5 Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes on Nature

Friedrich Nietzsche quotes on nature

11. What does man actually know about himself? Is he, indeed, ever able to perceive himself completely, as if laid out in a lighted display case? Does nature not conceal most things from him - even concerning his own body - in order to confine and lock him within a proud, deceptive consciousness, aloof from the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blood stream, and the intricate quivering of the fibers! She threw away the key.

17. We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us.

89. Whatever has value in our world now does not have value in itself, according to its nature - nature is always value-less, but has been given value at some time, as a present - and it was we who gave and bestowed it.

123. Woher kommen die hochsten Berge? so fragte ich einst. Da lernte ich, da? sie aus dem Meere kommen. Dies Zeugnis ist in ihr Gestein geschrieben und in die Wande ihrer Gipfel. Aus dem Tiefsten mu? das Hochste zu seiner Hohe kommen.

128. So you want to live 'according to nature?' Oh, you noble Stoics, what a fraud is in this phrase! Imagine something like nature, profligate without measure, indifferent without measure, without purpose and regard, without mercy and justice, fertile and barren and uncertain at the same time, think of indifference itself as power - how could you live according to this indifference? Living - isn't that wanting specifically to be something other than this nature? Isn't living assessing, preferring, being unfair, being limited, wanting to be different? And assuming your imperative to 'live according to nature' basically amounts to 'living according to life' - well how could you not? Why make a principle out of what you yourselves are and must be?