Friedrich Nietzsche on Love

It's difficult to attribute a "philosophy of love" per se to Nietzsche. Anyone who would want to figure out Nietzsche's perspectives on love would have to piece together bits from his aphorisms. Care must be taken to distinguish between his thoughts on love in general, love as it was practiced by the Victorians, and the gender roles Victorian women adopted; Nietzsche had some widely different feelings on each.


Woman learns how to hate men to the extent that she unlearns how — to charm. (93)

To discover he is loved in return ought really to disenchant the lover with the beloved. "What? She is so modest as to love even you? Or so stupid? Or — or —." (95)

Sensuality often makes love grow too quickly, so that the root remains weak and is easy to pull out. (98)

One is punished most for one's virtues. (100)

Counsel as conundrum — "If the bonds are not to burst — you must try to cut them first. (101)

That which is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil. (103)

Love brings to light the exalted and concealed qualities of a lover — what is rare and exceptional in him: to that extent it can easily deceive as to what is normal in him. (104)


Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. Trans. R. J. Hollingdale. Penguin Books, London: 1990.

"Everyone carries in himself an image of woman derived from the mother; by this he is determined to revere women generally, or to hold them in low esteem, or to be generally indifferent to them."

"Women can form a friendship with a man very well; but to preserve it--to that end a slight physical antipathy must probably help."

"When marrying, one should ask oneself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this woman into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory, but the most time during the association belongs to conversation."

"Those noble free-spirited women who have made the education and elevation of the female sex their task should not over look one consideration: marriage, according to its highest conception as a friendship between the souls of two human beings of different sex...concluded for the purpose of begetting and educating a new generation--such a marriage, which uses the sensual, as it were, only as a rare means to a greater end, probably requires, I fear, a natural aid: concubinage. If, for reasons of the husband's health, the wife should also serve for the sole satisfaction of the sexual need, then the choice of a wife will be decisively influenced by a false consideration that is contrary to the aims suggested; the production of offspring becomes accidental, and a good education highly improbable. A good wife--who is supposed to be friend, helper, bearer of children, mother, head of the family, manager...cannot at the same time be a concubine: generally, this would be asking too much of her."

All of the above taken from Human, All Too Human. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. The Portable Nietzsche. Viking Penguin Inc. 1954.

Yes, it's more Nietzsche translated and taken entirely out of context for your enjoyment. Please try to understand the humor and particuarlly the sarcasm of some of these quotes (especially before downvoting me!).

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