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Digressions, Objections, Delight In Mockery, Carefree Mistrust Are Signs Of Health.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

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Digressions, Objections, Delight In

Friedrich Nietzsche

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Digressions, Objections, Delight In Mockery, Carefree Mistrust Are Signs Of Health.

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The Spiritualization Of Sensuality Is Called Love: It Is A Great Triumph Over Christianity.

We Are More Pained When One Of Our Friends Is Guilty Of Something Shameful Than When We Do It Ourselves.

Why Couldn't The World That Concerns Us- Be A Fiction? And If Somebody Asked, 'but To Be A Fiction There Surely Belongs An Author?'- Couldn't One Answer Simply: 'why? Doesn't This "belongs" Perhaps Belong To The Fiction, Too?'

It Is, Indeed, A Fact That, In The Midst Of Society And Sociability Every Evil Inclination Has To Place Itself Under Such Great Restraint, Don So Many Masks, Lay Itself So Often On The Procrustean Bed Of Virtue, That One Could Well Speak Of A Martyrdom Of The Evil Man. In Solitude All This Falls Away. He Who Is Evil Is At His Most Evil In Solitude: Which Is Where He Is At His Best - And Thus To The Eye Of Him Who Sees Everywhere Only A Spectacle Also At His Most Beautiful.

And This Do I Call Immaculate Perception Of All Things: To Want Nothing Else From Them, But To Be Allowed To Lie Before Them As A Mirror With A Hundred Facets.

One Can Promise Actions, But Not Feelings, For The Latter Are Involuntary. He Who Promises To Love Forever Or Hate Forever Or Be Forever Faithful To Someone Is Promising Something That Is Not In His Power.

Man... Cannot Learn To Forget, But Hangs On The Past: However Far Or Fast He Runs, That Chain Runs With Him.

One Must Not Let Oneself Be Misled: They Say 'judge Not!' But They Send To Hell Everything That Stands In Their Way.

You Implanted Your Highest Goal Into The Heart Of Those Passions: Then They Became Your Virtues And Joys.

There Are Few Pains So Grievous As To Have Seen, Divined, Or Experienced How An Exceptional Man Has Missed His Way And Deteriorated

Where The Good Begins.- Where The Poor Power Of The Eye Can No Longer See The Evil Impulse As Such Because It Has Become Too Subtle, Man Posits The Realm Of Goodness; And The Feeling That We Have Now Entered The Realm Of Goodness Excites All Those Impulses Which Had Been Threatened And Limited By The Evil Impulses, Like The Feeling Of Security, Of Comfort, Of Benevolence. Hence, The Duller The Eye, The More Extensive The Good. Hence The Eternal Cheerfulness Of The Common People And Of Children. Hence The Gloominess And Grief - Akin To A Bad Conscience - Of The Great Thinkers.

Egoism Is The Law Of Perspective Applied To Feelings: What Is Closest Appears Large And Weighty, And As One Moves Farther Away Size And Weight Decrease.

Art Is The Highest Task And The Proper Metaphysical Activity Of This Life.

For Such Is Man: A Theological Dogma Might Be Refuted To Him A Thousand Times - Provided However, That He Had Need Of It, He Would Again And Again Accept It As True. Belief Is Always Most Desired, Most Pressingly Needed Where There Is A Lack Of Will. Fanaticism Is The Sole "volitional Strength" To Which The Weak And Irresolute Can Be Excited, As A Sort Of Hypnotising Of The Entire Sensory-intellectual System.

Who Can Attain To Anything Great If He Does Not Feel In Himself The Force And Will To Inflict Great Pain?

I Have Not Come To Know Atheism As A Result Of Logical Reasoning And Still Less As An Event In My Life: In Me It Is A Matter Of Instinct.

Logical Reasoning

Is Wagner A Human Being At All? Is He Not Rather A Disease? He Contaminates Everything He Touches - He Has Made Music Sick.

It Is A Distinction To Have Many Virtues, But A Hard Lot.

All Human Life Is Sunk Deep In Untruth; The Individual Cannot Pull It Out Of This Well Without Growing Profoundly Annoyed With His Entire Past, Without Finding His Present Motives (like Honor) Senseless, And Without Opposing Scorn And Disdain To The Passions That Urge One On To The Future And To The Happiness In It.

There Are Slavish Souls Who Carry Their Appreciation For Favors Done Them So Far That They Strangle Themselves With The Rope Of Gratitude.

Every Habit Makes Our Hand More Witty And Our Wit Less Handy.

Science Is About Finding Ever Better Approximations Rather Than Pretending You Have Already Found Ultimate Truth. A Casual Stroll Through The Lunatic Asylum Shows That Faith Does Not Prove Anything.

Lunatic Asylums

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.

Among Twelve Apostles There Must Always Be One Who Is As Hard As Stone, So That The New Church May Be Built Upon Him.

I Want To Teach Men The Sense Of Their Existence, Which Is The Superman, The Lightning Out Of The Dark Cloud Man.

We Must Beware Of One Who Is In A Passion Against Us As Of One Who Has Once Sought Our Life; For The Fact That We Still Live Is Due To The Absence Of Power To Kill, - If Looks Could Kill, We Should Have Been Dead Long Ago.

But This Word Will I Say To My Enemies: What Is All Manslaughter In Comparison With What You Have Done To Me!

In Everything One Thing Is Impossible: Rationality.

The Man Who Meets With A Failure Attributes This Failure Rather To The Ill Will Of Another Than To Fate.

Women's Modesty Generally Increases With Their Beauty.

All That The World Most Needs Today, Is Combined In The Most Seductive Manner In His Art, — The Three Great Stimulants Of Exhausted People: Brutality, Artificiality And Innocence (idiocy).

A Noble Soul Is Not The One That Can Manage The Highest Flights But The One That Rises Very Little And Falls Very Little But Always Dwells In A Free, Resplendent Atmosphere And Altitude.

You Know These Things As Thoughts, But Your Thoughts Are Not Your Experiences, They Are An Echo And After-effect Of Your Experiences: As When Your Room Trembles Whe Na Carriage Goes Past. I However Am Sitting In The Carriage, And Often I Am The Carriage Itself. Ina Man Who Thinks Like This, The Dichotomy Between Thinking And Feeling, Intellect And Passion, Has Really Disappeared. He Feels His Thoughts. He Can Fall In Love With An Idea. An Idea Can Make Him Ill.

When You Stare Into An Abyss For A Long Time, The Abyss Also Stares Into You.

I Do Not Mean To Moralise But To Those Who Do, I Would Give This Advice : If You Mean Ultimately To Deprive The Best Things And States Of All All Honour And Worth Then Continue To Talk About Them As You Have Been Doing!

Give Me Today, For Once, The Worst Throw Of Your Dice, Destiny. Today I Transmute Everything Into Gold.

Woman Learns To Hate To The Extent To Which Her Charms Decrease.

Triumph Depends On A Roll Of Fate's Dice; The Ultimate Prize Is A Place In Heaven.

Mozart, The Last Chord Of A Centuries-old Great European Taste.

For Some Natures, Changing Their Opinions Is Just As Much A Requirement Of Cleanliness As Changing Their Clothes: For Others, However, It Is Merely A Requirement Of Vanity.

Life Is That Which Must Overcome Itself Again And Again

Again And Again

Where There Is The Tree Of Knowledge, There Is Always Paradise: So Say The Most Ancient And Most Modern Serpents.

Morality In Europe Today Is Herd-morality

You Never Exist Quite So Much As When You Are Not Thinking

"this - Is Now My Way - Where Is Yours"? Thus Did I Answer Those Who Asked Me "the Way". For The Way - It Does Not Exist!

Do Ask Yourself Why You, The Individual, Exist, And If You Can Get No Other Answer Try For Once To Justify The Meaning Of Your Existence As It Were A Posteriori By Setting Before Yourself An Aim, A Goal, A 'to This End', An Exalted And Noble 'to This End'.

Art Furnishes Us With Eyes And Hands And Above All The Good Conscience To Be Able To Turn Ourselves Into Such A Phenomenon.

Dreadful Experiences Raise The Question Whether He Who Experiences Them, Is Not Something Dreadful Also.

Beyond Good And Evil

It Is However A Disgrace To Pray! Not For All, But For You, And Me, And Whoever Has His A Conscience.

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.

Laughter Means: Taking A Mischievous Delight In Someone Else's Uneasiness, But With A Good Conscience.

There Is An Innocence In Admiration; It Is Found In Those To Whom It Has Never Yet Occurred That They, Too, Might Be Admired Some Day.

What We Know Oman Today Is Limited Precisely By The Extent To Which We Have Regarded Him As A Machine.

A Woman Does Not Want The Truth; What Is Truth To Women? From The Beginning, Nothing Has Been More Alien, Repugnant, And Hostile To Woman Than The Truth - Her Great Art Is The Lie, Her Highest Concern Is Mere Appearance And Beauty.

All Sciences Are Now Under The Obligation To Prepare The Ground For The Future Task Of The Philosopher, Which Is To Solve The Problem Of Value, To Determine The True Hierarchy Of Values.

You Must Await Your Thirst And Allow It To Become Complete: Otherwise You Will Never Discover Your Spring, Which Can Never Be Anyone Else's!

What Doesn't Kill You Make You Stronger.

Makes You Stronger

If You Know The Why, You Can Live Any How.

Memory Says, 'i Did That.' Pride Replies, 'i Could Not Have Done That.' Eventually, Memory Yields.

Lust And Self-mutilation Are Closely Related Impulses. There Are Also Self-mutilators Among Knowers: They Do Not Want To Be Creators Under Any Circumstances.

Stupidity In A Woman Is Unfeminine.

Be Your Self! All You Are Now Doing, Thinking, Desiring, Is Not You Yourself.

Who Has Not For The Sake Of His Reputation Sacrificed Himself?

I Love Him Whose Soul Is Deep Even In The Wounding

Spirit Is The Life That Itself Cuts Into Life: With Its Own Torment It Increases Its Own Knowledge. Did You Already Know That?

Man Demands Truth And Fulfills This Demand In Moral Intercourse With Other Men; This Is The Basis Of All Social Life. One Anticipates The Unpleasant Consequences Of Reciprocal Lying. From This There Arises The Duty Of Truth. We Permit Epic Poets To Lie Because We Expect No Detrimental Consequences In This Case. Thus The Lie Is Permitted Where It Is Considered Something Pleasant. Assuming That It Does No Harm, The Lie Is Beautiful And Charming.

What Do You Regard As Most Humane? To Spare Someone Shame.

Watch Them Clamber, These Swift Monkeys! They Clamber Over One Another And Thus Drag One Another Into The Mud And The Depth. They All Want To Get To The Throne: That Is Their Madness — As If Happiness Sat On The Throne. Often, Mud Sits On The Throne — And Often The Throne Also On Mud. Mad They All Appear To Me, Clambering Monkeys And Overardent. Foul Smells Their Idol, The Cold Monster: Foul, They Smell To Me Altogether, These Idolators.

My Time Has Not Yet Come Either; Some Are Born Posthumously.

In Laughter All That Is Evil Comes Together, But Is Pronounced Holy And Absolved By Its Own Bliss.

History Teaches That A Race Of People Is Best Preserved Where The Greater Number Hold One Common Spirit In Consequence Of The Similarity Of Their Accustomed And Indisputable Principles.

A Man Far Oftener Appears To Have A Decided Character From Persistently Following His Temperament Than From Persistently Following His Principles.

He Who Bears Injustice Alone Is Terrible To Behold.

The Grand Style Follows Suit With All Great Passion. It Disdains To Please, It Forgets To Persuade. It Commands. It Wills.

Talking Much About Oneself Can Also Be A Means To Conceal Oneself.

Beware In The Presence Of Cats: They Never Give, They Do Not Even Retaliate--they Only Reply, And Purr In Doing So.

Death. The Certain Prospect Of Death Could Sweeten Every Life With A Precious And Fragrant Drop Of Levity- And Now You Strange Apothecary Souls Have Turned It Into An Ill-tasting Drop Of Poison That Makes The Whole Of Life Repulsive.

Anyone Who Has Declared Someone Else To Be An Idiot, A Bad Apple, Is Annoyed When It Turns Out In The End That He Isn't.

Someone Said: "i Have Been Prejudiced Against Myself From My Earliest Childhood: Hence I Find Some Truth In All Blame And Some Stupidity In All Praise. I Generally Estimate Praise Too Poorly And Blame Too Highly.

To Learn To See- To Accustom The Eye To Calmness, To Patience, And To Allow Things To Come Up To It; To Defer Judgment, And To Acquire The Habit Of Approaching And Grasping An Individual Case From All Sides. This Is The First Preparatory Schooling Of Intellectuality. One Must Not Respond Immediately To A Stimulus; One Must Acquire A Command Of The Obstructing And Isolating Instincts.

'god Himself Cannot Exist Without Wise Men' - Luther Said, And Was Right. But 'god Can Exist Even Less Without Unwise Men' - That Good Old Luther Did Not Say.

To Those Human Beings Who Are Of Any Concern To Me, I Wish Suffering, Desolation, Sickness, Ill Treatment, Indignities, Profound Self-contempt, The Torture Of Self-mistrust, And The Wretchedness Of The Vanquished.

There Will Always Be Rocks In The Road Ahead Of Us. They Will Be Stumbling Blocks Or Stepping Stones; It All Depends On How You Use Them.

Words Of Wisdom

Well-meaning, Helpful, Good-natured Attitudes Of Mind Have Not Come To Be Honored On Account Of Their Usefulness, But Because They Are States Of Richer Souls That Are Capable Of Bestowing And Have Their Value In The Feeling Of The Plenitude Of Life.

Man Is More Ape Than Many Of The Apes.

"body Am I, And Soul" - So Saith The Child. And Why Should One Not Speak Like Children?

Each Word Of Heraclitus Expresses The Pride And The Majesty Of Truth, But Of Truth Grasped In Intuitions Rather Than Attained By The Rope Ladder Of Logic.

You Want To Be Paid As Well, You Virtuous! You Want Reward For Virtue, And Heaven For Earth, And Eternity For Your Today?

Is Man Merely A Mistake Of God's? Or God Merely A Mistake Of Man?

To Experience A Thing As Beautiful Means: To Experience It Necessarily Wrongly.

The Most Welcome Joke To Me Is The One That Takes The Place Of A Heavy, Not Altogether Innocuous Thought, At Once A Cautionary Hint Of The Finger And A Flash Of The Eye.

Man Is Something That Must Be Overcome

Whoever Wants To Set A Good Example Must Add A Grain Of Foolishness To His Virtue: Then Others Can Imitate And Yet At The Same Time Surpass The One They Imitate-which Human Beings Love To Do.

My Brother, Are War And Battle Evil? Necessary, However, Is The Evil; Necessary Are The Envy And The Distrust And The Back-biting Among The Virtues.

Tolerance Is A Proof Of Distrust In One's Own Ideals.

Who Can Attain To Anything Great If He Does Not Feel In Himself The Force And Will To Inflict Great Pain? The Ability To Suffer Is A Small Matter: In That Line, Weak Women And Even Slaves Often Attain Masterliness. But Not To Perish From Internal Distress And Doubt When One Inflicts Great Suffering And Hears The Cry Of It That Is Great, That Belongs To Greatness.

I Enquire Now As To The Genesis Of A Philologist And Assert The Following: 1. A Young Man Cannot Possibly Know What Greeks And Romans Are. 2. He Does Not Know Whether He Is Suited For Finding Out About Them.

Whoever Possesses The Will To Suffering Within Himself Has A Different Attitude Towards Cruelty: He Does Not Regard It As Inherently Harmful And Bad.

Vanity Is The Fear Of Appearing Original: It Is Thus A Lack Of Pride, But Not Necessarily A Lack Of Originality.

What Is More Harmful Than Any Vice? Practical Sympathy And Pity For All The Failures And All The Weak : Christianity.

After All, What Would Be "beautiful" If The Contradiction Had Not First Become Conscious Of Itself, If The Ugly Had Not First Said To Itself: "i Am Ugly"?.

One's Own Self Is Well Hidden From One's Own Self; Of All Mines Of Treasure, One's Own Is The Last To Be Dug Up.

Another Christian Concept, No Less Crazy, Has Passed Even More Deeply Into The Tissue Of Modernity: The Concept Of The 'equality Of Souls Before God.' This Concept Furnishes The Prototype Of All Theories Of Equal Rights.

A Man Should Not Play The Coward To His Deeds. He Should Not Repudiate Them Once He Has Performed Them. Pangs Of Conscience Are Indecent.

The Ability To Suffer Is A Small Matter - Weak Women And Even Slaves Can Acheive Virtuosity In That.

There Is Something Laughable About The Sight Of Authors Who Enjoy The Rustling Folds Of Long And Involved Sentences: They Are Trying To Cover Up Their Feet.

In The True Man There Is A Child Concealed Who Wants To Play.

Faced With A World Of "modern Ideas" Which Would Like To Banish Everyone Into A Corner And A "specialty," A Philosopher, If There Could Be A Philosopher These Days, Would Be Compelled To Establish The Greatness Of Mankind, The Idea Of "greatness," On The Basis Of His Own Particular Extensive Range And Multiplicity, His Own Totality In The Midst Of Diversity.

Hold A True Friend With Both Your Hands.

The Snake That Cannot Shed Its Skin Perishes.

Knowing Who You Are

The Visionary Lies To Himself, The Liar Only To Others.

Children From Humble Families Must Be Taught How To Command Just As Other Children Must Be Taught How To Obey.

Logic, Too, Also Rests On Assumptions That Do Not Correspond To Anything In The Real World, E.g., On The Assumption That There Areequal Things, That The Same Thing Is Identical At Different Points In Time: But This Science Arose As A Result Of The Opposite Belief (that Such Things Actually Exist In The Real World). And It Is The Same With Mathematics, Which Would Certainly Never Have Arisen If It Had Been Understood From The Beginning That There Is No Such Thing In Nature As A Perfectly Straight Line, A True Circle, And Absolute Measure.

It Is Difficult To Preach, This Morality Of Mediocrity! It May Never Admit What It Is And What It Wants! It Must Speak About Restraint And Worth And Duty And Love Of One's Neighbor.

Not With Wrath Do We Kill, But With Laughter. Come, Let Us Kill The Spirit Of Gravity!

Zarathustra Was The First To Consider The Fight Of Good And Evil The Very Wheel In The Machinery Of Things: The Transposition Of Morality Into The Metaphysical Realm, As A Force, Cause, And End In Itself, Is His Work. [...] Zarathustra Created This Most Calamitous Error, Morality; Consequently, He Must Also Be The First To Recognize It.

He Who Laughs Best Today, Will Also Laughs Last.

The Perfect Woman Perpetrates Literature As She Perpetrates A Small Sin: As An Experiment, In Passing, Glancing Around To See Whether Anybody Notices--and To Make Sure That Somebody Notices.

In Magnanimity There Is The Same Amount Of Egoism As In Revenge, But Egoism Of A Different Quality.

Life, And You, And I, And All Of Us Together Became For A While Interesing To Ourselves Once More.

The Spirit Of The Poet Craves Spectators... Even If Only Buffaloes.

The Sick Are The Greatest Danger For The Healthy; It Is Not From The Strongest That Harm Comes To The Strong, But From The Weakest.

The Good Displeases Us When We Are Not Up To It.

Some Mothers Need Happy Children; Others Need Unhappy Ones-otherwise They Cannot Prove Their Maternal Virtues.

Where One Despises, One Cannot Wage War.

Art Is The Proper Task Of Life.

What Verse Is For The Poet, Dialectical Thinking Is For The Philosopher. He Grasps For It In Order To Get Hold Of His Own Enchantment, In Order To Perpetuate It.

There Are No Moral Phenomena At All, But Only A Moral Interpretation Of Phenomena.

Life Without Music Is No Life At All.

Life Without Music

I Have Forgotten My Umbrella.

If Ye Would Go Up High, Then Use Your Own Legs! Do Not Get Yourselves Carried Aloft; Do Not Seat Yourselves On Other People's Backs And Heads!

I Love Him Who Is Ashamed When The Dice Fall In His Favour, And Who Then Asketh: "am I A Dishonest Player?" - For He Is Willing To Succumb.

[heraclitus Speaks As If] In Entrancement ... But [also] Truthfully.

The Courage Of All One Really Knows Comes But Late In Life.

The Broad Effects Which Can Be Obtained By Punishment In Man And Beast, Are The Increase Of Fear, The Sharpening Of The Sense Of Cunning, The Mastery Of The Desires; So It Is That Punishment Tames Man, But Does Not Make Him "better.".

Possessions Are Usually Diminished By Possession.

Behold! I Am Weary Of My Wisdom, Like The Bee That Has Gathered Too Much Honey; I Need Hands Outstretched To Take It From Me. I Wish To Spread It And Bestow It, Until The Wise Have Once More Become Joyous In Their Folly, And The Poor Happy In Their Riches.

In Some Remote Corner Of The Universe, Poured Out And Glittering Among Innumerable Solar Systems, There Once Was A Star On Which Clever Animals Invented Knowledge.

O My Brothers, Am I Then Cruel? But I Say: That Which Is Falling Should Also Be Pushed!

Today As Always, Men Fall Into Two Groups: Slaves And Free Men. Whoever Does Not Have Two-thirds Of His Day For Himself, Is A Slave, Whatever He May Be: A Statesman, A Businessman, An Official, Or A Scholar.

Books That Teach Us To Dance: There Are Writers Who, By Portraying The Impossible As Possible, And By Speaking Of Morality And Genius As If Both Were High-spirited Freedom, As If Man Were Rising Up On Tiptoe And Simply Had To Dance Out Of Inner Pleasure.

There Is No Better Soporific And Sedative Than Skepticism.

Questioning Beliefs

In Morality, Man Treats Himself Not As Individuum But As Dividuum.

On Every Parable You Ride To Every Truth.

There Is No More Dangerous Error Than That Of Mistaking The Consequence For The Cause.

Early In The Morning, At Break Of Day, In All The Freshness And Dawn Of One's Strength, To Read A Book -i Call That Vicious!

The Advocates Of A Criminal Are Seldom Artists Enough To Turn The Beautiful Terribleness Of The Deed To The Advantage Of The Doer.

A Living Being Seeks, Above All, To Discharge Its Strength. Life Is Will To Power.

When One Is Young, One Venerates And Despises Without That Art Of Nuances Which Constitutes The Best Gain Of Life, And It Is Only Fair That One Has To Pay Dearly For Having Assaulted Men And Things In This Manner With Yes And No. Everything Is Arranged So That The Worst Of Tastes, The Taste For The Unconditional, Should Be Cruelly Fooled And Abused Until A Man Learns To Put A Little Art Into His Feelings And Rather To Risk Trying Even What Is Artificial — As The Real Artists Of Life Do.

Phlegmatic Natures Can Be Inspired To Enthusiasm Only By Being Made Into Fanatics.

If We Possess A Why Of Life We Can Put Up With Almost Any How.

In War Personal Revenge Maintains Its Silence.

How Can A Man Know Himself? He Is A Thing Dark And Veiled; And If The Hare Has Seven Skins, Man Can Slough Off Seventy Times Seven And Still Not Be Able To Say: "this Is Really You, This Is No Longer Outer Shell.

The Greatest Giver Of Alms Is Cowardice.

It Was Christianity, With Its Heartfelt Resentment Against Life, That First Made Something Unclean Of Sexuality: It Threw Filth On The Origin, On The Essential Fact Of Our Life.

But This People Has Deliberately Made Itself Stupid, For Nearly A Millennium: Nowhere Have The Two Great European Narcotics, Alcohol And Christianity, Been Abused More Dissolutely.

The State Is The Coldest Of All Cold Monsters.

We Must Remain As Close To The Flowers, The Grass, And The Butterflies As The Child Is Who Is Not Yet So Much Taller Than They Are. We Adults, On The Other Hand, Have Outgrown Them And Have To Lower Ourselves To Stoop Down To Them. It Seems To Me That The Grass Hates Us When We Confess Our Love For It. Whoever Would Partake Of All Good Things Must Understand How To Be Small At Times.

You Say It Is The Good Cause That Hallows Even War? I Say Unto You: It Is The Good War That Hallows Any Cause.

A Sedentary Life Is The Real Sin Against The Holy Spirit. Only Those Thoughts That Come By Walking Have Any Value.

Sometimes In Conversation The Sound Of Our Own Voice Distracts Us And Misleads Us Into Making Assertions That In No Way Express Our True Opinions.

The Sick Woman Especially: No One Surpasses Her In Refinements For Ruling, Oppressing, Tyrannising.

I Love Something: And Scarcely Do I Love It Completely When The Tyrant In Me Says: "i Want That In Sacrifice." This Cruelty Is In My Entrails. Behold! I Am Evil.

What Is Genius?- To Aspire To A Lofty Aim And To Will The Means To That Aim.

Perhaps No Philosopher Is More Correct Than The Cynic. The Happiness Of The Animal, That Thorough Cynic, Is The Living Proof Of Cynicism.

At One Time Or Another, Almost Every Politician Needs An Honest Man So Badly That, Like A Ravenous Wolf, He Breaks Into A Sheep-fold: Not To Devour The Ram He Has Stolen, However, But Rather To Conceal Himself Behind Its Wooly Back.

A Thinker Sees His Own Actions As Experiments And Questions--as Attempts To Find Out Something. Success And Failure Are For Him Answers Above All.

That Grand Drama In A Hundred Acts, Which Is Reserved For The Next Two Centuries Of Europe-the Most Terrible, Most Questionable And Perhaps Also The Most Hopeful Of All Dramas.

No One Is Such A Liar As The Indignant Man.

Lift Up Your Hearts, My Brothers, High, Higher! And Don't Forget About Your Legs Either! Lift Up Your Legs As Well, You Good Dancers, And Better Yet--stand Also On Your Heads!

His (the Theologian) Basic Instinct Of Self Preservation Forbids Him To Respect Reality At Any Point Or Even To Let It Get A Word In.

To Demand Of Strength That It Should Not Express Itself As Strength, That It Should Not Be A Desire To Overcome, A Desire To Throw Down, A Desire To Become Master, A Thirst For Enemies And Resistances And Triumphs, Is Just As Absurd As To Demand Of Weakness That It Should Express Itself As Strength.

Full Is The Earth Of The Superfluous; Marred Is Life By The Many-too-many. May They Be Decoyed Out Of This Life By The "life Eternal"!

Life Is An Instinct For Growth, For Survival, For The Accumulation Of Forces, For Power.

History Belongs Above All To The Man...who Needs Models, Teachers, Comforters And Cannot Find Them Among His Contemporaries.

Everything Which Distinguishes Man From The Animals Depends Upon This Ability To Volatilize Perceptual Metaphors In A Schema, And Thus To Dissolve An Image Into A Concept.

Profundity Of Thought Belongs To Youth, Clarity Of Thought To Old Age.

When Good Friends Praise A Gifted Person He Often Appears To Be Delighted With Them Out Of Politeness And Goodwill, But In Reality He Feels Indifferent.

No Journey Is Too Great, When One Finds What One Seeks.

Coming To America

Man Is The Cruelest Animal. At Tragedies, Bullfights, And Crucifixions He Has So Far Felt Best On Earth; And When He Invented Hell For Himself, Behold, That Was His Very Heaven.

If You Wish To Understand A Philosopher, Do Not Ask What He Says, But Find Out What He Wants

...if I Continued To Harbour Any Hope For Music It Lay In The Expectation That A Musician Might Come Who Was Sufficiently Bold, Subtle, Malicious, Southerly, Superhealthy To Confront That Music And In An Immortal Fashion Take Revenge On It.

So Far There Has Been No Philosopher In Whose Hands Philosophy Has Not Grown Into An Apology For Knowledge; On This Point, At Least, Every One Is An Optimist, That The Greatest Usefulness Must Be Ascribed To Knowledge. They Are All Tyrannized Over By Logic, And This Is Optimism In Its Essence.

Some Are Made Modest By Great Praise, Others Insolent.

The Spiritual Activity Of Millennia Is Deposited In Language.

The Text Has Disappeared Under The Interpretation.

Never To Read Another Book That Was Born And Baptized (with Ink) At The Same Time.

The Discipline Of Suffering, Of Great Suffering- Do You Not Know That Only This Discipline Has Created All Enhancements Of Man So Far? That Tension Of The Soul In Unhappiness Which Cultivates Its Strength, Its Shudders Face To Face With Great Ruin, Its Inventiveness And Courage In Enduring, Preserving, Interpreting, And Exploiting Suffering, And Whatever Has Been Granted To It Of Profundity, Secret, Mask, Spirit, Cunning, Greatness- Was It Not Granted To It Through Suffering, Through The Discipline Of Great Suffering?

Only Idiots Fail To Contradict Themselves Three Times A Day.

In Russia There Is An Emigration Of Intelligence: émigrés Cross The Frontier In Order To Read And To Write Good Books. But In Doing So They Contribute To Making Their Fatherland, Abandoned By Spirit, Into The Gaping Jaws Of Asia That Would Like To Swallow Our Little Europe.

Whoever Turns Away From Us Might Not Offend Us In Doing So Perhaps, But He Certainly Offends Our Followers.

One Should Not Go Into Churches If One Wants To Breathe Pure Air.

All Truth Is Crooked, Time Itself Is A Circle

I Love Him Who Chasteneth His God, Because He Loveth His God: For He Must Succumb Through The Wrath Of His God.

One Never Dives Into The Water To Save A Drowning Man More Eagerly Than When There Are Others Present Who Dare Not Take The Risk.

Whoever Writes In Blood And Aphorisms Wants Not To Be Learned But To Be Learned By Heart.

In Constructing Concepts, We Overlook The Fact That No Two Things Are The Same. There Is No Such Thing As The Concept Of A Leaf, Only Billions And Billions Of Leaves.

Let Your Love To Life Be Love To Your Highest Hope; And Let Your Highest Hope Be The Highest Thought Of Life!

Thoughts On Life

I Climb Upon The Highest Mountains, Laughing At All Tragedies - Whether Real Or Imaginary.

Everything Matters. Nothing's Important.

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