Quotessence
Home / Topics / Thus Spoke Zarathustra Quotes

Thus Spoke Zarathustra Quotes

Browse 18 quotes about Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra Quotes

“Like many others of the younger generation, for Magda and Fritz the last years of the sixties were the utopian meaning of paradise on earth, the more so for Magda who had graduated with honours. She had based a part of her thesis on the philosophical perspective of the Expressionist movement, particularly what the philosopher Nietzsche wrote in his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in which, amongst other things, he stated: ''What does my shadow matter?... Let it run after me!... I shall out-run it...'' And that's what Magda wanted to do with her life: declare herself independent from conventional thought and from past memories.”

PhilosophyLiteratureParis1960sNietzscheFriedrich NietzscheExpressionismZarathustraThus Spoke ZarathustraMaltese
Book:Memories of Recurrent Echoes
Create image

“Such was also the case with Nietzsche, a volcanic genius if ever there was one. Here, too, there is passionate exteriorization of an inward fire, but in a manner that is both deviated and demented; we have in mind here, not the Nietzschian philosophy, which taken literally is without interest, but his poetical work, whose most intense expression is in part his ‘Zarathustra’. What this highly uneven book manifests above all is the violent reaction of an a priori profound soul against a mediocre and paralyzing cultural environment; Nietzsche’s fault was to have only a sense of grandeur in the absence of all intellectual discernment. ‘Zarathustra’ is basically the cry of a grandeur trodden underfoot, whence comes the heart-rending authenticity – grandeur precisely – of certain passages; not all of them, to be sure, and above all not those which express a half-Machiavellian, half-Darwinian philosophy, or minor literary cleverness. Be that as it may, Nietzsche’s misfortune, like that of other men of genius, such as Napoleon, was to be born after the Renaissance and not before it; which indicates evidently an aspect of their nature, for there is no such thing as chance.”

RenaissanceNietzscheThus Spoke Zarathustra
Book:To Have a Center
Create image

“and what fantasy can there possibly be in misery? You sense that it will at length grow weary, that it is exhausting itself in constant tension, this inexhaustible fantasy, because after all one matures, outgrows one's former ideals; they are shattered into dust and fragments; and if you have no other life, it behoves you to construct one from those same fragments.”

ExistentialismSupermanThus Spoke ZarathustraNietzche
Book:Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Create image

“Tel fut aussi le cas d'un Nietzsche, génie volcanique s'il en est ; ici encore - mais d'une façon à la fois déviée et démentielle - il y a extériorisation passionnée d'un feu intérieur ; nous pensons ici non à la philosophie nietzschéenne, qui dans sa littéralité est sans intérêt (17), mais à l'oeuvre poétique dont l'expression la plus intense est en partie le "Zarathoustra". Ce que ce livre, d'ailleurs fort inégal, manifeste avant tout, c'est la réaction violente d'une âme a priori profonde contre une ambiance culturelle médiocre et paralysante ; le défaut de Nietzsche, ce fut de n'avoir que le sens de la grandeur en l'absence de tout discernement intellectuel. Le "Zarathoustra" est au fond le cri d'une grandeur piétinée, d'où l'authenticité poignante - la grandeur précisément - de certains passages ; certes non de tous et surtout pas de ceux qui expriment une philosophie mi-machiavélique mi-darwiniste, ou de la petite habileté littéraire.Quoi qu'il en soit, le malheur de Nietzsche - ou celui d'autres hommes géniaux, comme Napoléon - fut d'être né après la Renaissance et non avant ; ce qui marque évidemment un aspect de leur nature, car il n'y a pas de hasard. (17) Cette philosophie aurait pu être un cri d'alarme contre le péril d'un humanitarisme aplatissant et abâtardissant, donc mortel pour le genre humain ; en fait, elle fut un combat contre des moulins à vent en même temps qu'une séduction plus périlleuse”

NietzscheThus Spoke Zarathustra
Book:To Have a Center
Create image