Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more

Hear the paradoxical and piercing words of Friedrich Nietzsche, who once sighed: “Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.” In this utterance lies the tension of human passion, the dual nature of love and desire that elevates the spirit even as it exposes the heart to suffering. Nietzsche, a man who walked the edge of philosophy and madness, speaks here not as a distant thinker but as one who had felt the flames of longing and the ashes it often leaves behind.

The origin of this saying may be found in Nietzsche’s own life, shaped by solitude, fragile health, and the unfulfilled love he bore for Lou Salomé, a woman of brilliance and independence who rejected his proposal. From this experience and others like it, Nietzsche came to see relationships with women as amplifiers of life’s intensity: they bestowed exaltation, beauty, and fire upon the soul, yet at the same time they made one vulnerable to despair, jealousy, and loss. Thus he declared that women heighten the extremes—turning joy into ecstasy, but also multiplying sorrow.

History bears witness to this truth in the lives of many. Consider the poet Edgar Allan Poe, whose love for his young wife Virginia brought moments of tenderness and deep devotion, but whose illness and eventual death plunged him into darkness, inspiring works filled with grief and melancholy. For Poe, as for Nietzsche, the presence of a beloved woman made the highs higher—his tender verses glow with love—but also the lows more frequent, for her absence and frailty became wounds that never healed.

Nietzsche’s words are not a condemnation but an observation of love’s power. To invite passion into one’s life is to invite risk. Women, as companions, lovers, and muses, awaken in men both greatness and vulnerability. They remind the spirit of what it means to feel deeply, to live not in the gray monotony of safe existence, but in the blazing realm of passion. Yet the same intensity that gives life its brilliance also gives it its sharpest pains. To love is to gamble with the soul, and Nietzsche, ever honest, admits that women tip the balance toward both ecstasy and anguish.

Yet his saying also carries a hidden reverence. For what is a life without highs, even if accompanied by lows? Better, perhaps, to live in the roaring storm of passion than in the flat plain of indifference. Women, in Nietzsche’s view, force men out of complacency. They awaken strength, ambition, art, and philosophy—but also weakness, doubt, and despair. In this paradox lies their power: they reveal the true scale of the human heart.

The lesson we may take is this: do not fear the lows that love and passion bring, for without them, the highs cannot be reached. The path of deep connection is not one of steady calm but of soaring peaks and plunging valleys. To shrink from love for fear of pain is to shrink also from the joy that only love can give. Nietzsche reminds us that it is in this dance of joy and sorrow that the soul finds its full measure.

Practically, this means embracing relationships and passions with eyes wide open. Accept that to love is to risk heartbreak, but also to gain glory. Nurture the highs, and when the lows come, endure them with courage, knowing they are the shadow of the light you once tasted. Let love inspire art, philosophy, compassion, and growth—even if it sometimes wounds. The scars of passion are the marks of a life truly lived.

So let Nietzsche’s words echo not only as lament, but as challenge: “They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.” To walk this path is to walk the path of humanity itself—torn between ecstasy and despair, but alive, intensely alive. Better this tempest than the stillness of a life without passion, for in the fire of love, both joy and pain carve the soul into something greater, something eternal.