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When Nietzsche Wept Quotes

When Nietzsche Wept by Irvin D. Yalom

When Nietzsche Wept Quotes
"For God’s sake, stop! Stop thinking! Open your eyes! Look! Let the world in!"
"People come from all over the world to see Venice—people who refuse to die before they are blessed by this beauty."
"He often terms himself a ‘posthumous philosopher’—a philosopher for whom the world isn’t yet ready."
"No physician has been able to comprehend his malady or relieve his symptoms."
"I have no illusions that you can cure Nietzsche’s medical condition. That was not why I sought your help."
"To find a friend for my ultimate happiness and suffering, now seems to me possible—the golden possibility on the horizon of my whole future life."
"I am still not convinced that our ménage à trois was impossible! It might have worked had it not been for the interference of Nietzsche’s odious sister."
"But I do know I feel privileged to converse with a man of your depth and range."
"No one ever dies of fatal truths nowadays—there are too many antidotes."
"What good is a book that does not carry us beyond all books?"
"The seal of liberation is—No longer being ashamed in front of oneself."
"What is the skin of the soul? Agitations and passions enveloped in vanity."
"The final reward of the dead is to die no more."
"Hope is the worst of evils because it protracts torment."
"Each person owns his own death. And each should enact it in his own way."
"No right by which we can take a man’s death. That is not comfort. That is cruelty!"
"You write extraordinarily well. Your publisher is not only lazy, but a fool: these are books a publisher should champion with his life blood."
"To disclose oneself to another is the prelude to betrayal, and betrayal makes one sick, does it not?"
"I write only from my own experience. I write in blood, and the best truth is a bloody truth!"
"For a psychologist, personal suffering is a blessing—the training ground for facing the suffering of existence."
"Whatever does not kill me, makes me stronger."
"No one has ever done anything wholly for others. All actions are self-directed, all service is self-serving, all love self-loving."
"It’s the courage to be myself that is the important thing."
"I have been the subject of my own study. But I am not willing to be your subject!"
"I have never met a physician like you, not one as capable, not one as concerned. Nor as personal."
"When it comes to learning how to live with people, I believe I must start from scratch."
"I urge you, Doctor, to cease your efforts on my behalf!"
"The reasons I gave you...were not frivolous, not simply dreamed up on the spot to oppose you."
"Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you will always find despair."
"I cannot understand much about myself today."
"My skills for social intercourse, my trust, my caring for others—these have long atrophied."
"I am not meant to mingle, to live among. My skills...have long atrophied."
"I believe there is some part of you that still craves to be with others."
"Nothing must interfere with the development of the hero inside of you."
"One must have chaos and frenzy within oneself to give birth to a dancing star."
"Lust, arousal, voluptuousness—they are the enslavers."
"Great passion is required to defeat passion!"
"If you kill God, you must also leave the shelter of the temple."
"I feel trapped—not by you, but by destiny. And a destiny not of my choosing."
"Suddenly I am old. I find myself an old man entombed in a life—a profession, a career, a family, a culture. Everything has been assigned to me. I chose nothing."
"I have to change my life! Otherwise, I shall face my death without ever feeling I have lived."
"Duty, duty! You will perish from such small virtues. Learn to become wicked."
"Time devours and devours—and gives back nothing."
"I can do nothing. I am drowning and must first save myself."
"Eternal recurrence means that every time you choose an action you must be willing to choose it for all eternity."
"You flee only from yourself. Remember that every moment eternally recurs."
"Let this idea take possession of you, and I promise that it will change you forever."
"Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions."
"The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear."
"We must love our fate and say yes to life, even in our darkest hours."
"A truly powerful man never inflicts pain or suffering but offers his wisdom freely to others."
"The path to becoming more evolved lies not in the conquest of others but through a self-overcoming."
"If we have our own 'why' of life, we can put up with almost any 'how'."
"The most significant challenge in life is to build a new self on the ashes of our old selves."
"In the wake of challenges, we must seek to create new values based not on supernatural beliefs but on human experience."
"To affirm life is to be willing to bear the burden of its hardships with courage and grace."
"Only by facing our inner turmoil can we hope to find peace and understanding."
"Yes, yes, give it to me. I’ll take that life and I’ll live it again in precisely the same way."
"That which does not kill me makes me stronger."
"One must pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while still alive."
"Physician, help thyself: thus you help your patients too."
"You shall build over and beyond yourself, but first you must be built yourself, perpendicular in body and soul."
"Some cannot loosen their own chains and can nonetheless redeem their friends."
"Here and there on earth we may encounter a kind of confirmation of love in which this possessive craving of two people for each other gives way to a new desire—a shared higher thirst for an ideal above them."
"The best view of the world is from a medium height."
"I am a railing by the torrent: let those who can, grasp me. A crutch, however, I am not!"