Assorted Opinions and Maxims

The most dangerous party member.-- In every party there is one who through his all too credulous avowal of the party's principles incites the others to apostasy.

from Nietzsche's Human, all too Human, s.298, R.J. Hollingdale transl.

Not suitable as a party member.-- Whoever thinks much is not suitable as a party member: he soon thinks himself right out of the party.

from Nietzsche's Human, all too Human, s.579, R.J. Hollingdale transl.

The most dangerous follower.-- The most dangerous follower is he whose defection would destroy the whole party: that is to say, the best follower.

from Nietzsche's The Wanderer and his Shadow,s. 290, R.J. Hollingdale transl.

Hundred-year quarantine.-- Democratic institutions are quarantine arrangements to combat that ancient pestilence, lust for tyranny: as such they are very useful and very boring.

from Nietzsche's The Wanderer and his Shadow,s. 289, R.J. Hollingdale transl.

Not too deep.-- People who comprehend a thing to its very depths rarely stay faithful to it forever. For they have brought its depths into the light of day: and in the depths there is always much that is unpleasant to see.

from Nietzsche's Human, all too Human, s.489, R.J. Hollingdale transl.

Punishment.-- A strange thing, our kind of punishment! It does not cleanse the offender, it is no expiation: on the contrary, it defiles more than the offense itself.

from Nietzsche's Daybreak,s. 236, R.J. Hollingdale transl.

Love-matches.-- Marriages contracted from love (so-called love-matches) have error for their father and need for their mother.

from Nietzsche's Human, all too Human, s.389, R.J. Hollingdale transl.

Friendship with women.-- Women are quite able to make friends with a man; but to preserve such a friendship - that no doubt requires the assistance of a slight physical antipathy.

from Nietzsche's Human, all too Human, s.390, R.J. Hollingdale transl.

Masks.-- There are women who, however you may search them, prove to have no content but are purely masks. The man who associates with such almost spectral, necessarily unsatisfied beings is to be commiserated with, yet it is precisely they who are able to arouse the desire of the man most strongly: he seeks for her soul -- and goes on seeking.

from Nietzsche's Human, all too Human, s.405, R.J. Hollingdale transl.

The shortsighted are in love.-- Sometimes it requires only a stronger pair of spectacles to cure the lover, and he who had the imagination to picture a face, a figure twenty years older would perhaps pass through life very undisturbed.

from Nietzsche's Human, all too Human, s.413, R.J. Hollingdale transl.

Cause of 'altruism'.-- Men have on the whole spoken of love with such emphasis and so idolized it because they have had little of it and have never been allowed to eat their fill of this food: thus it became for them 'food of the gods'. Let a poet depict a utopia in which there obtains universal love, he will certainly have to describe a painful and ludicrous state of affairs the like of which the earth has never yet seen - everyone worshipped, encumbered and desired, not by one lover, as happens now, but by thousands, indeed by everyone else, as the result of an uncontrollable drive which would then be as greatly execrated and cursed as selfishness had been in former times; and the poets in that state of things - provided that they were left alone long enough to write - would dream of nothing but the happy, loveless past, of divine selfishness, of how it was once possible to be alone, undisturbed, unloved, hated, despised on earth, and whatever else may characterize the utter baseness of the dear animal world in which we live.

from Nietzsche's Daybreak,s. 147, R.J. Hollingdale transl.

Remedium amoris.-- The cure for love is still in most cases that ancient radical medicine: love in return.

from Nietzsche's Daybreak, s. 415, R.J. Hollingdale transl

Forbidden generosity.-- There is not enough love and goodness in the world for us to be permitted to give any of it away to imaginary things.

from Nietzsche's Human, all too Human, s.129, R.J. Hollingdale transl.