"A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love"
About this Quote
The intent isn’t to deny desire so much as to expose its mechanics. Falling in love, in Nietzsche’s telling, is often an act of aesthetic intoxication: we select flattering angles, soften defects, edit contradictions, and call the result “truth.” The spectacles “cure” because they restore detail - and detail is the enemy of fantasy. Notice the verb: sufficed. Not therapy, not time, not tragedy. Just perception adjusted a few diopters. That’s the cynicism: what feels like destiny might be correctable with basic equipment.
Context matters. Nietzsche writes in an intellectual climate suspicious of sentimentality, and he himself is famously hostile to moralized romance and herd-approved ideals. He’s also a psychologist of motives before the term was fashionable, fascinated by how we rationalize our impulses. The subtext is a warning about self-deception: we don’t merely misread lovers; we collude in the misreading because it flatters our need for meaning, rescue, or conquest. The spectacles aren’t only for the beloved. They’re for the lover’s ego.
Quote Details
| Topic | Love |
|---|---|
| Source | Verified source: Human, All-Too-Human (A Book for Free Spirits), Part I (Friedrich Nietzsche, 1878)
Evidence: LOVERS AS SHORT-SIGHTED PEOPLE., A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love; and whoever has had sufficient imagination to represent a face or form twenty years older, has probably gone through life not much disturbed. (Part I, Seventh Division “Wife and Child”, aphorism §413 (“Lovers as Short-Sighted People”)). This line appears as aphorism §413 in Nietzsche’s Human, All-Too-Human, Part I (original German publication 1878). The commonly-circulated quote is a shortened excerpt of the full aphorism; the primary-source wording continues after the semicolon. The Wikisource text is an English translation (Helen Zimmern) and preserves the aphorism number and heading, which is sufficient to locate the passage in critical editions and in the original German (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches I). Other candidates (1) Inspirational Quotes For All Occasions (Bangambiki Habyarimana, 2013) compilation95.0% ... A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love. ~Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All T... |
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Nietzsche, Friedrich. (2026, February 12). A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/a-pair-of-powerful-spectacles-has-sometimes-24794/
Chicago Style
Nietzsche, Friedrich. "A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love." FixQuotes. February 12, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/a-pair-of-powerful-spectacles-has-sometimes-24794/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love." FixQuotes, 12 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/a-pair-of-powerful-spectacles-has-sometimes-24794/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.










