Twilight of the Idols Quotes

“Heraclitus will remain eternally right with his assertion that being is an empty fiction. The ‘apparent’ world is the only one: the ‘true’ world is only added by a lie.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Düşüncesizlik etmenin bir defayla sınırlı kalması çok enderdir. Kişi ilk düşüncesizliğinde, her zaman çok fazla şey yapar. Tam da bu yüzden ikinci bir düşüncesizlik daha yapar
- bu defa da çok az şey yapar...”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“37
Önden gidiyorsun öyle mi? ― Çoban olduğun için mi? yoksa istisna olduğun için mi? Bir üçüncü seçenek de kaçıp kurtulan olmaktır... Birinci vicdan sorusu.

38
Sahici misin? yoksa yalnızca bir oyuncu mu? Bir temsilci mi? yoksa temsil edilenin kendisi mi? ― Yoksa nihayetinde taklit edilen bir oyuncu musun sadece... İkinci vicdan sorusu.

40
Seyreden biri misin? yoksa omuz veren mi? ― yoksa, başını çevirip, yoluna giden mi?.. Üçüncü vicdan sorusu.

41
Birlikte yürümek mi istersin? önden yürümek mi? yoksa kendi başına yürümek mi?... kiş bilmeli istediği şeyin ne olduğunu, ve onu istiyor olduğunu. Dördüncü vicdan sorusu.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“The saying of yea to life, including even its most strange and most terrible problems, the will to life rejoicing over its own inexhaustibleness in the sacrifice of its highest types - this is what I called Dionysian, this is what I divined as the bridge leading to the psychology of the tragic poet. Not in order to escape from terror and pity, not to purify one's self of a dangerous passion by discharging it with vehemence — this is how Aristotle understood it — but to be far beyond terror and pity and to be the eternal lust of Becoming itself — that lust which also involves the lust of destruction. And with this I once more come into touch with the spot from which I once set out — the Birth of Tragedy was my first transvaluation of all values: with this I again take my stand upon the soil from out of which my will and my capacity spring — I, the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus — I, the prophet of eternal recurrence.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“To the Greeks, the symbol of sex was the most venerated of symbols, the really deep significance of all the piety of antiquity. All the details of the act of procreation, pregnancy and birth gave rise to the loftiest and most solemn feelings. In the doctrine of mysteries, pain was pronounced holy: the “pains of childbirth” sanctify pain in general, — all becoming and all growth, everything that guarantees the future involves pain .... In order that there may be eternal joy in creating, in order that the will to life may say Yea to itself in all eternity, the “pains of childbirth” must also be eternal.
All this is what the word Dionysus signifies: I know of no higher symbolism than this Greek symbolism, this symbolism of the Dionysian phenomenon. In it the profoundest instinct of life, the instinct that guarantees the future of life and life eternal, is understood religiously, — the road to life itself, procreation, is pronounced holy ...”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Man's three 'inner facts', the things he believed in most firmly—the will, the mind, the I—were projected out of himself: he derived the concept of Being from the concept of the I, and posited the existence of 'things' after his own image, after his concept of the I as cause. No wonder if, later on, he only ever rediscovered in things what he had put in them.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“The morality of breeding and the morality of taming, in the means which they adopt in order to prevail, are quite worthy of each other: we may lay down as a leading principle that in order to create morality a man must have the absolute will to immorality. This is the great and strange problem with which I have so long been occupied: the psychology of the “Improvers” of mankind. A small, and at bottom perfectly insignificant fact, known as the “pia fraus,” first gave me access to this problem: the pia fraus, the heirloom of all philosophers and priests who “improve” mankind. Neither Manu, nor Plato, nor Confucius, nor the teachers of Judaism and Christianity, have ever doubted their right to falsehood. They have never doubted their right to quite a number of other things To express oneself in a formula, one might say:—all means which have been used heretofore with the object of making man moral, were through and through immoral.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“In the teachings of the [Greek] mysteries, pain is declared holy; the “pangs of the childbearer” make pain in general holy—all becoming and growth, everything that vouches for the future requires pain . . . For there to be the eternal joy of creation, for the will to life to affirm itself eternally, there must also eternally be the “torment of the childbearer”.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Is the artist's most basic instinct bound up with art, or is it bound up much more intimately with life, which is the meaning of art? Isn't it bound up with the desirability of life? — Art is the great stimulus to life: how could art be understood as purposeless, pointless, l'art pour l'art?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“We stop valuing ourselves enough when we communicate. Our true expe­riences are completely taciturn. They could not be communicated even if they wanted to be. This is because the right words for them do not exist. The things we have words for are also the things we have already left behind. There is a grain of contempt in all speech. Language, it seems, was invented only for average, mediocre, communicable things. People vulgarize themselves when they speak a language.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“My taste, which may be the opposite of a tolerant taste, is in this case too far from saying Yes indiscriminately: it does not like to say Yes; rather even No; but best of all, nothing.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Nothing is more highly conditioned—let us say: more limited—than our feeling for beauty… In beauty, human beings posit themselves as the measure of perfection… But nothing, absolutely nothing, guarantees that a human being is the standard of beauty.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Bütün büyük, bütün güzel şeyler asla kamu malı olamaz: Pulchrum est paucorum hominum (Güzellik, azınlığa mahsustur) - Alman kültürünün çöküşünün nedeni nedir? "Yüksek eğitim"in artık bir ayrıcalık olmayışıdır - "genel" kültürün, yani kamusal olmuş kültürün demokratizmi... Askeri ayrıcalıkların yüksekokullara çok fazla öğrenci alınmasını, yani okulları resmen çökmeye zorladığını unutmamak gerekir.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Noon; moment of the shortest shadow; end of the longest error; high point of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“There reigns everywhere an indecent haste, as if something has been neglected if the young man of twenty-three is not yet 'finished and ready', does not yet know the answer to the 'chief question': which calling? - A higher kind of human being, excuse me for saying, doesn't think much of 'callings', the reason being he knows himself called ... He takes his time”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Supreme rule of conduct: even when alone one must not 'let oneself go'.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“In this state a man enriches everything from out his own abundance: what he sees, what he wills, he sees distended, compressed, strong, overladen with power. He transfigures things until they reflect his power, — until they are stamped with his perfection. This compulsion to transfigure into the beautiful is — Art. Everything — even that which he is not, — is nevertheless to such a man a means of rejoicing over himself; in Art man rejoices over himself as perfection. — It is possible to imagine a contrary state, a specifically anti-artistic state of the instincts, — a state in which a man impoverishes, attenuates, and draws the blood from everything. And, truth to tell, history is full of such anti-artists, of such creatures of low vitality who have no choice but to appropriate everything they see and to suck its blood and make it thinner. This is the case with the genuine Christian, Pascal for instance. There is no such thing as a Christian who is also an artist ... Let no one be so childish as to suggest Raphael or any homeopathic Christian of the nineteenth century as an objection to this statement: Raphael said Yea, Raphael did Yea, — consequently Raphael was no Christian.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“What is the meaning of the antithetical concepts Apollonian and Dionysian which I have introduced into the vocabulary of Aesthetic, as representing two distinct modes of ecstasy? — Apollonian ecstasy acts above all as a force stimulating the eye, so that it acquires the power of vision. The painter, the sculptor, the epic poet are essentially visionaries.
In the Dionysian state, on the other hand, the whole system of passions is stimulated and intensified, so that it discharges itself by all the means of expression at once, and vents all its power of representation, of imitation, of transfiguration, of transformation, together with every kind of mimicry and histrionic display at the same time.
The essential feature remains the facility in transforming, the inability to refrain from reaction (—a similar state to that of certain hysterical patients, who at the slightest hint assume any role). It is impossible for the Dionysian artist not to understand any suggestion; no outward sign of emotion escapes him, he possesses the instinct of comprehension and of divination in the highest degree, just as he is capable of the most perfect art of communication. He enters into every skin, into every passion: he is continually changing himself.
Music as we understand it today is likewise a general excitation and discharge of the emotions; but, notwithstanding this, it is only the remnant of a much richer world of emotional expression, a mere residuum of Dionysian histrionism. For music to be made possible as a special art, quite a number of senses, and particularly the muscular sense, had to be paralysed (at least relatively: for all rhythm still appeals to our muscles to a certain extent): and thus man no longer imitates and represents physically everything he feels, as soon as he feels it. Nevertheless that is the normal Dionysian state, and in any case its primitive state. Music is the slowly attained specialisation of this state at the cost of kindred capacities.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“When you give up Christian faith, you pull the rug out from under your right to Christian morality as well. This is anything but obvious: you have to keep driving this point home, English idiots to the contrary.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Physiologically speaking, everything ugly weakens and oppresses human beings. It reminds them of decline, danger, powerlessness; it actually makes them lose strength. You can measure the effect of the ugly with a dynamometer. Whenever human beings are depressed, they sense that something “ugly” is nearby. Their feeling of power, their will to power, their courage, their pride—it all falls with the ugly and rises with the beautiful . . .”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“One has relinquished ”
― Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“One has relinquished great life when one relinquishes war...”
― Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols