Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man - the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The beauty and ugliness in the world are defined by human perception and morality.
Friedrich Nietzsche asserts that beauty is not an inherent quality of objects or nature but is instead influenced by human perception and the moral state of humanity. In his view, aesthetics hinge on human values—what we find beautiful is a reflection of our own nature, while ugliness stems from the degeneration of humanity. This perspective challenges traditional notions of beauty and invites a deeper contemplation on the nature of aesthetic judgment.
Themes
BeautyUglinessAestheticsHuman PerceptionNietzsche
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about art, one might use this quote to emphasize the subjective nature of beauty.
More from Friedrich Nietzsche
All quotes →That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
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Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
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Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness — as if happiness sat on the throne. Often, mud sits on the throne — and often the throne also on mud. Mad they all appear to me, clambering monkeys and overardent. Foul smells their idol, the cold monster: foul, they smell to me altogether, these idolators.
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Reason is the cause of our falsification of the evidence of the senses. In so far as the senses show becoming, passing away, change, they do not lie.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
The anarchist and the Christian have a common origin.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
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Sometimes I feel that I am destined always to be offstage whenever the main action occurs. That God has made me the victim of some cosmic practical joke, by assigning me little more than a walk-on part in my own life. Or sometimes I feel that my role is simply to be a spectator to other people's stories, and always to wander away at the most important moment, drifiting into the kitchen to make a cup of tea just as the denouement unfolds.
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That man has missed something who has never left a brothel at sunrise feeling like throwing himself into the river out of pure disgust.
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Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory.
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Nothing is so false as human life, nothing so treacherous. God knows no one would have accepted it as a gift, if it had not been given without our knowledge.
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