"Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent"
About this Quote
The intent isn’t to describe women so much as to narrate a male psyche that experiences desire as both elevation and destabilization. Women become a shorthand for volatility: the force that heightens sensation and sabotages equilibrium. That framing fits Nietzsche’s broader habit of turning personal entanglements into metaphysical claims, where romance isn’t just romance but a test of strength, discipline, and self-mastery. The subtext is control: if “highs” are granted by women, then a man’s sovereignty looks compromised; if “lows” are “frequent,” then the safest story is that the problem lies in the stimulus, not the self.
Context matters because Nietzsche’s writing on women is famously inconsistent-sometimes admiring, often patronizing, always more revealing of his anxieties about dependency than of any stable thesis about gender. The line works as epigram because it compresses that ambivalence into a rhythm you can’t quite argue with: the seduction of intensity, followed by the resentment of its costs. It’s less sociology than self-portrait.
Quote Details
| Topic | Sarcastic |
|---|---|
| Source | Later attribution: Quotes: The Famous and Not so Famous (Terence M. Dorn Ph.D., 2021) modern compilation
Evidence: ... Friedrich Nietzsche , 1844–1900 , German philosopher Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed . - Fredrich Nietzsche Ah , women . They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent ... Other candidates (2) Friedrich Nietzsche (Friedrich Nietzsche) compilation43.0% preface who is the most moral man first he who obeys the law most frequently wh The Nietzsche-Wagner correspondence (Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-19..., 1921) primary41.3% he nineteenth century many others must have thought the same as i have frequentl |
| Featured | This quote was our Quote of the Day on October 26, 2023 |
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Nietzsche, Friedrich. (2026, February 7). Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/ah-women-they-make-the-highs-higher-and-the-lows-24799/
Chicago Style
Nietzsche, Friedrich. "Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent." FixQuotes. February 7, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/ah-women-they-make-the-highs-higher-and-the-lows-24799/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent." FixQuotes, 7 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/ah-women-they-make-the-highs-higher-and-the-lows-24799/. Accessed 8 Feb. 2026.




