Works by Friedrich Nietzsche

"Esteeming humble truths. It is the sign of a higher culture to esteem more highly the little, humble truths, those discovered by a strict method, rather than the gladdening and dazzling errors that originate in metaphysical and artistic ages and men. At first, one has scorn on his lips for humble truths [-] But truths that are hard won, certain, enduring, and therefore still of consequence for all further knowledge are the higher;..."

"Here lies the antagonism between the individual regions of science and philosophy. The latter wants, as art does, to bestow on life and action the greatest possible profundity and significance; in the former one seeks knowledge and nothing further -- and does in fact acquire it."

"So weiss jeder aus Erfahrung, wie schnell der Traeumende einen starken an ihn dringenden Ton, zum Beispiel Glockenlaeuten, Kanonenschuesse in seinen Traum verflicht, das heisst aus ihm hinterdrein erklaert, so dass er zuerst die veranlassenden Umstaende, dann jenen Ton zu erleben meint."

"Das Traumdenken wird uns jetzt so leicht, weil wir in ungeheuren Entwickelungsstrecken der Menschheit gerade auf diese Form des phantastischen und wohlfeilen Erklaerens aus dem ersten beliebigen Einfalle heraus so gut eingedrillt worden sind. Insofern ist der Traum eine Erholung fuer das Gehirn, welches am Tage den strengeren Anforderungen an das Denken zu genuegen hat, wie sie von der hoeheren Cultur gestellt werden."

"Allem Glauben zu Grunde liegt die Empfindung des Angenehmen oder Schmerzhaften in Bezug auf das empfindende Subject. Eine neue dritte Empfindung als Resultat zweier vorangegangenen einzelnen Empfindungen ist das Urtheil in seiner niedrigsten Form."

"Ein wesentlicher Nachtheil, welchen das Aufhoeren metaphysischer Ansichten mit sich bringt, liegt darin, dass das Individuum zu streng seine kurze Lebenszeit in's Auge fasst und keine staerkeren Antriebe empfaengt, an dauerhaften, fuer Jahrhunderte angelegten Institutionen zu bauen."

"Man glaubt einer Philosophie etwas Gutes nachzusagen, wenn man sie als Ersatz der Religion fuer das Volk hinstellt."

"Der Irrthum hat den Menschen so tief, zart, erfinderisch gemacht, eine solche Bluethe, wie Religionen und Kuenste, herauszutreiben. Das reine Erkennen waere dazu ausser Stande gewesen."

"Often enough, and always with great consternation, people have told me that there is something distinctive in all my writings, from The Birth of Tragedy to the most recently published Prologue to a Philosophy of the Future. All of them, I have been told, contains snares and nets for careless birds, and almost , unperceived challenge to reverse one's habitual estimations esteemed habits. 'What's that? Everything is only-human, all too human?"

"Aphorism 1, Preface"

"Enough, I am still alive; and life has not been devised by morality: it wants deception, it lives on deception - but wouldn't you know it?"

"It is still a long way from this morbid isolation, from the desert of these experimental years, to that enormous, overflowing certainty and health which cannot do without even illness itself, as an instrument and fishhook of knowledge; to that mature freedom of the spirit which is fully as much self-mastery and discipline of the heart, and which permits paths to many opposing ways of thought. It is a long way to inner spaciousness and cosseting of a superabundance which precludes the danger and the sprit might lose itself on its own paths and fall in love and stay put, intoxicated, in some nook; a long way to that excess of vivid healing, reproducing, reviving power, the very sign of great health, an excess that gives free spirit the dangerous privilege of being permitted to live experimentally."

"Esteeming Humble Truths. It is the sign of a higher culture to esteem more highly the little, humble truths, those discovered by a strict method, rather than the gladdening and dazzling error that originate in metaphysical and artistic ages and men. At first, one has scorn on his lips for humble truths, as if they could offer no match for the others: they stand so modest, simple, sober, even apparently discouraging, while the other truths are so beautiful, splendid, enchanting, or even enrapturing. But truths that are hard won, certain, enduring, and therefore still of consequence for all further knowledge are the higher; to keep to them i many and shows bravery, simplicity, restraint. Eventually, not only the individual, but all mankind will be elevated to this manliness when men finally grow accustomed to the greater esteem for durable, lasting knowledge and have lost all belief in sinpiration and a seemingly miraculous communication of truths."

"Ohne die Irrthuemer, welche in den Annahmen der Moral liegen, waere der Mensch Thier geblieben. So aber hat er sich als etwas Hoeheres genommen und sich strengere Gesetze auferlegt. Er hat desshalb einen Hass gegen die der Thierheit naeher gebliebenen Stufen."

"Die Kuerze des menschlichen Lebens verleitet zu manchen irrthuemlichen Behauptungen ueber die Eigenschaften des Menschen."

"Die Menschen, welche jetzt grausam sind, muessen uns als Stufen frueherer Culturen gelten, welche uebrig geblieben sind: das Gebirge der Menschheit zeigt hier einmal die tieferen Formationen, welche sonst versteckt liegen, offen. ... Sie zeigen uns, was wir Alle waren, und machen uns erschrecken: aber sie selber sind so wenig verantwortlich, wie ein Stueck Granit dafuer, dass es Granit ist."

"Der Grund, wesshalb der Maechtige dankbar ist, ist dieser. Sein Wohlthaeter hat sich durch seine Wohlthat an der Sphaere des Maechtigen gleichsam vergriffen und sich in sie eingedraengt: nun vergreift er sich zur Vergeltung wieder an der Sphaere des Wohlthaeters durch den Act der Dankbarkeit. Es ist eine mildere Form der Rache."

"Freilich solle man Mitleiden bezeugen, aber sich hueten, es zu haben: denn die Ungluecklichen seien nun einmal so dumm, dass bei ihnen das Bezeugen von Mitleid das groesste Gut von der Welt ausmache."

"das Mitleiden, welches Jene dann aeussern, ist insofern eine Troestung fuer die Schwachen und Leidenden, als sie daran erkennen, doch wenigstens noch Eine Macht zu haben, trotz aller ihrer Schwaeche: die Macht, wehe zu thun."

"Aber wird es viele Ehrliche geben, welche zugestehen, dass es Vergnuegen macht, wehe zu thun?"

"Einer der gewoehnlichen Fehlschluesse ist der: weil Jemand wahr und aufrichtig gegen uns ist, so sagt er die Wahrheit."

"Isn't it clear that, in all these cases [of selflessness] man is loving something of himself, a thought, a longing, an offspring, more than something else of himself, that he is thus dividing up his being and sacrificing one part for the other?"

"Man kann Handlungen versprechen, aber keine Empfindungen; denn diese sind unwillkuerlich. Wer jemandem verspricht, ihn immer zu lieben oder immer zu hassen oder ihm immer treu zu sein, verspricht Etwas, das nicht in seiner Macht steht."

"Die Leidenschaft will nicht warten"

"[V]ielleicht die allermeisten Menschen haben, um ihre Selbstachtung und eine gewisse Tuechtigkeit im Handeln bei sich aufrecht zu erhalten, durchaus noethig, alle ihnen bekannten Menschen in ihrer Vorstellung herabzusetzen und zu verkleinern."

"If looks could kill, we would long ago have been done for."

"Er erregte erst Anstoss, dann Verdacht, wurde allmaehlich geradezu erfehmt und in die Acht der Gesellschaft erklaert, bis endlich die Justiz sich eines so verworfenen Wesens erinnerte, bei Gelegenheiten, wo sie sonst kein Auge hatte, oder dasselbe zudrueckte."

"In truth, [hope] is the most evil of evils because it prolongs man's torment."

"Man wird selten irren, wenn man extreme Handlungen auf Eitelkeit, mittelmaessige auf Gewoehnung und kleinliche auf Furcht zurueckfuehrt."

"[I]t is automatically assumed that the perpetrator and sufferer think and feel the same, and the guilt of one is therefore measured by the pain of the other."

"Wenn die Tugend geschlafen hat, wird sie frischer aufstehen."

"Die Menschen schaemen sich nicht, etwas Schmutziges zu denken, aber wohl, wenn sie sich vorstellen, dass man ihnen diese schmutzigen Gedanken zutraue."

"Die meisten Menschen sind viel zu sehr mit sich beschaeftigt, um boshaft zu sein."

"Man lobt oder tadelt, je nachdem das Eine oder das Andere mehr Gelegenheit giebt, unsere Urtheilskraft leuchten zu lassen."

"Wer sich selbst erniedrigt, will erhoehet werden."

"[T]he initial character of justice is barter."

"Unusquisque tantum juris habet, quantum potentia valere creditur - Each has as much right as his power is assessed to be."

"[W]e all still suffer from too slight a regard for our own personal needs; it has been poorly developed."

"Socrates and Plato were right: whatever man does, he always acts for the good; that is, in a way which seems to him good (useful) according to the degree of his intellect, the prevailing measure of his rationality."

"Is Schadenfreude devilish ... Is the knowledge, then, that another person is suffering because of us supposed to make immoral the same thing about which we would otherwise feel no responsibility?"

"If one does not know how painful an action is, it cannot be malicious; thus the child is not malicious or evil to an animal: he examines and destroys it like a toy."

"No life without pleasure, the struggle for pleasure is the struggle for life."

"Between good and evil actions there is no difference in type; at most a difference in degree. Good actions are sublimated evil actions; evil actions are good actions become coarse and stupid."

"The thinking of men who believe in magic and miracles is bent on imposing a law on nature; and in short, religious worship is the result of this thinking."

"When we hear the old bells ringing out on a Sunday morning, we ask ourselves: can it be possible? This is for a Jew, crucified two thousand years ago, who said he was the son of God. The proof for such a claim is wanting."

"Christianity came into being in order to lighten the heart; but now it has to burden the heart first, in order to be able to lighten it afterwards. Consequently it will perish."

"Without blind disciples, no man or his work has ever gained great influence."

"There is not enough love and kindness in the world to permit us to give any of it away to imaginary beings."

"In each ascetic morality, man prays to one part of himself as a god and also finds it necessary to diabolify the rest."

"What do we long for when we see beauty? To be beautiful. We think much happiness must be connected with it. But that is an error."

"Art renders the sight of life bearable by laying over it the gauze of impure thinking."

"Every great phenomenon is followed by degeneration, particularly in the realm of art. The model of the great man stimulates vainer natures to imitate him outwardly or to surpass him; in addition, all great talents have the fateful quantity of stifling many weaker forces and seeds, and seem to devastate the nature around them. The most fortunate instance in the development of an art is when several geniuses reciprocally keep each other in check; in this kind of a struggle, weaker and gentler natures are generally also allowed air and light."

"Just as youth and childhood have value in and of themselves ... so too do unfinished thoughts have their own value."

"Every writer is surprised anew when a book, as soon as it has been separated from him, begins to take on a life of its own ... it goes about finding its readers, kindles life, pleases, horrifies, fathers new works, becomes the soul of others' resolutions and behaviour. In short, it lives like a being fitted out with a mind and soul—yet it is nevertheless not human."

"Jedermann traegt ein Bild des Weibes von der Mutter her in sich: davon wird er bestimmt, die Weiber ueberhaupt zu verehren oder sie geringzuschaetzen oder gegen sie im Allgemeinen gleichgueltig zu sein."

"In jeder Art der weiblichen Liebe kommt auch Etwas von der muetterlichen Liebe zum Vorschein."

"Wenn die Ehegatten nicht beisammen lebten, wuerden die guten Ehen haeufiger sein."

"Mit der Schoenheit der Frauen nimmt im Allgemeinen ihre Schamhaftigkeit zu."

"Man soll sich beim Eingehen einer Ehe die Frage vorlegen: glaubst du, dich mit dieser Frau bis in's Alter hinein gut zu unterhalten? Alles Andere in der Ehe ist transitorisch, aber die meiste Zeit des Verkehrs gehoert dem Gespraeche an."

"Nach einem persoenlichen Zwiespalt und Zanke zwischen einer Frau und einem Manne leidet der eine Theil am meisten bei der Vorstellung, dem anderen Wehe gethan zu haben; waehrend jener am meisten bei der Vorstellung leidet, dem andern nicht genug Wehe gethan zu haben, wesshalb er sich bemueht, durch Thraenen, Schluchzen und verstoerte Mienen, ihm noch hinterdrein das Herz schwer zu machen."

"Es scheint, dass alle grossen Dinge, um der Menschheit sich mit ewigen Forderungen in das Herz einzuschreiben, erst als ungeheure und furchteinflössende Fratzen über die Erde hinwandeln müssen"

"Christenthum ist Platonismus für's „Volk“"

"The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it: it is here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely. The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life- preserving, species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing, and we are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions ..."

"Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir; also that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy constituted the real germ of life from which the whole plant has grown."

"So you want to live 'according to nature?' Oh, you noble Stoics, what a fraud is in this phrase! Imagine something like nature, profligate without measure, indifferent without measure, without purpose and regard, without mercy and justice, fertile and barren and uncertain at the same time, think of indifference itself as power — how could you live according to this indifference? Living — isn't that wanting specifically to be something other than this nature? Isn't living assessing, preferring, being unfair, being limited, wanting to be different? And assuming your imperative to 'live according to nature' basically amounts to 'living according to life' — well how could you not? Why make a principle out of what you yourselves are and must be?"

"It seems to me that today attempts are made everywhere to divert attention from the actual influence Kant exerted on German philosophy, and especially to ignore prudently the value he set upon himself. Kant was first and foremost proud of his table of categories; with that in his hand he said: "This is the most difficult thing that could ever be undertaken on behalf of metaphysics"."

"Physiologists should think twice before positioning the drive for self-preservation as the cardinal drive of an organic being. Above all, a living thing wants to discharge its strength — life itself is will to power -: self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent consequences of this."

"Niemand lügt soviel als der Entrüstete."

"Independence is an issue that concerns very few people: — it is a prerogative of the strong. And even when somebody has every right to be independent, if he attempts such a thing without having to do so, he proves that he is probably not only strong, but brave to the point of madness. He enters a labyrinth, he multiplies by a thousand the dangers already inherent in the very act of living, not the least of which is the fact that no one with eyes will see how and where he gets lost and lonely and is torn limb from limb by some cave-Minotaur of conscience. And assuming a man like this is destroyed, it is an event so far from human comprehension that people do not feel it or feel for him: — and he cannot go back again! He cannot go back to their pity again!"

"Walter Kaufmann's translation: Independence is for the very few; it is a privilege of the strong. And whoever attempts it even with the best right but without inner constraint proves that he is probably not only strong, but also daring to the point of recklessness. He enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies a thousandfold the dangers which life brings with it in any case, not the least of which is that no one can see how and where he loses his way, becomes lonely, and is torn piecemeal by some minotaur of conscience. Supposing one like that comes to grief, this happens so far from the comprehension of men that they neither feel it nor sympathize. And he cannot go back any longer. Nor can he go back to the pity of men."

"There is no other way: the feelings of devotion, self-sacrifice for one’s neighbor, the whole morality of self-denial must be questioned mercilessly and taken to court- no less than the aesthetics of “contemplation devoid of all interest” which is used today as a seductive hose for emasculation of art, to give it a good conscience"

"'Truth' and the search for truth are no trivial matter; and if a person goes about searching in too human a fashion, I'll bet he won't find anything !"

"O Voltaire! O humaneness! O nonsense! There is something about "truth", about the search for truth; and when a human being is too human about it- "il ne cherche le vrai que pour faire le bien"- I bet he finds nothing."

"Will they be new friends of "truth," these coming philosophers? Very probably, for all philosophers hitherto have loved their truths. But assuredly they will not be dogmatists. It must be contrary to their pride, and also contrary to their taste, that their truth should still be truth for every one--that which has hitherto been the secret wish and ultimate purpose of all dogmatic efforts. "My opinion is MY opinion:another person has not easily a right to it"--such a philosopher of the future will say, perhaps. One must renounce the bad taste of wishing to agree with many people. "Good" is no longer good when one's neighbour takes it into his mouth. And how could there be a "common good"! The expression contradicts itself; that which can be common is always of small value. In the end things must be as they are and have always been--the great things remain for the great, the abysses for the profound, the delicacies and thrills for the refined, and, to sum up shortly, everything rare for the rare."

"People used to believe in 'the soul' as they believed in grammar and the grammatical subject: people said that 'I' was a condition and 'think' was a predicate and conditioned — thinking is an activity and a subject must be thought of as its cause. Now, with admirable tenacity and cunning, people are wondering whether they can get out of this net — wondering whether the reverse might be true: that 'think' is the condition and 'I' is conditioned, in which case 'I' would be a synthesis that only gets produced through thought itself."

"There is a great ladder of religious cruelty, and, of its many rungs, three are the most important. People used to make human sacrifices to their god, perhaps even sacrificing those they loved the best ... Then, during the moral epoch of humanity, people sacrificed the strongest instincts they had, their 'nature,' to their god; the joy of this particular festival shines in the cruel eyes of the ascetic, that enthusiastic piece of 'anti-nature.' Finally: what was left to be sacrificed? In the end, didn't people have to sacrifice all comfort and hope, everything holy or healing, any faith in hidden harmony or a future filled with justice and bliss? Didn't people have to sacrifice God himself and worship rocks, stupidity, gravity, fate, or nothingness out of sheer cruelty to themselves? To sacrifice God for nothingness — that paradoxical mystery of the final cruelty has been reserved for the race that is now approaching: by now we all know something about this."

"Die Liebe zu Einem ist eine Barbarei: denn sie wird auf Unkosten aller Übrigen ausgeübt. Auch die Liebe zu Gott."

""Das habe ich getan" sagt mein Gedächtnis. Das kann ich nicht getan haben — sagt mein Stolz und bleibt unerbittlich. Endlich — gibt das Gedächtnis nach."

"One has only seen little of life, if one hasn't also seen the hand that mercifully — kills."

"To stage as astronomer, So long as thou feelest the stars as an ‘above thee’, Thou lackest the eye of the discerning one"

"Ein Mensch mit Genie ist unausstehlich, wenn er nicht mindestens noch zweierlei dazu besitzt: Dankbarkeit und Reinlichkeit."

"Anyone who despises himself will still respect himself as a despiser."

"Die gleichen Affekte sind bei Mann und Weib doch im Tempo verschieden: deshalb hören Mann und Weib nicht auf, sich misszuverstehn."

"Reife des Mannes: das heisst den Ernst wiedergefunden haben, den man als Kind hatte, beim Spiel."

"Wenn man sein Gewissen dressirt, so küsst es uns zugleich, indem es beisst."

"Die Sinnlichkeit übereilt oft das Wachsthum der Liebe, so dass die Wurzel schwach bleibt und leicht auszureissen ist."

"Es ist eine Feinheit, daß Gott griechisch lernte, als er Schriftsteller werden wollte, und ebenso dies, daß er es nicht besser lernte!"

"Even cohabitation has been corrupted—by marriage."

"Man wird am besten für seine Tugenden bestraft."

"One seeks a midwife for his thoughts, another someone to whom he can be a midwife: thus originates a good conversation."

"Wir machen es auch im Wachen wie im Traume: wir erfinden und erdichten erst den Menschen, mit dem wir verkehren — und vergessen es sofort."

"Was wir am besten thun, von dem möchte unsre Eitelkeit, dass es grade als Das gelte, was uns am schwersten werde. Zum Ursprung mancher Moral."

"Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein."

"Das, was ein Alter fühlt sich böse zu sein ist in der Regel ein vorzeitiges Widerhall dessen, was ehemals als gut - der Atavismus eines alten ideal."

"Ein Talent haben ist nicht genug: man muss auch eure Erlaubniss dazu haben, — wie? meine Freunde?"

"Was aus Liebe getan wird, geschieht immer Jenseits von Gut und Böse."

"Der Irrsinn ist bei Einzelnen etwas Seltenes, — aber bei Gruppen, Parteien, Völkern, Zeiten die Regel."

"Der Gedanke an den Selbstmord ist ein starkes Trostmittel: mit ihm kommt man gut über manche böse Nacht hinweg."

"Man liebt seine Erkenntniss nicht genug mehr, sobald man sie mittheilt."

"Viel von sich reden kann auch ein Mittel sein, sich zu verbergen."

"In a man devoted to knowledge, pity seems almost ridiculous, like delicate hands on a cyclops."

"Die Eitelkeit Andrer geht uns nur dann wider den Geschmack, wenn sie wider unsre Eitelkeit geht."

"Ober Das, was "Wahrhaftigkeit" ist, war vielleicht noch Niemand wahrhaftig genug."

"Die Folgen unsrer Handlungen fassen uns am Schopfe, sehr gleichgültig dagegen, dass wir uns inzwischen "gebessert" haben."

"Kurz, die Moralen sind auch nur eine Zeichensprache der Affekte."

"The Jews — a people "born for slavery" as Tacitus and the whole ancient world says, "the chosen people" as they themselves say and believe — the Jews achieved that miracle of inversion of values thanks to which life on earth has for a couple of millennia acquired a new and dangerous fascination — their prophets fused "rich", "godless", "evil", "violent", "sensual" into one and were the first to coin the word "world" as a term of infamy. It is in this inversion of values ... that the significance of the Jewish people resides: with them there begins the slave revolt in morals."

"Selig sind die Vergesslichen: denn sie werden auch mit ihren Dummheiten "fertig.""

"Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?"

"Every enhancement of the type "man" has so far been the work of an aristocratic society—and it will be so again and again—a society that believes in the long ladder of an order of rank and differences in value between man and man, and that needs slavery in some sense or other."

"Vanity is an atavism."

"It is some basic certainty which the noble soul has about itself, something which does not allow itself to be sought out or found or perhaps even to be lost. The noble soul has reverence for itself."

"What is noble? What does the word “noble” still mean to us today? What betrays, what allows one to recognize the noble human being, under this heavy, overcast sky of the beginning rule of the plebs that makes everything opaque and leaden?"

"It is not actions that prove him – actions are always open to many interpretations, always unfathomable – nor is it “works.” Among artists and scholars today one finds enough of those who betray by their works how they are impelled by a profound desire for what is noble; but just this need for what is noble is fundamentally different from the needs of the noble soul itself and actually the eloquent and dangerous mark of its lack. It is not the works, it is the faith that is decisive here, that determines the order of rank – to take up again an ancient religious formula in a new and more profound sense: some fundamental certainty that a noble soul has about itself, something that cannot be sought, nor found, nor perhaps lost."

"A moral system valid for all is basically immoral."

"What is good? — All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man. What is bad? — All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? — The feeling that power increases — that a resistance is overcome."

"The weak and ill-constituted shall perish: first principle of our philanthropy. And one shall help them to do so."

"I call an animal, a species, an individual depraved when it loses its instincts, when it chooses, when it prefers what is harmful to it."

"Pity on the whole thwarts the law of evolution, which is the law of selection."

"The very word 'Christianity' is a misunderstanding--at bottom there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross."

"The Christian church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul."

"Du grosses Gestirn! Was wäre dein Glück, wenn du nicht Die hättest, welchen du leuchtest!"

"The fall of our footsteps ringeth too hollow through their streets. And just as at night, when they are in bed and hear a man abroad long before sunrise, so they ask themselves concerning us: Where goeth the thief? Go not to men, but stay in the forest! Go rather to the animals! Why not be like me- a bear amongst bears, a bird amongst birds?" "And what doeth the saint in the forest?" asked Zarathustra. The saint answered: "I make hymns and sing them; and in making hymns I laugh and weep and mumble: thus do I praise God. With singing, weeping, laughing, and mumbling do I praise the God who is my God.""

"When Zarathustra was alone, however, he said to his heart: "Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that God is dead!""

"Ich lehre euch den Übermenschen. Der Mensch ist Etwas, das überwunden werden soll. Was habt ihr getan, ihn zu überwinden?"

"Ihr habt den Weg vom Wurme zum Menschen gemacht, und Vieles ist in euch noch Wurm. Einst wart ihr Affen, und auch jetzt ist der Mensch mehr Affe, als irgend ein Affe."

"Wahrlich, ein schmutziger Strom ist der Mensch. Man muß schon ein Meer sein, um einen schmutzigen Strom aufnehmen zu können, ohne unrein zu werden."

"What is the greatest thing you can experience? It is the hour of your greatest contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becomes loathsome to you, and so also your reason and virtue. The hour when you say: 'What good is my happiness? It is poverty and filth and miserable self-complacency. But my happiness should justify existence itself!' The hour when you say: 'What good is my reason? Does it long for knowledge as the lion for his prey? It is poverty and filth and miserable self-complacency!' The hour when you say: 'What good is my virtue? It has not yet driven me mad! How weary I am of my good and my evil! It is all poverty and filth and miserable self-complacency!' The hour when you say: 'What good is my justice? I do not see that I am filled with fire and burning coals. But the just are filled with fire and burning coals!' The hour when you say: 'What good is my pity? Is not pity the cross on which he is nailed who loves man? But my pity is no crucifixion!""

"Was gross ist am Menschen, das ist, dass er eine Brücke ist und kein Zweck ist."

"I love him whose soul is lavish, who wanteth no thanks and doth not give back: for he always bestoweth, and desireth not to keep for himself."

"Ich sage euch: man muß noch Chaos in sich haben, um einen tanzenden Stern gebären zu können."

"Kein Hirt und Eine Heerde! Jeder will das Gleiche, Jeder ist gleich: wer anders fühlt, geht freiwillig in's Irrenhaus."

""We have invented happiness" -say the last men and blink"

"A light has dawned for me: I need companions, living ones, not dead companions and corpses which I carry with me wherever I wish. But I need living companions who follow me because they want to follow themselves— and who want to go where I want to go. A light has dawned for me: Zarathustra shall not speak to the people but to companions! Zarathustra shall not be herdsman and dog to the herd! To lure many away from the herd— that is why I have come. The people and the herd shall be angry with me: the herdsmen shall call Zarathustra a robber. I will not be herdsmen or gravedigger. I will not speak again to the people: I have spoken to a dead man for the last time. I will make company with creators, with harvesters, with rejoicers: I will show them the rainbow and the stairway to the Superman."

"Welches ist der große Drache, den der Geist nicht mehr Herr und Gott heißen mag? "Du-sollst" heißt der große Drache. Aber der Geist des Löwen sagt "ich will". "Du-sollst" liegt ihm am Wege, goldfunkelnd, ein Schuppentier, und auf jeder Schuppe glänzt golden "Du sollst!" Tausendjährige Werte glänzen an diesen Schuppen, und also spricht der mächtigste aller Drachen: "aller Wert der Dinge - der glänzt an mir." "Aller Wert ward schon geschaffen, und aller geschaffene Wert - das bin ich. Wahrlich, es soll kein 'Ich will' mehr geben!" Also spricht der Drache."

"Keine geringe Kunst ist schlafen: es tut schon Noth, den ganzen Tag darauf hin zu wachen."

""Leib bin ich und Seele"–so redet das Kind. Und warum sollte man nicht wie die Kinder reden?"

"Es ist mehr Vernunft in deinem Leibe, als in deiner besten Weisheit."

"Und nichts Böses wächst mehr fürderhin aus dir, es sei denn das Böse, das aus dem Kampfe deiner Tugenden wächst. Mein Bruder, wenn du Glück hast, so hast du Eine Tugend und nicht mehr: so gehst du leichter über die Brücke."

"Von allem Geschriebenen liebe ich nur Das, was Einer mit seinem Blute schreibt."

"Es ist immer etwas Wahnsinn in der Liebe. Es ist aber immer auch etwas Vernunft im Wahnsinn."

"Muthig, unbekümmert, spöttisch, gewaltthätig - so will uns die Weisheit: sie ist ein Weib und liebt immer nur einen Kriegsmann."

"Es ist wahr: wir lieben das Leben, nicht, weil wir an's Leben, sondern weil wir an's Lieben gewöhnt sind."

"Ich würde nur an einen Gott glauben, der zu tanzen verstünde."

"Nicht durch Zorn, sondern durch Lachen tötet man"

"Ihr seht nach oben, wenn ihr nach Erhebung verlangt. Und ich sehe hinab, weil ich erhoben bin."

"Im Gebirge ist der nächste Weg von Gipfel zu Gipfel: aber dazu musst du lange Beine haben. Sprüche sollen Gipfel sein: und Die, zu denen gesprochen wird, Grosse und Hochwüchsige."

"»Je mehr er hinauf in die Höhe und Helle will, um so stärker streben seine Wurzeln erdwärts, abwärts, in's Dunkle, Tiefe, — in's Böse.«"

"Ich weiss um den Hass und Neid eures Herzens. Ihr seid nicht gross genug, um Hass und Neid nicht zu kennen. So seid denn gross genug, euch ihrer nicht zu schämen!"

"Aber der Staat lügt in allen Zungen des Guten und Bösen; und was er auch redet, er lügt—und was er auch hat, gestohlen hat er's."

"Seht sie klettern, diese geschwinden Affen! Sie klettern über einander hinweg und zerren sich also in den Schlamm und die Tiefe. Hin zum Throne wollen sie Alle: ihr Wahnsinn ist es, — als ob das Glück auf dem Throne sässe! Oft sitzt der Schlamm auf dem Thron — und oft auch der Thron auf dem Schlamme. Wahnsinnige sind sie mir Alle und kletternde Affen und Überheisse. Übel riecht mir ihr Götze, das kalte Unthier: übel riechen sie mir alle zusammen, diese Götzendiener."

"Free from what? As if that mattered to Zarathustra! But your eyes should tell me brightly: free for what?"

"Zweierlei will der echte Mann: Gefahr und Spiel. Deshalb will er das Weib als das gefährlichste Spielzeug."

"Der Mann soll zum Kriege erzogen werden und das Weib zur Erholung des Kriegers: alles Andre ist Thorheit."

"Man is for woman a means; the end is always the child."

"Vornehmer ist's, sich Unrecht zu geben als Recht zu behalten, sonderlich wenn man Recht hat. Nur muss man reich genug dazu sein."

"Then will he who goes under bless himself for being one who goes over and beyond; and the sun of his knowledge will stand at high noon for him. "Dead are all gods: now we want the overman to live" — on that great noon, let this be our last will."

"Verily, I advise you: depart from me, and guard yourselves against Zarathustra! And better still: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he hath deceived you. The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends. One requiteth a teacher badly if one remain merely a student. And why will ye not pluck at my wreath? Ye venerate me; but what if your veneration should some day collapse? Take heed lest a statue crush you! Ye say, ye believe in Zarathustra? But of what account is Zarathustra! Ye are my believers: but of what account are all believers! Ye had not yet sought yourselves: then did ye find me. So do all believers; therefore all belief is of so little account. Now do I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when ye have all denied me, will I return unto you."

"Ihre Weisheit lautet: „ein Thor, der leben bleibt, aber so sehr sind wir Thoren! Und das eben ist das Thörichtste am Leben!“—"

"Ihr Alle, denen die wilde Arbeit lieb ist und das Schnelle, Neue, Fremde,—ihr ertragt euch schlecht, euer Fleiss ist Flucht und Wille, sich selber zu vergessen. <!--"

"Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not with us, my brethren: here there are states. A state? What is that? Well! open now your ears unto me, for now will I say unto you my word concerning the death of peoples."

"A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: "I, the state, am the people." It is a lie! Creators were they who created peoples, and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life. Destroyers, are they who lay snares for many, and call it the state: they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them. Where there is still a people, there the state is not understood, but hated as the evil eye, and as sin against laws and customs."

"This sign I give unto you: every people speaketh its language of good and evil: this its neighbour understandeth not. Its language hath it devised for itself in laws and customs. But the state lieth in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it saith it lieth; and whatever it hath it hath stolen. False is everything in it; with stolen teeth it biteth, the biting one. False are even its bowels. Confusion of language of good and evil; this sign I give unto you as the sign of the state. Verily, the will to death, indicateth this sign! Verily, it beckoneth unto the preachers of death! Many too many are born: for the superfluous ones was the state devised! See just how it enticeth them to it, the many-too-many! How it swalloweth and cheweth and recheweth them! "On earth there is nothing greater than I: it is I who am the regulating finger of God." — thus roareth the monster. And not only the long-eared and short-sighted fall upon their knees! Ah! even in your ears, ye great souls, it whispereth its gloomy lies! Ah! it findeth out the rich hearts which willingly lavish themselves!"

"Heroes and honourable ones, it would fain set up around it, the new idol! Gladly it basketh in the sunshine of good consciences, — the cold monster! Everything will it give you, if ye worship it, the new idol: thus it purchaseth the lustre of your virtue, and the glance of your proud eyes. It seeketh to allure by means of you, the many-too-many! Yea, a hellish artifice hath here been devised, a death-horse jingling with the trappings of divine honours! Yea, a dying for many hath here been devised, which glorifieth itself as life: verily, a hearty service unto all preachers of death!"

"The state, I call it, where all are poison-drinkers, the good and the bad: the state, where all lose themselves, the good and the bad: the state, where the slow suicide of all — is called "life." Just see these superfluous ones! They steal the works of the inventors and the treasures of the wise. Culture, they call their theft — and everything becometh sickness and trouble unto them! Just see these superfluous ones! Sick are they always; they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper. They devour one another, and cannot even digest themselves. Just see these superfluous ones! Wealth they acquire and become poorer thereby. Power they seek for, and above all, the lever of power, much money — these impotent ones! See them clamber, these nimble apes! They clamber over one another, and thus scuffle into the mud and the abyss. Towards the throne they all strive: it is their madness — as if happiness sat on the throne! Ofttimes sitteth filth on the throne. — and ofttimes also the throne on filth. Madmen they all seem to me, and clambering apes, and too eager. Badly smelleth their idol to me, the cold monster: badly they all smell to me, these idolaters."

"Open still remaineth the earth for great souls. Empty are still many sites for lone ones and twain ones, around which floateth the odour of tranquil seas. Open still remaineth a free life for great souls. Verily, he who possesseth little is so much the less possessed: blessed be moderate poverty! There, where the state ceaseth — there only commenceth the man who is not superfluous: there commenceth the song of the necessary ones, the single and irreplaceable melody. There, where the state ceaseth — pray look thither, my brethren! Do ye not see it, the rainbow and the bridges of the Superman? — Thus spake Zarathustra."

"Spirit is the life that itself strikes into life: through its own torment it increases its own knowledge -- did you know that before?"

"Wenn die Macht gnädig wird und herabkommt ins Sichtbare: Schönheit heiße ich solches Herabkommen. Und von niemandem will ich so als von dir gerade Schönheit, du Gewaltiger: deine Güte sei deine letzte Selbst-Überwältigung. Alles Böse traue ich dir zu: darum will ich von dir das Gute. Wahrlich, ich lachte oft der Schwächlinge, welche sich gut glauben, weil sie lahme Tatzen haben!"

"Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman hath one solution—it is called pregnancy."

"Wenn es Götter gäbe, wie hielte ich's aus, kein Gott zu sein! Also gibt es keine Götter."

"It moves my heart for those priests. They also go against my taste; but that is the small matter to me, since I am among men. But I suffer and have suffered with them: prisoners are they to me, and stigmatised ones. He whom they call Saviour put them in fetters:- In fetters of false values and fatuous words! Oh, that some one would save them from their Saviour!"

"Better songs would they have to sing, for me to believe in their Saviour: more like saved ones would his disciples have to appear to me!"

"Also aber rate ich euch, meine Freunde: misstraut Allen, in welchen der Trieb, zu strafen, mächtig ist! Das ist Volk schlechter Art und Abkunft; aus ihren Gesichtern blickt der Henker und der Spürhund. Misstraut allen Denen, die viel von ihrer Gerechtigkeit reden! Wahrlich, ihren Seelen fehlt es nicht nur an Honig. Und wenn sie sich selber 'die Guten und Gerechten' nennen, so vergesst nicht, dass ihnen zum Pharisäer Nichts fehlt als — Macht!"

"Und wer von uns Dichtern hätte nicht seinen Wein verfälscht? Manch giftiger Mischmasch geschah in unsern Kellern, manches Unbeschreibliche ward da getan."

"Ach, es gibt so viel Dinge zwischen Himmel und Erde, von denen sich nur die Dichter etwas haben träumen lassen. Und zumal ü b e r dem Himmel: denn alle Götter sind Dichter-Gleichnis, Dichter-Erschleichnis! Wahrlich, immer zieht es uns hinan - nämlich zum Reich der Wolken: auf diese setzen wir unsre bunten Bälge und heißen sie dann Götter und Übermenschen: - Sind sie doch gerade leicht genug für diese Stühle! - alle diese Götter und Übermenschen. Ach, wie bin ich all des Unzulänglichen müde, das durchaus Ereignis sein soll! Ach, wie bin ich der Dichter müde!"

"They are not clean enough for me, either: they all disturb their waters so"

"Höheres als alle Versöhnung muss der Wille wollen, welcher der Wille zur Macht ist."

"Und wer unter Menschen nicht verschmachten will, muß lernen, aus allen Gläsern zu trinken; und wer unter Menschen rein bleiben will, muß verstehn, sich auch mit schmutzigem Wasser zu waschen. Und also sprach ich oft mir zum Troste: "Wohlan! Wohlauf! Altes Herz! Ein Unglück mißriet dir: genieße dies als dein - Glück!""

"Die stillsten Worte sind es, welche den Sturm bringen. Gedanken, die mit Taubenfüßen kommen, lenken die Welt."

"Woher kommen die höchsten Berge? so fragte ich einst. Da lernte ich, daß sie aus dem Meere kommen. Dies Zeugnis ist in ihr Gestein geschrieben und in die Wände ihrer Gipfel. Aus dem Tiefsten muß das Höchste zu seiner Höhe kommen."

"Whence come the highest mountains? I once asked. Then I learned that they came out of the sea. The evidence is written in their rocks and in the walls of their peaks. It is out of the deepest depth that the highest must come to its height."

"O meine Brüder, ich weihe und weise euch zu einem neuen Adel: ihr sollt mir Zeuger und Züchter werden und Säemänner der Zukunft, - wahrlich, nicht zu einem Adel, den ihr kaufen könntet gleich den Krämern und mit Krämer-Golde: denn wenig Wert hat alles, was seinen Preis hat. Nicht, woher ihr kommt, mache euch fürderhin eure Ehre, sondern wohin ihr geht! Euer Wille und euer Fuß, der über euch selber hinaus will, — das mache eure neue Ehre!"

"O meine Brüder, nicht zurück soll euer Adel schauen, sondern h i n a u s ! Vertriebene sollt ihr sein aus allen Vater- und Urväterländern! Eurer Kinder Land sollt ihr lieben: diese Liebe sei euer neuer Adel, — das unentdeckte, im fernsten Meere! Nach ihm heiße ich eure Segel suchen und suchen! An euren Kindern sollt ihr gut machen, daß ihr eurer Väter Kinder seid: alles Vergangene sollt ihr so erlösen! Diese neue Tafel stelle ich über euch!"

"Was fällt, das soll man auch noch stoßen!"

""Nothing is true, all is permitted": so said I to myself. Into the coldest water did I plunge with head and heart. Ah, how oft did I stand there naked on that account, like a red crab! Ah, where have gone all my goodness and all my shame and all my belief in the good! Ah, where is the lying innocence which I once possessed, the innocence of the good and of their noble lies! Too oft, verily, did I follow close to the heels of truth: then did it kick me on the face. Sometimes I meant to lie, and behold! then only did I hit— the truth."

"Zarathustra's "Shadow" in Chapter 69 "The Shadow""

"But one thing is the thought, another thing is the deed, and another thing is the idea of the deed. The wheel of causality doth not roll between them."

"By our best enemies we do not want to be spared, nor by those either whom we love from the very heart."

"Many die too late, and some die too early. Yet strange soundeth the precept: "Die at the right time!""

"Life is a well of delight; but where the rabble also drink, there all fountains are poisoned."

"Ihr sagt, die gute Sache sei es, die sogar den Krieg heilige? Ich sage euch: der gute Krieg ist es, der jede Sache heiligt"

"It is entirely in the spirit of collectivism when Nietzsche makes his Zarathustra say: “A thousand goals have existed hitherto, for a thousand people existed. But the fetter for the thousand necks is still lacking, the one goal is still lacking. Humanity has no goal yet. But tell me, I pray, my brethren: if the goal be lacking to humanity, is not humanity itself lacking?”"

"In one sense, the Republic is a monologue. No one is presented directly as speaking, other than Socrates himself. But Socrates recounts in great detail a complex conversation that he had with, or in the presence of, ten other persons. I shall come back shortly to the question of the identities of these ten characters. The immediate question is why Socrates is represented as recounting the conversation about the just city to an anonymous audience, that is to say, to no one. Are we meant to infer that the Republic, like Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, is a book for everyone and no one? Simply to launch a trial balloon, I shall observe that both works are addressed to no one among the contemporaries of the main speaker; Zarathustra is not the superman but the prophet of the coming of the superman, and Socrates, as he makes clear in the Platonic corpus, is unwilling to participate in politics and, given his peculiar nature, he is incapable of doing so. Socrates is thus the "prophet" of the philosopher-king but not one himself."

"Man hat die Realität in dem Grade um ihren Werth, ihren Sinn, ihre Wahrhaftigkeit gebracht, als man eine ideale Welt erlog."

"Die Lüge des Ideals war bisher der Fluch über der Realität, die Menschheit selbst ist durch sie bis in ihre untersten Instinkte hinein verlogen und falsch geworden—bis zur Anbetung der umgekehrten Werthe, als die sind, mit denen ihr erst das Gedeihen, die Zukunft, das hohe Recht auf Zukunft verbürgt wäre."

"Philosophie, wie ich sie bisher verstanden und gelebt habe, ist das freiwillige Leben in Eis und Hochgebirge—das Aufsuchen alles Fremden und Fragwürdigen im Dasein, alles dessen, was durch die Moral bisher in Bann gethan war."

"Wie viel Wahrheit erträgt, wie viel Wahrheit wagt ein Geist? das wurde für mich immer mehr der eigentliche Werthmesser."

"Irrthum (—der Glaube an's Ideal—) ist nicht Blindheit, Irrthum ist Feigheit."

"Jede Errungenschaft, jeder Schritt vorwärts in der Erkenntnis folgt aus dem Muth, aus der Härte gegen sich, aus der Sauberkeit gegen sich."

"Nitimur in vetitum: in diesem Zeichen siegt einmal meine Philosophie, denn man verbot bisher grundsätzlich immer nur die Wahrheit."

"Ich machte aus meinem Willen zur Gesundheit, zum Leben, meine Philosophie."

"Und woran erkennt man im Grunde die Wohlgerathenheit? Dass ein wohlgerathner Mensch unsern Sinnen wohlthut: dass er aus einem Holze geschnitzt ist, das hart, zart und wohlriechend zugleich ist. Ihm schmeckt nur, was ihm zuträglich ist; sein Gefallen, seine Lust hört auf, wo das Maass des Zuträglichen überschritten wird. Er erräth Heilmittel gegen Schädigungen, er nützt schlimme Zufälle zu seinem Vortheil aus; was ihn nicht umbringt, macht ihn stärker. Er sammelt instinktiv aus Allem, was er sieht, hört, erlebt, seine Summe: er ist ein auswählendes Princip, er lässt Viel durchfallen. Er ist immer in seiner Gesellschaft, ob er mit Büchern, Menschen oder Landschaften verkehrt: er ehrt, indem er wählt, indem er zulässt, indem er vertraut. Er reagirt auf alle Art Reize langsam, mit jener Langsamkeit, die eine lange Vorsicht und ein gewollter Stolz ihm angezüchtet haben,—er prüft den Reiz, der herankommt, er ist fern davon, ihm entgegenzugehn. Er glaubt weder an „Unglück”, noch an „Schuld”: er wird fertig, mit sich, mit Anderen, er weiss zu vergessen,—er ist stark genug, dass ihm Alles zum Besten gereichen muss."

"... I, the last anti-political German."

"Meine Erfahrungen geben mir ein Anrecht auf Misstrauen überhaupt hinsichtlich der sogenannten „selbstlosen” Triebe, der gesammten zu Rath und That bereiten „Nächstenliebe”. Sie gilt mir an sich als Schwäche, als Einzelfall der Widerstands-Unfähigkeit gegen Reize."

"Ich werfe den Mitleidigen vor, dass ihnen die Scham, die Ehrfurcht, das Zartgefühl vor Distanzen leicht abhanden kommt, dass Mitleiden im Handumdrehn nach Pöbel riecht und schlechten Manieren zum Verwechseln ähnlich sieht,—dass mitleidige Hände unter Umständen geradezu zerstörerisch in ein grosses Schicksal, in eine Vereinsamung unter Wunden, in ein Vorrecht auf schwere Schuld hineingreifen können."

"Hier Herr bleiben, hier die Höhe seiner Aufgabe rein halten von den viel niedrigeren und kurzsichtigeren Antrieben, welche in den sogenannten selbstlosen Handlungen thätig sind, das ist die Probe, die letzte Probe vielleicht, die ein Zarathustra abzulegen hat."

"Gleich Jedem, der nie unter seines Gleichen lebte und dem der Begriff „Vergeltung” so unzugänglich ist wie etwa der Begriff „gleiche Rechte”, verbiete ich mir in Fällen, wo eine kleine oder sehr grosse Thorheit an mir begangen wird, jede Gegenmaassregel, jede Schutzmaassregel,—wie billig, auch jede Vertheidigung, jede „Rechtfertigung”."

"Meine Art Vergeltung besteht darin, der Dummheit so schnell wie möglich eine Klugheit nachzuschicken: so holt man sie vielleicht noch ein."

"Auch scheint es mir, dass das gröbste Wort, der gröbste Brief noch gutartiger, noch honnetter sind als Schweigen. Solchen, die schweigen, fehlt es fast immer an Feinheit und Höflichkeit des Herzens; Schweigen ist ein Einwand, Hinunterschlucken macht nothwendig einen schlechten Charakter,—es verdirbt selbst den Magen."

"Man sieht, ich möchte die Grobheit nicht unterschätzt wissen, sie ist bei weitem die humanste Form des Widerspruchs und, inmitten der modernen Verzärtelung, eine unsrer ersten Tugenden."

"Kranksein ist eine Art Ressentiment selbst.—Hiergegen hat der Kranke nur Ein grosses Heilmittel—ich nenne es den russischen Fatalismus, jenen Fatalismus ohne Revolte, mit dem sich ein russischer Soldat, dem der Feldzug zu hart wird, zuletzt in den Schnee legt. Nichts überhaupt mehr annehmen, an sich nehmen, in sich hineinnehmen,—überhaupt nicht mehr reagiren … Die grosse Vernunft dieses Fatalismus, der nicht immer nur der Muth zum Tode ist, als lebenerhaltend unter den lebensgefährlichsten Umständen, ist die Herabsetzung des Stoffwechsels, dessen Verlangsamung, eine Art Wille zum Winterschlaf. … Weil man zu schnell sich verbrauchen würde, wenn man überhaupt reagirte, reagirt man gar nicht mehr: dies ist die Logik. Und mit Nichts brennt man rascher ab, als mit den Ressentiments-Affekten. Der Ärger, die krankhafte Verletzlichkeit, die Ohnmacht zur Rache, die Lust, der Durst nach der Rache, das Giftmischen in jedem Sinne—das ist für Erschöpfte sicherlich die nachtheiligste Art zu reagiren."

"Das Ressentiment ist das Verbotene an sich für den Kranken—sein Böses: leider auch sein natürlichster Hang.—Das begriff jener tiefe Physiolog Buddha. Seine „Religion”, die man besser als eine Hygiene bezeichnen dürfte, um sie nicht mit so erbarmungswürdigen Dingen wie das Christenthum ist, zu vermischen, machte ihre Wirkung abhängig von dem Sieg über das Ressentiment: die Seele davon frei machen—erster Schritt zur Genesung. „Nicht durch Feindschaft kommt Feindschaft zu Ende, durch Freundschaft kommt Feindschaft zu Ende”: das steht am Anfang der Lehre Buddha's—so redet nicht die Moral, so redet die Physiologie.—Das Ressentiment, aus der Schwäche geboren, Niemandem schädlicher als dem Schwachen selbst,—im andern Falle, wo eine reiche Natur die Voraussetzung ist, ein überflüssiges Gefühl, ein Gefühl, über das Herr zu bleiben beinahe der Beweis des Reichthums ist."

"In den Zeiten der décadence verbot ich sie mir als schädlich; sobald das Leben wieder reich und stolz genug dazu war, verbot ich sie mir als unter mir."

"Pure habits and honesty toward myself are among the first conditions of my existence. ... I swim, bathe, and splash about, as it were, incessantly in water, in any kind of perfectly transparent and shining element. That is why my relations with fellows try my patience to no small extent; my humanity does not consist in the fact that I understand the feelings of my fellow, but that I can endure to understand."

"Ich habe nie über Fragen nachgedacht, die keine sind, —ich habe mich nicht verschwendet."

"Ich möchte nicht eine Handlung hinterdrein in Stich lassen, ich würde vorziehn, den schlimmen Ausgang, die Folgen grundsätzlich aus der Werthfrage wegzulassen. Man verliert beim schlimmen Ausgang gar zu leicht den richtigen Blick für Das, was man that: ein Gewissensbiss scheint mir eine Art „böser Blick”. Etwas, das fehlschlägt, um so mehr bei sich in Ehren halten, weil es fehlschlug—das gehört eher schon zu meiner Moral."

"Ich bin zu neugierig, zu fragwürdig, zu übermüthig, um mir eine faustgrobe Antwort gefallen zu lassen. Gott ist eine faustgrobe Antwort, eine Undelicatesse gegen uns Denker —, im Grunde sogar bloss ein faustgrobes Verbot an uns: ihr sollt nicht denken!"

"In diesem Falle wird einfach Nichts gehört, mit der akustischen Täuschung, dass wo Nichts gehört wird, auch Nichts da ist"

"Wer mir aber durch Höhe des Wollens verwandt ist, erlebt dabei wahre Ekstasen des Lernens."

"Es giebt durchaus keine stolzere und zugleich raffinirtere Art von Büchern: — sie erreichen hier und da das Höchste, was auf Erden erreicht werden kann, den Cynismus."

"„Femininismus” im Menschen, auch im Manne, ein Thorschluss für mich: man wird niemals in dies Labyrinth verwegener Erkenntnisse eintreten."

"Man muss sich selbst nie geschont haben, man muss die Härte in seinen Gewohnheiten haben, um unter lauter harten Wahrheiten wohlgemuth und heiter zu sein."

"Das Christenthum ... ist weder apollinisch, noch dionysisch; es negirt alle ästhetischen Werthe—die einzigen Werthe, die die „Geburt der Tragödie” anerkennt."

"Insgleichen war damit, dass ich Sokrates als décadent erkannte, ein völlig unzweideutiger Beweis dafür gegeben, wie wenig die Sicherheit meines psychologischen Griffs von Seiten irgend einer Moral-Idiosynkrasie Gefahr laufen werde:—die Moral selbst als décadence-Symptom ist eine Neuerung, eine Einzigkeit ersten Rangs in der Geschichte der Erkenntniss."

"Ich sah zuerst den eigentlichen Gegensatz:—den entartenden Instinkt, der sich gegen das Leben mit unterirdischer Rachsucht wendet (—Christenthum, die Philosophie Schopenhauers, in gewissem Sinne schon die Philosophie Platos, der ganze Idealismus als typische Formen) und eine aus der Fülle, der Überfülle geborene Formel der höchsten Bejahung, ein Jasagen ohne Vorbehalt, zum Leiden selbst, zur Schuld selbst, zu allem Fragwürdigen und Fremden des Daseins selbst."

"Es ist Nichts, was ist, abzurechnen, es ist Nichts entbehrlich—die von den Christen und andren Nihilisten abgelehnten Seiten des Daseins sind sogar von unendlich höherer Ordnung in der Rangordnung der Werthe als das, was der Décadence-Instinkt gutheissen, gut heissen durfte. Dies zu begreifen, dazu gehört Muth und, als dessen Bedingung, ein Überschuss von Kraft."

"Genau so weit als der Muth sich vorwärts wagen darf, genau nach dem Maass von Kraft nähert man sich der Wahrheit."

"Die Erkenntniss, das Jasagen zur Realität ist für den Starken eine ebensolche Nothwendigkeit als für den Schwachen, unter der Inspiration der Schwäche, die Feigheit und Flucht vor der Realität—das „Ideal” … Es steht ihnen nicht frei, zu erkennen: die décadents haben die Lüge nöthig, sie ist eine ihrer Erhaltungs-Bedingungen."

"Heraklit, in dessen Nähe überhaupt mir wärmer, mir wohler zu Muthe wird als irgendwo sonst. Die Bejahung des Vergehens und Vernichtens, das Entscheidende in einer dionysischen Philosophie, das Jasagen zu Gegensatz und Krieg, das Werden, mit radikaler Ablehnung auch selbst des Begriffs „Sein”—darin muss ich unter allen Umständen das mir Verwandteste anerkennen, was bisher gedacht worden ist."

"Die zweite Unzeitgemässe (1874) bringt das Gefährliche, das Leben-Annagende und -Vergiftende in unsrer Art des Wissenschafts-Betriebs an's Licht —: das Leben krank an diesem entmenschten Räderwerk und Mechanismus, an der „Unpersönlichkeit” des Arbeiters, an der falschen Ökonomie der „Theilung der Arbeit”. Der Zweck geht verloren, die Cultur:—das Mittel, der moderne Wissenschafts-Betrieb, barbarisirt"

"Es ist meine Klugheit, Vieles und vielerorts gewesen zu sein, um Eins werden zu können,—um zu Einem kommen zu können. Ich musste eine Zeit lang auch Gelehrter sein."

"In keinem andren Sinne will das Wort „freier Geist” hier verstanden werden: ein freigewordner Geist, der von sich selber wieder Besitz ergriffen hat."

"Sieht man genauer zu, so entdeckt man einen unbarmherzigen Geist, der alle Schlupfwinkel kennt, wo das Ideal heimisch ist,—wo es seine Burgverliesse und gleichsam seine letzte Sicherheit hat."

"Meine Aufgabe, einen Augenblick höchster Selbstbesinnung der Menschheit vorzubereiten, einen grossen Mittag, wo sie zurückschaut und hinausschaut, wo sie aus der Herrschaft des Zufalls und der Priester heraustritt und die Frage des warum?, des wozu? zum ersten Male als Ganzes stellt —, diese Aufgabe folgt mit Nothwendigkeit aus der Einsicht, dass die Menschheit nicht von selber auf dem rechten Wege ist, dass sie durchaus nicht göttlich regiert wird, dass vielmehr gerade unter ihren heiligsten Werthbegriffen der Instinkt der Verneinung, der Verderbniss, der décadence-Instinkt verführerisch gewaltet hat."

"The instinct of negation, of corruption, the decadence-instinct, has been seductively at work, and precisely under humanity’s holiest value concepts."

"Das entscheidende Zeichen, an dem sich ergiebt, dass der Priester (—eingerechnet die versteckten Priester, die Philosophen) nicht nur innerhalb einer bestimmten religiösen Gemeinschaft, sondern überhaupt Herr geworden ist, dass die décadence-Moral, der Wille zum Ende, als Moral an sich gilt, ist der unbedingte Werth, der dem Unegoistischen und die Feindschaft, die dem Egoistischen überall zu Theil wird."

"Mensch will lieber noch das Nichts wollen als nicht wollen."

"I alone have the criterion of “truths” in my possession. I alone can decide."

"The fate of music be as dear to man as his own life, because joy and suffering are alike bound up with it."

"The German people, ... with an appetite for which they are to be envied, continue to diet themselves on contradictions, and gulp down “faith” in company with science, ... without showing the slightest signs of indigestion."

"Not only have the Germans entirely lost the breath of vision which enables one to grasp the course of culture and the values of culture, not only are they one and all political (or Church) puppets, but they have also actually put a ban upon this very breadth of vision."

"Psychology is almost the standard of measurement for the cleanliness or uncleanliness of a race."

"That which is called “deep” in Germany is precisely this uncleanliness towards oneself. ... People refuse to be clear in regard to their own natures."

"I require no “believers,” it is my opinion that I am too full of malice to believe even in myself; I never address myself to masses."

"I refuse to be a saint; I would rather be a clown."

"If falsehood insists on claiming at all costs the word “truth” for its standpoint, the really truthful man must be sought out among the despised."

"The kind of man that he [Zarathustra] conceives sees reality as it is. He is strong enough for this."

"In his own nature can be found all the terrible and questionable character of reality."

"Was a single one of the philosophers who preceded me a psychologist at all, and not the very reverse of a psychologist, that is to say, a superior swindler, an idealist?"

"Not to have awakened to these discoveries before struck me as the sign of the greatest uncleanliness that mankind has on it's conscience, as self-deception become instinctive, as fundamental will to be blind to every phenomenon."

"It is not ... the millennia of absence ... of bravery in spiritual things which betrays itself in the triumph of Christianity. It is rather ... the perfectly ghastly fact that anti-nature itself received the highest honors, as morality and as law and has remained suspends over man in the form of the categorical imperative."

"My formula for the greatness of a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different—not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely to bear what is necessary, still less conceal it … but love it."

"... imprisoned among all sorts of terrible concepts"

"‘You run ahead? Are you doing it as a shepherd? Or as an exception? A third case would be the fugitive. First question of conscience.’"

"Auch der Muthigste von uns hat nur selten den Muth zu dem, was er eigentlich weiss."

"Die Weisheit zieht auch der Erkenntniss Grenzen."

"I want, once and for all, not to know many things. Wisdom requires moderation in knowledge as in other things."

"Daß man gegen seine Handlungen keine Feigheit begeht! daß man sie nicht hinterdrein im Stiche läßt!—Der Gewissensbiß ist unanständig."

"Hat man sein warum? des Lebens, so verträgt man sich fast mit jedem wie?"

"Ich mißtraue allen Systematikern und gehe ihnen aus dem Weg. Der Wille zum System ist ein Mangel an Rechtschaffenheit."

"Man begeht selten eine Übereilung allein. In der ersten Übereilung thut man immer zu viel. Eben darum begeht man gewöhnlich noch eine zweite—und nunmehr thut man zu wenig."

"Es giebt einen Hass auf Lüge und Verstellung aus einem reizbaren Ehrbegriff; es giebt einen ebensolchen Hass aus Feigheit, insofern die Lüge, durch ein göttliches Gebot, verboten ist. Zu feige, um zu lügen."

"Ohne Musik wäre das Leben ein Irrthum."

"Nur die ergangenen Gedanken haben Werth."

"Das waren Stufen für mich, ich bin über sie hinaufgestiegen,—dazu mußte ich über sie hinweg. Aber sie meinten, ich wollte mich auf ihnen zur Ruhe setzen."

"Der Fanatismus, mit dem sich das ganze griechische Nachdenken auf die Vernünftigkeit wirft, verräth eine Nothlage: man war in Gefahr, man hatte nur Eine Wahl: entweder zu Grunde zu gehn oder—absurd-vernünftig zu sein."

"All passions have a phase when they are merely disastrous, when they drag down their victim with the weight of stupidity—and a later, very much later phase when they wed the spirit, when they “spiritualize” themselves. Formerly, in view of the element of stupidity in passion, war was declared on passion itself, its destruction was plotted… The most famous formula for this is to be found in the New Testament.... There it is said, for example, with particular reference to sexuality: “If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out.” Fortunately, no Christian acts in accordance with this precept. Destroying the passions and cravings, merely as a preventive measure against their stupidity and the unpleasant consequences of this stupidity—today this itself strikes us as merely another acute form of stupidity. We no longer admire dentists who “pluck out” teeth so that they will not hurt any more."

"The early church, as everyone knows, certainly did wage war against the intelligent."

"The church combats passion by means of excision of all kinds. Its practice, its remedy is castration. It never inquires, “How can a desire be spiritualized, beautified, deified.” In all ages it has laid the weight of discipline in the process of extirpation. The extirpation of sensuality, pride, lust of dominion, lust of property, and revenge. But to attack the passions at the roots means attacking life itself at its source. The method of the church is hostile to life."

"Castration and extirpation are instinctively chosen for waging war against a passion by those who are too weak of will, too degenerate, to impose some sort of moderation upon it."

"Radical and moral hostility to sensuality remains a suspicious symptom."

"The most poisonous diatribes against the senses have not been said by the impotent, nor by the ascetics, but by those impossible ascetics, by those who found it necessary to be ascetics."

"The spiritualization of sensuality is called love."

"…the value of having enemies …"

"A man is productive only insofar as he is rich in contrasted instincts. He can remain young only on condition that his soul does not begin to take things easy and to yearn for peace."

"Nothing has grown more alien to us than that old desire, the peace of the soul, which is the aim of Christianity."

"… the well-being of unaccustomed satiety …"

"… laziness, coaxed by vanity into togging itself out in a moral garb …"

"The price of fruitfulness is to be rich in internal opposition …"

"Any one of the laws of life is fulfilled by the definite cannon “thou shalt.” “Thou shalt not,” and any sort of obstacle or hostile element in the road of life, is thus cleared away."

"The morality which is antagonistic to nature, that is to say, almost every morality that has been taught, honored and preached hitherto, is directed precisely against the life instincts. It is a condemnation, now secret, now blatant and impudent, of these very instincts."

"The saint in whom God is well pleased is the ideal Eunuch."

"Admitting that you have understood the villainy of such a mutiny against life as that which has become almost sacrosanct in Christian morality, you have fortunately understood something besides, and that is the futility, the fictitiousness, the absurdity and the falseness of such a mutiny. For the condemnation of life by a living creature is after all but the symptom of a definite kind of life."

"In order even to approach the problem of the value of life, a man would need to be placed outside life, and moreover know it as well as one, as many, as all in fact, who have lived it. These are reasons enough to prove to us that this problem is an inaccessible one to us."

"When we speak of values, we speak under the inspiration, and through the optics, of life. Life itself urges us to determine values. Life itself values through us when we determine values."

"Eine Verurteilung des Lebens von seiten des Lebenden bleibt zuletzt doch nur das Symptom einer bestimmten Art von Leben: die Frage, ob mit Recht, ob mit Unrecht, ist gar nicht damit aufgeworfen. Man müßte eine Stellung außerhalb des Lebens haben, und andrerseits es so gut kennen, wie einer, wie viele, wie alle, die es gelebt haben, um das Problem vom Wert des Lebens überhaupt anrühren zu dürfen: Gründe genug, um zu begreifen, daß dies Problem ein für uns unzugängliches Problem ist. Wenn wir von Werten reden, reden wir unter der Inspiration,"

"Morality as it has been understood hitherto … is the instinct of degeneration itself, which converts itself into an imperative. It says “perish.” It is the death sentence of men …"

"Every healthy morality is dominated by an instinct of life… Anti-natural morality—that is, almost every morality which has so far been taught, revered and preached—turns, conversely, against the instincts of life: it is a condemnation of these instincts…"

"Morality, insofar as it condemns for its own sake, and not out of regard for the concerns, considerations, and contrivances of life, is a specific error for which one ought to have no pity…"

"Let us at last consider how exceedingly simple it is on our part to say: “Man should be thus and thus!” Reality shows us a marvelous wealth of types, and a luxuriant variety of forms and changes—and yet the first wretch of a moral loafer that comes along cries: “No! Man should be different.” He even knows what man should be like, this sanctimonious prig: he draws his own face on the wall and declares, “Ecce homo!”"

"The individual in his past and future is a piece of fate. One law the more, one necessity the more for all that is to come and is to be. To say to him, “change thyself” is tantamount to saying that everything should change, even backwards as well."

"Morality, insofar as it condemns per se, and not out of any aim, consideration or motive of life, is a specific error for which no one should feel any mercy—a degenerate idiosyncrasy that has done an unalterable amount of harm."

"We others, we immoralists, on the contrary, have opened our hearts wide to all kinds of comprehension, understanding, and approbation. We do not deny readily; we glory in saying “Yea” to things. Our eyes have opened ever wider and wider to that economy which still employs, and knows how to use to its own advantage, all that which the sacred craziness of priests and the morbid reason in priests rejects."

"… the repulsive race of bigots, the priests and the virtuous …"

"Alles Gute ist Instinkt—und, folglich, leicht, nothwendig, frei. Die Mühsal ist ein Einwand."

"Die leichten Füsse das erste Attribut der Göttlichkeit."

"The so-called motive: another error. Merely a surface phenomenon of consciousness, something alongside the deed that is more likely to cover up the antecedents of the deeds than to represent them."

"And what a fine abuse we had perpetrated with this “empirical evidence”; we created the world on this basis as a world of causes, a world of will, a world of spirits. The most ancient and enduring psychology was at work here and did not do anything else: all that happened was considered a doing, all doing the effect of a will; the world became to it a multiplicity of doers; a doer (a “subject”) was slipped under all that happened. It was out of himself that man projected his three “inner facts”—that in which he believed most firmly: the will, the spirit, the ego. He even took the concept of being from the concept of the ego; he posited “things” as being, in his image, in accordance with his concept of the ego as a cause. Is it any wonder that later he always found in things only that which he had put into them?"

"With the unknown, one is confronted with danger, discomfort, and care,—the first instinct is to abolish [wegzuschaffen] these painful states. First principle: any explanation is better than none. Since at bottom it is merely a matter of wishing to be rid of oppressive representations, one is not too particular about the means of getting rid of them: the first representation that explains the unknown as familiar feels so good that one “considers it true.” The proof of pleasure (“of strength”) as a criterion of truth. .— The causal instinct is thus conditional upon, and excited by, the feeling of fear. The “why?” shall, if at all possible, not give the cause for its own sake so much as for a kind of cause—a cause that is comforting, liberating, and relieving. That it is something already familiar, experienced, and inscribed in the memory, which is posited as a cause, that is the first consequence of this need. That which is new and strange and has not been experienced before, is excluded as a cause.— Thus one searches not only for some kind of explanation to serve as a cause, but for a selected and preferred kind of explanation—that which has most quickly and most frequently abolished the feeling of the strange, new, and hitherto unexperienced: the most habitual explanations.— Consequence: one kind of positing of causes predominates more and more, is concentrated into a system and finally emerges as dominant, that is, as simply precluding other causes and explanations.— The banker immediately thinks of “business,” the Christian of “sin,” and the girl of her love."

"The “explanation” of agreeable general feelings. They are produced by trust in God. They are produced by the consciousness of good deeds .. They are produced by faith, charity, and hope—the Christian virtues.— In truth, all these supposed explanations are resultant states and, as it were, translations of pleasurable or unpleasurable feelings into a false dialect: one is in a state of hope because the basic physiological feeling is once again strong and rich; one trusts in God because the feeling of fullness and strength gives a sense of rest.— Morality and religion belong altogether to the psychology of error: in every single case, cause and effect are confused; or truth is confused with the effects of believing something to be true; or a state of consciousness is confused with its causes."

"The error of free will.— Today we no longer have any pity for the concept of “free will”: we know only too well what it is—the foulest of all theologians’ artifices aimed at making mankind “responsible” in their sense, that is, dependent upon them ... Here I simply supply the psychology of all making-responsible.— Wherever responsibilities are sought, it is usually the instinct of wanting to judge and punish which is at work. Becoming has been deprived of its innocence when any being-such-and-such is traced back to will, to purposes, to acts of responsibility: the doctrine of the will has been invented essentially for the purpose of punishment, that is, because one wanted to impute guilt. The entire old psychology, the psychology of will, was conditioned by the fact that its originators, the priests at the head of ancient communities, wanted to create for themselves the right to punish—or wanted to create this right for God ... Men were considered “free” so that they might be judged and punished—so that they might become guilty: consequently, every act had to be considered as willed, and the origin of every act had to be considered as lying within the consciousness (—and thus the most fundamental counterfeit in psychologicis was made the principle of psychology itself ...). Today, as we have entered into the reverse movement and we immoralists are trying with all our strength to take the concept of guilt and the concept of punishment out of the world again, and to cleanse psychology, history, nature, and social institutions and sanctions of them, there is in our eyes no more radical opposition than that of the theologians, who continue with the concept of a “moral world-order” to infect the innocence of becoming by means of “punishment” and “guilt.” Christianity is a metaphysics of the hangman ..."

"Moral judgment has this in common with the religious one: that it believes in realities which are not real."

"Moral judgments, like religious ones, belong to a stage of ignorance at which the very concept of the real, and the distinction between what is real and imaginary, are still lacking."

"Weder Manu, noch Plato, noch Confucius, noch die jüdischen und christlichen Lehrer haben je an ihrem Recht zur Lüge gezweifelt."

"Alle Mittel, wodurch bisher die Menschheit moralisch gemacht werden sollte, waren von Grund aus unmoralisch."

"Plato … says … that there would be no Platonic philosophy at all if there were not such beautiful youths in Athens."

"Wenn man den christlichen Glauben aufgiebt, zieht man sich damit das Recht zur christlichen Moral unter den Füßen weg."

"Wenn thatsächlich die Engländer glauben, sie wüßten von sich aus, „intuitiv”, was gut und böse ist, wenn sie folglich vermeinen, das Christenthum als Garantie der Moral nicht mehr nöthig zu haben, so ist dies selbst bloß die Folge der Herrschaft des christlichen Werthurtheils und ein Ausdruck von der Stärke und Tiefe diesen Herrschaft: sodaß der Ursprung der englischen Moral vergessen worden ist, sodaß das Sehr-Bedingte ihres Rechts auf Dasein nicht mehr empfunden wird."

"In art, man enjoys himself as perfection."

"The other thing I do not like to hear is the notorious “and” …"

"How does one compromise oneself today? If one is consistent. If one proceeds in a straight line. If one is not ambiguous enough to permit five conflicting interpretations. If one is genuine."

"Plato goes further. He says with an innocence possible only for a Greek, not a “Christian,” that there would be no Platonic philosophy at all if there were not such beautiful youths in Athens: it is only their sight that transposes the philosopher’s soul into an erotic trance, leaving it no peace until it lowers the seed of all exalted things into such beautiful soil."

"“What is the task of all higher education?” To turn men into machines. “What are the means?” Man must learn to be bored. “How is that accomplished?” “By means of the concept of duty.”"

"Nothing is more distasteful to true philosophers than man when he beings to wish. If they see man only at his deeds, if they see this bravest, craftiest, and most enduring of animals, even inextricably entangled in disaster, how admirable he then appears to them. They even encourage him. But true philosophers despise the man who wishes, as also the desirable man, and all the desiderata and ideals of man in general … he finds only nonentity behind human ideals, or, not even nonentity but vileness, absurdity, sickness, cowardice, fatigue, … How is it that man, who as a reality is so estimable, ceases from deserving respect the moment he begins to desire. Must he pay for being so perfect as a reality? Must he make up for his deeds, for the tension of spirit and will which underlies all his deeds, by an eclipse of his power in matters of the imagination, and in absurdity. … That which justifies man is his reality. It will justify him to all eternity. How much more valuable is a real man than any other man who is merely the phantom desires, of dreams …than any kind of ideal man."

"Self-interest is worth as much as the person who has it."

"The single one, the “individual,” as hitherto understood by the people and the philosophers alike, is an error after all: he is nothing by himself, no atom, no “link in the chain,” nothing merely inherited from former times; he is the whole single line of humanity up to himself."

"The way that the “single one” or the “individual,” has been hitherto understood, by the people and the philosophers alike, is an error. He is not a thing by himself, not an atom, not a “link in the chain,” not a thing merely inherited from former times. He represents the whole single line of humanity up to himself."

"The anarchist, as the mouthpiece of the declining strata of society, demands with a fine indignation what is “right,” “justice,” and “equal rights,” … the “fine indignation” itself soothes him; it is a pleasure for all wretched devils to scold: it gives a slight but intoxicating sense of power. Even plaintiveness and complaining can give life a charm."

"Complaining is never any good: it stems from weakness. Whether one charges one’s misfortune to others or to oneself—the socialist does the former; the Christian, for example, the latter—really makes no difference. The common and, let us add, the unworthy thing is that it is supposed to be somebody’s fault that one is suffering; in short, that the sufferer prescribes the honey of revenge for himself against his suffering. The objects of this need for revenge, as a need for pleasure, are mere occasions: everywhere the sufferer finds occasions for satisfying his little revenge."

"When the anarchist, as the mouthpiece of the decaying strata of society, raises his voice in splendid indignation for “right,” “justice,” “equal rights,” he is only groaning under the burden of his ignorance, which cannot understand why he actually suffers, what his poverty consists of: the poverty of life. An instinct of causality is active in him. Someone must be responsible for him being so ill at ease. His splendid indignation alone relieves him somewhat. It is a pleasure for all poor devils to grumble. It gives them a little intoxicating sensation of power. The very act of complaining, the mere fact that one bewails one’s lot, may lend such a charm to life that on that account alone one is ready to endure it. There is a small dose of revenge in every lamentation. One casts one’s affections, and, under certain circumstances, even one’s baseness, in the teeth of those who are different, as if their condition were an injustice and iniquitous privilege."

"To bewail one’s lot is always despicable: it is always the outcome of weakness. Whether one ascribes one’s afflictions to others or to one’s self, it is all the same. The socialist does the former, the Christian, for instance, does the latter. That which is common to both attitudes, or rather that which is equally ignoble in them both, is the fact that somebody must be to blame if one suffers—in short, that the sufferer drugs himself with the honey of revenge to allay his anguish."

"Instinctively to choose what is harmful for oneself, to feel attracted by “disinterested” motives, that is virtually the formula of decadence. “Not to seek one’s own advantage”—that is merely the moral fig leaf for quite a different, namely, a physiological, state of affairs: “I no longer know how to find my own advantage.” Disintegration of the instincts!"

"Instead of saying naively, “I am no longer worth anything,” the moral lie in the mouth of the decadent says, “Nothing is worth anything, life is not worth anything.”"

"Finally, some advice for our dear pessimists and other decadents. It is not in our hands to prevent our birth; but we can correct this mistake …one must advance a step further in its logic and not only negate life with “will and representation,” as Schopenhauer did—one must first of all negate Schopenhauer."

"If one wants an end, one must also want the means: if one wants slaves, then one is a fool if one educates them to be masters."

"Philosophers are merely another kind of saint, and their whole craft is such that they admit only certain truths—namely, those for the sake of which their craft is accorded public sanction."

"The criminal type is the type of the strong human being under unfavorable circumstances: a strong human being made sick."

"Whoever must do secretly, with long suspense, caution, and cunning, what he can do best and would like most to do, becomes anemic; and because he always harvests only danger, persecution, and calamity from his instincts, his attitude to these instincts is reversed too"

"It is society, our tame, mediocre, emasculated society, in which a natural human being … necessarily degenerates into a criminal."

"Let us generalize the case of the criminal: let us think of men so constituted that for one reason or another, they lack public approval and know that they are not felt to be beneficent or useful—that chandala feeling that one is not considered equal, but an outcast, unworthy, contaminating. All men so constituted have a subterranean hue to their thoughts and actions; everything about them becomes paler than in those whose existence is touched by daylight. Yet almost all forms of existence which we consider distinguished today once lived in this half tomblike atmosphere: the scientific character, the artist, the genius, the free spirit, the actor, the merchant, the great discoverer. … All innovators of the spirit must for a time bear the pallid and fatal mark of the chandala on their foreheads—not because they are considered that way by others, but because they themselves feel the terrible chasm which separates them from everything that is customary or reputable. Almost every genius knows, as one stage of his development, the “Catilinarian existence”—a feeling of hatred, revenge, and rebellion against everything which already is, which no longer becomes ... Catiline—the form of pre-existence of every Caesar.—"

"In Athens, in the time of Cicero (who expresses his surprise about this), the men and youths were far superior in beauty to the women. But what work and exertion in the service of beauty had the male sex there imposed on itself for centuries!— For one should make no mistake about the method in this case: a breeding of feelings and thoughts alone is almost nothing (—this is the great misunderstanding underlying German education, which is wholly illusory): one must first persuade the body."

"Strict perseverance in significant and exquisite gestures together with the obligation to live only with people who do not “let themselves go”—that is quite enough for one to become significant and exquisite…"

"Supreme rule of conduct: before oneself too, one must not “let oneself go.”"

"It is decisive for the lot of a people and of humanity that culture should begin in the right place—not in the “soul” (as was the fateful superstition of the priests and half-priests): the right place is the body, the gesture, the diet, physiology; the rest follows from that ... Therefore the Greeks remain the first cultural event in history—they knew, they did, what was needed; and Christianity, which despised the body, has been the greatest misfortune of humanity so far."

"The beauty of a race or family, their grace and graciousness in all gestures, is won by work: like genius, it is the end result of the accumulated work of generations. One must have made great sacrifices to good taste… one must have preferred beauty to advantage, habit, opinion and inertia."

"It is decisive … for humanity that culture should begin in the right place—not in the “soul”: … the right place is the body, the gesture, the diet, physiology; the rest follows from that. Therefore the Greeks remain the first cultural event in history: the knew, they did, what was needed; and Christianity, which despised the body, has been the greatest misfortune to humanity so far."

"Plato is a coward before reality, consequently he flees into the ideal"

"[I praise] the unconditional will to not deceive oneself and to see reason in reality—not in “reason,” still less in “morality.”"

"I know no higher symbolism than this Greek symbolism of the Dionysian festivals. Here the most profound instinct of life, that directed toward the future of life, the eternity of life, is experienced religiously—and the way to life, procreation, as the holy way. It was Christianity, with its ressentiment against life at the bottom of its heart, which first made something unclean of sexuality: it threw filth on the origin, on the presupposition of our life."

"For the Greeks the sexual symbol was therefore the venerable symbol par excellence, the real profundity in the whole of ancient piety. Every single element in the act of procreation, of pregnancy, and of birth aroused the highest and most solemn feelings."

"All becoming and growing—all that guarantees a future—involves pain."

"Saying Yes to life even in its strangest and hardest problems, the will to life rejoicing over its own inexhaustibility even in the very sacrifice of its highest types—that is what I called Dionysian."

"It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book."

"The criminal type is the strong type under unfavorable conditions, a strong man rendered sickly. What he lacks is the jungle, a certain freer and more dangerous form of nature and existence where all that serves as arms and armor—in the strong man’s instinctive view—is his by right. His virtues society has prohibited; the liveliest impulses he has borne within him are quickly entangled with the crushing emotions of suspicion, fear and ignominy."

"Was kann allein unsre Lehre sein?—Daß niemand dem Menschen seine Eigenschaften giebt, weder Gott, noch die Gesellschaft, noch seine Eltern und Vorfahren, noch er selbst ... Niemand ist dafür verantwortlich, daß er überhaupt da ist, daß er so und so beschaffen ist, daß er unter diesen Umständen in dieser Umgebung ist. Die Fatalität seines Wesens ist nicht herauszulösen aus der Fatalität alles dessen, was war und sein wird ... Man ist notwendig, man ist ein Stück Verhängnis, man gehört zum Ganzen, man ist im Ganzen,—es gibt nichts, was unser Sein richten, messen, vergleichen, verurteilen könnte, denn das hieße, das Ganze richten, messen, vergleichen, verurteilen ... Aber es gibt nichts außer dem Ganzen! . . .—Damit erst ist die Unschuld des Werdens wieder hergestellt"

"I descended into the lowest depths, I searched to the bottom, I examined and pried into an old faith on which, for thousands of years, philosophers had built as upon a secure foundation. The old structures came tumbling down about me."

"Sittlichkeit ist nichts Anderes (also namentlich nicht mehr!), als Gehorsam gegen Sitten."

"Der freie Mensch ist unsittlich, weil er in Allem von sich und nicht von einem Herkommen abhängen will."

"In allen ursprünglichen Zuständen der Menschheit bedeutet „böse” so viel wie „individuell”, „frei”, „willkürlich”, „ungewohnt”, „unvorhergesehen”, „unberechenbar”."

"If an action is performed not because tradition commands it but for other motives ... even indeed for precisely the motives which once founded the tradition, it is called immoral."

"Wer ist der Sittlichste? Einmal Der, welcher das Gesetz am häufigsten erfüllt: also, gleich dem Brahmanen, das Bewusstsein desselben überallhin und in jeden kleinen Zeitteil trägt, sodass er fortwährend erfinderisch ist in Gelegenheiten, das Gesetz zu erfüllen. Sodann Der, der es auch in den schwersten Fällen erfüllt. Der Sittlichste ist Der, welcher am meisten der Sitte opfert: welches aber sind die größten Opfer? Nach der Beantwortung dieser Frage entfalten sich mehrere unterschiedliche Moralen; aber der wichtigste Unterschied bleibt doch jener, welcher die Moralität der häufigsten Erfüllung von der der schwersten Erfüllung trennt. Man täusche sich über das Motiv jener Moral nicht, welche die schwerste Erfüllung der Sitte als Zeichen der Sittlichkeit fordert! Die Selbstüberwindung wird nicht ihrer nützlichen Folgen halber, die sie für das Individuum hat, gefordert, sondern damit die Sitte, das Herkommen herrschend erscheine, trotz allem individuellen Gegengelüst und Vorteil: der Einzelne soll sich opfern,—so heischt es die Sittlichkeit der Sitte."

"The moralists who, following in the footsteps of Socrates, offer the individual a morality of self-control and temperance as a means to his own advantage, as his personal way to happiness, are the exceptions. ... They take a new path under the highest disapprobation of all advocates of morality of custom—they cut themselves off from the community, as immoral men, and are in the profoundest sense evil."

"Every individual action, every individual mode of thought arouses dread; it is impossible to compute what precisely the rarer, choicer, more original spirits in the whole course of history have had to suffer through being felt as evil and dangerous, indeed through feeling themselves to be so. Under the dominion of the morality of custom, originality of every kind has acquired a bad conscience."

"Popular morality and popular medicine. The morality which prevails in a community is constantly being worked at by everybody: most people produce example after example of the alleged relationship between cause and effect between guilt and punishment, confirm it as well founded and strengthen their faith ... All, however, are at one in the wholly crude, unscientific character of their activity ... both material and form are worthless, as are the material and form of all popular medicine. Popular medicine and popular morality belong together and ought not to be evaluated differently as they still are: both are the most dangerous pseudosciences."

"Men of application and goodwill, assist in this one work: to take the concept of punishment which has overrun the whole world and root it out! There exists no more noxious weed!"

"Among barbarous peoples there exists a species of customs whose purpose appears to be [to support the idea of] custom in general: minute and fundamentally superfluous stipulations ... which, however keep continually in the consciousness the constant proximity of custom, the perpetual compulsion to practice customs: so as the strengthen the mighty proposition with which civilization begins: any custom is better than no custom."

"Nothing has been purchased more dearly than that little bit of human reason and feeling of freedom that now constitutes our pride. It is this pride, however, which now makes it almost impossible for us to empathize with those tremendous eras of ‘morality of custom’ which precede ‘world history’ as the actual and decisive eras of history which determined the character of mankind: the eras in which suffering counted as virtue, cruelty counted as virtue, dissembling counted as virtue, revenge counted as virtue ... Do you think all this has altered and that mankind must therefore have changed its character?"

"Custom represents the experiences of men in earlier times, as to what they supposed to be useful and harmful—but the sense for custom (morality) applies, not to these experiences as such, but to the age, sanctity and indiscussability of the custom. And so this sense is a hindrance to the acquisition of new experiences and the correction of customs; that is to say, morality is a hindrance to the creation of new and better customs"

"Freedoers are at a disadvantage compared to freethinkers because people suffer more obviously from the consequences of deeds than from those of thoughts. If one considers, however, that both one and the other are in search of gratification, and that the in case of the freethinker the mere thinking thorough and enunciation of forbidden things provides this gratification, both are on an equal footing with regard to motive"

"Whoever has overthrown an existing law of custom has hitherto always first been accounted a bad man: but when, as did happen, the law could not afterwards be reinstantiated and this fact was accepted, the predicate gradually changed—history treats almost exclusively of these bad men who subsequently became good men!"

"All institutions which accord to a passion belief in its endurance and responsibility for its endurance, contrary to the nature of passion, have raised it to a new rank, and thereafter he who is assailed by such a passion no longer believes himself debased or endangered by it, as he formerly did, but enhanced in his own eyes and those of his peers. Think of institutions and customs which have created out of the fiery abandonment of the moment perpetual fidelity, out of the enjoyment of anger perpetual vengeance, ... out of a single and unpremeditated word perpetual obligation. This transformation has each time introduced a very great deal of hypocrisy and lying into the world, but each time too, and at this cost, it has introduced a new suprahuman concept which elevates mankind."

"Here is a morality which rests entirely on the drive to distinction—do not think too highly of it! For what kind of a drive is it, and what thought lies behind it? We want to make the sight of us painful to another and to awaken in him the feeling of envy and of his own impotence and degradation... This person has become humble and is now perfect in his humility—seek for those whom he has for long wished to torture with it! You will find them soon enough! ... The chastity of the nun: with what punitive eyes it looks into the faces of women who live otherwise! How much joy in revenge there is in those eyes! ...the morality of distinction is, in its ultimate foundation, pleasure in refined cruelty."

"During the prehistoric age of mankind, spirit was presumed to exist everywhere and was not held in honor as a privilege of man. Because, on the contrary, ... one saw in the spirit that which unites us with nature, not that which sunders us from it."

"To suffer for the sake of morality and then be told that this kind of suffering is founded on an error: this arouses indignation. For there is a unique consolation in affirming through one’s suffering a ‘profounder world of truth’ ... and one would much rather suffer and thereby feel oneself exalted above reality (through consciousness of having thus approached this ‘profounder world of truth’) than be without suffering but also without this feeling that one is exalted. It is thus pride, and the customary manner in which pride is gratified, which stands in the way of a new understanding of morality."

"Under the pressure of superstitious fear, ... one spoils one’s sense of reality and one’s pleasure in it, and in the end accords reality a value only insofar as it is capable of being a symbol."

"Wherever a man’s feelings are exalted, that imaginary world is involved in some way. It is a sad fact, but for the moment the man of science has to be suspicious of all higher feelings, so greatly are they nourished by delusion and nonsense. It is not that they are thus in themselves, or must always remain thus, but of all the gradual purifications awaiting mankind, the purification of the higher feelings will certainly be one of the most gradual."

"It is clear that moral feelings are transmitted in this way: children observe in adults inclinations for and aversions to certain actions and, as born apes, imitate these inclinations and aversions; in later life they find themselves full of these acquired and well-exercised affects and consider it only decent to try to account for and justify them. This ‘accounting,’ however, has nothing to do with either the origin or the degree of intensity of the feeling: all one is doing is complying with the rule that, as a rational being, one has to have reasons for one’s For and Against, and that they have to adducible and acceptable reasons."

"‘Trust your feelings!’—But feelings are nothing final or original; behind the feelings there stand judgments and evaluations. ... The inspiration born of feeling is the grandchild of a judgment—and often a false judgment! And in any event not a child of your own! To trust one’s feelings means to give more obedience to one’s grandfather and grandmother and their grandparents than to the gods which are in us: our reason and our experience."

"Primitive mankind devised a word. … They had touched on a problem, and by supposing they had solved it they had created a hindrance to its solution.—Now with every piece of knowledge one has to stumble over dead, petrified words."

"Men who enjoy moments of exaltation and ecstasy who, on account of the contrast other states present and because of the way they have squandered their nervous energy, are ordinarily in a wretched and miserable condition, regard these moments as their real ‘self’ and their wretchedness and misery as the effect of what is ‘outside the self’; and thus they harbor feelings of revengefulness towards their environment, their age, their entire world."

"The free spirit … counts the theory of the innocence of all opinions as being as well founded as the theory of the innocence of all actions"

"The Christian church … always could, and it can still go wherever it pleases and it always found, and always finds something … to which it can adapt itself and gradually impose upon it a Christian meaning. … One may admire this power of causing the most various elements to coalesce, but one must not forget the contemptible quality that adheres to this power: the astonishing crudeness and self-satisfiedness of the church’s intellect … which permitted it to accept any food and to digest opposites like pebbles."

"The [Christian] addition of Hell ... the novel teaching of eternal damnation ... was mightier than the idea of definitive death, which thereafter faded away. It was only science which reconquered (?) it, as it had to do when it at the same time rejected any other idea of death and of any life beyond it."

"A proof of truth is not the same thing as a proof of truthfulness."

"The passions become evil and malicious if they are regarded as evil and malicious."

"Christianity has succeeded in transforming Eros and Aphrodite—great powers capable of idealisation—into diabolical kobolds and phantoms."

"Is it not dreadful to make necessary and regularly recurring sensations into a source of inner misery, and in this way to want to make inner misery a necessary and regularly recurring phenomenon."

"Must everything that one has to combat, that one has to keep within bounds or on occasion banish totally from one’s mind, always have to be called evil! Is it not the way of common souls always to think an enemy must be evil!"

"[With] the sexual sensations ... one person, by doing what pleases him, gives pleasure to another person—such benevolent arrangements are not to be found so very often in nature! And to calumniate such an arrangement and to ruin it through associating it with a bad conscience!"

"Everyone now exclaims loudly against torment inflicted by one person on the body of another ... But we are still far from feeling so decisively and with such unanimity in regard to torments of the soul and how dreadful it is to inflict them. Christianity has made use of them on an unheard-of scale and continues to preach this species of torture"

"Misfortune and guilt—Christianity has placed these two things on a balance: so that, when misfortune consequent on guilt is great, even now the greatness of the guilt itself is consequently measured by it. ... The Greek tragedy, which speaks so much yet in so different a sense of misfortune and guilt, is a great liberator of the spirit in a way in which the ancients themselves could not feel. They were still so innocent as not to have established an ‘adequate relationship’ between guilt and misfortune. The guilt of their tragic heroes is, indeed, the little stone over which they stumble ... It was reserved for Christianity to say, “Here is a great misfortune and behind it must lie hidden a great, equally great, guilt, even though it may not be clearly visible!"

"In antiquity there still existed actual misfortune, pure innocent misfortune; only in Christendom did everything become punishment, well-deserved punishment."

"With every misfortune, [the Christian] feels himself morally reprehensible and cast out. Poor mankind!"

"The Greeks have a word for indignation at another’s unhappiness: this affect was inadmissible among Christian peoples and failed to develop, so they also lack a name for this more manly brother of pity."

"God created all things except for sin alone: is it any wonder if he is ill-disposed towards it? But man created sin—and is he to cast out this only child of his merely because it displeases God, the grandfather of sin! Is that humane? ... Heart and duty ought to speak firstly for the child and only secondarily for the honor of the grandfather!"

"Moralism ... is the euthanasia of Christianity."

"However advanced Europe might be in other respects, in religious matters it has not yet reached the freethinking naïveté of the ancient Brahmans."

"Unsere Wertschätzungen.—Alle Handlungen gehen auf Wertschätzungen zurück, alle Wertschätzungen sind entweder eigene oder angenommene,—letztere bei Weitem die meisten. Warum nehmen wir sie an? Aus Furcht,—das heißt: wir halten es für ratsamer, uns so zu stellen, als ob sie auch die unsrigen wären—und gewöhnen uns an diese Verstellung, sodass sie zuletzt unsere Natur ist. Eigene Wertschätzung: das will besagen, eine Sache in Bezug darauf messen, wie weit sie gerade uns und niemandem Anderen Lust oder Unlust macht,—etwas äußerst Seltenes!—Aber wenigstens muss doch unsre Wertschätzung des Anderen, in der das Motiv dafür liegt, dass wir uns in den meisten Fällen seiner Wertschätzung bedienen, von uns ausgehen, unsere eigene Bestimmung sein? Ja, aber als Kinder machen wir sie, und lernen selten wieder um; wir sind meist zeitlebens die Narren kindlicher angewöhnter Urteile, in der Art, wie wir über unsre Nächsten (deren Geist, Rang, Moralität, Vorbildlichkeit, Verwerflichkeit) urteilen und es nötig finden, vor ihren Wertschätzungen zu huldigen."

"All our so-called consciousness is a more or less fantastic commentary on an unknown, perhaps unknowable, but felt text."

"Etwas nicht wieder gut zu machen ist: die Vergeudung unserer Jugend, als unsre Erzieher jene wissbegierigen, heißen und durstigen Jahre nicht dazu verwandten, uns der Erkenntnis der Dinge entgegenzuführen, sondern der sogenannten “Klassischen Bildung”! Die Vergeudung unserer Jugend, als man uns ein dürftiges Wissen um Griechen und Römer und deren Sprachen ebenso ungeschickt, als quälerisch beibrachte und zuwider dem obersten Satze aller Bildung: dass man nur Dem, der Hunger darnach hat, eine Speise gebe! Als man uns Mathematik und Physik auf eine gewaltsame Weise aufzwang, anstatt uns erst in die Verzweiflung der Unwissenheit zu führen und unser kleines tägliches Leben, unsere Hantierungen und Alles, was sich zwischen Morgen und Abend im Hause, in der Werkstatt, am Himmel, in der Landschaft begibt, in Tausende von Problemen aufzulösen, von peinigenden, beschämenden, aufreizenden Problemen,—um unsrer Begierde dann zu zeigen, dass wir ein mathematisches und mechanisches Wissen zu allernächst nötig haben und uns dann das erste wissenschaftliche Entzücken an der absoluten Folgerichtigkeit dieses Wissens zu lehren! Hätte man uns auch nur die Ehrfurcht vor diesen Wissenschaften gelehrt, hätte man uns mit dem Ringen und Unterliegen und Wieder-Weiterkämpfen der Großen, von dem Martyrium, welches die Geschichte der strengen Wissenschaft ist, auch nur Ein Mal die Seele erzittern machen!"

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."

"It is not enough to prove something, one has also to seduce or elevate people to it. That is why the man of knowledge should learn how to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that it sounds like folly!"

"Wehe dem Denker, der nicht der Gärtner, sondern nur der Boden seiner Gewächse ist!"

"Mag wohl die Verwechselung in jenem Wahne des Bildungsphilisters daher rühren, dass er überall das gleichförmige Gepräge seiner selbst wiederfindet und nun aus diesem gleichförmigen Gepräge aller „Gebildeten” auf eine Stileinheit der deutschen Bildung, kurz auf eine Kultur schliesst."

"Eine unglückliche Verdrehung muss im Gehirne des gebildeten Philisters vor sich gegangen sein: er hält gerade das, was die Kultur verneint, für die Kultur."

"Nobody, however, is more disliked by [the Culture-Philistine] than the man who regards him as a Philistine, and tells him what he is—namely, the barrier in the way of all powerful men and creators, the labyrinth for all who doubt and go astray, the swamp for all the weak and the weary, the fetters of those who would run towards lofty goals, the poisonous mist that chokes all germinating hopes, the scorching sand to all those German thinkers who seek for, and thirst after, a new life. For the mind of Germany is seeking; and you hate it because it is seeking, and because it will not accept your word when you declare that you have found what it is seeking."

"In order to be able thus to misjudge, and thus to grant left-handed veneration to our classics, people must have ceased to know them. This, generally speaking, is precisely what has happened. For, otherwise, one ought to know that there is only one way of honoring them, and that is to continue seeking with the same spirit and with the same courage, and not to weary of the search. But to foist the doubtful title of “classics” upon them, and to “edify” oneself from time to time by reading their works, means to yield to those feeble and selfish emotions which all the paying public may purchase at concert-halls and theatres. Even the raising of monuments to their memory, and the christening of feasts and societies with their names—all these things are but so many ringing cash payments by means of which the Culture-Philistine discharges his indebtedness to them, so that in all other respects he may be rid of them, and, above all, not bound to follow in their wake and prosecute his search further. For henceforth inquiry is to cease: that is the Philistine watchword."

"[The Philistine] opposed the restless creative spirit that animates the artist, by means of a certain smug ease—the ease of self-conscious narrowness, tranquility, and self-sufficiency. His tapering finger pointed, without any affectation of modesty, to all the hidden and intimate incidents of his life, to the many touching and ingenuous joys which sprang into existence in the wretched depths of his uncultivated existence."

"These smug ones [The Philistines] now once and for all sought to escape from the yoke of these dubious classics and the command which they contained—to seek further and to find."

"[The Philistines] only devised the notion of an epigone-age in order to secure peace for themselves, and to be able to reject all the efforts of disturbing innovators summarily as the work of epigones. With the view of ensuring their own tranquility, these smug ones even appropriated history, and sought to transform all sciences that threatened to disturb their wretched ease into branches of history... No, in their desire to acquire an historical grasp of everything, stultification became the sole aim of these philosophical admirers of “nil admirari.” While professing to hate every form of fanaticism and intolerance, what they really hated, at bottom, was the dominating genius and the tyranny of the real claims of culture."

"In this way, a philosophy which veiled the Philistine confessions of its founder beneath neat twists and flourishes of language proceeded further to discover a formula for the canonization of the commonplace. It expatiated upon the rationalism of all reality, and thus ingratiated itself with the Culture-Philistine, who also loves neat twists and flourishes, and who, above all, considers himself real, and regards his reality as the standard of reason for the world. From this time forward he began to allow every one, and even himself, to reflect, to investigate, to aestheticise, and, more particularly, to make poetry, music, and even pictures—not to mention systems of philosophy; provided, of course, that ... no assault were made upon the “reasonable” and the “real”—that is to say, upon the Philistine."

"“I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity.” These words are from Goethe and they may stand as a sincere ceterum censeo at the beginning of our meditation on the value of history. For its intention is to show why instruction without invigoration, why knowledge not attended by action, why history as a costly superfluity and luxury, must, to use Goethe's word, be seriously hated by us—hated because we still lack even the things we need and the superfluous is the enemy of the necessary."

"We need history, certainly, but we need it for reasons different from those for which the idler in the garden of knowledge needs it, even though he may look nobly down on our rough and charmless needs and requirements. We need it, that is to say, for the sake of life and action, not so as to turn comfortably away from life and action, let alone for the purpose of extenuating the self seeking life and the base and cowardly action. We want to serve history only to the extent that history serves life: for it is possible to value the study of history to such a degree that life becomes stunted and degenerate."

"Ich wüsste nicht, was die classische Philologie in unserer Zeit für einen Sinn hätte, wenn nicht den, in ihr unzeitgemäss—das heisst gegen die Zeit und dadurch auf die Zeit und hoffentlich zu Gunsten einer kommenden Zeit—zu wirken."

"Im Grunde weiß jeder Mensch recht wohl, daß er nur einmal, als ein Unikum, auf der Welt ist und daß kein noch so seltsamer Zufall zum zweitenmal ein so wunderlich buntes Mancherlei zum Einerlei, wie er es ist, zusammenschütteln wird: er weiß es, aber verbirgt es wie ein böses Gewissen – weshalb? Aus Furcht vor dem Nachbar, welcher die Konvention fordert und sich selbst mit ihr verhüllt."

"Was ist es, was den einzelnen zwingt, den Nachbar zu fürchten, herdenmäßig zu denken und zu handeln und seiner selbst nicht froh zu sein? Schamhaftigkeit vielleicht bei einigen und seltnen. Bei den allermeisten ist es Bequemlichkeit, Trägheit, kurz jener Hang zur Faulheit, von dem der Reisende sprach."

"Die Menschen sind noch fauler als furchtsam und fürchten gerade am meisten die Beschwerden, welche ihnen eine unbedingte Ehrlichkeit und Nacktheit aufbürden würde. Die Künstler allein hassen dieses lässige Einhergehen in erborgten Manieren und übergehängten Meinungen und enthüllen das Geheimnis, das böse Gewissen von jedermann, den Satz, daß jeder Mensch ein einmaliges Wunder ist."

"Men are even lazier than they are timid, and fear most of all the inconveniences with which unconditional honesty and nakedness would burden them. Artists alone hate this sluggish promenading in borrowed fashions and appropriated opinions and they reveal everyone’s secret bad conscience, the law that every man is a unique miracle."

"When the great thinker despises mankind, he despises its laziness: for it is on account of their laziness that men seem like factory products."

"A man who would not belong in the mass needs only to cease being comfortable with himself."

"The man who does not wish to belong to the mass needs only to cease taking himself easily; let him follow his conscience, which calls to him: “Be your self! All you are now doing, thinking, desiring, is not you yourself.”"

"Es gibt kein öderes und widrigeres Geschöpf in der Natur als den Menschen, welcher seinem Genius ausgewichen ist und nun nach rechts und nach links, nach rückwärts und überallhin schielt. Man darf einen solchen Menschen zuletzt gar nicht mehr angreifen, denn er ist ganz Außenseite ohne Kern, ein anbrüchiges, gemaltes, aufgebauschtes Gewand."

"If it is true to say of the lazy that they kill time, then it is greatly to be feared that an era which sees its salvation in public opinion, this is to say private laziness, is a time that really will be killed: I mean that it will be struck out of the history of the true liberation of life. How reluctant later generations will be to have anything to do with the relics of an era ruled, not by living men, but by pseudo-men dominated by public opinion."

"Wir haben uns über unser Dasein vor uns selbst zu verantworten; folglich wollen wir auch die wirklichen Steuermänner dieses Daseins abgeben und nicht zulassen, daß unsre Existenz einer gedankenlosen Zufälligkeit gleiche."

"I will make an attempt to attain freedom, the youthful soul says to itself; and is it to be hindered in this by the fact that two nations happen to hate and fight one another, or that two continents are separated by an ocean, or that all around it a religion is taught with did not yet exist a couple of thousand years ago. All that is not you, it says to itself."

"Niemand kann dir die Brücke bauen, auf der gerade du über den Fluß des Lebens schreiten mußt, niemand außer dir allein."

"Es gibt in der Welt einen einzigen Weg, auf welchem niemand gehen kann, außer dir: wohin er führt? Frage nicht, gehe ihn."

"Wie finden wir uns selbst wieder? Wie kann sich der Mensch kennen? Er ist eine dunkle und verhüllte Sache; und wenn der Hase sieben Häute hat, so kann der Mensch sich sieben mal siebzig abziehn und wird noch nicht sagen können: »das bist du nun wirklich, das ist nicht mehr Schale«."

"Das ist das Geheimnis aller Bildung: sie verleiht nicht künstliche Gliedmaßen, wächserne Nasen, bebrillte Augen – vielmehr ist das, was diese Gaben zu geben vermöchte, nur das Afterbild der Erziehung. Sondern Befreiung ist sie, Wegräumung alles Unkrauts, Schuttwerks, Gewürms, das die zarten Keime der Pflanzen antasten will."

"Die gebildeten Stände und Staaten werden von einer großartig verächtlichen Geldwirtschaft fortgerissen. Niemals war die Welt mehr Welt, nie ärmer an Liebe und Güte."

"Where there have been powerful governments, societies, religions, public opinions, in short wherever there has been tyranny, there the solitary philosopher has been hated; for philosophy offers an asylum to a man into which no tyranny can force it way, the inward cave, the labyrinth of the heart."

"All that exists that can be denied deserves to be denied; and being truthful means: to believe in an existence that can in no way be denied and which is itself true and without falsehood."

"The objective of all human arrangements is through distracting one’s thoughts to cease to be aware of life."

"Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself."