Book Quotes by Friedrich Nietzsche

A book is made better by good readers and clearer by good opponents.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

“This book is intended for calm readers.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

It is neither the best nor the worst things in a book that defy translation.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

We criticize a man or a book most sharply when we sketch out their ideal.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

What good is a book that does not even transport us beyond all books?

— Friedrich Nietzsche

A book full of brilliance imparts some of it even to its opponents.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Someone who does not write books, who thinks a lot, and who lives in unsatisfying society will usually be a good letter-…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Books for all the world are always foul-smelling books: the smell of small people clings to them.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

In the whole of the New Testament there is not one joke, that fact alone would invalidate any book.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

“the Alexandrian man, who is basically a librarian and copy editor and goes miserably blind from the dust of books and printing…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

It was a subtle refinement of God to learn Greek when he wished to write a book – and that he did…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

A book calls for pen, ink, and a writing desk; today the rule is that pen, ink, and a writing desk call…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Early in the morning, at break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one's strength, to read a book -I…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

If that glad message of your Bible were written in your faces, you would not need to demand belief in the authority…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

A book should long for pen, ink, and writing-table: but usually it is pen, ink, and writing-table that long for a book.…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The aphorism in which I am the first master among Germans, are the forms of 'eternity'; my ambition is to say in…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

A reader is doubly guilty of bad manners against an author when he praises his second book at the expense of his…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Writers ought to be regarded as wrongdoers who deserve to be acquitted or pardoned only in the rarest cases: that would be…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The aphorism, the apothegm, in which I am the first among the Germans to be a master, are the forms of “eternity”;…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

We do not belong to those who only get their thought from books, or at the prompting of books, -- it is…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

It seems to me that to take a book of mine into his hands is one of the rarest distinctions that anyone…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Very early in my life I took the question of the relation of art to truth seriously: even now I stand in…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

One receives as reward for much ennui, despondency, boredom -such as a solitude without friends, books, duties, passions must bring with it…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

I can tell by my own reaction to it that this book is harmful." But let him only wait and perhaps one…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

We are, indeed, not among the least contented. You, however, if your belief makes you blessed then appear to be blessed! Your…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

There is nothing that has caused me to meditate more on Plato's secrecy and sphinx-like nature, than the happily preserved petit fait…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Books and drafts mean something quite different for different thinkers. One collects in a book the lights he was able to steal…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Books for general reading always smell bad; the odor of common people hangs around them.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The value of many men and books rests solely on their faculty for compelling all to seek out the most hidden and…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Never to read another book that was born and baptized (with ink) at the same time.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Ultimately, no one can extract from things, books included, more than he already knows.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

No one can draw more out of things, books included, than he already knows. A man has no ears for that to…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

“Books for general reading always smell badly. The odor of common people hangs about them.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The so-called paradoxes of an author, to which a reader takes exception, often exist not in the author's book at all, but…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

How can anyone become a thinker unless he spends at least a third of every day away from passions, people, and books?

— Friedrich Nietzsche

So far no one had had enough courage and intelligence to reveal me to my dear Germans. My problems are new, my…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

In Russia there is an emigration of intelligence: émigrés cross the frontier in order to read and to write good books. But…

— Friedrich Nietzsche