The collection / 353 fragments

Friendship.

Explore passages mentioning friend, friends, friendship. Topic suggestions use transparent word matching, not scholarly classification. Editorial meanings and lexical matches are discovery aids, not independent authentication of a quotation.

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01c. 1872 AD

As Friends of Music.—Ultimately we are and remain good friends with music, as we are with the light of the moon. Neither, after all, tries to supplant the sun: they only want to illumine our nights to the best of their powers. Yet we may jest and laugh at them, may we not? Just a little, at least, and from time to time? At the man in the moon, at the woman in the music?

Friedrich Nietzsche / quote

02c. 1872 AD

The Talk of Invalids.—Just as in spiritual grief we tear our hair, strike our foreheads, lacerate our cheeks or even (like Œdipus) gouge our eyes out, so against violent physical pain we call to our aid a bitter, violent emotion, through the recollection of slanderous and malignant people, through the denigration of our future, through the sword-pricks and acts of malice which we mentally direct against the absent. And at times it is true that one devil drives out another—but then we have the other.—Hence a different sort of talk, tending to alleviate pain, should be recommended invalids: reflections upon the kindnesses and courtesies that can be performed towards friend and foe.

Friedrich Nietzsche / quote

03c. 1872 AD

Teachers in the Age of Books.—Now that self-education and mutual education are becoming more widespread, the teacher in his usual form must become almost unnecessary. Friends eager to learn, who wish to master some branch of knowledge together, find in our age of books a shorter and more natural way than “school” and “teachers.”

Friedrich Nietzsche / quote

04c. 1872 AD

The Philosophy of Luxury.—A garden, figs, a little cheese, and three or four good friends—that was the luxury of Epicurus.

Friedrich Nietzsche / quote

05c. 1872 AD

The Solitary Speaks.—In compensation for much disgust, disheartenment, boredom—such as a lonely life without friends, books, duties, and passions must involve—we enjoy those short spans of deep communion with ourselves and with Nature. He who fortifies himself completely against boredom fortifies himself against himself too. He will never drink the most powerful elixir from his own innermost spring.

Friedrich Nietzsche / quote

06c. 1872 AD

Dangerous Irritability.—Talented men who are at the same time idle will always appear somewhat irritated when one of their friends has accomplished a thorough piece of work. Their jealousy is awakened, they are ashamed of their own laziness, or rather, they fear that their active friend will now despise them even more than before. In such a mood they criticise the new achievement, and, to the utter astonishment of the author, their criticism becomes a revenge.

Friedrich Nietzsche / quote

07c. 515 BC

1. The Master said, 'Is it not pleasant to learn with a constant perseverance and application? 2. 'Is it not delightful to have friends coming from distant quarters?' 3. 'Is he not a man of complete virtue, who feels no discomposure though men may take no note of him?'

Confucius (traditional attribution) / quote

08c. 515 BC

The Master said, 'A youth, when at home, should be filial, and, abroad, respectful to his elders. He should be earnest and truthful. He should overflow in love to all, and cultivate the friendship of the good. When he has time and opportunity, after the performance of these things, he should employ them in polite studies.'

Confucius (traditional attribution) / quote

09c. 515 BC

1. The Master said, 'If the scholar be not grave, he will not call forth any veneration, and his learning will not be solid. 2. 'Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles. 3. 'Have no friends not equal to yourself. 4. 'When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them.'

Confucius (traditional attribution) / quote

10c. 515 BC

1. The Master said, 'Respectfulness, without the rules of propriety, becomes laborious bustle; carefulness, without the rules of propriety, becomes timidity; boldness, without the rules of propriety, becomes insubordination; straightforwardness, without the rules of propriety, becomes rudeness. 2. 'When those who are in high stations perform well all their duties to their relations, the people are aroused to virtue. When old friends are not neglected by them, the people are preserved from meanness.'

Confucius (traditional attribution) / quote

11c. 515 BC

The Master said, 'Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles. Have no friends not equal to yourself. When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them.'

Confucius (traditional attribution) / quote

12c. 1486 AD

The mind of the painter must be like unto a mirror, which ever takes the colour of the object it reflects, and contains as many images as there are objects before it. Therefore realize, O painter, that thou canst not succeed unless thou art the universal master of imitating by thy art every variety of nature's forms, and this thou canst not do save by perceiving them and retaining them in thy mind; wherefore when thou walkest in the country let thy mind play on various objects, observe now this thing and now that thing, making a store of various objects selected and chosen from those of lesser value. And thou shalt not do as some painters, who, when weary of plying their fancy, dismiss their work from their mind and take exercise in walking for relaxation, but retain fatigue in the mind, which, though they see various objects, does not apprehend them, but often when they meet friends and relations and are saluted by them, they are no more conscious of them than if they had met empty air.

Leonardo da Vinci / quote

13c. 1872 AD

Inimitable.—There is an enormous strain and distance between envy and friendship, between self-contempt and pride: the Greek lived in the former, the Christian in the latter.

Friedrich Nietzsche / quote

14c. 1872 AD

The Cause of “Altruism.”—Men have on the whole spoken of love with so much emphasis and adoration because they have hitherto always had so little of it, and have never yet been satiated with this food: in this way it became their ambrosia. If a poet wished to show universal benevolence in the image of a Utopia, he would certainly have to describe an agonising and ridiculous state of things, the like of which was never seen on earth,—every one would be surrounded, importuned, and sighed for, not as at present, by one lover, but by thousands, by everybody indeed, as the result of an irresistible craving which would then be as vehemently insulted and cursed as selfishness has been by men of past ages. The poets of this new condition of things, if they had sufficient leisure to write, would be dreaming of nothing but the blissful and loveless past, the divine selfishness of yore, and the wonderful possibilities in former times of remaining alone, not being run after by one's friends, and of even being hated and despised—or any other odious expressions which the beautiful animal world in which we live chooses to coin.

Friedrich Nietzsche / quote

15c. 1872 AD

From a Dispute.—A. Friend, you have talked yourself hoarse.—B. Then I am refuted, so let's drop the subject.

Friedrich Nietzsche / quote

16c. 1872 AD

Two Friends.—They were friends once, but now they have ceased to be so, and both of them broke off the friendship at the same time, the one because he believed himself to be too greatly misunderstood, and the other because he thought he was known too intimately—and both were wrong! For neither of them knew himself well enough.

Friedrich Nietzsche / quote

17c. 1872 AD

The Friend whom we want no Longer.—That friend whose hopes we cannot satisfy we should prefer to have as an enemy.

Friedrich Nietzsche / quote

18c. 1872 AD

Raising one's self above one's own Lowness.—“Proud” fellows they are indeed, those who, in order to establish a sense of their own dignity and importance, stand in need of other people whom they may tyrannise and oppress—those whose powerlessness and cowardice permits some one to make sublime and furious gestures in their presence with impunity, so that they require the baseness of their surroundings to raise themselves for one short moment above their own baseness!—For this purpose one man requires a dog, another a friend, a third a wife, a fourth a party, a fifth, again, one very rarely to be met with, a whole age.

Friedrich Nietzsche / quote

19c. 1872 AD

The Comedy of Pity.—However much we may feel for an unhappy friend of ours, we always act with a certain amount of insincerity in his presence: we refrain from telling him everything we think, and how we think it, with all the circumspection of a doctor standing by the bedside of a patient who is seriously ill.

Friedrich Nietzsche / quote

20c. 1872 AD

Privileges.—The man who really owns himself, that is to say, he who has finally conquered himself, regards it as his own right to punish, to pardon, or to pity himself: he need not concede this privilege to any one, though he may freely bestow it upon some one else—a friend, for example—but he knows that in doing this he is conferring a right, and that rights can only be conferred by one who is in full possession of power.

Friedrich Nietzsche / quote

21c. 1872 AD

Far-off Perspectives.— A. But why this solitude? B. I am not angry with anybody. But when I am alone it seems to me that I can see my friends in a clearer and rosier light than when I am with them; and when I loved and felt music best I lived far from it. It would seem that I must have distant perspectives in order that I may think well of things.

Friedrich Nietzsche / quote

22c. 1872 AD

Friends in Need.—We may occasionally remark that one of our friends sympathises with another more than with us. His delicacy is troubled thereby, and his selfishness is not equal to the task of breaking down his feelings of affection: in such a case we should facilitate the separation for him, and estrange him in some way in order to widen the distance between us.—This is also necessary when we fall into a habit of thinking which might be detrimental to him: our affection for him should induce us to ease his conscience in separating himself from us by means of some injustice which we voluntarily take upon ourselves.

Friedrich Nietzsche / quote

23c. 1872 AD

Friendship.—The objection to a philosophic life that it renders us useless to our friends would never have arisen in a modern mind: it belongs rather to classical antiquity. Antiquity knew the stronger bonds of friendship, meditated upon it, and almost took it to the grave with it. This is the advantage it has over us: we, on the other hand, can point to our idealisation of sexual love. All the great excellencies of ancient humanity owed their stability to the fact that man was standing side by side with man, and that no woman was allowed to put forward the claim of being the nearest and highest, nay even sole object of his love, as the feeling of passion would teach. Perhaps our trees do not grow so high now owing to the ivy and the vines that cling round them.

Friedrich Nietzsche / quote

24c. 1872 AD

The Settled and the Free.—It is only in the Underworld that we catch a glimpse of that gloomy background of all that bliss of adventure which forms an everlasting halo around Ulysses and his like, rivalling the eternal phosphorescence of the sea,—that background which we can never forget: the mother of Ulysses died of grief and yearning for her child. The one is driven on from place to place, and the heart of the other, the tender stay-at-home friend, breaks through it—so it always is. Affliction breaks the hearts of those who live to see that those whom they love best are deserting their former views and faith,—it is a tragedy brought about by the free spirits,—a tragedy which, indeed, occasionally comes to their own knowledge. Then, perhaps, they too, like Ulysses, will be forced to descend among the dead to get rid of their sorrow and to relieve their affliction.

Friedrich Nietzsche / quote