Quotessence
Home / Topics / Zarathustra Quotes

Zarathustra Quotes

Browse 34 quotes about Zarathustra.

Zarathustra Quotes

“If, however, thou hast a suffering friend, then be a resting-place for his suffering; like a hard bed, however, a camp-bed: thus wilt thou serve him best. And if a friend doeth thee wrong, then say: "I forgive thee what thou hast done unto me; that thou hast done it unto THYSELF, however--how could I forgive that!" Thus speaketh all great love: it surpasseth even forgiveness and pity. One should hold fast one's heart; for when one letteth it go, how quickly doth one's head run away!”

“Since humanity came into being, man hath enjoyed himself too little: that alone, my brethren, is our original sin! And when we learn better to enjoy ourselves, then do we unlearn best to give pain unto others, and to contrive pain. Therefore do I wash the hand that hath helped the sufferer; therefore do I wipe also my soul. For in seeing the sufferer suffering – thereof was I ashamed on account of his shame; and in helping him, sorely did I wound his pride.”

“He who seeks may go astray. All solitude is sin/ says the herd. And long were you yourself of the herd. The voice of the herd still lingers in you, and when you shall say: ‘I no longer have a common conscience with them’, it shall be a grief and pain to you. You call yourself free? I would hear of your master-thought, not of your escape from the yoke. Are you a man that should escape from the yoke? Many have cast off all their values when they cast off their servitude. Free from what? How does that concern Zarathustra? Let your eye answer me frankly: Free for what? ... a day will come when loneliness shall weary you, when your pride shall writhe and your courage gnash its teeth. In that day you shall cry: I am alone. A day will come when you shall see your high things no more, and your low things all too near; you shall fear your exaltation as if it were a phantom. In that day you will cry: All is false. There are emotions that seek to slay the solitary; if they don’t succeed they must perish themselves. Are you able to be a murderer?”

“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.”

“Nietzsche was not an atheist, any more than the Buddha was.* Anyone who reads the Night Song and the Dance Song in Zarathustra will recognize that they spring out the same emotion as the Vedic or Gathic hymns or the Psalms of David. The idea of the Superman is a response to the need for salvation in precisely the same way that Buddhism was a response to the 'three signs'.”

“To live as I incline, or not to live at all: so do I wish; so wisheth also the holiest. But alas! how have I still - inclination? Have I-still a goal? A haven towards which MY sail is set?A good wind? Ah, he only who knoweth WHITHER he saileth, knoweth what wind is good, and a fair wind for him.What still remaineth to me? A heart weary and flippant; and unstable will; fluttering wings; a broken backbone.This seeking for MY home: O Zarathustra, dost thou know that this seeking hath been MY home-sickening; it eateth me up.”

“Zarathustra was the first to consider the fight of good and evil the very wheel in the machinery of things: the transposition of morality into the metaphysical realm, as a force, cause, and end in itself, is his work. [...] Zarathustra created this most calamitous error, morality; consequently, he must also be the first to recognize it.”

“Willing emancipateth: that is the true doctrine of will and emancipation - so teacheth you Zarathustra. No longer willing, and no longer valuing, and no longer creating! Ah, that that great debility may ever be far from me! And also in discerning do I feel only my will's procreating and evolving delight.”

“I guess I could be singing about Superman, or about Zarathustra coming down from the mountain, but in my mind I was singing about Julian Assange. I wish I could say that Nietzsche inspired my lyrics but all I can honestly say is I was inspired by the graphic design of these '70s paperback covers for Beyond Good & Evil and The Birth of Tragedy and The Gay Science.”

“From the sun did I learn this, when it goeth down, the exuberant one: gold doth it then pour into the sea, out of inexhaustible riches, -So that the poorest fisherman roweth even with golden oars! For this did I once see, and did not tire of weeping in beholding it. - Like the sun will also Zarathustra go down: now sitteth he here and waiteth, old broken tables around him, and also new tables half-written.”

“Now know I well what people sought formerly above all else when they sought Teachers of virtue. Good sleep they sought for themselves, and poppy-head virtues to promote it! To all those be-lauded sages of the academic chairs, wisdom was sleep Without dreams: they knew no higher significance of life. Even at present, to be sure, there are some like this preacher of virtue, and not always so honorable: but their time is past. And not much longer do they stand: there they already lie. Blessed are those drowsy ones: for they shall soon nod to sleep.-Thus spoke Zarathustra.”

“Nietzsche is absolutely correct, even more correct today than when he wrote it in Thus Spake Zarathustra: I looked all about me for human beings but all I saw were fragments, deformed creatures with too much eye or too much ear. This is what the modern culture of specialized intellect-the kind of one-sidedness that banausic utilitarianism alone can value-works so hard to produce.”