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthword, downword, into the dark, the deep - into evil.

Man is something that shall be overcome. Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman — a rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.

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

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

You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted.

I change too quickly: my today refutes my yesterday. When I ascend I often jump over steps, and no step forgives me that.

You say 'I' and you are proud of this word. But greater than this- although you will not believe in it - is your body and its great intelligence, which does not say 'I' but performs 'I'.

You know these things as thoughts, but your thoughts are not your experiences, they are an echo and after-effect of your experiences: as when your room trembles when a carriage goes past. I however am sitting in the carriage, and often I am the carriage itself. Ina man who thinks like this, the dichotomy between thinking and feeling, intellect and passion, has really disappeared. He feels his thoughts. He can fall in love with an idea. An idea can make him ill.

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

The real man wants two different things: danger and play. Therefore he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

I have learned to walk: since then I have run. I have learned to fly: since then I do not have to be pushed in order to move. Now I am nimble, now I fly, now I see myself under myself, now a god dances within me.

I would only believe in a god who could dance.

Blessed are the sleepy ones: for they shall soon nod off.

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

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

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

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

And if a friend does you wrong, then say: "I forgive you what you have done to me; that you have done it to YOURSELF, however--how could I forgive that!.

You tell me: 'Life is hard to bear.' But if it were otherwise why should you have your pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening? Life is hard to bear: but do not pretend to be so tender! We are all of us pretty fine asses and asseses of burden!.

there they laugh: they do not understand me; I am not the mouth for these ears.

Oh great star! What would your happiness be if you did not have us to shine for?.

A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: "I, the state, am the people." It is a lie! Creators were they who created peoples, and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life. Destroyers, are they who lay snares for many, and call it the state: they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them. Where there is still a people, there the state is not understood, but hated as the evil eye, and as sin against laws and customs.

Our faith in others betrays that we would rather have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer. And often with our love we want merely to overcome envy. And often we attack and make ourselves enemies, to conceal that we are vulnerable.

I say unto you: 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 yourselves. *** Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue. Where is the frenzy with which you should be inoculated. Behold. I give you the Ubermensch. He is this lightning. He is this frenzy.

I and me are always too deeply in conversation: how could I endure it, if there were not a friend? The friend of the hermit is always the third one: the third one is the float which prevents the conversation of the two from sinking into the depth.

Ten truths must you find during the day; otherwise will you seek truth during the night, and your soul will have been hungry.

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

You say that a good cause will even sanctify war! I tell you, it is the good war that sanctifies every cause!.

And to me also, who appreciate life, the butterflies, and soap-bubbles, and whatever is like them amongst us, seem most to enjoy happiness.

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.

Behold! I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that has gathered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to take it from me. I wish to spread it and bestow it, until the wise have once more become joyous in their folly, and the poor happy in their riches.

How lovely it is that there are words and sounds. Are not words and sounds rainbows and illusive bridges between things which are eternally apart?.

Something unappeased, unappeasable, is within me.

Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.

Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.

Creating—that is the great salvation from suffering, and life's alleviation. But for the creator to appear, suffering itself is needed, and much transformation.

Disobedience- that is the nobility of slaves.

It was the sick and decaying who despised the body and earth and invented the heavenly realm and the redemptive drops of blood: but they took even these sweet and gloomy poisons from body and earth. They wanted to escape their own misery, and the stars were too far for them.

The happiness of man is: I will. The happiness of woman is: he wills. ‘Behold, just now the world became perfect!’—thus thinks every woman when she obeys out of entire love. And women must obey and find a depth for her surface. Surface is the disposition of woman: a mobile, stormy film over shallow water. Man’s disposition, however, is deep; his river roars in subterranean caves: woman feels his strength but does not comprehend it.

You should seek your enemy, you should wage your war - a war for your opinions. And when your opinion is defeated, our honesty should still cry triumph over that!.

Dead are all gods: now we want the overman to live.