Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Art is the proper task of life.

  • Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.

  • Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

  • For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.

  • I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his 'divine service.'