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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.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

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There Is Something Laughable

Friedrich Nietzsche

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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.

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We Cannot Even Reproduce Our Thoughts Entirely In Words.

There They Laugh: They Do Not Understand Me; I Am Not The Mouth For These Ears.

And If You Are Not A Bird, Then Beware Of Coming To Rest Above An Abyss.

Youth Is An Unpleasant Period; For Then It Is Not Possible Or Not Prudent To Be Productive In Any Sense Whatsoever.

Against The Censurers Of Brevity. - Something Said Briefly Can Be The Fruit Of Much Long Thought: But The Reader Who Is A Novice In This Field, And Has As Yet Reflected On It Not At All, Sees In Everything Said Briefly Something Embryonic, Not Without Censuring The Author For Having Served Him Up Such Immature And Unripened Fare.

Whenever The Truth Is Uncovered, The Artist Will Always Cling With Rapt Gaze To What Still Remains Covering Even After Such Uncovering; But The Theoretical Man Enjoys And Finds Satisfaction In The Discarded Covering And Finds The Highest Object Of His Pleasure In The Process Of An Ever Happy Uncovering That Succeeds Through His Own Efforts.

That Every Will Must Consider Every Other Will Its Equal Would Be A Principle Hostile To Life, An Agent Of The Dissolution And Destruction Of Man, An Attempt To Assassinate The Future Of Man, A Sign Of Weariness, A Secret Path To Nothingness.

The Christian Church Has Left Nothing Untouched By Its Depravity; It Has Turned Every Value Into Worthlessness, And Every Truth Into A Lie

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

Beyond Good And Evil

Those Who Are Failures From The Start, Downtrodden, Crushed -- It Is They, The Weakest, Who Must Undermine Life Among Men, Who Call Into Question And Poison Most Dangerously Our Trust In Life, In Man, And In Ourselves.

Have You Heard Of That Madman Who Lit A Lantern In The Bright Morning Hours, Ran To The Market Place, And Cried Incessantly, I Seek God! I Seek God! As Many Of Those Who Do Not Believe In God Were Standing Around Just Then, He Provoked Much Laughter... Whither Is God, He Cried. I Shall Tell You. We Have Killed Him - You And I. All Of Us Are Murderers.... God Is Dead. God Remains Dead. And We Have Killed Him.

Exhaustion Is The Shortest Way To Equality And Fraternity.

Assuming That We Have Trained Our Imagination To Denounce The Past, We Will Not Suffer Much From Unfulfilled Wishes.

Look Not Into The Sun! Even The Moon Is Too Bright For Your Nocturnal Eyes!

We Become Aware, However, That All Customs, Even The Hardest, Grow Pleasanter And Milder With Time, And That The Severest Way Of Life May Become A Habit And Therefore A Pleasure.

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.

This World Is The Will To Power And Nothing Besides!

Since Copernicus, Man Seems To Have Got Himself On An Inclined Plane-now He Is Slipping Faster And Faster Away From The Center Into-what? Into Nothingness? Into A 'penetrating Sense Of His Nothingness?' ... All Science, Natural As Well As Unnatural-which Is What I Call The Self-critique Of Knowledge-has At Present The Object Of Dissuading Man From His Former Respect For Himself, As If This Had Been But A Piece Of Bizarre Conceit.

Ah, There Are So Many Things Betwixt Heaven And Earth Of Which Only The Poets Have Dreamed!

Heaven And Earth

It Is Terrible To Die Of Thirst In The Ocean. Do You Have To Salt Your Truth So Heavily That It Does Not Even-quench Thirst Any More?

An Educator Never Says What He Himself Thinks, But Only That Which He Thinks It Is Good For Those Whom He Is Educating To Hear.

Ye Shall Only Have Foes To Be Hated; But Not Foes To Be Despised: Ye Must Be Proud Of Your Foes.

What, If Some Day Or Night A Demon Were To Steal After You Into Your Loneliest Loneliness And Say To You: 'this Life As You Now Live It And Have Lived It, You Will Have To Live Once More And Innumerable Times More' ... Would You Not Throw Yourself Down And Gnash Your Teeth And Curse The Demon Who Spoke Thus? Or Have You Once Experienced A Tremendous Moment When You Would Have Answered Him: 'you Are A God And Never Have I Heard Anything More Divine.

Does Wisdom Perhaps Appear On The Earth As A Raven Which Is Inspired By The Smell Of Carrion?

Possessions Are Usually Diminished By Possession.

However Closely People Are Attached To One Another, Their Mutual Horizon Nonetheless Includes All Four Compass Directions, And Nowand Again They Notice It.

One Begins To Mistrust Very Clever People When They Become Embarrassed.

At Times One Remains Faithful To A Cause Only Because Its Opponents Do Not Cease To Be Insipid.

In The Consciousness Of The Truth He Has Perceived, Man Now Sees Everywhere Only The Awfulness Or The Absurdity Of Existence And Loathing Seizes Him.

The Golden Age, When Rambunctious Spirits Were Regarded As The Source Of Evil.

Once The Decision Has Been Made, Close Your Ear Even To The Best Counter Argument: Sign Of A Strong Character. Thus An Occasional Will To Stupidity.

One Is Healthy When One Can Laugh At The Earnestness And Zeal With Which One Has Been Hypnotized By Any Single Detail Of One's Life.

To Predict The Behavior Of Ordinary People In Advance, You Only Have To Assume That They Will Always Try To Escape A Disagreeable Situation With The Smallest Possible Expenditure Of Intelligence.

Are You Visiting Women? Do Not Forget Your Whip

When One Rows It Is Not The Rowing Which Moves The Ship: Rowing Is Only A Magical Ceremony By Means Of Which One Compels A Demon To Move The Ship.

Man Is More Sensitive To The Contempt That Others Feel Towards Him Than To The Contempt That He Feels Towards Himself.

Compassion For The Friend Should Conceal Itself Under A Hard Shell.

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 Are No Beautiful Surfaces Without A Terrible Depth.

Those You Cannot Teach To Fly, Teach To Fall Faster.

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.

It Is Possible That The Production Of Genius Is Reserved To A Limited Period Of Mankind's History.

Many Are Obstinate With Regard To The Pathway Once They Have Set Upon It, Few With Regard To The Goal.

Antithesis Is The Narrow Gateway Through Which Error Most Prefers To Worm Its Way Towards Truth.

A Book Calls For Pen, Ink, And A Writing Desk; Today The Rule Is That Pen, Ink, And A Writing Desk Call For A Book.

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.

What Is Good? All That Heightens The Feeling Of Power, The Will To Power, Power Itself In Man.

With Deep Men, As With Deep Wells, It Takes A Long Time For Anything That Falls Into Them To Hit Bottom. Onlookers, Who Almost Never Wait Long Enough, Readily Suppose That Such Men Are Callous And Unresponsive--or Even Boring.

It's Not The Intensity Of The Man, But The Duration Of His Intensity That Makes The Man Great.

The Christian Church Is An Encyclopedia Of Prehistoric Cults.

Mediocrity Is The Most Effective Mask A Superior Spirit Can Wear, Because To The Great Majority, Which Is To Say, To The Mediocre,it Will Not Suggest A Disguise:--and Yet It Is Precisely For Their Sake That He Puts It On--so As Not To Arouse Them, And, Indeed, Not Infrequently To Avoid This Out Of Pity And Benevolence.

One Does Not Know - Cannot Know - The Best That Is In One.

Concerning Great Things One Should Either Be Silent Or Speak Loftily.

Was Aus Liebe Getan Wird, Geschieht Immer Jenseits Von Gut Und Böse. (what Is Done Out Of Love Always Takes Place Beyond Good And Evil.)

Every Attainment, Every Step Forward In Knowledge, Follows From Courage, From Hardness Against Oneself, From Cleanliness In Relation To Oneself.

No One Is Such A Liar As The Indignant Man.

What Is The Seal Of Liberation? Not To Be Ashamed In Front Of Oneself.

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.

Moral Sensibilities Are Nowadays At Such Cross-purposes That To One Man A Morality Is Proved By Its Utility, While To Another Its Utility Refutes It.

There Is Always Some Madness In Love.

The Most Spiritual Human Beings, Assuming They Are The Most Courageous, Also Experience By Far The Most Painful Tragedies: But It Is Precisely For This Reason That They Honor Life, Because It Brings Against Them Its Most Formidable Weapons.

You Must Climb Above Yourself-up And Beyond, Until You Have Even Your Stars Under You.

Human Life Is Inexplicable, And Still Without Meaning: A Fool May Decide Its Fate.

Modern Science Has As Its Object As Little Pain As Possible, As Long A Life As Possible - Hence A Sort Of Eternal Blessedness, But Of A Very Limited Kind In Comparison With The Promises Of Religion.

Men Seldom Persevere In A Vocation Unless They Believe Or Can Convince Themselves That It Is Fundamentally More Important Than Anyother Calling. Women Are The Same With Their Lovers.

The Most Spiritual Men, As The Strongest, Find Their Happiness Where Others Would Find Their Destruction: In The Labyrinth, In Hardness Against Themselves And Others, In Experiments. Their Joy Is Self-conquest: Asceticism Becomes In Them Nature, Need, And Instinct. Difficult Tasks Are A Privilege To Them; To Play With Burdens That Crush Others, A Recreation. Knowledge-a Form Of Asceticism. They Are The Most Venerable Kind Of Man: That Does Not Preclude Their Being The Most Cheerful And The Kindliest.

I Am Affected, Not Because You Have Deceived Me, But Because I Can No Longer Believe In You.

Creation Is The Great Redemption From Suffering And All Life's Growing Light. But The Creator Must Be Suffering If Needed And Accept Much Change.

I Shall Repeat A Hundred Times; We Really Ought To Free Ourselves From The Seduction Of Words!

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

Without The Errors Involved In The Assumptions Of Ethics, Man Would Have Remained An Animal. Thus Has He Taken Himself As Something Higher And Imposed Rigid Laws Upon Himself.

One Must Renounce The Bad Taste Of Wishing To Agree With Many People.

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

The True Man Wants Two Things: Danger And Play. For That Reason He Wants Woman, As The Most Dangerous Plaything.

We Must Be Cruel As Well As Compassionate: Let Us Guard Against Becoming Poorer Than Nature Is!

I Have Found Strength Where One Does Not Look For It: In Simple, Mild, And Pleasant People, Without The Least Desire To Rule -- And, Conversely, The Desire To Rule Has Often Appeared To Me A Sign Of Inward Weakness: They Fear Their Own Slave Soul And Shroud It In A Royal Cloak (in The End, They Still Become The Slaves Of Their Followers, Their Fame, Etc.)

In Affability There Is No Hatred Of Men, But For That Very Reason There Is All Too Much Contempt For Men.

Ye Are Ugly? Well Then, My Brethren, Take The Sublime About You, The Mantle Of The Ugly!

Is Life Not A Thousand Times Too Short For Us To Bore Ourselves?

The Scaffolding Must Be Removed Once The House Is Built.

One Who Is Unassuming In Dealing With People Exhibits His Arrogance All The More Strongly In Dealing With Things (city, State, Society, Age, Mankind). That Is His Revenge.

In Those Days It Was Possible For A Greek To Flee From An Over-abundant Reality As Though It Were But The Tricky Scheming Off The Imagination-and To Flee, Not Like Plato Into The Land Of Eternal Ideas, Into The Workshop Off The World-creator, Feasting One's Eyes On The Unblemished Unbreakable Archetypes, But Into The Rigor Mortis Off The Coldest Emptiest Concept Off All, The Concept Of Being.

My Philosophy Is Inverted Platonism: The Further A Thing Is From True Being, The Purer, The Lovelier, The Better It Is. Living Inillusion As A Goal!

Love Your Enemies Because They Bring Out The Best In You.

Love Your Enemies

In The Mountains, The Shortest Way Is From Peak To Peak: But For That You Must Have Long Legs

Thinking About Suicide Is A Potent Consolation: It Helps Us To Get Through Many A Bad Night.

The Teacher As A Necessary Evil. Let Us Have As Few People As Possible Between The Productive Minds And The Hungry And Recipient Minds! The Middlemen Almost Unconsciously Adulterate The Food Which They Supply. It Is Because Of Teachers That So Little Is Learned, And That So Badly.

One Pays Dearly For Being Immortal: One Must Die Many Times During His Life.

If We Affirm One Moment, We Thus Affirm Not Only Ourselves But All Existence. For Nothing Is Self-sufficient, Neither In Us Ourselves Nor In Things; And If Our Soul Has Trembled With Happiness And Sounded Like A Harp String Just Once, All Eternity Was Needed To Produce This One Event - And In This Single Moment Of Affirmation All Eternity Was Called Good, Redeemed, Justified, And Affirmed.

Fear Is The Mother Of Morality.

There Are The Terrible Ones Who Carry About In Themselves The Beast Of Prey, And Have No Choice Except Lusts Or Self-laceration. And Even Their Lusts Are Self-laceration.

For Those Who Need Consolation No Means Of Consolation Is So Effective As The Assertion That In Their Case No Consolation Is Possible: It Implies So Great A Degree Of Distinction That They At Once Hold Up Their Heads Again.

...throw Roses Into The Abyss And Say: 'here Is My Thanks To The Monster Who Didn't Succeed In Swallowing Me Alive.

Through Searching Out Origins, One Becomes A Crab. The Historian Looks Backwards, And Finally He Also Believes Backwards.

The Earth Is Like The Breasts Of A Woman: Useful As Well As Pleasing.

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

Disobedience- That Is The Nobility Of Slaves.

The Arrogance That Accompanies Merit Offends Us Even More Than The Arrogance Of People Who Are Lacking In Merit: Since Merit Itself Offends Us.

Most People Are Far Too Much Occupied With Themselves To Be Malicious.

In Compassionate Men, Severity Is A Virtue.

He Who Obeys, Does Not Listen To Himself!

The Final Reward Of The Dead - To Die No More

O Voltaire! O Humanity! O Idiocy! There Is Something Ticklish In "the Truth," And In The Search For The Truth; And If Man Goes About It Too Humanely-"il Ne Cherche Le Vrai Que Pour Faire Le Bien"-i Wager He Finds Nothing!

This Is The Manner Of Noble Souls: They Do Not Want To Have Anything For Nothing; Least Of All, Life. Whoever Is Of The Mob Wants To Live For Nothing; We Others, However, To Whom Life Gave Itself, We Always Think About What We Might Best Give In Return... One Should Not Wish To Enjoy Where One Does Not Give Joy.

He Who Cannot Obey Himself Will Be Commanded. That Is The Nature Of Living Creatures.

I Change Too Quickly: My Today Refutes My Yesterday. When I Ascend I Often Jump Over Steps, And No Step Forgives Me That.

Prejudice Of The Learned. - The Learned Judge Correctly That People Of All Ages Have Believed They Know What Is Good And Evil, Praise- And Blameworthy. But It Is A Prejudice Of The Learned That We Now Know Better Than Any Other Age.

You Highest Men Whom I Have Ever Seen! This Is My Suspicion About You And My Secret Laughter: I Guess That You Would Call My Superman--a Devil!

One May Sometimes Tell A Lie, But The Grimace That Accompanies It Tells The Truth.

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.

I Teach The No To All That Makes Weak--that Exhausts. I Teach The Yes To All That Strengthens, That Stores Up Strength, That Pride.

The Love Of Truth Has Its Reward In Heaven And Even On Earth.

One Must Be A Sea, To Receive A Polluted Stream Without Becoming Impure.

Pollution Control

It Is The Music In Our Conscience, The Dance In Our Spirit, To Which Puritan Litanies, Moral Sermons, And Goody Goodness Won’t Chime.

Metaphysical World.- It Is True, There Could Be A Metaphysical World; The Absolute Possibility Of It Is Hardly To Be Disputed. We Behold All Things Through The Human Head And Cannot Cut Off This Head; While The Question Nonetheless Remains What Of The World Would Still Be There If One Had Cut It Off.

Time Flies Apace-we Would Fain Believe That Everything Flies Forward With It.

Immortal Is The Moment When I Engendered The Recurrence. For The Sake Of This Moment I Bear The Recurrence.

They Would Have To Sing Better Songs For Me To Learn To Have Faith In Their Redeemer; And His Disciples Would Have To Look More Redeemed!

The Criminal Type Is The Type Of The Strong Human Being Under Unfavorable Circumstances: A Strong Human Being Made Sick.

Men Who Think Deeply Appear To Be Comedians In Their Dealings With Others Because They Always Have To Feign Superficiality In Order To Be Understood.

One Must Learn To Love Oneself With A Wholesome And Healthy Love, So That One Can Bear To Be With Oneself And Need Not Roam.

On The Tree, Future, We Build Our Nest; And In Our Solitude Eagles Shall Bring Us Nourishment In Their Beaks!

The Job Of Rearing A Child Consists Of Making Conscious Activities Unconscious.

If A Man Wishes To Become A Hero, Then The Serpent Must First Become A Dragon: Otherwise He Lacks His Proper Enemy.

One Can Also Be Undignified And Flattering Toward A Virtue.

The Flame Is Not As Bright To Itself As It Is To Those It Illuminates: So Too The Sage.

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"!

Growth In Wisdom Can Be Measured Precisely By Decline In Bile.

A Man Who Has Depths In His Shame Meets His Destiny And His Delicate Decisions Upon Paths Which Few Ever Reach . . .

What? A Great Man? I Only Ever See The Ape Of His Own Ideal.

The World Is A Work Of Art That Gives Birth To Itself.

Just As A Waterfall Grows Slower And More Lightly Suspended As It Plunges Down, So The Great Man Of Action Tends To Act With Greater Calmness Than His Tempestuous Desires Prior To The Deed Would Lead One To Expect.

Out Of Damp And Gloomy Days, Out Of Solitude, Out Of Loveless Words Directed At Us, Conclusions Grow Up In Us Like Fungus: One Morning They Are There, We Know Not How, And They Gaze Upon Us, Morose And Gray. Woe To The Thinker Who Is Not The Gardener But Only The Soil Of The Plants That Grow In Him.

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".

In All Institutions From Which The Cold Wind Of Open Criticism Is Excluded, An Innocent Corruption Begins To Grow Like A Mushroom - For Example, In Senates And Learned Societies

Behind A Remarkable Scholar We Not Infrequently Find An Average Human Being, And Behind An Average Artist We Often Find A Very Remarkable Human Being.

For The Woman, The Man Is A Means: The End Is Always The Child.

The Really Royal Calling Of The Philosopher (as Expressed By Alcuin The Anglo-saxon): To Correct What Is Wrong, And Strengthen The Right, And Raise What Is Holy.

You Lovers Of Knowledge! So What Have You Done Out Of Your Love Of Knowledge Up To Now? Have You Already Stolen And Murdered So As To Know How A Thief And A Murderer Feels?

Love As A Passion—it Is Our European Specialty—must Absolutely Be Of Noble Origin; As Is Well Known, Its Invention Is Due To The Provencal Poet-cavaliers, Those Brilliant, Ingenious Men Of The "gai Saber," To Whom Europe Owes So Much, And Almost Owes Itself.

Genuine Historical Knowledge Requires Nobility Of Character, A Profound Understanding Of Human Existence - Not Detachment And Objectivity.

Historical Knowledge

He Has Drawn Back, Only In Order To Have Enough Room For His Leap

[heraclitus' Language] Dispenses With Lightness And Artificial Decoration, Foremost Out Of Disgust For Humanity And Out Of [his Own] Defiant Feeling.

Little Prigs And Three-quarter Madmen May Have The Conceit That The Laws Of Nature Are Constantly Broken For Their Sakes.

The Belief In Authority Is The Source Of Conscience; Which Is Therefore Not The Voice Of God In The Heart Of Man, But The Voice Of Some Men In Man.

How Can Anyone Become A Thinker Unless He Spends At Least A Third Of Every Day Away From Passions, People, And Books?

When Somebody Dies We Usually Need Reasons For Consolation, Not So Much To Alleviate Our Pain As To Excuse Ourselves For So Readily Feeling Consoled.

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.

Life Is At An End Where The Kingdom Of God Begins

Linguistic Danger To Spiritual Freedom.- Every Word Is A Prejudice.

People Who, Out Of An Inborn Moderation, Leave Every Glass Standing Only Half-emptied Refuse To Admit That Everything In The World Has Its Sediments And Dregs.

Every Church Is A Stone On The Grave Of A God-man: It Does Not Want Him To Rise Up Again Under Any Circumstances.

In This State One Enriches Everything Out Of One's Own Fullness: Whatever One Sees, Whatever Wills Is Seen Swelled, Taut, Strong, Overloaded With Strength. A Man In This State Transforms Things Until They Mirror His Power—until They Are Reflections Of His Perfection. This Having To Transform Into Perfection Is—art.

To Live Is To Suffer, To Survive Is To Find Some Meaning In The Suffering.

World Suffering

All Preachers Of Morality, As Also All Theologians Have A Bad Habit In Common: All Of Them Try To Persuade Man That He Is Very Ill, And That A Severe, Final, Radical Cure Is Necessary.

He Who Humbles Himself Wants To Be Exalted.

Belief In Truth Begins With Doubting All That Has Hitherto Been Believed To Be True.

Love And Hatred Are Not Blind, But Are Blinded By The Fire They Bear Within Themselves.

What Makes One Heroic? - Going Out To Meet At The Same Time One's Highest Suffering And One's Highest Hope.

Every Profound Spirit Needs A Mask: Even More, Around Every Profound Spirit A Mask Is Continually Growing.

In The Dark, Time Feels Different Than When It Is Light.

If You Go To See The Woman, Do Not Forget The Whip.

Sensuality Often Hastens The "growth Of Love" So Much That The Roots Remain Weak And Are Easily Torn Up.

I Love All Who Are Like Heavy Drops Falling One By One Out Of The Dark Cloud That Lowereth Over Man: They Herald The Coming Of The Lightning, And Succumb As Heralds.

I Teach You The Overman. Man Is Something Which Shall Be Surpassed.

This Life As You Now Live It And Have Lived It, You Will Have To Live Once More And Innumerable Times More; And There Will Be Nothing New In It, But Every Pain And Every Joy And Every Thought And Sigh And Everything Unutterably Small Or Great In Your Life Will Have To Return To You, All In The Same Succession And Sequence - Even This Spider And This Moonlight Between The Trees, And Even This Moment And I Myself. The Eternal Hourglass Of Existence Is Turned Upside Down Again And Again, And You With It, Speck Of Dust!

Many Are Stubborn In Pursuit Of The Path They Have Chosen, Few In Pursuit Of The Goal.

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.

Where There Is Happiness, There Is Found Pleasure In Nonsense. The Transformation Of Experience Into Its Opposite, Of The Suitable Into The Unsuitable, The Obligatory Into The Optional (but In Such A Manner That This Process Produces No Injury And Is Only Imagined In Jest), Is A Pleasure.

Could Truth Perhaps Be A Woman Who Has Reasons For Not Permitting Her Reasons To Be Seen? Could Her Name Perhaps Be--to Speak Greek--baubo?... Oh, Those Greeks! They Understood How To Live: To Do That It Is Necessary To Stop Bravely At The Surface, The Fold, The Skin, To Adore The Appearance, To Believe In Forms, In Tones, In Words, In The Whole Olympus Of Appearance! Those Greeks Were Superficial--out Of Profundity!

I Am No Man, I Am Dynamite.

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

The Magnitude Of A Progress Is Gauged By The Greatness Of The Sacrifice That It Requires.

He Who Rejoices Even At The Stake Triumphs Not Over Pain But Over The Absence Of Pain Where He Had Anticipated Feeling It. A Parable.

That The World Is Not The Embodiment Of An Eternal Rationality Can Be Conclusively Proved By The Fact That The Piece Of The Worldthat We Know--i Mean Our Human Reason--is Not So Very Rational. And If It Is Not Eternally And Completely Wise And Rational, Then The Rest Of The World Will Not Be Either; Here The Conclusion A Minori Ad Majus, A Parte Ad Totum Applies, And Does So With Decisive Force.

We Pay Dearly For Immortality: We Die For It More Than Once During Our Lifetimes.

To Do Great Things Is Difficult; But To Command Great Things Is More Difficult.

From The Sun I Learned This: When He Goes Down, Overrich; He Pours Gold Into The Sea Out Of Inexhaustible Riches, So That Even The Poorest Fisherman Still Rows With Golden Oars. For This I Once Saw And I Did Not Tire Of My Tears As I Watched It.

For A Significant Man Woman, The One Thought He Values Greatly, To The Laughter And Scorn Of Insignificant Men, Is A Key To Hidden Treasure Chambers; For Those Others, It Is Nothing But A Piece Of Old Iron.

In Song And Dance, Man Forgets How To Walk And Speak And Is On The Way Into Flying Into The Air, Dancing... His Very Gestures Express Enchantment.

The Rising And Falling Of The Scales Of Pride And Humility Sustain The Brooding Mind As Well As The Alternations Of Desire And Peace Of The Soul.

The Child Is Innocence And Forgetting, A New Beginning, A Game, A Wheel Rolling On Its Own, A Prime Movement, A Sacred Yes.

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

Good Writers Have Two Things In Common: They Prefer To Be Understood Rather Than Admired; And They Do Not Write For Knowing And Over-acute Readers.

Beggars Should Be Entirely Abolished! Truly, It Is Annoying To Give To Them And Annoying Not To Give To Them.

I Live In My Own Place - Have Never Copied Anyone Even Half, And At Any Master Who Lacks The Grace - To Laugh At Himself - I Laugh.

Epicurus Had Rage And Envy Of Plato's Superior Style.

We Can Speak Very Much To The Purpose And Yet In Such A Way That The Whole World Cries Out In Contradiction: Namely, When We Are Not Speaking To The Whole World.

To Forget One's Purpose Is The Commonest Form Of Stupidity.

Life Is A Well Of Joy; But For Those Out Of Whom An Upset Stomach Speaks, Which Is The Father Of Melancholy, All Wells Are Poisoned.

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.

Go Through The Towns And Ask Yourselves Whether These People Should Reproduce! Let Them Go To Their Whores!

You Lack The Courage To Be Consumed In Flames And To Become Ashes: So You Will Never Become New, And Never Young Again!

The Strongest And Most Evil Spirits Have To Date Advanced Mankind The Most: They Always Rekindled The Sleeping Passions - All Orderly Arranged Society Lulls The Passions To Sleep; They Always Reawakened The Sense Of Comparison, Of Contradiction, Of Delight In The New, The Adventurous, The Untried; They Compelled Men To Set Opinion Against Opinion, Ideal Plan Against Ideal Plan.

God Is Dead. God Remains Dead. And We Have Killed Him. How Shall We Comfort Ourselves, The Murderers Of All Murderers? What Was Holiest And Mightiest Of All That The World Has Yet Owned Has Bled To Death Under Our Knives: Who Will Wipe This Blood Off Us? What Water Is There For Us To Clean Ourselves? What Festivals Of Atonement, What Sacred Games Shall We Have To Invent? Is Not The Greatness Of This Deed Too Great For Us? Must We Ourselves Not Become Gods Simply To Appear Worthy Of It?

One Should Die Proudly When It Is No Longer Possible To Live Proudly.

The Most Dangerous Follower Is The One Whose Defection Would Destroy The Whole Party: Hence, The Best Follower.

The Advantage Of A Bad Memory Is That One Enjoys Several Times The Same Good Things For The First Time.

Funny Inspirational

What Is Originality? To See Something That Has No Name As Yet And Hence Cannot Be Mentioned Although It Stares Us All In The Face. The Way Men Usually Are, It Takes A Name To Make Something Visible For Them.

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

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