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Their Usual Mistaken Premise Is That They Affirm Some Consensus Among People, At Least Among Tame Peoples, Concerning Certain Moral Principles, And Then Conclude That These Principles Must Be Unconditionally Binding Also For You And Me-or Conversely, They See That Among Different Peoples Moral Valuations Are Necessarily Different And Infer From This That No Morality Is Binding-both Of Which Are Equally Childish.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

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Their Usual Mistaken Premise

Friedrich Nietzsche

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Their Usual Mistaken Premise Is That They Affirm Some Consensus Among People, At Least Among Tame Peoples, Concerning Certain Moral Principles, And Then Conclude That These Principles Must Be Unconditionally Binding Also For You And Me-or Conversely, They See That Among Different Peoples Moral Valuations Are Necessarily Different And Infer From This That No Morality Is Binding-both Of Which Are Equally Childish.

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Moral Absolutism

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What Is The Greatest Thing Ye Can Experience? It Is The Hour Of Great Contempt. The Hour In Which Even Your Happiness Becometh Loathsome Unto You, And So Also Your Reason And Virtue.

My Formula For Greatness In A Human Being Is Amor Fati: That One Wants Nothing To Be Different, Not Forward, Not Backward, Not In All Eternity. Not Merely Bear What Is Necessary, Still Less Conceal It—all Idealism Is Mendaciousness In The Face Of What Is Necessary—but Love It

The Church Is Precisely That Against Which Jesus Preached -- And Against Which He Taught His Disciples To Fight.

Every Achievement, Every Step Forward In Knowledge, Is The Consequence Of Courage, Of Toughness Towards Oneself, Of Sincerity To Oneself

One Has Been A Poor Spectator Of Life If One Has Not Witnessed The Hand - That Kills From Mercy.

Do Not Talk About Giftedness, Inborn Talents! One Can Assume Great Men Of All Kinds Who Were Very Little Gifted. They Acquired Greatness, Became “geniuses” (as We Put It), Through Qualities The Lack Of Which No One Who Knew What They Were Would Boast Of: They All Possessed That Seriousness Of The Efficient Workman Which First Learns To Construct The Parts Properly Before It Ventures To Fashion A Great Whole; They Allowed Themselves Time For It, Because They Took More Pleasure In Making The Little, Secondary Things Well Than In The Effect Of A Dazzling Whole.

A Good Writer Possesses Not Only His Own Spirit But Also The Spirit Of His Friends.

People Who Live In An Age Of Corruption Are Witty And Slanderous; They Know That There Are Other Kinds Of Murder Than By Dagger Or Assault; They Also Know That Whatever Is Well Said Is Believed.

Pitch-black Winter Nights Live In My Bones.

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.

Mystical Explanations Are Thought To Be Deep; The Truth Is That They Are Not Even Shallow.

I Fly In Dreams, I Know It Is My Privilege, I Do Not Recall A Single Situation In Dreams When I Was Unable To Fly. To Execute Every Sort Of Curve And Angle With A Light Impulse, A Flying Mathematics - That Is So Distinct A Happiness That It Has Permanently Suffused My Basic Sense Of Happiness.

Morality Makes Stupid.- Custom Represents The Experiences Of Men Of Earlier Times As To What They Supposed Useful And Harmful - But The Sense For Custom (morality) Applies, Not To These Experiences As Such, But To The Age, The Sanctity, The Indiscussability Of The Custom. And So This Feeling Is A Hindrance To The Acquisition Of New Experiences And The Correction Of Customs: That Is To Say, Morality Is A Hindrance To The Development Of New And Better Customs: It Makes Stupid.

New Experiences

Good Prose Is Written Only Face To Face With Poetry.

He Who Possesseth Little Is So Much The Less Possessed. Blessed Be Moderate Poverty!

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

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.

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

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

Just As Soon As We Notice That Someone Has To Force Himself To Pay Attention When Dealing And Talking With Us, We Have A Valid Demonstration That He Does Not Love Us Or That He Does Not Love Us Anymore.

Truths Are Illlusions Which We Have Forgotten Are Illusions.

The Golden Fleece Of Self-sufficiency Guards Against Cudgel- Blows But Not Against Pin-pricks.

Astrology Presupposes That The Heavenly Bodies Are Regulated In Their Movements In Harmony With The Destiny Of Mortals: The Moral Man Presupposes That That Which Concerns Himself Most Nearly Must Also Be The Heart And Soul Of Things.

Enjoy Life. This Is Not A Dress Rehearsal.

Loneliness Is One Thing, Solitude Another.

It Is The Good War That Hallows Every Cause.

Whoever Has Character Also Has His Typical Experience, Which Returns Over And Over Again.

Systems Of Morals Are Only A Sign-language Of The Emotions.

When A Man Reaches His Maturity In Understanding And In Years, The Feeling Comes Over Him That His Father Was Wrong To Beget Him.

As Refined Fare Serves A Hungry Man As Well As And No Better Than Coarser Food, The More Pretentious Artist Will Not Dream Of Inviting The Hungry Man To His Meal.

Living In A Constant Chase After Gain Compels People To Expend Their Spirit To The Point Of Exhaustion.

Without Cruelty There Is No Festival: Thus The Longest And Most Ancient Part Of Human History Teaches And In Punishment There Is So Much That Is Festive!

Happiness: Being Able To Forget Or, To Express In A More Learned Fashion.

A Certain Type Of Person Strives To Become A Master Over All, And To Extend His Force, His Will To Power, And To Subdue All That Resists It. But He Encounters The Power Of Others, And Comes To An Arrangement, A Union, With Those That Are Like Him: Thus They Work Together To Serve The Will To Power. And The Process Goes On.

Working Together

Every Day I Count Wasted In Which There Has Been No Dancing.

In Certain Pious People I Have Found A Hatred Of Reason, And Have Been Favourably Disposed To Them For It: Their Bad Intellectual Conscience Was At Least Exposed By That!

One Who Is Always Deeply Involved In What He Is Doing Is Above All Embarrassment.

Your Highest Thought, However, Ye Shall Have It Commanded Unto You By Me - And It Is This: Man Is Something That Is To Be Surpassed.

Precisely This Is Godliness--that There Are Gods, But No God.

Only Great Pain Is, As The Teacher Of Great Suspicion, The Ultimate Liberator Of The Spirit...i Doubt Whether Such Pain Improves Us-but I Do Know It Deepens Us.

All That Philosophers Have Handled For Millennia Has Been Conceptual Mummies; Nothing Actual Has Ever Escaped From Their Hands Alive.

Christianity Is A Metaphysics Of The Hangman.

The Hour-hand Of Life.

The Will To Overcome An Emotion, Is Ultimately Only The Will Of Another, Or Of Several Other, Emotions.

Beyond Good And Evil

When A Man Is Ill His Very Goodness Is Sickly.

We Do Not By Any Means Think It Desirable That The Kingdom Of Righteousness And Peace Should Be Established On Earth (because Under Any Circumstances It Would Be The Kingdom Of The Profoundest Mediocrity And Chinaism); We Rejoice In All Men, Who Like Ourselves Love Danger, War And Adventure, Who Do Not Make Compromises, Nor Let Themselves Be Captured, Conciliated And Stunted; We Count Ourselves Among The Conquerors; We Ponder Over The Need Of A New Order Of Things, Even Of A New Slavery For Every Strengthening And Elevation Of The Type "man" Also Involves A New Form Of Slavery.

Is Man God's Biggest Blunder, Or Is Man's God?

Man Would Sooner Have The Void For His Purpose Than Be Void Of Purpose.

Someone Who Does Not Write Books, Who Thinks A Lot, And Who Lives In Unsatisfying Society Will Usually Be A Good Letter- Writer.

The 'kingdom Of God' Is Not Something One Waits For; It Has No Yesterday Or Tomorrow, It Does Not Come 'in A Thousand Years' It Is An Experience Within A Heart; It Is Everywhere, It Is Nowhere.

A Martyr's Disciples Suffer More Than The Martyr.

Weariness Is The Shortest Path To Equality And Fraternity-and Finally Liberty Is Bestowed By Sleep.

In Order To Acquire Intellect One Must Need It. One Loses It When It Is No Longer Necessary.

When One Thinks Profusely And Cleverly, Not Only His Face But His Body Too Takes On A Clever Appearance.

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.

But Thus I Counsel You, My Friends: Mistrust All In Whom The Impulse To Punish Is Powerful. They Are People Of A Low Sort And Stock; The Hangmen And The Bloodhound Look Out Of Their Faces. Mistrust All Who Talk Much Of Their Justice! Verily, Their Souls Lack More Than Honey. And When They Call Themselves The Good And The Just, Do Not Forget That They Would Be Pharisees, If Only They Had-power.

When Horror Is Associated With What Is Harmful, Evil Results, When Disgust Does, Badness.

This Mother Needs Happy, Reputable Children, And That One Needs Unhappy Ones: Otherwise She Cannot Show Her Kindness As A Mother.

The Pure Soul Is A Pure Lie.

We Hear Only Those Questions For Which We Are In A Position To Find Answers.

Asking Questions

No Victor Believes In Chance.

What Is Great In Man Is That He Is A Bridge And Not A Goal: What There Is To Love In Man Is That He Is A Going-over And A Going-under.

Do Not Paint A Picture Either Of God Or The Devil On Your Walls: This Will Ruin Both Your Walls And The Atmosphere.

It Is Thus Only This Personal Feeling Of Misery That We Get Rid Of By Acts Of Pity.

From Which Stars Have We Fallen To Meet Each Other Here?

Man Does Not Strive For Happiness; Only The Englishman Does That.

The Thought Is Merely A Sign, As The Word Is Merely A Sign For The Thought.

All Great Things Must First Wear Terrifying And Monstrous Masks, In Order To Inscribe Themselves On The Hearts Of Humanity.

Whoever Despises Himself Still Esteems The Despiser Within Himself.

When A Man Is In Love He Endures More Than At Other Times; He Submits To Everything.

Experience, As A Desire For Experience, Does Not Come Off. We Must Not Study Ourselves While Having An Experience.

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

It Is The Stillest Words That Bring The Storm.

The Noble Soul Reveres Itself

Man, A Hybrid Of Plant And Ghost.

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.

The Ordinary Man Is As Courageous And Invulnerable As A Hero When He Does Not Recognize Any Danger, When He Has No Eyes To See It.conversely, The Hero's Only Vulnerable Spot Is On His Back, And So Exactly Where He Has No Eyes.

There Is Nothing We Like To Communicate To Others As Much As The Seal Of Secrecy Together With What Lies Under It.

A Physician Who Treated Me As A Nervous Case For A While Said In The End "no! It Is Not A Matter Of Your Nerves; It Is I Who Am Nervous".

How Much Beer Is In German Intelligence?

When We Cannot Stand Certain People, We Try To Have Suspicions About Them.

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

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

Foolish Is My Happiness, And Foolish Things Will It Speak: It Is Still Too Young—so Have Patience With It!

The Truthful Man Ends Up Realizing That He Always Lies.

Necessity Is An Interpretation, Not A Fact.

When Gods Die, They Always Die Many Sorts Of Death.

Both Classically- And Romantically-minded Spirits-inasmuch As These Two Species Always Exist-occupy Themselves With A Vision Of The Future: But The Former Do So Out Of A Strength Of Their Age, The Latter Out Of Its Weakness.

Visions Of The Future

A Refined Soul Is Distressed To Know That Someone Owes It Thanks; A Crude Soul, To Know That It Owes Someone Thanks.

I Love Him Who Desireth Not Too Many Virtues. One Virtue Is More Of A Virtue Than Two, Because It Is More Of A Knot For One's Destiny To Cling To.

When Death Brings At Last The Desired Forgetfulness, It Abolishes Life And Being Together, And Sets The Seal On The Knowledge That "being" Is Merely A Continual "has Been," A Thing That Lives By Denying And Destroying And Contradicting Itself.

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

The View That Honesty Is Something, And Even A Virtue, Belongs, It Is True, To Those Private Opinions Which Are Forbidden In This Age Of Public Opinions.

Free Will Appears Unfettered, Deliberate; It Is Boundlessly Free, Wandering, The Spirit. But Fate Is A Necessity; Unless We Believe That World History Is A Dream-error, The Unspeakable Sorrows Of Mankind Fantasies, And That We Ourselves Are But The Toys Of Our Fantasies. Fate Is The Boundless Force Of Opposition Against Free Will. Free Will Without Fate Is Just As Unthinkable As Spirit Without Reality, Good Without Evil. Only Antithesis Creates The Quality.

There Is Not Enough Love And Goodness In The World To Permit Giving Any Of It Away To Imaginary Beings.

In Christianity Neither Morality Nor Religion Come Into Contact With Reality At Any Point.

Every Step Forward Is Made At The Cost Of Mental And Physical Pain To Someone.

There Are Expressions And Bulls-eyes Of The Spirit, There Are Epigrams, A Little Handful Of Words, In Which A Whole Culture, A Whole Society Is Suddenly Crystallized.

One Is Most Dishonest To One's God: He Is Not Allowed To Sin.

It Is Difficult To Live Among People Because Silence Is So Difficult.

A Belief, However Necessary It May Be For The Preservation Of A Species, Has Nothing To Do With Truth. The Falseness Of A Judgment Is Not For Us Necessarily An Objection To A Judgment. The Question Is To What Extent It Is Life-promoting, Life-preserving, Species Preserving, Perhaps Even Species Cultivating. To Recognize Untruth As A Condition Of Life--that Certainly Means Resisting Accustomed Value Feelings In A Dangerous Way; And A Philosophy That Risks This Would By That Token Alone Place Itself Beyond Good And Evil.

We Laugh At A Man Who, Stepping Out Of His Room At The Very Minute When The Sun Is Rising, Says, “it Is My Will That The Sun Shall Rise”; Or At Him Who, Unable To Stop A Wheel, Says, “i Wish It To Roll”; Or, Again, At Him Who, Thrown In A Wrestling Match, Says, “here I Lie, But Here I Wish To Lie.” But, Joking Apart, Do We Not Act Like One Of These Three Persons Whenever We Use The Expression “i Wish”?

Not Their Love Of Humanity, But The Impotence Of Their Love, Prevents The Christians Of Today - Burning Us.

The Bite Of Conscience, Like The Bite Of A Dog Into A Stone, Is A Stupidity.

But Are There Many Honest People Who Will Admit That It Is Pleasing To Give Pain?

Generally Speaking, The Greater A Woman's Beauty, The Greater Her Modesty.

Man, However, Is The Most Courageous Animal: Thereby Has He Overcome Every Animal. With Sound Of Triumph Has He Overcome Every Pain; Human Pain, However, Is The Sorest Pain.

The Strong Individual Loves The Earth So Much He Lusts For Recurrence. He Can Smile In The Face Of The Most Terrible Thought: Meaningless, Aimless Existence Recurring Eternally. The Second Characteristic Of Such A Man Is That He Has The Strength To Recognize - And To Live With The Recognition - That The World Is Valueless In Itself And That All Values Are Human Ones. He Creates Himself By Fashioning His Own Values; He Has The Pride To Live By The Values He Wills.

I Have Given A Name To My Pain, And Call It "dog".

For Let Us Not Underestimate The Christian: The Christian, False To The Point Of Innocence, Is Far Above The Ape-regarding Christians, A Well Known Theory Of Descent Becomes A Mere Compliment.

Our Sense Of The Tragic Waxes And Wanes With Our Sensuality.

'he Who Seeks May Easily Get Lost Himself. It Is A Crime To Go Apart And Be Alone.' Thus Speaks The Herd.

You May Have Enemies Whom You Hate, But Not Enemies Whom You Despise. You Must Be Proud Of Your Enemy: Then The Success Of Your Enemy Shall Be Your Success Too.

Rendering Oneself Unarmed When One Had Been The Best-armed, Out Of A Height Of Feeling-that Is The Means To Real Peace, Which Must Always Rest On A Peace Of Mind.

We Are Responsible To Ourselves For Our Own Existence; Consequently We Want To Be The True Helmsman Of This Existence And Refuse To Allow Our Existence To Resemble A Mindless Act Of Chance.

There Is Nothing For Which Men Ask To Be Paid Dearer Than For Humiliation.

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

I Awoke You From Your Sleep Because I Saw That You Were Having A Nightmare. And Now You Are Cross And Say To Me: "what Are We Supposed To Do Now? Everything Is Still Night!" You Ingrates! You Should Go To Sleep Again And Dream Better.

Every Great Love Brings With It The Cruel Idea Of Killing The Object Of Its Love So That It May Be Removed Once And For All From The Wicked Game Of Change: For Love Dreads Change Even More Than Annihilation.

How Much Reverence Has A Noble Man For His Enemies!--and Such Reverence Is A Bridge To Love.--for He Desires His Enemy For Himself, As His Mark Of Distinction; He Can Endure No Other Enemy Than One In Whom There Is Nothing To Despise And Very Much To Honor! In Contrast To This, Picture "the Enemy" As The Man Of Ressentiment Conceives Him--and Here Precisely Is His Deed, His Creation: He Has Conceived "the Evil Enemy," "the Evil One," And This In Fact Is His Basic Concept, From Which He Then Evolves, As An Afterthought And Pendant, A "good One"--himself!

"belief In The Truth Commences With The Doubting Of All Those "truths" We Once Believed."

At Every Step One Has To Wrestle For Truth; One Has To Surrender For It Almost Everything To Which The Heart, To Which Our Love, Our Trust In Life, Cling Otherwise. That Requires Greatness Of Soul: The Service Of Truth Is The Hardest Service. What Does It Mean, After All, To Have Integrity In Matters Of The Spirit? That One Is Severe Against One's Heart...that One Makes Of Every Yes And No A Matter Of Conscience.

In Large States Public Education Will Always Be Mediocre, For The Same Reason That In Large Kitchens The Cooking Is Usually Bad.

When The Gratitude That Many Owe To One Discards All Modesty, Then There Is Fame.

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

All I Need Is A Sheet Of Paper And Something To Write With, And Then I Can Turn The World Upside Down.

All Philosophers Make The Common Mistake Of Taking Contemporary Man As Their Starting Point And Of Trying, Through An Analysis Of Him, To[21] Reach A Conclusion. "man" Involuntarily Presents Himself To Them As An Aeterna Veritas As A Passive Element In Every Hurly-burly, As A Fixed Standard Of Things. Yet Everything Uttered By The Philosopher On The Subject Of Man Is, In The Last Resort, Nothing More Than A Piece Of Testimony Concerning Man During A Very Limited Period Of Time.

Go Through The Moral Demands...one By One And You Will Find That Man Could Not Live Up To Them; The Intention Is Not That He Should Become More Moral, But That He Should Feel As Sinful As Possible. If Man Had Failed To Find This Feeling Pleasant - Why Should He Have Engendered Such An Idea And Adhered To It For So Long?... Man Was By Every Means To Be Made Sinful And Thereby Become Excited, Animated, Enlivened In General. To Excite, Animate, Enliven At Any Price.

To Learn From Our Enemies Is The Best Pathway To Loving Them: For It Makes Us Grateful To Them.

If You Look Long Enough Into The Void, The Void Begins To Look Back Through You.

The People We Keep Standing In The Anteroom Of Our Favor Either Start Fermenting Or Turn Sour.

I Have Learned To Walk: Since Then I Have Run. I Have Learned To Fly: Since Then I Do Not Have To Be Pushed In Order To Move. Now I Am Nimble, Now I Fly, Now I See Myself Under Myself, Now A God Dances Within Me.

The Greatest Events-they Are Not Our Loudest But Our Stillest Hours.

Three Metamorphoses Of The Spirit I Relate To You: How The Spirit Becomes A Camel; And The Camel, A Lion; And The Lion, Finally, A Child.

What Does Your Conscience Say? — 'you Should Become The Person You Are'.

Then Is What You See Through This Window Onto The World So Lovely That You Have No Desire Whatsoever To Look Out Through Any Other Window, And That You Even Make An Attempt To Prevent Others From Doing So?

The Humanity Of Famous Intellectuals Lies In Being Wrong With Gracious Courtesy When Dealing With Those Who Are Not Famous.

One Can Also Be Undignified And Flattering Toward A Virtue.

It Is Not When Truth Is Dirty, But When It Is Shallow, That The Lover Of Knowledge Is Reluctant To Step Into Its Waters.

Thoughts Are The Shadows Of Our Feelings - Always Darker, Emptier And Simpler.

And If Your Friend Does Evil To You, Say To Him, ''i Forgive You For What You Did To Me, But How Can I Forgive You For What You Did To Yourself?

The Machine Is Impersonal, It Takes The Pride Away From A Piece Of Work, The Individual Merits And Defects That Go Along With Allwork That Is Not Done By A Machine--which Is To Say, Its Little Bit Of Humanity.

You Want To Make Him Interested In You? Then Pretend To Be Embarrassed In His Presence-

The Desire To Create Continually Is Vulgar And Betrays Jealousy, Envy, Ambition. If One Is Something One Really Does Not Need To Make Anything --and One Nonetheless Does Very Much. There Exists Above The ''productive'' Man A Yet Higher Species.

One Often Contradicts An Opinion When What Is Uncongenial Is Really The Tone In Which It Was Conveyed.

A Book Is Made Better By Good Readers And Clearer By Good Opponents.

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

Illusions Are Certainly Expensive Amusements; But The Destruction Of Illusions Is Still More Expensive, If Looked Upon As An Amusement, As It Undoubtedly Is By Some People.

The Relatives Of A Suicide Hold It Against Him That Out Of Consideration For Their Reputation He Did Not Remain Alive.

The Newspaper Reader Says: This Party Will Ruin Itself If It Makes Errors Like This. My Higher Politics Says: A Party Which Makes Errors Like This Is Already Finished -- It Is No Longer Secure In Its Instincts.

We Must Repay Goodness And Wickedness: But Why Exactly To The Person Who Has Done Us A Good Or A Wicked Turn?

One Must Give Value To Their Existence By Behaving As If Ones Very Existence Were A Work Of Art.

The Higher We Soar The Smaller We Appear To Those Who Cannot Fly.

You Say 'i' And You Are Proud Of This Word. But Greater Than This- Although You Will Not Believe In It - Is Your Body And Its Great Intelligence, Which Does Not Say 'i' But Performs 'i'.

Mankind Must Work Continually To Produce Individual Great Human Beings - This And Nothing Else Is The Task... For The Question Is This : How Can Your Life, The Individual Life, Retain The Highest Value, The Deepest Significance? Only By Living For The Good Of The Rarest And Most Valuable Specimens.

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

Whoever Has Looked Deeply Into The World Might Well Guess What Wisdom Lies In The Superficiality Of Men.

Love Brings To Light A Lover's Noble And Hidden Qualities-his Rare And Exceptional Traits: It Is Thus Liable To Be Deceptive Of His Normal Qualities.

We Should Conserve Evil Just As We Should Conserve The Forests. It Is True That By Thinning And Clearing The Forests The Earth Grew Warmer.

One Loves Ultimately One's Desires, Not The Thing Desired.

Beyond Good And Evil

Every Extension Of Knowledge Arises From Making The Conscious The Unconscious.

What Is New, However, Is Always Evil, Being That Which Wants To Conquer And Overthrow The Old Boundary Markers And The Old Pieties; And Only What Is Old Is Good. The Good Men Are In All Ages Those Who Dig The Old Thoughts, Digging Deep And Getting Them To Bear Fruit - The Farmers Of The Spirit. But Eventually All Land Is Depleted, And The Ploughshare Of Evil Must Come Again And Again.

And Those Who Were Seen Dancing Were Thought To Be Insane By Those Who Could Not Hear The Music.

There Was At All Events One Advantage In The Choice Of This Day To My Birth; My Birthday Throughout The Whole Of My Childhood Was A Day Of Public Rejoicing.

It Was Christianity Which First Painted The Devil On The Worlds Walls; It Was Christianity Which First Brought Sin Into The World. Belief In The Cure Which It Offered Has Now Been Shaken To It's Deepest Roots; But Belief In The Sickness Which It Taught And Propagated Continues To Exists.

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

He That Writeth In Blood And Proverbs Doth Not Want To Be Read, But Learnt By Heart.

But In The End One Also Has To Understand That The Needs That Religion Has Satisfied And Philosophy Is Now Supposed To Satisfy Are Not Immutable; They Can Be Weakened And Exterminated. Consider, For Example, That Christian Distress Of Mind That Comes From Sighing Over Ones Inner Depravity And Care For Ones Salvation - All Concepts Originating In Nothing But Errors Of Reason And Deserving, Not Satisfaction, But Obliteration.

The Perfect Woman Is A Higher Type Of Humanity Than The Perfect Man, And Also Something Much Rarer. The Natural History Of Animals Furnishes Grounds In Support Of This Theory.

We Criticize A Thinker More Acutely When He Advances A Proposition That Is Disagreeable To Us; And Yet It Would Be More Reasonableto Do So When His Proposition Is Agreeable To Us.

Without Passions You Have No Experience Whatever.

Not Doubt, Certainty Is What Drives One Insane.

Nothing Ever Succeeds Which Exuberant Spirits Have Not Helped To Produce.

I Have Not The Capability To Give You My Loyalty, Nor Do I Have The Vanity To Appear As If I Did.

This Is One Of The Stout-hearted Old Warriors: He Is Angry With Civilization Because He Supposes That Its Aim Is To Make All Goodthings--honors, Treasures, Beautiful Women--accessible Even To Cowards.

We Only Hear Questions That We Are Able To Answer.

He Who Does Not Lie Does Not Know What Truth Is.

We Find Nothing Easier Than Being Wise, Patient, Superior. We Drip With The Oil Of Forbearance And Sympathy, We Are Absurdly Just, We Forgive Everything. For That Very Reason We Ought To Discipline Ourselves A Little; For That Very Reason We Ought To Cultivate A Little Emotion, A Little Emotional Vice, From Time To Time. It May Be Hard For Us; And Among Ourselves We May Perhaps Laugh At The Appearance We Thus Present. But What Of That! We No Longer Have Any Other Mode Of Self-overcoming Available To Us: This Is Our Asceticism, Our Penance.

But Let Me Open Up My Heart To You Completely, My Friends: If There Were Gods, How Could I Bear Not Being A God! Hence, There Areno Gods. I Drew This Conclusion, To Be Sure--but Now It Draws Me.

At A Certain Place In Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, For Example, He Might Feel That He Is Floating Above The Earth In A Starry Dome, With The Dream Of Immortality In His Heart; All The Stars Seem To Glimmer Around Him, And The Earth Seems To Sink Ever Deeper Downwards.

There Are More Idols Than Realities In The World: That Is My "evil Eye" For This World, Which Is Also My "evil Ear".

One Will Rarely Err If Extreme Actions Be Ascribed To Vanity, Ordinary Actions To Habit, And Mean Actions To Fear.

There Exists Above The "productive" Man A Yet Higher Species.

The Author Must Keep His Mouth Shut When His Work Starts To Speak.

Every Master Has But One Disciple, And That One Becomes Unfaithful To Him, For He Too Is Destined For Master-ship.

This Verse Gets Me Through Each Day, What Doesn't Kill Us Makes Us Stronger! I Am Not Afraid Of Anything Because The Lord Is My Shepherd!

To Become Wise You Have To Want To Experience Certain Experiences, And So To Run Into Their Open Jaws. This Is Very Dangerous, Tobe Sure; Many A "wise Man" Has Been Eaten Up In Doing So.

Consider The Cattle, Grazing As They Pass You By. They Do Not Know What Is Meant By Yesterday Or Today, They Leap About, Eat, Rest, Digest, Leap About Again, And So From Morn Till Night And From Day To Day, Fettered To The Moment And Its Pleasure Or Displeasure, And Thus Neither Melancholy Nor Bored. [...] A Human Being May Well Ask An Animal: 'why Do You Not Speak To Me Of Your Happiness But Only Stand And Gaze At Me?' The Animal Would Like To Answer, And Say, 'the Reason Is I Always Forget What I Was Going To Say' - But Then He Forgot This Answer Too, And Stayed Silent.

Underneath The Reality In Which We Live And Have Our Being, Another Altogether Different Reality Lies Concealed.

When One Is Young, One Venerates And Despises Without That Art Of Nuances Which Constitutes The Best Gain Of Life.

Love Of One Is A Piece Of Barbarism: For It Is Practised At The Expense Of All Others. Love Of God Likewise.

If There Is Something To Pardon In Everything, There Is Also Something To Condemn.

I Do Not Give Alms; I Am Not Poor Enough For That.

Whoever Thinks Much And To Good Purpose Easily Forgets His Own Experiences, But Not The Thoughts Which These Experiences Have Called Forth.

Animals Know Nothing Of Themselves, And They Also Know Nothing Of The World.

There Is Such A Thing As A Hatred Of Lies And Dissimulation, Which Is The Outcome Of A Delicate Sense Of Humor; There Is Also The Selfsame Hatred But As The Result Of Cowardice, In So Far As Falsehood Is Forbidden By Divine Law. Too Cowardly To Lie.

But He Who Is Hated By The People, As The Wolf By The Dogs - Is The Free Spirit, The Enemy Of Fetters, The Non-adorer, The Dweller In The Woods.

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

Men Submit From Habit To Everything That Seeks Power.

The Doer Is Merely A Fiction Added To The Deed ? The Deed Is Everything.

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