Great Quotes
I looked for great men, but all I found were the apes of their ideals.
The great poet draws his creations only from out of his own reality.
Do not allow yourselves to be deceived: Great minds are skeptical.
The Great Man... is colder, harder, less hesitating, and without fear of 'opinion'; he lacks the virtues that accompany respect and 'respectability,' and altogether everything that is the 'virtue of the herd.' If he cannot lead, he goes alone... He knows he is incommunicable: he finds it tasteless to be familiar... When not speaking to himself, he wears a mask. There is a solitude within him that is inaccessible to praise or blame.
Do not talk about giftedness, inborn talents! One can assume great men of all kinds who were very little gifted. They acquired greatness, became "geniuses" (as we put it), through qualities the lack of which no one who knew what they were would boast of: they all possessed that seriousness of the efficient workman which first learns to construct the parts properly before it ventures to fashion a great whole; they allowed themselves time for it, because they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole.
Some people appear to be more meager in talent than they are, just because the tasks they set themselves are always too great.
In the end things must be as they are and have always been - the great things remain for the great, the abysses for the profound, the delicacies and thrills for the refined, and, to sum up shortly, everything rare for the rare.
I love the great despisers because they are the great adorers.
Oh great star! What would your happiness be if you did not have us to shine for?
Even great spirits have only their five-fingers' breadth of experience - just beyond it their thinking ceases and their endless empty space and stupidity begins.
Mankind must work continually to produce individual great human beings-this and nothing else is the task... for the question is this: How can your life, the individual life, retain the highest value, the deepest significance? Only by living for the good of the rarest and most valuable specimens.
Hope, in its stronger forms, is a great deal more powerful stimulans to life than any sort of realized joy can ever be.
The errors of great men are venerable because they are more fruitful than the truths of little men.
The man of the future who will redeem us not only from the hitherto reigning ideal but also from that which was bound to grow out of it, the great nausea, the will to nothingness, nihilism; this bell stroke of noon and of the great decision that liberates the will again and restores its goal to the earth and his hope to man; this Antichrist and anti-nihilist; this victor over God and nothingness - he must come one day.
The governments of the great States have two instruments for keeping the people dependent, in fear and obedience: a coarser, the army; and a more refined, the school.
Giving style to one's character-a great and rare art! It is exercised by those who see all the strengths and weaknesses of their own natures and then comprehend them in an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason and even weakness delights the eye.
The parasites live where the great have little secret sores.
Species do not grow more perfect: the weaker dominate the strong, again and again-the reason being that they are the great majority, and they are also cleverer. Darwin forgot the mind (- that is English!): the weak possess more mind. ... To acquire mind, one must need mind-one loses it when one no longer needs it.
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