42 Powerful Quotes From Thus Spake Zarathustra To Scale-Up Your Life

German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s most significant work, Thus Spake Zarathustra was first published in 1887 with three parts. In 1892, the full volume was published with the added fourth.

The book is a work of fiction written in a style that resembles religious scriptures like the Bible — with a central character — his deeds, and teachings. The prophet here is the modern version of Zarathustra(Zoroaster), the Iranian Prophet and the founder of Zoroastrianism.

This book has themes of Superman, Eternal Recurrence, Will to Power and can pretty much be looked upon as containing everything Nietzsche was about.

Here are 42 Powerful Quotes from the book that will help you — look at life from a different perspective, in your Self Improvement and scale-Up your Life:

1. Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yes!
2. My ego taught me a new pride, and I teach that to men: no longer to thrust one’s head into the sand of celestial things, but to carry it freely, a terrestrial head, which gives meaning to the earth!
3. No longer can your Self do that which it desires the most: — create beyond itself. That is what it desires the most; that is all its fervour.
4. Man is something that has to be surpassed: and therefore shall you love your virtues, — for you will succumb by them.
5. Every one being allowed to learn to read, ruins in the long run not only writing but also thinking.
6. He who writes in blood and proverbs does not want to be read, but learnt by heart.
7. I no longer feel in common with you; the very cloud which I see beneath me, the blackness and heaviness at which I laugh — that is your thunder-cloud.
8. It is true we love life; not because we are used to living, but because we are are used to loving.
9. Many a soul one will never discover, unless one first invent it.
10. I know the hatred and envy of your hearts. You are not great enough not to know of hatred and envy. Then be great enough not to be ashamed of them!
11. Your enemy shall you seek; your war shall you wage, and for the sake of your thoughts! And if your thoughts succumb, your uprightness shall still shout triumph thereby!
12. You I advise not to work, but to fight. You I advise not to peace, but to victory. Let your work be a fight, let your peace be a victory!
13. War and courage have done more great things than charity. Not your sympathy, but your bravery has hitherto saved the victims.
14. You shall only have enemies to be hated, but not enemies to be despised. You must be proud of your enemies; then, the successes of your enemies are also your successes.
15. Resistance — that is the distinction of the slave. Let your distinction be obedience. Let your commanding itself be obeying!
16. Open still remains a free life for great souls. Verily, he who possesses little is so much the less possessed: blessed be moderate poverty!
17. There, where the state ceases — there only commences the man who is not superfluous: there commences the song of the necessary ones, the single and irreplaceable melody.
18. Around the devisers of new values revolves the world: — invisibly it revolves. But around the actors revolve the people and the glory: such is the course of things.
19. Away from the market-place and from fame takes place all that is great: away from the market-place and from fame have ever dwelt the devisers of new values.
20. Towards thee they have nothing but vengeance.
21. Raise no longer an arm against them! Innumerable are they, and it is not your lot to be a fly-flap.
22. Because you are gentle and of upright character, you say: “Blameless are they for their small existence.” But their circumscribed souls think: “Blamable is all great existence.”
23. Even when you are gentle towards them, they still feel themselves despised by you; and they repay your beneficence with secret maleficence.
24. I love the forest. It is bad to live in cities: there, there are too many of the lustful.
25. Our faith in others betrays wherein we would fain have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer.
26. A thousand goals have there been so far, for a thousand peoples have there been. Only the fetter for the thousand necks is still lacking; there is lacking the one goal. As yet humanity doesn’t have a goal.
27. You call in a witness when you want to speak well of yourselves; and when you have misled him to think well of you, you also think well of yourselves.
28. Can you give unto yourself your bad and your good, and set up your will as a law over yourself? Can’t you be judge for yourself, and avenger of your law?
29. You lonesome one, you go the way to yourself! And past yourself and your seven devils lead your way!
30. A heretic will you be to yourself, and a wizard and a sooth-sayer, and a fool, and a doubter, and a reprobate, and a villain.
31. Ready you must be to burn yourself in your own flame; how can you become new if you have not first become ashes!
32. You lonesome one, you go the way of the creating one: a God will you create for yourself out of your seven devils!
33. You lonesome one, you go the way of the loving one: you love yourself, and on that account you despise yourself, as only the loving ones despise.
34. The loving one desires to create, because he despises! What knows he of love who has not been obliged to despise just what he loved!
35. The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends.
36. Since humanity came into being, man has enjoyed himself too little: that alone, my brethren, is our original sin!
37. And when we learn better to enjoy ourselves, then do we unlearn best to give pain unto others, and to contrive pain.
38. The worst things, however, are the petty thoughts. Better to have done evilly than to have thought pettily!
39. Because, FOR MAN TO BE REDEEMED FROM REVENGE — that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms.
40. Man, however, is the most courageous animal: thereby he has overcome every animal. With sound of triumph has he overcome every pain; human pain, however, is the sorest pain.
41. To one man, lonesomeness is the flight of the sick one; to another, it is the flight FROM the sick ones.
42. “Is not all weeping complaining? And all complaining, accusing?” Thus speak you to yourself; and therefore, O my soul, will you rather smile than pour forth your grief— Than in gushing tears pour forth all thy grief concerning thy fulness, and concerning the craving of the vine for the vintager and vintage-knife!

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