QUOTES BY AUTHOR

 QUOTES BY AUTHOR

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Nietzsche was a German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, philologist, and scholar of Latin and Greek, but he was, perhaps above all else, a consummate rhetorician (a lover of powerful, eloquent language). He delighted in the striking turn of phrase. Academic philosophers frequently lament that he sacrificed accuracy, specificity and well-structured arguments in favour of literary flair. Dramatic overstatement is a well-used rhetorical technique. This, in fact, is the fundamental character of Nietzsche’s thought. He celebrates the virtues of style and passion and is highly skeptical about objective truth and even about the ability of human beings to communicate ideas accurately through language. For him, getting across the feeling can be more vital and important than the precision of the terms used.

(It is) true: We love live, not because we're used to living but because we're used to loving. (Thus Spake Zarathustra)

Other versions of this quote:

It is true, we love life; not because we are wont to live, but because we are wont to love.

It is true, we love life, (but) not because we want to live, but because we want to love.



What doesn't kill you (only / just) makes you stronger. I really believe that.

 Other versions of this quote: 

What doesn't destroy you (only / just) makes you stronger. I really believe that".

I strongly believe, what doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger!”

What does not destroy you makes you stronger.



OSCAR WILDE

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish playwright, poet and author of numerous short stories and one novel. Known for his biting wit, and a plentitude of aphorisms, he became one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era in London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day. Several of his plays continue to be widely performed, especially The Importance of Being Earnest. 

As the result of a widely covered series of trials, Wilde suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned for two years hard labour after being convicted of "gross indecency" with other men. After Wilde was released from prison he set sail for Dieppe by the night ferry. He never returned to Ireland or Britain, and died in poverty.

* A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.

* A kiss may ruin a human life.

* A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

* A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

* A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

* A passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young.

* A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.

* A thing is not necessarily true (just) because a man dies for it.

* An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

* Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

* America has never quite forgiven Europe for having been discovered somewhat earlier in history than itself.

* Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.

* Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

* All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

* Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.

* Anybody can be good in the country; there are no temptations there.

* Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.

* Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal.

* Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.

* Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.

* Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.

* Art persists, it timelessly continues.

* At 46 one must be a miser; only have time for essentials.

* Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood.

* Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

* Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.

* Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.

* Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.

* Crying is for plain women. Pretty women go shopping.

* Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

* Each of us has heaven and hell in him...

* Each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it.

* Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

* Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

* Everything in moderation, including moderation.

* Everything popular is wrong.

* Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

* Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.

* Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer.

* He is really not so ugly after all, provided, of course, that one shuts one's eyes, and does not look at him.

* Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.

* Hatred is blind, as well as love.

* He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.

* He must have a truly romantic nature, for he weeps when there is nothing at all to weep about.

* He was always late on principle; his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.

* How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

* How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?

* How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.

* I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.

* I am always astonishing myself. It is the only thing that makes life worth living.

* We are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood.

* I am not young enough to know everything. 

* I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word (of what) I am saying.

* I am sick of women who love one. Women who hate one are much more interesting.

* I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly. Oscar Wilde

* I am too fond of reading books to care to write them. The Picture of Dorian Gray

* I can believe anything as long as it is incredible.

* I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.

* I don't at all like knowing what people say of me behind my back. It makes me far too conceited.

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* I don't like compliments, and I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he doesn't mean.

* I don’t say we all ought to misbehave. But we ought to look as if we could.

* I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.

* I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.

* I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing.

* I have learned this: it is not what one does that is wrong, but what one becomes as a consequence of it.

* I have nothing to declare except my genius. (Upon arriving at US customs)

* I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

* I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.

* I like men who have a future and women who have a past.

* I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.

* I love acting. It is so much more real than life.

* I love to talk about nothing. It's the only thing I know anything about.

* I never change, except in my affections.

* I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do - the day after.

* I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

* I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.

* I never play cricket. It requires one to assume such indecent postures.

* I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

* I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.

* I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.

* I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.

* I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability. Oscar Wilde

* I suppose that I shall have to die beyond my means.

* I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.

* I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

* If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.

* If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.

* If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.

* If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world. 

* If we men married the women we deserved, we should have a very bad time of it.

* If you cannot write well, you cannot think well; if you cannot think well, others will do your thinking for you.

* If you don't get everything you want, think of the things you don't get that you don't want. 

* If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you. The Nightingale and the Rose

* Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

* In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. 

* In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.

* In love, one always begins by deceiving oneself, and one always ends by deceiving others; and that is what the world calls a romance.

* In married life, three is company and two none.

* In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.

* In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.

* In the old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press.

* Indeed I have always been of the opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing to do.

* Indifference is the revenge the world takes on mediocrities.

* It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.

* It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

* It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

* It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.

* It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art. 

* It is only about things that do not interest one that one can give a really unbiased opinion, which is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is always valueless.

* It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes. 

* It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible...

* It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned. 

* It is the stupid and the ugly who have the best of it in this world.

* It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection.

* It is very vulgar to talk about one’s business. Only people like stockbrokers do that, and then merely at dinner parties.

* It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.

* It takes great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.

* Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is by far the best ending for one. ― The Picture of Dorian Gray

* Life is a nightmare that prevents one from sleeping.

* Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

* Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.

* Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about. ― Lady Windermere's Fan

* Life is too important to be taken seriously.

* Life is too short to learn German.

* Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.

* Long engagements give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which is never advisable.

* Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.

* Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

* Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

* Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.

* Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed. ― The Picture of Dorian Gray

* Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.

* Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one’s nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.

* My great mistake, the fault for which I can’t forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.

* My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people’s.

* My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.

* Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.

* Never trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever her age may be, or a woman over thirty-five who is fond of pink ribbons.

* No gentleman ever has any money.

* No good deed goes unpunished.

* No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

* No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

* No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.

* No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.

* Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

* Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman

* Nothing succeeds like excess.

* Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

* Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. ― The Picture of Dorian Gray

* Nowadays we are all of us so hard up that the only pleasant things to pay are compliments. They're the only things we can pay.

* Oh, I love London society! It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what society should be.

* Of course I have played outdoor games. I once played dominoes in an open air cafe in Paris.

* One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

* One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

* One has a right to judge a man by the effect he has over his friends.

* One must have some sort of occupation nowadays. If I hadn’t my debts I shouldn’t have anything to think about.

* One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.

* One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.

* One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.

* One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.

* One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.

* Only the shallow know themselves.

* Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.

* Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.

* Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.

* Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.

* Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.

* Prayer must never be answered: if it is, it ceases to be prayer and becomes correspondence.

* Punctuality is the thief of time.

* Questions are never indiscreet; answers sometimes are.

* Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.

* Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.

* Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.

* Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.

* Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

* Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

* She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm. 

* She...can talk brillantly upon any subject provided she knows nothing about it.

* She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.

* She is very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. ― The Picture of Dorian Gray

* Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.

* Society produces rogues (scoundrel, rascal), and education makes one rogue more clever than another.

* Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

* Some things are more precious because they don't last long. The Picture of Dorian Gray

* Some of these people need ten years of therapy - ten sentences of mine do not equal ten years of therapy.

* Sooner or later we have all to pay for what we do. 

* The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

* The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.

* The basis of action is lack of imagination. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.

* The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.

* The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. 

* The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing.

* The nineteenth century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac. 

* The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.

* The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means. 

* The great events of the world take place in the brain...

* The growing influence of women is the one reassuring thing in our political life.

* The heart was made to be broken.

* The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

* The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.

* The most terrible thing about it is not that it breaks one’s heart—hearts are made to be broken—but that it turns one’s heart to stone.

* The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.

* The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.

* The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.

* The one charm of the past is that it is the past.” ― The Picture Of Dorian Gray

* The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.

* The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

* The only link between Literature and the Drama left to us in England at the present moment is the bill of the play.

* The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance. The only thing that can console one for being rich is economy.

* The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes.

* The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.

* The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation.

* The optimist sees the donut, the pessimist sees the hole.

* The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.

* The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it. 

* The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.

* The supreme vice is shallowness.

* The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

* The very essence of romance is uncertainty. If I ever marry, I'll try to forget the fact.

* The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.

* The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

* The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable. 

* There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up. 

* There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

* There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating - people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

* There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.

* There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.

* There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.

* There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.

* There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

* There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love. The Picture of Dorian Gray

* There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. ― The Picture of Dorian Gray

* They've promised that dreams can come true - but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too.

* They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about. 

* They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever.

* Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease.

* This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

* Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.

* Those whom the gods love grow young.

* Time is a waste of money.

* To be great is to be misunderstood.

* To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.

* To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

* To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

* To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

* To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

* True friends stab you in the front.

* We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.

* We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

* We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.

* We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.

* We Irish are too poetical to be poets; we are a nation of brilliant failures, but we are the greatest talkers since the Greeks

* We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.

* We women, as some one says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes... ― The Picture of Dorian Gray

* What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us.

* What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

* What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.

* When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her. 

* When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.

* When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.

* When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

* When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers. 

* When you really want love you will find it waiting for you.

* Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. 

* With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?

* Who, being loved, is poor?

* Women are made to be loved, not understood.

* Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.

* Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

* Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them.

* Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.

* Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

* Yet each man kills the thing he loves, by each let this be heard, some do it with a bitter look, some with a flattering word. The coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword!

* You can never be overdressed or overeducated.

* You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one.

* You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit. 

* Young men want to be faithful and are not; old men want to be faithless and cannot.

* Young people think money's the most important thing in life. Only when they get older do they know it for sure.