Friedrich Nietzsche

“ Implicit confidence renders us speechless; nay, this blissful silence even implies suffering and heaviness; wherefore souls, overwhelmed with happiness, generally feel more grateful to music than all other and better ones would do, For they see and hear through music as through an iridescent cloud; their love grows, at it were, more distant, more touching and less oppressive: music is their only means of watching their extraordinary state of mind, and of becoming aware of it with a feeling of surprise and relief. ”

“ You come with coarse, sensuous ears, you have left behind you the conscience of the art of listening, you have, on your way, cast off the finest portion of your honesty. And thereby you spoil both art and artists. Every time you applaud and cheer you have the conscience of the artists in your hands—and alas! if they should notice that you cannot distinguish between inoffensive and offensive music! ”

“ The demon of power.—Neither necessity or desire— nay, the love of power is the demon of mankind. Give them anything you like, health, food, abode, enjoyment —they are and will ever be unhappy and whimsical : for the demon is ever on the alert and longing to be gratified. Take everything from them and gratify this craving: then they will almost be happy—as happy, at least, as men and demons can be. ”

“ But I call an inoffensive music that winch altogether thinks but of itself and has forgotten the world on account of itself— the spontaneous resounding of the deepest solitude, which speaks of itself to itself, quite forgetful of the fact that there are hearers, listeners, effects, misunderstandings, and failures in the outside world. In fact, the music, which we have just heard, is indeed of this noble and rare kind ”

“ Only now have we gained the common, dark-coloured background, whereon every ray of beautiful music, however faint, obtains a gold and emerald lustre: only now we venture upon rousing the audience to impetuous and indignant feelings, taking away their breath, and then, in an interval of harmonious concord, giving them a feeling of bliss which is of general advantage to the appreciation of music. We have discovered the contrast : now only the strongest effects are possible—and cheap : nobody any longer asks for good music. ”

“ First and foremost, the capacity of lying and of shrewd and terrible revenge; being equal to circumstances; appearing nobler than the noblest if required; being what one wants to be; persevering with heroic steadfastness; having all means within one's reach; having genius—his genius forms the admiration of all the gods, they smile when they think of itall this is the Greek ideal! ”

“ Different pride.—Women burn pale at the thought that their lover night be unworthy of them; men turn pale at the thought that they might be worthy of the woman they love. I allude to perfect women, perfect well. Men, as a rule sanguine and self-confident, when under the influence of a strong passion grow diffident, doubtful of themselves: women, on the other hand, though generally conscious of being the weak, devoted sex, in the great exception of love become proud and conscious of their power, they ask, Who is worthy of me? ”

“ Dignity and timidity.—Ceremonies, official and staterobes, grave faces, solemn looks, slow pace, involved speech—in short, everything called dignity—is a form of simulation adopted by those people who are timid at heart; they wish to make others afraid (of them or of that which they represent) . Men of a dauntless mind who are naturally awe-inspiring do not stand in need of dignity and ceremonies; they bring into repute—or rather into ill-repute—honesty, straightforward words and actions, as characteristics of self-confident arrogance. ”

“ It is the dream of the moun taineer who, although having set his goal on high, falls asleep on the road from sheer exhaustion and dreams of the bliss of the contrast—the very rolling downhill without the least effort. I describe happiness such as I presume it in our present hunted, ambitious society both in Europe and America. ”

“ To what extent the thinker loves his enemy.—Make it a rule never to withhold or conceal anything from yourself, anything that you might think against your own thoughts. It is the foremost requirement of honest reflection. Every day you must make it your duty to wage war against self. A victory and a conquered bulwark are no longer your concern but that of truth, but also your defeat is no longer your concern. ”

“ From their height you look down upon that other sober morality which requires selfcontrol, severity, obedience; perhaps you even call it selfish, and indeed!—you are honest towards yourselves when it displeases you—it cannot help displeasing you! For in enthusiastically sacrificing yourselves and making victims of yourselves, you enjoy that rapturous thought now to be one with the powerful, be he God or man, to whom you devote yourselves: you revel in the consciousness of his power which is, in its turn, testified by a sacrifice. In truth you only seen to sacrifice yourselves ”

“ Others are of so peculiar a nature–it need not be a particularly noble, but only a rarer one–that they cannot but fare ill, with the only exception that they are able to live according to their sole purpose: in all other cases society is the loser. For everything that the individual considers a failure, a blighted life, his whole burden of peevishness, paralysis, sickness, irritability, covetousness, is laid at the door of society–and this a bad, sultry air and in the most favourable case a thundercloud gathers round it. ”

“ How many actions are accomplished, not because they have been selected as the most rational, but because they, when they occurred in our minds, in some way or other tickled our ambition and vanity so that we persist in them and rashly accomplish them. Thus they strengthen in us the belief in our character and our safe conscience, hence, generally speaking, in our strength: whilst the choice of the most rational acts maintains scepticism against us and a sense of weakness in us. ”

“ Misunderstood as a rule.—In conversation we sometimes notice people endeavouring to set a trap wherein to catch others—not from any base motive, as one might think, but from sheer delight in their own shrewdness: some again prepare a joke and leave it to others to utter it, they tie the loop for the other to pull out the knot: not from goodwill, as one might be induced to think, but from wickedness and contempt of coarse intellects. ”

“ Moral stinging-flies.—Those moralists who lack the love of knowledge and who only know the pleasure of giving pain to others, have the temper and tediousness of townsfolk. It is their pastime, which is as cruel as it is mean, closely to watch their neighbour and quite imperceptibly to put a pin in such a way that he cannot help pricking himself with it. This is their last residuum of the schoolboy's naughtiness, who cannot be merry without hunting and torturing both the living and dead. ”

“ And then he will have to halt for ever and ever, nailed to disappointment and turned into a stony knight, with a longing for an evening repast of knowledge which never more will fall to his share. For the whole world of things has not a morsel left to offer to his famished soul. ”

“ By means of their foibles, these musicians have created within us an arlent craving for their virtnes—and for a palate ten times more sensitive to every accent of intellect, beauty and goodness in music. ”

“ Festive mood.—Those very people who are most eager in the aspiration after power experience an indescribably pleasant sensation when feeling themselves overpowered. Sinking suddenly and deeply into a feeling as into a whirlpool! Suffering the reins to be snatched from our hands and watching a movement whose end is unknown. ”

“ Living and believing apart.—The means of becoming the prophet and phenomenon of one's age is the same in our days as it was of old, namely, to live apart, with little knowledge, few thoughts, and great deal of conceit;—in the end the belief springs up within us that mankind cannot get on without us because it is quite evident that we get on quite well without mankind. ”

“ His subject, the so-called world's history, is made up of opinions on imaginary actions and their imaginary motives, which in their turn give rise to opinions and actions, the truth of which, however, evaporates at once and is only effective as vapour,— continuous generating and teeming of phantoms above the dense mists of unfathomable truth. All historians record things that have never existed except in their imagination. ”

“ This would be turning the poets upside down for they, and Shakespeare above all, are in love with the passions themselves, and no less with their yearnings for death— when the heart does not cling to life more firmly than the drop of water does to the glass. ”

“ How does hunger originate? Having thought it over in our minds, we have come to the conclusion that there is nothing which is good, nothing which is beautiful, nothing which is lofty, nothing which is evil in itself ”

“ Knowledge of our circumstances.—We may estimate our forces but not our force. Circumstances do not only conceal it from and show it to us—nay, they even exaggerate and diminish it. We ought to consider ourselves variable quantities whose active power may, under specially favourable circumstances, become equivalent to that of the highest order. We ought, therefore, to weigh the circumstances, and spare no effort in studying them. ”

“ I am the centre of the world," springs up with full force when we are suddenly overtaken by same. We feel dazed and, as it were, standing in the midst of a surge, dazzled by one great piercing eye, which from all sides gazes down upon us and looks straight through and through us. ”

“ To raise oneself above one's own worthlessness.—Proud fellows indeed those who, in order to re-establish the consciousness of their dignity and importance, need others whom they may tyrannise and oppress: whose impotence and cowardice permit the impunity wherewith some display in their pressure a haughty or angry demeanour, so that they need the worthlessness of their surroundings to raise themselves for a short while above their own worthlessness. ”

“ But here, on this small space, we meet other birds of passage and hear of former ones,—and so we live together one precious minute of recognition and divinity, amid cheerful fluttering of the wings and joyous chirping, and, in our imagination, go to seek adventures for out on the ocean not less proud than he is himself. ”

“ The conscientious.—Have you observed what kind of people attach the greatest importance to scrupulous conscientiousness? Those who are conscious of many mean feelings; who are carefully thinking of and about themselves, and are afraid of others; who are intent upon concealing their innermost feelings to the best of their power ;—by this scrupulous conscientiousness and strict fulfilment of duty, by the severe and harsh impression which others, especially their inferiors, are bound to receive of them, they endeavour to impose upon themselves. ”

“ Some day they are overcome by that all-absorbing, dreamy sensation which forms the contrast to their whole secret and public life: like unto delightful mystery and miracle, full of golden splendour and baffling description and illustration. ”

“ Where is our worst enemy!—We, who are and are conscious of being good managers of our own affairs, are generally conciliatory towards our adversary. But the belief that we have the right on our side, and the knowledge that we are incapable of pleading it.—rouses a fierce an implacable hatred against the opponent of our cause. ”

“ Probable and improbable.—A woman secretly loved a man and raised him high above herself, saying a hundred of times in her heart of hearts, "If such a man were to love me, I should deem it a condescension which would make me grovel in the dust."—And the man entertained the same feelings for the woman, and in the inmost recesses of his heart he fostered the very same thought. ”

“ Therein we become artists.—Whoever idolises a person tries to justify himself in his own eyes by idealising him; he thus becomes an artist in order to have a safe conscience. If he suffers, he does not suffer from ignorance, but from belying himself, as though he were ignorant. ”

“ From the academy of thinkers.—In the midst of the ocean of genesis we adventurers and birds of passage wake up on an islet not larger than a canoe, and here glance around for a short while as furtively and as curiously as possible; for how quickly may some wind blow us away or some wave sweep over the islet and nothing be left of us! ”