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What Do You Plan To Do In The Land Of The Sleepers? You Have Been Floating In A Sea Of Solitude, And The Sea Has Borne You Up. At Long Last, Are You Ready For Dry Land? Are You Ready To Drag Yourself Ashore?

-Friedrich Nietzsche

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What Do You Plan

Friedrich Nietzsche

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What Do You Plan To Do In The Land Of The Sleepers? You Have Been Floating In A Sea Of Solitude, And The Sea Has Borne You Up. At Long Last, Are You Ready For Dry Land? Are You Ready To Drag Yourself Ashore?

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I Speak And The Child Plays: Who Can Be More Serious Than We Are?

I Want To Learn More And More To See As Beautiful What Is Necessary In Things; Then I Shall Be One Of Those Who Make Things Beautiful. Amor Fati: Let That Be My Love Henceforth! I Do Not Want To Wage War Against What Is Ugly. I Do Not Want To Accuse; I Do Not Even Want To Accuse Those Who Accuse. Looking Away Shall Be My Only Negation. And All In All And On The Whole: Some Day I Wish To Be Only A Yes-sayer.

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

Even In The Lust Of Knowledge I Feel Only My Will's Delight In Begetting And Becoming; And If There Be Innocence In My Knowledge It Is Because My Procreative Will Is In It.

Where Is The Lightning To Lick You With Its Tongue? Where Is The Madness With Which You Should Be Cleansed? Behold, I Show You The Superman. He Is This Lightning, He Is This Madness.

The Best Way To Give Assistance To Those Who Are Deeply Embarrassed And To Calm Them Down Is To Praise Them Decisively.

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

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

Heaven And Earth

Not Joy Is The Mother Of Dissipation, But Joylessness.

Love Matches, So Called, Have Illusion For Their Father And Need For Their Mother.

In Bach There Is Still Too Much Crude Christianity, Crude Germanism, Crude Scholasticism; He Stands On The Threshold Of European (modern) Music, But He Looks Back From There To The Middle Ages.

The Superman Is The Meaning Of The Earth. Let Your Will Say: The Superman Shall Be The Meaning Of The Earth!

Though The Favourites Of The Gods Die Young, They Also Live Eternally In The Company Of Gods

One Must Have All The Virtues To Sleep Well. Shall I Bear False Witness? Shall I Commit Adultery? Shall I Covet My Neighbor's Maid? All That Would Go Ill With Good Sleep.

You Shall Not Steal! You Shall Not Kill! Such Words Were Once Called Holy; Before Them People Bowrd Their Knees And Heads, And Removed Their Shoes. But I Ask You: Where Have There Ever Been Better Thieves And Killers In The World Than Such Holy Words Have Been? Is There Not In All Of Life Itself - Robbing And Killing? And When Such Words Were Called Holy, Was Not Truth Itself Thereby - Killed?

The Child As A Monument To The Passion Of Two People; The Will To Oneness In Two.

[heraclitus] Did Not Require Humans Or Their Sort Of Knowledge, Since Everything Into Which One May Inquire He Despises [as Being] In Contrast [to His Own] Inward-turning Wisdom. [to Him] All Learning From Others Is A Sign Of Nonwisdom, Because The Wise Man Focuses His Vision On His Own Intelligence.

Do You Call Yourself Free? It Is Your Ruling Thought That I Would Hear, And Not That You Have Escaped From A Yoke.

The Good-they Cannot Create; They Are Always The Beginning Of The End.

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

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.

The Genius-in Work And In Deed-is Necessarily A Squanderer: The Fact That He Spends Himself Constitutes His Greatness.

Dead Are All Gods: Now We Want The Overman To Live.

Every Man Has His Price. This Is Not True. But For Every Man There Exists A Bait Which He Cannot Resist Swallowing.

Necessity Is An Interpretation, Not A Fact.

I Fear Animals Regard Man As A Creature Of Their Own Kind Which Has In A Highly Dangerous Fashion Lost Its Healthy Animal Reason - As The Mad Animal, As The Laughing Animal, As The Weeping Animal, As The Unhappy Animal.

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.

If A Man Wishes To Rid Himself Of A Feeling Of Unbearable Oppression, He May Have To Take Hashish.

Partial Knowledge Is More Triumphant Than Complete Knowledge; It Takes Things To Be Simpler Than They Are, And So Makes Its Theory More Popular And Convincing.

Sometimes In Our Relationship To Another Human Being The Proper Balance Of Friendship Is Restored When We Put A Few Grains Of Impropriety Onto Our Own Side Of The Scale.

Those Moralists, On The Other Hand, 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 Key To Happiness, Are The Exceptions.

A Declaration Of War On The Masses By Higher Men Is Needed! ... Everything That Makes Soft And Effeminate, That Serves The End Of The People Or The Feminine, Works In Favor Of Universal Suffrage, I.e. The Domination Of The Inferior Men. But We Should Take Reprisal And Bring This Whole Affair To Light And The Bar Of Judgment.

Those With Very Loud Voices In Their Throats Are Nearly Incapable Of Thinking Subtle Thoughts.

Is Not Wounded Vanity The Mother Of All Tragedies?

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.

Morality Is The Best Of All Devices For Leading Mankind By The Nose.

The Man Loves Danger And Sport. That Is Why He Loves Woman, The Most Dangerous Of All Sports.

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

There Is Sense In Hoping For Recognition In A Distant Future Only When We Take It For Granted That Mankind Will Remain Essentially Unchanged, And That Whatever Is Great Is Not For One Age Only But Will Be Looked Upon As Great For All Time.

Should Not The Giver Be Thankful That The Receiver Received? Is Not Giving A Need? Is Not Receiving, Mercy?

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

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'.

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

I Am Zarathustra The Godless: Where Shall I Find My Equal? All Those Who Give Themselves Their Own Will And Renounce All Submission, They Are My Equals.

Exhaustion Is The Shortest Way To Equality And Fraternity.

Enduring Habits I Hate.... Yes, At The Very Bottom Of My Soul I Feel Grateful To All My Misery And Bouts Of Sickness And Everything About Me That Is Imperfect, Because This Sort Of Thing Leaves Me With A Hundred Backdoors Through Which I Can Escape From Enduring Habits.

Time, Space, And Causality Are Only Metaphors Of Knowledge, With Which We Explain Things To Ourselves.

One Sticks To An Opinion Because He Prides Himself On Having Come To It On His Own, And Another Because He Has Taken Great Pains To Learn It And Is Proud To Have Grasped It: And So Both Do So Out Of Vanity.

Sometimes People Don't Want To Hear The Truth Because They Don't Want Their Illusions Destroyed.

We Praise Or Blame As One Or The Other Affords More Opportunity For Exhibiting Our Power Of Judgement.

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.

Jealous Is Every Virtue Of The Others, And A Dreadful Thing Is Jealousy. Even Virtues May Succumb By Jealousy.

What Saved Me Then? Nothing But Pregnancy. And Each Time After I Had Given Birth To My Work My Life Hung Suspended By A Thin Thread.

That Which Does Not Kill Us Makes Us Stronger.

Sometimes All You Need To Do To Win Clever People Over To A Principle Is To Present It In The Form Of A Shocking Paradox.

Creating-that Is The Great Salvation From Suffering.

There Is Nothing More Necessary Than Truth, And In Comparison With It Everything Else Has Only Secondary Value. This Absolute Will To Truth: What Is It? Is It The Will To Not Allow Ourselves To Be Deceived? Is It The Will Not To Deceive? One Does Not Want To Be Deceived, Under The Supposition That It Is Injurious, Dangerous, Or Fatal To Be Deceived.

Was That Life? Well Then, Once More!

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

But Thought Is One Thing, The Deed Is Another, And The Image Of The Deed Still Another: The Wheel Of Causality Does Not Roll Between Them.

However Unchristian It May Seem, I Do Not Even Bear Any Ill Feeling Towards Myself.

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.

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

Funny Inspirational

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

Preparatory Human Beings. - I Welcome All Signs That A More Virile, Warlike Age Is About To Begin, Which Will Restore Honour To Courage Above All! For This Age Shall Prepare The Way For One Yet Higher, And It Shall Gather The Strength That This Higher Age Will Require Some Day - The Age That Will Carry Heroism Into The Search For Knowledge And That Will Wage Wars For The Sake Of Ideas And Their Consequences.

We Do Not Hate As Long As We Still Attach A Lesser Value, But Only When We Attach An Equal Or A Greater Value.

Anything Which Is A Living And Not A Dying Body... Will Have To Be An Incarnate Will To Power, It Will Strive To Grow, Spread, Seize, Become Predominant - Not From Any Morality Or Immorality But Because It Is Living And Because Life Simply Is Will To Power... 'exploitation'... Belongs To The Essence Of What Lives, As A Basic Organic Function; It Is A Consequence Of The Will To Power, Which Is After All The Will To Life.

How Did Reason Come Into The World? As Is Fitting, In An Irrational Manner, By Accident. One Will Have To Guess At It As At A Riddle.

Deception, Flattering, Lying, Deluding, Talking Behind The Back, Putting Up A False Front, Living In Borrowed Splendor, Wearing A Mask, Hiding Behind Convention, Playing A Role For Others And For Oneself -- In Short, A Continuous Fluttering Around The Solitary Flame Of Vanity -- Is So Much The Rule And The Law Among Men That There Is Almost Nothing Which Is Less Comprehensible Than How An Honest And Pure Drive For Truth Could Have Arisen Among Them.

Life Is The Will To Power; Our Natural Desire To Dominate And Reshape The World To Fit Our Own Preferences And Assert Our Personal Strength To The Fullest Degree.

When Asses Are Needed.- You Will Never Get The Crowd To Cry Hosanna Until You Ride Into Town On An Ass.

God Is A Gross Answer, An Indelicacy Against Us Thinkers- At Bottom Merely A Gross Prohibition For Us: You Shall Not Think!

The Believer In Magic And Miracles Reflects On How To Impose A Law On Nature--: And, In Brief, The Religious Cult Is The Outcome Of This Reflection.

It Is I, The Ungodly Zarathustra, Who Says:who Is More Ungodly Than I, That I May Rejoice In His Teaching?

Principle Of "christian Love": It Insists Upon Being Well Paid In The End.

If One Uses One's Intellect To Become Master Over The Unlimited Emotions, It May Produce A Sorry And Diversionary Effect Upon The Intellect.

The Reason Adultery Is Immoral Is That It Might Lead To Marriage.

The Danger In Happiness - "now Everything Is Turning Out Right For Me; From Now On I'll Love Every Turn Of Fate - Who Wants To Be My Fate?

There Are Two Types Of Genius; One Which Above All Begets And Wants To Beget, And Another Which Prefers Being Fertilized And Giving Birth.

No, Life Has Not Disappointed Me. On The Contrary, I Find It Truer, More Desirable And Mysterious Every Year -- Ever Since The Day When The Great Liberator Came To Me: The Idea That Life Could Be An Experiment Of The Seeker For Knowledge -- And Not A Duty, Not A Calamity, Not Trickery.

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.

Either One Does Not Dream, Or One Does So Interestingly. One Should Learn To Spend One's Waking Life In The Same Way: Not At All, Or Interestingly.

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

The Saying, "the Magyar Is Much Too Lazy To Be Bored," Is Worth Thinking About. Only The Most Subtle And Active Animals Are Capable Of Boredom.--a Theme For A Great Poet Would Be God's Boredom On The Seventh Day Of Creation.

I Know No Other Way To Associate With Great Tasks Than As Play: As A Sign Of Greatness, This Is An Essential Presupposition.

It Is Hard Enough To Remember My Opinions, Without Also Remembering My Reasons For Them!

It Is The Evening That Questions Thus From Within Me.

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?

Writers Ought To Be Regarded As Wrongdoers Who Deserve To Be Acquitted Or Pardoned Only In The Rarest Cases: That Would Be A Way To Keep Books From Getting Out Of Hand.

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

How Is Freedom Measured, In Individuals As In Nations? By The Resistance Which Has To Be Overcome, By The Effort It Costs To Stay Aloft. One Would Have To Seek The Highest Type Of Free Man Where The Greatest Resistance Is Constantly Being Overcome: Five Steps From Tyranny, Near The Threshold Of The Danger Of Servitude.

Human Existence Basically Is──a Never To Be Completed Imperfect Tense.

Around The Hero Everything Turns Into A Tragedy, Around The Demigod, A Satyr-play, And Around God--what? Perhaps A "world"?

The Discipline Of Suffering, Of Great Suffering - Do You Not Know That It Is This Discipline Alone That Has Produced All The Elevations Of Humanity So Far?

The World Is Beautiful, But Has A Disease Called Man.

[heraclitus Had] Pride Not In Logical Knowledge But Rather In Intuitive Grasping Of The Truth.

In The World Of High Finance The Shilling Of The Idle Rich Man Can Buy More Than That Of The Poor, Industrious Man.

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.

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.

There Is A Rollicking Kindness That Looks Like Malice.

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.

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

One Has To Pay Dearly For Immortality; One Has To Die Several Times While One Is Still Alive.

The 'kingdom Of Heaven' Is A Condition Of The Heart - Not Something That Comes 'upon The Earth' Or 'after Death.'

Envy And Jealousy Are The Private Parts Of The Human Soul. Perhaps The Comparison Can Be Extended.

But Anyone Who Has Really Made Sacrifices Knows That He Wanted And Got Something In Return Perhaps Something For Something Of Himself - That He Gave Up In Order To Have More Here Or At Least To Feel That He Has "more".

Today I Love Myself As I Love My God: Who Could Charge Me With A Sin Today? I Know Only Sins Against My God; But Who Knows My God?

One Must Know How To Conserve Oneself- The Best Test Of Independence.

One Receives As Reward For Much Ennui, Despondency, Boredom -such As A Solitude Without Friends, Books, Duties, Passions Must Bring With It -those Quarter-hours Of Profoundest Contemplation Within Oneself And Nature. He Who Completely Entrenches Himself Against Boredom Also Entrenches Himself Against Himself: He Will Never Get To Drink The Strongest Refreshing Draught From His Own Innermost Fountain.

Jesus Died Too Soon. If He Had Lived To My Age He Would Have Repudiated His Doctrine.

Energy Wasted On Negative Ends.

Life Is That Which Must Overcome Itself Again And Again

Again And Again

Objectivity And Justice Have Nothing To Do With One Another.

Our Vanity Is Hardest To Wound Precisely When Our Pride Has Just Been Wounded.

We Attack Not Only To Hurt Someone, To Defeat Him, But Perhaps Also Simply To Become Conscious Of Our Own Strength.

A Vocation Is The Backbone Of Life.

Life And Living

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

It Is Not A Lack Of Love, But A Lack Of Friendship That Makes Unhappy Marriages.

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.

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

We Are, Indeed, Not Among The Least Contented. You, However, If Your Belief Makes You Blessed Then Appear To Be Blessed! Your Faces Have Always Been More Injurious To Your Belief Than Our Objections Have! If These Glad Tidings Of Your Bible Were Written On Your Faces, You Would Not Need To Insist So Obstinately On The Authority Of That Book ... As Things Are, However, All Your Apologies For Christianity Have Their Roots In Your Lack Of Christianity; With Your Defense Plea You Inscribe Your Own Bill Of Indictment.

I Love Him Who Liveth In Order To Know, And Seeketh To Know In Order That The Superman May Hereafter Live. Thus Seeketh He His Own Down-going.

To Produce Music Is Also In A Sense To Produce Children.

This World Is The Will To Power And Nothing Besides!

I Would Only Believe In A God Who Could Dance. And When I Saw My Devil I Found Him Serious, Thorough, Profound, And Solemn: It Was The Spirit Of Gravity—through Him All Things Fall. Not By Wrath Does One Kill But By Laughter. Come, Let Us Kill The Spirit Of Gravity!

But The Worst Enemy You Can Meet Will Always Be Yourself; You Lie In Wait For Yourself In Caverns And Forests. Lonely One, You Are Going The Way To Yourself! And Your Way Goes Past Yourself, And Past Your Seven Devils! You Will Be A Heretic To Yourself And Witch And Soothsayer And Fool And Doubter And Unholy One And Villain. You Must Be Ready To Burn Yourself In Your Own Flame: How Could You Become New, If You Had Not First Become Ashes?

Man Is Something That Must Be Overcome

Love Is A State In Which A Man Sees Things Most Decidedly As They Are Not.

Learn To Laugh At Yourselves As One Must Laugh!

The Noble Man Honours In Himself The Powerful One, Him Also Who Has Power Over Himself, Who Knows How To Speak And How To Keep Silence, Who Takes Pleasure In Subjecting Himself To Severity And Hardness, And Has Reverence For All That Is Severe And Hard.

I Presume That You Are Compassionate: To Be Without Pity Means To Be Sick In Body And Spirit. But One Should Have Spirit In Abundance, So As To Be Permitted To Be Compassionate! For Your Pity Is Detrimental To You And To Everyone.

Even Great Spirits Have Only Their Five-fingers' Breadth Of Experience - Just Beyond It Their Thinking Ceases And Their Endless Empty Space And Stupidity Begins.

All In All, Punishment Hardens And Renders People More Insensible; It Concentrates; It Increases The Feeling Of Estrangement; It Strengthens The Power Of Resistance.

It Is Certainly Not The Least Charm Of A Theory That It Is Refutable; It Is Precisely Thereby That It Attracts The More Subtle Minds. It Seems That The Hundred-times-refuted Theory Of The "free Will" Owes Its Persistence To This Charm Alone; Some One Is Always Appearing Who Feels Himself Strong Enough To Refute It.

Never To Talk About Oneself Is A Very Refined Form Of Hypocrisy.

The Melancholia Of Everything Completed!

Against War It May Be Said That It Makes The Victor Stupid And The Vanquished Revengeful.

The Demand To Be Loved Is The Greatest Of All Arrogant Presumptions.

Inspirational Love

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.

What We Experience In Dreams - Assuming That We Experience It Often - Belongs In The End Just As Much To The Over-all Economy Of Our Soul As Anything Experienced "actually": We Are Richer Or Poorer On Account Of It.

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

We No Longer Love Our Knowledge Enough Once We Have Passed It On.

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

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

Where Do Your Greatest Dangers Lie?--in Pity.

Mastery Has Been Achieved When One Neither Makes A Mistake Nor Hesitates In The Performance.

In Order For Once To Get A Glimpse Of Our European Morality From A Distance, In Order To Compare It With Other Earlier Or Future Moralities, One Must Do As The Traveller Who Wants To Know The Height Of The Towers Of A City: He Leaves The City.

That Which Intoxicates, The Sensually Ecstatic, The Sudden Surprise, The Urge To Be Profoundly Stirred At Any Price -- Dreadful Tendencies!

People Press Toward The Light Not In Order To See Better But In Order To Shine Better.--we Are Happy To Regard The One Before Whomwe Shine As Light.

The World Is Poor For Him Who Has Never Been Sick Enough For This 'voluptuousness Of Hell

One Should Part From Life As Odysseus Parted From Nausicaa-blessing It Rather Than In Love With It.

My Humanity Is A Constant Self-overcoming.

I Too Have Been In The Underworld, As Was Odysseus, And I Will Often Be There Again; Not Only Sheep Have I Sacrificed So As To Beable To Speak With A Few Dead Souls, But Neither Have I Spared My Own Blood As Well.

The State Is The Coldest Of All Cold Monsters, And Coldly It Tells Lies, And This Lie Drones On From Its Mouth: 'i, The State, Am The People'.

Quidquid Luce Fuit Tenebris Agit: But Also The Other Way Around. What We Experience In Dreams, So Long As We Experience It Frequently, Is In The End Just As Much A Part Of The Total Economy Of Our Soul As Anything We "really" Experience: Because Of It We Are Richer Or Poorer, Are Sensitive To One Need More Or Less, And Are Eventually Guided A Little By Our Dream-habits In Broad Daylight And Even In The Most Cheerful Moments Occupying Our Waking Spirit.

No One Talks More Passionately About His Rights Than He Who In The Depths Of His Soul Doubts Whether He Has Any

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

One Is Honest About Oneself Either With A Sense Of Shame Or With Vanity.

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

The Snake Which Cannot Cast Its Skin Has To Die. As Well The Minds Which Are Prevented From Changing Their Opinions; They Cease To Be Mind.

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

More And More It Seems To Me That The Philosopher, Being Of Necessity A Man Of Tomorrow And The Day After Tomorrow, Has Always Found Himself, And Had To Find Himself, In Contradiction To His Today: His Enemy Was Ever The Ideal Of Today. So Far All These Extraordinary Furtherers Of Men Whom One Calls Philosophers, Though They Themselves Have Rarely Felt Like Friends Of Wisdom But Rather Like Disagreeable Fools And Dangerous Question Marks, Have Found Their Task, Their Hard, Unwanted, Inescapable Task, But Eventually Also The Greatness Of Their Task, In Being The Bad Conscience Of Their Time.

The So-called Paradoxes Of An Author, To Which A Reader Takes Exception, Often Exist Not In The Author's Book At All, But Rather In The Reader's Head.

What Destroys A Man More Quickly Than To Work, Think And Feel Without Inner Necessity, Without Any Deep Personal Desire, Without Pleasure - As A Mere Automaton Of Duty?

The Great Man... Is Colder, Harder, Less Hesitating, And Without Fear Of 'opinion'; He Lacks The Virtues That Accompany Respect And 'respectability,' And Altogether Everything That Is The 'virtue Of The Herd.' If He Cannot Lead, He Goes Alone... He Knows He Is Incommunicable: He Finds It Tasteless To Be Familiar... When Not Speaking To Himself, He Wears A Mask. There Is A Solitude Within Him That Is Inaccessible To Praise Or Blame.

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

Egoism Is The Very Essence Of A Noble Soul.

I Hate You Most Because You Attract, But Are Not Strong Enough To Pull Me To You.

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

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.

The Mouth May Lie, Alright, But The Face It Makes Nonetheless Tells The Truth.

Conversation With A Friend Will Only Bear Good Fruit Of Knowledge When Both Think Only Of The Matter Under Consideration And Forget That They Are Friends.

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.

Lightning And Thunder Need Time, The Light Of The Stars Needs Time, Deeds Need Time, Even After They Are Done, To Be Seen And Heard.

Every Man Who Has Declared That Some Other Man Is An Ass Or A Scoundrel, Gets Angry When The Other Man Conclusively Shows That The Assertion Was Erroneous.

The Scaffolding Must Be Removed Once The House Is Built.

Life Is At An End Where The Kingdom Of God Begins

Many Things About Man Are Not Very Godly: Whenever A Person Excretes Feces, How Can He Be A God Then? But It Is Even Worse Regarding The Other Feces We Call Sin: Man Still Surely Wants To Retain This, And Not Excrete It. Now However, I Must Believe It: A Person Can Be God And Still Excrete Feces. Thus I Teach You, Excrete Your Feces And Become Gods.

It Is Some Fundamental Certainty Which A Noble Soul Has About Itself, Something Which Is Not To Be Sought, Is Not To Be Found, And Perhaps, Also, Is Not To Be Lost. The Noble Soul Has Reverence For Itself.

Verily, I Do Not Want To Be Like The Ropemakers: They Drag Out Their Threads And Always Walk Backwards.

Knowing Who You Are

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.

What Is It That You Love In Others?--my Hopes.

Nobody Can Build The Bridge For You To Walk Across The River Of Life, No One But You Yourself Alone. There Are, To Be Sure, Countless Paths And Bridges And Demi-gods Which Would Carry You Across This River; But Only At The Cost Of Yourself; You Would Pawn Yourself And Lose. There Is In The World Only One Way, On Which Nobody Can Go, Except You: Where Does It Lead? Do Not Ask, Go Along With It.

... Art Approaches As A Saving Sorceress, Expert At Healing. She Alone Knows How To Turn These Nauseous Thoughts About The Horror Or Absurdity Of Existence Into Notions With Which One Can Live.

Here One Must Think Profoundly To The Very Basis And Resist All Sentimental Weakness: Life Itself Is Essentially Appropriation, Injury, Conquest Of The Strange And Weak, Suppression, Severity, Obtrusion Of Peculiar Forms, Incorporation, And At The Least, Putting It Mildest, Exploitation - But Why Should One For Ever Use Precisely These Words On Which For Ages A Disparaging Purpose Has Been Stamped?

I Am Too Inquisitive, Too Skeptical, Too Arrogant, To Let Myself Be Satisfied With An Obvious And Crass Solution Of Things. God Is Such An Obvious And Crass Solution; A Solution Which Is A Sheer Indelicacy To Us Thinkers - At Bottom He Is Really Nothing But A Coarse Commandment Against Us: Ye Shall Not Think!

We Must Learn To Love, Learn To Be Kind, And This From The Earliest Youth; If Education Or Chance Give Us No Opportunity To Practice These Feelings, Our Soul Becomes Dry And Unsuited Even To Understanding The Tender Inventions Of Loving People.

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.

Whoever Does Not Know How To Find The Way To His Ideal Lives More Frivolously And Impudently Than The Man Without An Ideal.

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

One Should Never Know Too Precisely Whom One Has Married

Love Brings To Light The Lofty And Hidden Characteristics Of The Lover--what Is Rare And Exceptional In Him: To That Extent It Caneasily Be Deceptive With Respect To What Is Normal In Him.

A Life Without Music Is An Error.

Life Without Music

Where One Despises, One Cannot Wage War.

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.

The Purpose Of Punishment Is To Improve Those Who Do The Punishing--that Is The Final Recourse Of Those Who Support Punishment.

Good Deeds Shun The Light As Anxiously As Evil Deeds: The Latter Fear That Disclosure Will Bring On Pain (as Punishment), While The Former Fear That Disclosure Will Take Away Pleasure (that Pure Pleasure, That Pleasure Per Se, Which Immediately Ceases Once The Vanity's Satisfaction Is Added).

He Who Bestows Something Great Receives No Gratitude; For In Accepting It The Recipient Has Already Been Weighed Down Too Much.

Our Salvation Lies Not In Knowing, But In Creating!

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Mordecai Wyatt Johnson

Robert Rodriguez

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