Friedrich Nietzsche Spirit Quotations

As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies—but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters: other kinds of spirit hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.

The spirit of the poet craves spectators... even if only buffaloes.

In being wildly natural we recover best from being unnatural, from being spiritual.

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

He who seeks intelligence lacks intelligence.

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

How much truth can a spirit bear, how much truth can a spirit dare? ... that became for me more and more the real measure of value.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare?

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

The most spiritual human beings, assuming they are the most courageous, also experience by far the most painful tragedies: but it is precisely for this reason that they honor life, because it brings against them its most formidable weapons.

The most spiritual men, as the strongest, find their happiness where others would find their destruction: in the labyrinth, in hardness against themselves and others, in experiments. Their joy is self-conquest: asceticism becomes in them nature, need, and instinct. Difficult tasks are a privilege to them; to play with burdens that crush others, a recreation. Knowledge-a form of asceticism. They are the most venerable kind of man: that does not preclude their being the most cheerful and the kindliest.

Spirit is the life that itself cuts into life: with its own torment it increases its own knowledge. Did you already know that?

The spiritual activity of millennia is deposited in language.

I understand by 'freedom of spirit' something quite definite - the unconditional will to say No, where it is dangerous to say No.

Even today many educated people think that the victory of Christianity over Greek philosophy is a proof of the superior truth of the former - although in this case it was only the coarser and more violent that conquered the more spiritual and delicate. So far as superior truth is concerned, it is enough to observe that the awakening sciences have allied themselves point by point with the philosophy of Epicurus, but point by point rejected Christianity.

One must never have spared oneself, one must have acquired hardness as a habit to be cheerful and in good spirits in the midst of nothing but hard truths.

It is the music in our conscience, the dance in our spirit, to which Puritan litanies, moral sermons, and goody goodness won’t chime.

But he who is hated by the people, as the wolf by the dogs - is the free spirit, the enemy of fetters, the non-adorer, the dweller in the woods.

I love him who reserveth no share of spirit for himself, but wanteth to be wholly the spirit of his virtue: thus walketh he as spirit over the bridge.

I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus is his head only the bowels of his heart; his heart, however, causeth his down-going.

Instruments and playthings are sense and spirit: behind them there is still the Self. The Self seeketh with the eyes of the senses, it hearkeneth also with the ears of the spirit.

He who knoweth the reader, doeth nothing more for the reader. Another century of readers - and spirit itself will stink.

What the sense feeleth, what the spirit discerneth, hath never its end in itself. But sense and spirit would fain persuade thee that they are the end of all things: so vain are they.

Every relationship that does not raise us up pulls us down, and vice versa; this is why men usually sink down somewhat when they take wives while women are usually somewhat raised up. Overly spiritual men require marriage every bit as much as they resist it as bitter medicine.

A book full of brilliance imparts some of it even to its opponents.

All contempt for the sexual life, all denigration under the concept 'impure" is the essential crime against Life- against the Holy Spirit of Life".

Every profound spirit needs a mask.

He who lives as children live - who does not struggle for his bread and does not believe that his actions possess any ultimate significance - remains childlike.

Linguistic danger to spiritual freedom.- Every word is a prejudice.

Nothing ever succeeds which exuberant spirits have not helped to produce.

One should not be deceived: great spirits are skeptics ... Strength, FREEDOM which is born of the strength and overstrength of the spirit, proves itself by skepticism. Men of conviction are not worthy of the least consideration in fundamental questions of value and disvalue. Convictions are prisons.

Of all writings I love only that which is written with blood. Write with blood: and you will discover that blood is spirit.

The degree and kind of a man's sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit.

With the strength of his spiritual sight and insight the distance, and as it were the space, around man continually expands: his world grows deeper, ever new stars, ever new images and enigmas come into view.

A sedentary life is the real sin against the Holy Spirit. Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.

Spiritual strength and passion, when accompanied by bad manners, only provoke loathing.