Friedrich Nietzsche on Love

"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness."

"The spiritualization of sensuality is called love: it is a great triumph over Christianity."

"Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love."

"One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too."

"Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not."

"The 'Kingdom of Heaven' is a condition of the heart — not something that comes 'upon the earth' or 'after death'."

"And nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment."

"Even the most beautiful scenery is no longer assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some distant coast attracts our avarice: possessions are generally diminished by possession..."

"No one talks more passionately about his rights than he who in the depths of his soul doubts whether he has any. By enlisting passion on his side he wants to stifle his reason and its doubts: thus he will acquire a good conscience and with it success among his fellow men."

"We imagine that hardness, violence, slavery, peril in the street and in the heart, concealment, Stoicism, temptation, and deviltry of every sort, everything evil, frightful, tyrannical, raptor- and snake-like in man, serves as well for the advancement of the species "man" as their opposite."