Painted portrait of Nietzsche with swept-back dark hair and a heavy moustache, in a dark coat and white collar, against a burnt sienna ground

Portraits · Philosophers & essayists · X of XII

Friedrich Nietzsche

1844–1900 · Philosopher

All great men were great workers, unwearied not only in invention but also in rejection, reviewing, transforming, and arranging.

Alle Grossen waren grosse Arbeiter, unermüdlich nicht nur im Erfinden, sondern auch im Verwerfen, Sichten, Umgestalten, Ordnen.

Friedrich Nietzsche · Human, All-Too-Human, 1878
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Friedrich Nietzsche wrote this in 1878, in Human, All-Too-Human, against the belief that great work shines down from heaven in a flash. The imagination, he says, produces good, mediocre and bad alike; the work lies in judging, rejecting and joining together, as Beethoven's notebooks show.

Human, All-Too-Human I, §155 ('The Belief in Inspiration'). Human, All-Too-Human, Part I, tr. Helen Zimmern (Edinburgh and London: T. N. Foulis, 1910), p. 160; German from Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (Leipzig: C. G. Naumann, 1894), p. 161.

The originals

Photograph of Nietzsche with swept-back hair and a heavy moustache
The likenessPHOTOGRAPHED BY FRIEDRICH HERMANN HARTMANN · c. 1875Our portrait is painted after it.Public domain (19th-century photograph, Basel).
A handwritten letter in German, dated 30 October 1868, opening Hochverehrter Herr
A letter to Leiden, 1868A letter of 30 October 1868, written at twenty-four to the librarian at Leiden, asking about a copy of the Greek Contest of Homer and Hesiod.Autograph letter to Willem Pluygers, librarian of Leiden University, 30 October 1868. Leiden University Library, BPL 2432, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.