Beyond Good and Evil quotes

Supposing that Truth is a woman⁠—what then?

Is there not ground for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they have been dogmatists, have failed to understand women—that the terrible seriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have usually paid their addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly methods for …

… cobolds), will find that they have all practiced philosophy at one time or another, and that each one of them would have been only too glad to look upon itself as the ultimate end of existence and the legitimate lord over all the other impulses.

For every impulse is imperious, and as such, attempts to philosophize.

To be sure, in the case of scholars, in the case of really scientific men, it may be otherwise—“better,” if you will;

More rigorous minds, however, learnt at last to get along without this “earth-residuum,” and perhaps some day we shall accustom ourselves, even from the logician’s point of view, to get along without the little “one” (to which the worthy old “ego” has refined itself).

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; someone is always appearing who feels himself strong enough to refute it.

O sancta simplicitiatas! In what strange simplification and falsification man lives!

One can never cease wondering when once one has got eyes for beholding this marvel! How we have made everything around us clear and free and easy and simple!

… who simply recognize the animal, the commonplace and “the rule” in themselves, and at the same time have so much spirituality and ticklishness as to make them talk of themselves and their like before witnesses—sometimes they wallow, even in books, as on their own dunghill.

Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach what is called honesty

; and the higher man must open his ears to all the coarser or finer cynicism, and congratulate himself when the clown becomes shameless right before him, or the scientific satyr speaks out.

… and lacerates himself with his own teeth (or, in place of himself, the world, God, or society), may indeed, morally speaking, stand higher than the laughing and self-satisfied satyr, but in every other sense he is the more ordinary, more indifferent, and less instructive case.

And no one is such a liar as the indignant man.

It is difficult to be understood, especially when one thinks and lives gangasrotogati among those only who think and live otherwise—namely, kurmagati, or at best “froglike,” mandeikagati (I do everything to be “difficultly understood” myself!)—and one should be heartily grateful for the good will to …

How could even Plato have endured life—a Greek life which he repudiated—without an Aristophanes!

It is the business of the very few to be independent; it is a privilege of the strong.

And whoever attempts it, even with the best right, but without being obliged to do so, proves that he is probably not only strong, but also daring beyond measure.

Books for the general reader are always ill-smelling books, the odour of paltry people clings to them. Where the populace eat and drink, and even where they reverence, it is accustomed to stink.

One should not go into churches if one wishes to breathe pure air.

In our youthful years we still venerate and despise without the art of nuance, which is the best gain of life, and we have rightly to do hard penance for having fallen upon men and things with Yea and Nay.

for I myself have long ago learned to think and estimate differently with regard to deceiving and being deceived, and I keep at least a couple of pokes in the ribs ready for the blind rage with which philosophers struggle against being deceived. Why not?

It is nothing more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than semblance; it is, in fact, the worst proved supposition in the world.

So much must be conceded: there could have been no life at all except upon the basis of perspective estimates and semblances;

… will very readily regard a doctrine as true merely because it makes people happy or virtuous—excepting, perhaps, the amiable “Idealists,” who are enthusiastic about the good, true, and beautiful, and let all kinds of motley, coarse, and good-natured desirabilities swim about promiscuously in their pond.

Happiness and virtue are no arguments.

It is willingly forgotten, however, even on the part of thoughtful minds, that to make unhappy and to make bad are just as little counterarguments. A thing could be true, although it were in the highest degree injurious and dangerous;

“Pour être bon philosophe,” says this last great psychologist, “il faut être sec, clair, sans illusion. Un banquier, qui a fait fortune, a une partie du caractère requis pour faire des découvertes en philosophie, c’est-à-dire pour voir clair dans ce qui est.”

Everything that is profound loves the mask: the profoundest things have a hatred even of figure and likeness.

Should not the contrary only be the right disguise for the shame of a God to go about in? A question worth asking!—it would be strange if some mystic has not already ventured on the same kind of thing.

One must not avoid one’s tests, although they constitute perhaps the most dangerous game one can play, and are in the end tests made only before ourselves and before no other judge.

Not to cleave to any person, be it even the dearest⁠—every person is a prison and also a recess.

Not to cleave to a fatherland, be it even the most suffering and necessitous—it is even less difficult to detach one’s heart from a victorious fatherland.

“My opinion is my opinion: another person has not easily a right to it”—such a philosopher of the future will say, perhaps. One must renounce the bad taste of wishing to agree with many people.

“Good” is no longer good when one’s neighbour takes it into his mouth.

And how could there be a “common good”! The expression contradicts itself; that which can be common is always of small value.

Was it not necessary to sacrifice God himself, and out of cruelty to themselves to worship stone, stupidity, gravity, fate, nothingness?

To sacrifice God for nothingness⁠—this paradoxical mystery of the ultimate cruelty has been reserved for the rising generation; we all know something thereof already.

Whoever, like myself, prompted by some enigmatical desire, has long endeavoured to go to the bottom of the question of pessimism and free it from the half-Christian, half-German narrowness and stupidity in which it has finally presented itself to this century, namely, in the form …

… in the unsuspecting, simple certainty with which his instinct treats the religious man as a lower and less valuable type, beyond, before, and above which he himself has developed—he, the little arrogant dwarf and mob-man, the sedulously alert, head-and-hand drudge of “ideas,” of “modern ideas”!

Whoever has seen deeply into the world has doubtless divined what wisdom there is in the fact that men are superficial.

It is their preservative instinct which teaches them to be flighty, lightsome, and false. Here and there one finds a passionate and exaggerated adoration of “pure forms” in philosophers as well as in artists:

Perhaps there has hitherto been no more effective means of beautifying man than piety, by means of it man can become so artful, so superficial, so iridescent, and so good, that his appearance no longer offends.

To love mankind for God’s sake⁠—this has so far been the noblest and remotest sentiment to which mankind has attained.

That love to mankind, without any redeeming intention in the background, is only an additional folly and brutishness, that the inclination to this love has first to get its proportion, its delicacy, its gram of salt and sprinkling of ambergris from a higher inclination—whoever first …

He who is a thorough teacher takes things seriously⁠—and even himself⁠—only in relation to his pupils.

“Knowledge for its own sake”—that is the last snare laid by morality: we are thereby completely entangled in morals once more.

He who is a thorough teacher takes things seriously—and even himself—only in relation to his pupils.

“Knowledge for its own sake”⁠—that is the last snare laid by morality: we are thereby completely entangled in morals once more.

The charm of knowledge would be small, were it not so much shame has to be overcome on the way to it.

“Knowledge for its own sake”—that is the last snare laid by morality: we are thereby completely entangled in morals once more.

The charm of knowledge would be small, were it not so much shame has to be overcome on the way to it.

We are most dishonourable towards our God: he is not permitted to sin.

The charm of knowledge would be small, were it not so much shame has to be overcome on the way to it.

We are most dishonourable towards our God: he is not permitted to sin.

The tendency of a person to allow himself to be degraded, robbed, deceived, and exploited might be the diffidence of a God among men.

The tendency of a person to allow himself to be degraded, robbed, deceived, and exploited might be the diffidence of a God among men.

Love to one only is a barbarity, for it is exercised at the expense of all others. Love to God also!

“I did that,” says my memory. “I could not have done that,” says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually—the memory yields.

Love to one only is a barbarity, for it is exercised at the expense of all others. Love to God also!

“I did that,” says my memory. “I could not have done that,” says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually⁠—the memory yields.

One has regarded life carelessly, if one has failed to see the hand that—kills with leniency.

The Sage as Astronomer.—So long as thou feelest the stars as an “above thee,” thou lackest the eye of the discerning one.

It is not the strength, but the duration of great sentiments that makes great men.

He who attains his ideal, precisely thereby surpasses it.

It is not the strength, but the duration of great sentiments that makes great men.

He who attains his ideal, precisely thereby surpasses it.

Many a peacock hides his tail from every eye—and calls it his pride.

He who attains his ideal, precisely thereby surpasses it.

Many a peacock hides his tail from every eye⁠—and calls it his pride.

A man of genius is unbearable, unless he possess at least two things besides: gratitude and purity.

With his principles a man seeks either to dominate, or justify, or honour, or reproach, or conceal his habits: two men with the same principles probably seek fundamentally different ends therewith.

He who despises himself, nevertheless esteems himself thereby, as a despiser.

A soul which knows that it is loved, but does not itself love, betrays its sediment: its dregs come up.

A thing that is explained ceases to concern us—What did the God mean who gave the advice, “Know thyself!” Did it perhaps imply “Cease to be concerned about thyself! become objective!”—And Socrates?—And the “scientific man”?

It is terrible to die of thirst at sea. Is it necessary that you should so salt your truth that it will no longer⁠—quench thirst?

“Sympathy for all”—would be harshness and tyranny for thee, my good neighbour.

Instinct.—When the house is on fire one forgets even the dinner.—Yes, but one recovers it from among the ashes.

Woman learns how to hate in proportion as she⁠—forgets how to charm.

The same emotions are in man and woman, but in different tempo, on that account man and woman never cease to misunderstand each other.

Fettered Heart, Free Spirit.—When one firmly fetters one’s heart and keeps it prisoner, one can allow one’s spirit many liberties: I said this once before. But people do not believe it when I say so, unless they know it already.

One begins to distrust very clever persons when they become embarrassed.

Dreadful experiences raise the question whether he who experiences them is not something dreadful also.

One begins to distrust very clever persons when they become embarrassed.

Dreadful experiences raise the question whether he who experiences them is not something dreadful also.

Heavy, melancholy men turn lighter, and come temporarily to their surface, precisely by that which makes others heavy—by hatred and love.

So cold, so icy, that one burns one’s finger at the touch of him! Every hand that lays hold of him shrinks back!—And for that very reason many think him red-hot.

Who has not, at one time or another⁠—sacrificed himself for the sake of his good name?

In affability there is no hatred of men, but precisely on that account a great deal too much contempt of men.

In affability there is no hatred of men, but precisely on that account a great deal too much contempt of men.

The maturity of man⁠—that means, to have reacquired the seriousness that one had as a child at play.

To be ashamed of one’s immorality is a step on the ladder at the end of which one is ashamed also of one’s morality.

The maturity of man—that means, to have reacquired the seriousness that one had as a child at play.

To be ashamed of one’s immorality is a step on the ladder at the end of which one is ashamed also of one’s morality.

One should part from life as Ulysses parted from Nausicaa—blessing it rather than in love with it.

What? A great man? I always see merely the playactor of his own ideal.

When one trains one’s conscience, it kisses one while it bites.

The Disappointed One Speaks.—“I listened for the echo and I heard only praise.”

When one trains one’s conscience, it kisses one while it bites.

The Disappointed One Speaks.⁠—“I listened for the echo and I heard only praise.”

We all feign to ourselves that we are simpler than we are, we thus relax ourselves away from our fellows.

The Danger in Happiness.—“Everything now turns out best for me, I now love every fate:—who would like to be my fate?”

Not their love of humanity, but the impotence of their love, prevents the Christians of today⁠—burning us.

The pia fraus is still more repugnant to the taste (the “piety”) of the free spirit (the “pious man of knowledge”) than the impia fraus. Hence the profound lack of judgment, in comparison with the Church, characteristic of the type “free spirit”—as its non-freedom.

The pia fraus is still more repugnant to the taste (the “piety”) of the free spirit (the “pious man of knowledge”) than the impia fraus. Hence the profound lack of judgment, in comparison with the Church, characteristic of the type “free spirit”—as its non-freedom.

By means of music the very passions enjoy themselves.

A sign of strong character, when once the resolution has been taken, to shut the ear even to the best counterarguments. Occasionally, therefore, a will to stupidity.

A sign of strong character, when once the resolution has been taken, to shut the ear even to the best counterarguments. Occasionally, therefore, a will to stupidity.

There is no such thing as moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.

The criminal is often enough not equal to his deed: he extenuates and maligns it.

The advocates of a criminal are seldom artists enough to turn the beautiful terribleness of the deed to the advantage of the doer.

Our vanity is most difficult to wound just when our pride has been wounded.

To him who feels himself preordained to contemplation and not to belief, all believers are too noisy and obtrusive; he guards against them.

Where there is neither love nor hatred in the game, woman’s play is mediocre.

The great epochs of our life are at the points when we gain courage to rebaptize our badness as the best in us.

The will to overcome an emotion, is ultimately only the will of another, or of several other, emotions.

The great epochs of our life are at the points when we gain courage to rebaptize our badness as the best in us.

The will to overcome an emotion, is ultimately only the will of another, or of several other, emotions.

There is an innocence of admiration: it is possessed by him to whom it has not yet occurred that he himself may be admired some day.

Sensuality often forces the growth of love too much, so that its root remains weak, and is easily torn up.

It is a curious thing that God learned Greek when he wished to turn author⁠—and that he did not learn it better.

To rejoice on account of praise is in many cases merely politeness of heart—and the very opposite of vanity of spirit.

To rejoice on account of praise is in many cases merely politeness of heart—and the very opposite of vanity of spirit.

Even concubinage has been corrupted⁠—by marriage.

He who exults at the stake, does not triumph over pain, but because of the fact that he does not feel pain where he expected it. A parable.

When we have to change an opinion about anyone, we charge heavily to his account the inconvenience he thereby causes us.

A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at six or seven great men.⁠—Yes, and then to get round them.

In the eyes of all true women science is hostile to the sense of shame. They feel as if one wished to peep under their skin with it—or worse still! under their dress and finery.

Thus man wishes woman to be peaceable: but in fact woman is essentially unpeaceable, like the cat, however well she may have assumed the peaceable demeanour.

One is punished best for one’s virtues.

He who cannot find the way to his ideal, lives more frivolously and shamelessly than the man without an ideal.

Advice As a Riddle.—“If the band is not to break, bite it first—secure to make!”

The belly is the reason why man does not so readily take himself for a God.

The chastest utterance I ever heard: “Dans le véritable amour c’est l’âme qui enveloppe le corps.”

Comparing man and woman generally, one may say that woman would not have the genius for adornment, if she had not the instinct for the secondary role.

He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.

From old Florentine novels—moreover, from life: Buona femmina e mala femmina vuol bastone. —Sacchetti, Nov. ’86.

To seduce their neighbour to a favourable opinion, and afterwards to believe implicitly in this opinion of their neighbour—who can do this conjuring trick so well as women?

That which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable echo of what was formerly considered good⁠—the atavism of an old ideal.

Around the hero everything becomes a tragedy; around the demigod everything becomes a satyr-play; and around God everything becomes—what? perhaps a “world”?

That which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable echo of what was formerly considered good—the atavism of an old ideal.

Around the hero everything becomes a tragedy; around the demigod everything becomes a satyr-play; and around God everything becomes⁠—what? perhaps a “world”?

It is not enough to possess a talent: one must also have your permission to possess it;—eh, my friends?

It is not enough to possess a talent: one must also have your permission to possess it;—eh, my friends?

“Where there is the tree of knowledge, there is always Paradise”: so say the most ancient and the most modern serpents.

What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.

“Where there is the tree of knowledge, there is always Paradise”: so say the most ancient and the most modern serpents.

What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.

Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.

What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.

Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.

The sense of the tragic increases and declines with sensuousness.

The sense of the tragic increases and declines with sensuousness.

Insanity in individuals is something rare⁠—but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.

The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets successfully through many a bad night.

Insanity in individuals is something rare—but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.

The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets successfully through many a bad night.

Not only our reason, but also our conscience, truckles to our strongest impulse—the tyrant in us.

Not only our reason, but also our conscience, truckles to our strongest impulse—the tyrant in us.

One must repay good and ill; but why just to the person who did us good or ill?

One no longer loves one’s knowledge sufficiently after one has communicated it.

One no longer loves one’s knowledge sufficiently after one has communicated it.

Poets act shamelessly towards their experiences: they exploit them.

“Our fellow-creature is not our neighbour, but our neighbour’s neighbour”:—so thinks every nation.

To vigorous men intimacy is a matter of shame—and something precious.

Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.

To talk much about oneself may also be a means of concealing oneself.

Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.

To talk much about oneself may also be a means of concealing oneself.

In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.

In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.

Pity has an almost ludicrous effect on a man of knowledge, like tender hands on a Cyclops.

One occasionally embraces some one or other, out of love to mankind (because one cannot embrace all); but this is what one must never confess to the individual.

One occasionally embraces some one or other, out of love to mankind (because one cannot embrace all); but this is what one must never confess to the individual.

One does not hate as long as one disesteems, but only when one esteems equal or superior.

Ye Utilitarians—ye, too, love the utile only as a vehicle for your inclinations—ye, too, really find the noise of its wheels insupportable!

Ye Utilitarians—ye, too, love the utile only as a vehicle for your inclinations—ye, too, really find the noise of its wheels insupportable!

One loves ultimately one’s desires, not the thing desired.

The vanity of others is only counter to our taste when it is counter to our vanity.

The vanity of others is only counter to our taste when it is counter to our vanity.

With regard to what “truthfulness” is, perhaps nobody has ever been sufficiently truthful.

One does not believe in the follies of clever men: what a forfeiture of the rights of man!

With regard to what “truthfulness” is, perhaps nobody has ever been sufficiently truthful.

One does not believe in the follies of clever men: what a forfeiture of the rights of man!

The consequences of our actions seize us by the forelock, very indifferent to the fact that we have meanwhile “reformed.”

There is a haughtiness of kindness which has the appearance of wickedness.

“I dislike him.”⁠—Why?⁠—“I am not a match for him.”⁠—Did anyone ever answer so?

precisely this shall be called greatness: as diversified as can be entire, as ample as can be full.” And to ask once more the question: Is greatness possible—nowadays?

It is difficult to learn what a philosopher is, because it cannot be taught: one must “know” it by experience⁠—or one should have the pride not to know it.

The fact that at present people all talk of things of which they cannot have any experience, is true more especially and unfortunately as concerns the philosopher and philosophical matters:—the very few know them, are permitted to know them, and all popular ideas about them …

This is also an advance, as it was an advance in our fathers that religion as an attitude finally became opposed to their taste, including the enmity and Voltairean bitterness against religion (and all that formerly belonged to freethinker-pantomime).

It is the music in our conscience, the dance in our spirit, to which Puritan litanies, moral sermons, and goody-goodness won’t chime.

Let us be careful in dealing with those who attach great importance to being credited with moral tact and subtlety in moral discernment!

They never forgive us if they have once made a mistake before us (or even with regard to us)—they inevitably become our instinctive calumniators and detractors, even when they still remain our “friends.”—

Blessed are the forgetful: for they “get the better” even of their blunders.

The psychologists of France—and where else are there still psychologists nowadays?—have never yet exhausted their bitter and manifold enjoyment of the bêtise bourgeoise, just as though … in short, they betray something thereby.

But this is a realm of questions and answers in which a more fastidious spirit does not like to stay: for here truth has to stifle her yawns so much when she is obliged to answer.

And after all, truth is a woman; one must not use force with her.

“It sometimes happens,” said a moralistic pedant and trifle-retailer, “that I honour and respect an unselfish man: not, however, because he is unselfish, but because I think he has a right to be useful to another man at his own expense.

”—So said my moralistic pedant and bonhomme. Did he perhaps deserve to be laughed at when he thus exhorted systems of morals to practise morality?

But one should not be too much in the right if one wishes to have the laughers on one’s own side; a grain of wrong pertains even to good taste.

Wherever sympathy (fellow-suffering) is preached nowadays—and, if I gather rightly, no other religion is any longer preached—let the psychologist have his ears open through all the vanity, through all the noise which is natural to these preachers (as to all preachers), he will hear a …

It belongs to the overshadowing and uglifying of Europe, which has been on the increase for a century (the first symptoms of which are already specified documentarily in a thoughtful letter of Galiani to Madame d’Epinay)—if it is not really the cause thereof!

The man of “modern ideas,” the conceited ape, is excessively dissatisfied with himself⁠—this is perfectly certain.

He suffers, and his vanity wants him only “to suffer with his fellows.”

Well-being, as you understand it—is certainly not a goal; it seems to us an end; a condition which at once renders man ludicrous and contemptible—and makes his destruction desirable!

The discipline of suffering, of great suffering⁠—know ye not that it is only this discipline that has produced all the elevations of humanity hitherto?

The tension of soul in misfortune which communicates to it its energy, its shuddering in view of rack and ruin, its inventiveness and bravery in undergoing, enduring, interpreting, and exploiting misfortune, and whatever depth, mystery, disguise, spirit, artifice, or greatness has been bestowed upon the …

Occasionally, it is true, we dance in our “chains” and betwixt our “swords”; it is none the less true that more often we gnash our teeth under the circumstances, and are impatient at the secret hardship of our lot.

But do what we will, fools and appearances say of us: “These are men without duty,”⁠—we have always fools and appearances against us!

Honesty, granting that it is the virtue of which we cannot rid ourselves, we free spirits—well, we will labour at it with all our perversity and love, and not tire of “perfecting” ourselves in our virtue, which alone remains:

Every virtue inclines to stupidity, every stupidity to virtue; “stupid to the point of sanctity,” they say in Russia—let us be careful lest out of pure honesty we eventually become saints and bores!

Is not life a hundred times too short for us⁠—to bore ourselves?

One would have to believe in eternal life in order to …

at the same time, however, I would not wish to overlook their general usefulness.

It is desirable that as few people as possible should reflect upon morals, and consequently it is very desirable that morals should not some day become interesting!

But let us not be afraid! Things still remain today as they have always been:

one ought at last to learn impatience, in order that such immodest gross errors—as, for instance, have been fostered by ancient and modern philosophers with regard to tragedy—may no longer wander about virtuously and boldly.

Almost everything that we call “higher culture” is based upon the spiritualising and intensifying of cruelty⁠—this is my thesis; the “wild beast” has not been slain at all, it lives, it flourishes, it has only been⁠—transfigured.

That which constitutes the painful delight of tragedy is cruelty;

Or, to put the question differently: “Why knowledge at all?” Everyone will ask us about this. And thus pressed, we, who have asked ourselves the question a hundred times, have not found and cannot find any better answer. …

Learning alters us, it does what all nourishment does that does not merely “conserve”⁠—as the physiologist knows.

But at the bottom of our souls, quite “down below,” there is certainly something unteachable, a granite of spiritual fate, of predetermined decision and answer to predetermined, chosen questions. In each cardinal problem there speaks an unchangeable “I am this”;

There are turns and casts of fancy, there are sentences, little handfuls of words, in which a whole culture, a whole society suddenly crystallises itself. Among these is the incidental remark of Madame de Lambert to her son:

“Mon ami, ne vous permettez jamais que des folies, qui vous feront grand plaisir”⁠—the motherliest and wisest remark, by the way, that was ever addressed to a son.

I have no doubt that every noble woman will oppose what Dante and Goethe believed about woman—the former when he sang, “ella guardava suso, ed io in lei,” and the latter when he interpreted it, “the eternally feminine draws us aloft”;

a real, genuine token of the German soul, which is at the same time young and aged, too ripe and yet still too rich in futurity.

This kind of music expresses best what I think of the Germans: they belong to the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow⁠—they have as yet no today.

We “good Europeans,” we also have hours when we allow ourselves a warmhearted patriotism, a plunge and relapse into old loves and narrow views—I have just given an example of it—hours of national excitement, of patriotic anguish, and all other sorts of old-fashioned floods of …

the strong man will necessarily in individual and exceptional cases, become stronger and richer than he has perhaps ever been before—owing to the unprejudicedness of his schooling, owing to the immense variety of practice, art, and disguise.

I meant to say that the democratising of Europe is at the same time an involuntary arrangement for the rearing of tyrants⁠—taking the word in all its meanings, even in its most spiritual sense.

I hear with pleasure that our sun is moving rapidly towards the constellation Hercules: and I hope that the men on this earth will do like the sun. And we foremost, we good Europeans!

I meant to say that the democratising of Europe is at the same time an involuntary arrangement for the rearing of tyrants—taking the word in all its meanings, even in its most spiritual sense.

I hear with pleasure that our sun is moving rapidly towards the constellation Hercules: and I hope that the men on this earth will do like the sun. And we foremost, we good Europeans!

There was a time when it was customary to call Germans “deep” by way of distinction;

And as everything loves its symbol, so the German loves the clouds and all that is obscure, evolving, crepuscular, damp, and shrouded, it seems to him that everything uncertain, undeveloped, self-displacing, and growing is “deep.”

The German himself does not exist, he is becoming, he is “developing himself.”

“Development” is therefore the essentially German discovery and hit in the great domain of philosophical formulas—a ruling idea, which, together with German beer and German music, is labouring to Germanise all Europe.

it is his proper Mephistophelean art; with this he can “still achieve much”!

The German lets himself go, and thereby gazes with faithful, blue, empty German eyes⁠—and other countries immediately confound him with his dressing-gown!

—I meant to say that, let “German depth” be what it will—among ourselves alone we perhaps take the liberty to laugh at it—we shall do well to continue henceforth to honour its appearance and good name, and not barter away too cheaply our old reputation …

… alone we perhaps take the liberty to laugh at it—we shall do well to continue henceforth to honour its appearance and good name, and not barter away too cheaply our old reputation as a people of depth for Prussian “smartness,” and Berlin wit and sand.

It is wise for a people to pose, and let itself be regarded, as profound, clumsy, good-natured, honest, and foolish: it might even be⁠—profound to do so!

Finally, we should do honour to our name—we are not called the “tiusche volk” (deceptive people) for nothing. …

with Schumann German music was threatened with its greatest danger, that of losing the voice for the soul of Europe and sinking into a merely national affair.

What a torture are books written in German to a reader who has a third ear!

How indignantly he stands beside the slowly turning swamp of sounds without tune and rhythms without dance, which Germans call a “book”! And even the German who reads books! How lazily, how reluctantly, how badly he reads!

… tortured and enraptured by unknown fevers and irresistibly forced out of themselves, amorous and longing for foreign races (for such as “let themselves be fructified”), and withal imperious, like everything conscious of being full of generative force, and consequently empowered “by the grace of God.”

These two kinds of geniuses seek each other like man and woman; but they also misunderstand each other⁠—like man and woman.

Every nation has its own “Tartuffery,” and calls that its virtue.—One does not know—cannot know, the best that is in one.

These two kinds of geniuses seek each other like man and woman; but they also misunderstand each other—like man and woman.

Every nation has its own “Tartuffery,” and calls that its virtue.

—One does not know—cannot know, the best that is in one.

it is here that sympathy, the kind, helping hand, the warm heart, patience, diligence, humility, and friendliness attain to honour; for here these are the most useful qualities, and almost the only means of supporting the burden of existence.

Slave-morality is essentially the morality of utility.

Here is the seat of the origin of the famous antithesis “good” and “evil”:—power and dangerousness are assumed to reside in the evil, a certain dreadfulness, subtlety, and strength, which do not admit of being despised. According to slave-morality, therefore, the “evil” man arouses fear;

because, according to the servile mode of thought, the good man must in any case be the safe man: he is good-natured, easily deceived, perhaps a little stupid, un bonhomme.

Everywhere that slave-morality gains the ascendancy, language shows a tendency to approximate the significations of the words “good” and “stupid.”

—A last fundamental difference:

it is the slave, too, who immediately afterwards falls prostrate himself before these opinions, as though he had not called them forth.—

And to repeat it again: vanity is an atavism.

A species originates, and a type becomes established and strong in the long struggle with essentially constant unfavourable conditions.

… of the sufferer, this pride of the elect of knowledge, of the “initiated,” of the almost sacrificed, finds all forms of disguise necessary to protect itself from contact with officious and sympathizing hands, and in general from all that is not its equal in suffering.

Profound suffering makes noble: it separates.

—One of the most refined forms of disguise is Epicurism, along with a certain ostentatious boldness of taste, which takes suffering lightly, and puts itself on the defensive against all that is sorrowful and profound.

Profound suffering makes noble: it separates.—One of the most refined forms of disguise is Epicurism, along with a certain ostentatious boldness of taste, which takes suffering lightly, and puts itself on the defensive against all that is sorrowful and profound.

They are “gay men” who make use of gaiety, because they are misunderstood on account of it⁠—they wish to be misunderstood.

There are “scientific minds” who make use of science, because it gives a gay appearance, and because scientificness leads to the conclusion that a person is superficial—they wish to mislead to a false conclusion.

and occasionally folly itself is the mask of an unfortunate overassured knowledge.—From which it follows that it is the part of a more refined humanity to have reverence “for the mask,” and not to make use of psychology and curiosity in the wrong place.

That which separates two men most profoundly is a different sense and grade of purity.

What does it matter about all their honesty and reciprocal usefulness, what does it matter about all their mutual goodwill: the fact still remains—they “cannot smell each other!”

… the bath, any kind of ardour or thirst which perpetually impels the soul out of night into the morning, and out of gloom, out of “affliction” into clearness, brightness, depth, and refinement:—just as much as such a tendency distinguishes—it is a noble tendency—it also separates.—

The pity of the saint is pity for the filth of the human, all-too-human.

And there are grades and heights where pity itself is regarded by him as impurity, as filth.

And there are grades and heights where pity itself is regarded by him as impurity, as filth.

Signs of nobility: never to think of lowering our duties to the rank of duties for everybody; to be unwilling to renounce or to share our responsibilities; to count our prerogatives, and the exercise of them, among our duties.

A man who strives after great things, looks upon everyone whom he encounters on his way either as a means of advance, or a delay and hindrance—or as a temporary resting-place.

“It is too late,” he has said to himself—and has become self-distrustful and henceforth forever useless.—In the domain of genius, may not the “Raphael without hands” (taking the expression in its widest sense) perhaps not be the exception, but the rule?—

Perhaps genius is by no means so rare: but rather the five hundred hands which it requires in order to tyrannize over the καιρὸϛ, “the right time”⁠—in order to take chance by the forelock!

He who does not wish to see the height of a man, looks all the more sharply at what is low in him, and in the foreground—and thereby betrays himself.

but rather the five hundred hands which it requires in order to tyrannize over the καιρὸϛ, “the right time”—in order to take chance by the forelock!

He who does not wish to see the height of a man, looks all the more sharply at what is low in him, and in the foreground⁠—and thereby betrays himself.

In all kinds of injury and loss the lower and coarser soul is better off than the nobler soul:

the dangers of the latter must be greater, the probability that it will come to grief and perish is in fact immense, considering the multiplicity of the conditions of its existence.—

In a lizard a finger grows again which has been lost; not so in man.

—

It is too bad! Always the old story! When a man has finished building his house, he finds that he has learnt unawares something which he ought absolutely to have known before he—began to build. The eternal, fatal “Too late!”

The melancholia of everything completed⁠—!

—Wanderer, who art thou?

What will serve to refresh thee? Only name it, whatever I have I offer thee! “To refresh me? To refresh me? Oh, thou prying one, what sayest thou! But give me, I pray thee—” What? what? Speak out! “Another mask! A second mask!”

Men of profound sadness betray themselves when they are happy: they have a mode of seizing upon happiness as though they would choke and strangle it, out of jealousy⁠—ah, they know only too well that it will flee from them!

“Bad! Bad! What? Does he not—go back?” Yes! But you misunderstand him when you complain about it. He goes back like everyone who is about to make a great spring.

“Bad! Bad! What? Does he not—go back?” Yes! But you misunderstand him when you complain about it.

He goes back like everyone who is about to make a great spring.

—“Will people believe it of me? But I insist that they believe it of me:

… an unconquerable distrust of the possibility of self-knowledge, which has led me so far as to feel a contradictio in adjecto even in the idea of ‘direct knowledge’ which theorists allow themselves:—this matter of fact is almost the most certain thing I know about myself.

There must be a sort of repugnance in me to believe anything definite about myself.

—Is there perhaps some enigma therein? Probably; but fortunately nothing for my own teeth.—Perhaps it betrays the species to which I belong?—but not to myself, as is sufficiently agreeable to me.”

To be able to allow oneself this veritable luxury of taste and morality, one must not live among intellectual imbeciles, but rather among men whose misunderstandings and mistakes amuse by their refinement—or one will have to pay dearly for it!—

“He praises me, therefore he acknowledges me to be right”⁠—this asinine method of inference spoils half of the life of us recluses, for it brings the asses into our neighbourhood and friendship.

To live in a vast and proud tranquility; always beyond … To have, or not to have, one’s emotions, one’s For and Against, according to choice; to lower oneself to them for hours;

To conserve one’s three hundred foregrounds; also one’s black spectacles: for there are circumstances when nobody must look into our eyes, still less into our “motives.”

And to choose for company that roguish and cheerful vice, politeness.

And to remain master of one’s four virtues, courage, insight, sympathy, and solitude. For solitude is a virtue with us, as a sublime bent and bias to purity, which divines that in the contact of man and man—“in society”—it must be unavoidably impure.

And to remain master of one’s four virtues, courage, insight, sympathy, and solitude. For solitude is a virtue with us, as a sublime bent and bias to purity, which divines that in the contact of man and man—“in society”—it must be unavoidably impure.

All society makes one somehow, somewhere, or sometime⁠—“commonplace.”

The greatest events and thoughts—the greatest thoughts, however, are the greatest events—are longest in being comprehended: the generations which are contemporary with them do not experience such events—they live past them. Something happens there as in the realm of stars.

For solitude is a virtue with us, as a sublime bent and bias to purity, which divines that in the contact of man and man—“in society”—it must be unavoidably impure. All society makes one somehow, somewhere, or sometime—“commonplace.”

The greatest events and thoughts⁠—the greatest thoughts, however, are the greatest events⁠—are longest in being comprehended: the generations which are contemporary with them do not experience such events⁠—they live past them.

Something happens there as in the realm of stars. The light of the furthest stars is longest in reaching man; and before it has arrived man denies—that there are stars there.

The greatest events and thoughts—the greatest thoughts, however, are the greatest events—are longest in being comprehended: the generations which are contemporary with them do not experience such events—they live past them. Something happens there as in the realm of stars.

The light of the furthest stars is longest in reaching man; and before it has arrived man denies⁠—that there are stars there.

“How many centuries does a mind require to be understood?”—that is also a standard, one also makes a gradation of rank and an etiquette therewith, such as is necessary for mind and for star.

… rank—to employ once more an old religious formula with a new and deeper meaning—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.

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