Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzschewas a German philosopher, cultural critic, poet and Latin and Greek scholar whose work has exerted a profound influence on Western philosophy and modern intellectual history. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869, at the age of 24. Nietzsche resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life, and...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth15 October 1844
CityRocken, Germany
CountryGermany
It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.
Every step forward is made at the cost of mental and physical pain to someone.
What really makes one indignant about suffering isn't the thing itself but the senselessness of it.
A martyr's disciples suffer more than the martyr.
Thus the will to power strives towards oppositions, towards displeasure. There is a will to suffering at the foundation of all organic life (contrary to "happiness" as "goal").
What makes us heroic?--Confronting simultaneously our supreme suffering and our supreme hope.
In pain there is as much wisdom as in pleasure: like the latter it is one of the best self preservatives of a species.
Intoxicating joy is it for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and forget himself. Intoxicating joy and self-forgetting, did the world once seem to me.
But not to perish from internal distress and doubt when one inflicts great suffering and hears the cry of suffering : that is great, that belongs to greatness.
So long as the spectator has to figure out the meaning of this or that person, or the presuppositions of this or that conflict of inclinations and purposes, he cannot become completely absorbed in the activities and sufferings of the chief characters or feel breathless pity and fear.
What makes one heroic? - Going out to meet at the same time one's highest suffering and one's highest hope.
Who can attain to anything great if he does not feel in himself the force and will to inflict great pain?
Pity makes suffering contagious.
Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.