Part Four : Maxims and Interludes

63

He who is a teacher from the very heart takes all things seriously only with reference to his students ‑ even himself.

64

'Knowledge for its own sake' ‑ this is the last snare set by morality: one therewith gets completely entangled with it once more.

65

The charm of knowledge would be small if so much shame did not have to be overcome on the road to it.

65a

One is most dishonest towards one's God: he is not permitted to sin!

66

The inclination to disparage himself, to let himself be robbed, lied to and exploited, could be the self‑effacement of a god among men.

67

Love of one is a piece of barbarism: for it is practised at the expense of all others. Love of God likewise.

68

'I have done that,' says my memory. 'I cannot have done that' ‑ says my pride, and remains adamant. At last ‑ memory yields.

69

One has been a bad spectator of life if one has not also seen the hand that in a considerate fashion ‑ kills.

70

If one has character one also has one's typical experience which recurs again and again.

71

The sage as astronomer. ‑ As long as you still feel the stars as being something 'over you' you still lack the eye of the man of knowledge.

72

It is not the strength but the duration of exalted sensations which makes exalted men.

73

He who attains his ideal by that very fact transcends it.

73a

Many a peacock hides his peacock tail from all eyes ‑ and calls it his pride.

74

A man with genius is unendurable if he does not also possess at least two other things: gratitude and cleanliness.

75

The degree and kind of a man's sexuality reaches up into the topmost summit of his spirit.

76

Under conditions of peace the warlike man attacks himself.

77

With one's principles one seeks to tyrannize over one's habits or to justify or honour or scold or conceal them ‑ two people with the same principles probably seek something fundamentally different with them.

78

He who despises himself still nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.

79

A soul which knows it is loved but does not itself love betrays its dregs ‑ its lowest part comes up.

80

A thing explained is a thing we have no further concern with. ‑‑ What did that god mean who counselled: `know thyself!'? Does that perhaps mean: `Have no further concern with thyself! become objective!' ‑ And Socrates? ‑ And the `man of science'?-

81

It is dreadful to die of thirst in the sea. Do you have to salt your truth so much that it can no longer even ‑ quench thirst?

82

`Pity for all' ‑ would be harshness and tyranny for  you, my neighbour!

83

Instinct ‑ When the house burns down one forgets even one's dinner. ‑ Yes: but one retrieves it from the ashes.

84

Woman learns how to hate to the extent that she unlearns how ‑ to charm.

85

The same emotions in man and woman are, however, different in tempo: therefore man and woman never cease to misunderstand one another.

86

Behind all their personal vanity women themselves always have their impersonal contempt ‑ for `woman'.

87

Bound heart, free spirit ‑ If one binds one's heart firmly and imprisons it one can allow one's spirit many liberties: I have said that before. But no one believes it if he does not already know it . . .

88

One begins to mistrust very clever people when they become embarrassed.

89

Terrible experiences make one wonder whether he who experiences them is not something terrible.

90

Heavy, melancholy people grow lighter through precisely that which makes others heavy, through hatred and love, and for a while they rise to their surface.

91

So cold, so icy one burns one's fingers on him! Every hand that grasps him starts back! ‑ And for just that reason many think he is growing hot.

92

Who has not for the sake of his reputation ‑ sacrificed himself?

93

There is no hatred for men in geniality, but for just that reason all too much , contempt for men.

94

Mature manhood: that means to have rediscovered the seriousness one had as a child at play.

95

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

96

One ought to depart from life as Odysseus departed from Nausicaa ‑ blessing rather than in love with it.

97

What? A great man? I always see only the actor of his own ideal.

98

If one trains one's conscience it will kiss us as it bites.

99

The disappointed man speaks. ‑ `I listened for an echo and I heard only praise ‑.'

100

Before ourselves we all pose as being simpler than we are: thus do we take a rest from our fellow men.

101

Today a man of knowledge might easily feel as if he were God become animal.

102

To discover he is loved in return ought really to disenchant the lover with the beloved. `What? She is so modest as to love even you? Or so stupid? Or ‑ or ‑.'

103

The danger in happiness. ‑ `Now everything is turning out well for me, now I love every destiny ‑ who would like to be my destiny?'

104

It is not their love for men but the impotence of their love for men which hinders the Christians of today from ‑ burning us.

105

The free spirit, the `pious man of knowledge' ‑ finds pia fraus even more offensive to his taste (to his kind of `piety') than impia fraus. Hence the profound lack of understanding of the church typical of the `free spirit' ‑ his kind of unfreedom.

106

By means of music the passions enjoy themselves.

107

To close your ears to even the best counter‑argument once the decision has been taken: sign of a strong character. Thus an occasional will to stupidity.

108

There are no moral phenomena at all, only a moral interpretation of phenomena. . .

109

The criminal is often enough not equal to his deed: he disparages and slanders it.

110

A criminal's lawyers are seldom artists enough to turn the beautiful terribleness of the deed to the advantage of him who did it

111.

Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded.

112

He who feels predestined to regard and not believe finds all believers too noisy and importunate: he rebuffs them.

113

`You want to make him interested in you? Then pretend to be embarrassed in his presence ‑'

114

The tremendous expectation in regard to sexual love and the shame involved in this expectation distorts all a woman's perspectives from the start.

115

Where neither love nor hate is in the game a woman is a mediocre player.

116

The great epochs of our life are the occasions when we gain the courage to rebaptize our evil qualities as our best qualities.

117

The will to overcome an emotion is ultimately only the will of another emotion or of several others.

118

There is an innocence in admiration: he has it to whom it has not yet occurred that he too could one day be admired.

119

Disgust with dirt can be so great that it prevents us from cleaning ourselves ‑ from `justifying' ourselves.

120

Sensuality often makes love grow too quickly, so that the root remains weak and is easy to pull out.

121

It was a piece of subtle refinement that God learned Greek when he wanted to become a writer‑ and that he did not learn it better.

122

To enjoy praise is with some people only politeness of the heart ‑ and precisely the opposite of vanity of the spirit.

123

Even concubinage has been corrupted: ‑ by marriage.

124

He who rejoices even at the stake triumphs not over pain but at the fact that he feels no pain where he had expected to feel it. A parable.

125

When we have to change our opinion about someone we hold the inconvenience he has therewith caused us greatly to his discredit.

126

A people is a detour of nature to get to six or seven great men. ‑ Yes: and then to get round them.

127

Science offends the modesty of all genuine women. They feel as if one were trying to look under their skin ‑ or worse! under their clothes and finery.

128

The more abstract the truth you want to teach the more you must seduce the senses to it.

129

The devil has the widest perspectives for God, and that is why he keeps so far away from him ‑ the devil being the oldest friend of knowledge.

130

What a person is begins to betray itself when his talent declines ‑ when he ceases to show what he can do. Talent is also finery; finery is also a hiding place.

131

The sexes deceive themselves about one another: the reason being that fundamentally they love and honour only themselves (or their own ideal, to express it more pleasantly‑). Thus man wants woman to be peaceful ‑ but woman is essentially unpeaceful, like the cat, however well she may have trained herself to present an appearance of peace.

132

One is punished most for one's virtues.

133

He who does not know how to find the road to his ideal lives more frivolously and impudently than the man without an ideal.

134

All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth comes only from the senses.

135

Pharisaism is not degeneration in a good man: a good part of it is rather the condition of all being good.

136

One seeks a midwife for his thoughts, another someone to whom he can be a midwife: thus originates a good conversation.

137

When one has dealings with scholars and artists it is easy to miscalculate in opposite directions: behind a remarkable scholar one not infrequently finds a mediocre man, and behind a mediocre artist often ‑ a very remarkable man.

138

What we do in dreams we also do when we are awake: we invent and fabricate the person with whom we associate ‑ and immediately forget we have done so.

139

In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man.

140

Counsel as conundrum ‑ `If the bonds are not to burst ‑ you must try to cut them first.'

141

The belly is the reason man does not so easily take himself for a god.

142

The chastest expression I have ever heard: `Dans le véritable amour c'est l’âme, qui enveloppe le corps.'

143

Our vanity would have just that which we do best count as that which is hardest for us. The origin of many a morality:

144

When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is usually something wrong with her sexuality. Unfruitfulness itself disposes one to a certain masculinity of taste; for man is, if I may be allowed to say so, `the unfruitful animal'.

145

Comparing man and woman in general one may say: woman would not have the genius for finery if she did not have the instinct for the secondary role.

146

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.

147

From old Florentine novels, moreover ‑ from life: 'buona femmina a mala femmina vuol bastone'. Sacchetti, Nov. 86.

148

To seduce one's neighbour to a good opinion and afterwards faithfully to believe in this good opinion of one's neighbour: who can do this trick as well as women?

149

That which an age feels to be evil is usually an untimely after-echo of that which was formerly felt to be good ‑ the atavism of an older ideal.

150

Around the hero everything becomes a tragedy, around the demi‑god a satyr‑play; and around God everything becomes what? Perhaps a `world'? -

151

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

152

`Where the tree of knowledge stands is always Paradise': thus speak the oldest and youngest serpents.

153

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

154

Objection, evasion, happy distrust, pleasure in mockery are signs of health: everything unconditional belongs in pathology.

155

The sense of the tragic increases and diminishes with sensuality.

156

Madness is something rare in individuals ‑ but in groups, parties, peoples, ages it is the rule.

157

The thought of suicide is a powerful solace: by means of it one gets through many a bad night.

158

To our strongest drive, the tyrant in us, not only our reason but also our conscience submits.

159

One has to requite good and ill: but why to precisely the person who did us good or ill?

160

One no longer loves one's knowledge enough when one has communicated it.

161

Poets behave impudently towards their experiences: they exploit them.

162

‘Our neighbour is not our neighbour but our neighbour’s neighbour’ – thus thinks every people.

163

Love brings to light the exalted and concealed qualities of a lover ‑ what is rare and exceptional in him: to that extent it can easily deceive as to what is normal in him.

164

Jesus said to his Jews: `The law was made for servants ‑ love God as I love him, as his son! What have we sons of God to do with morality!'

165

Concerning every party ‑ A shepherd always has need of a bellwether ‑ or he must himself occasionally be one.

166

You may lie with your mouth, but with the mouth you make as you do so you none the less tell the truth.

167

With hard men intimacy is a thing of shame – and something precious.

168

Christianity gave Eros poison to drink ‑ he did not die of it, to be sure, but degenerated into vice.

169

to talk about oneself a great deal can also be a means of concealing oneself.

170

In praise there is more importunity than in blame.

171

Pity in a man of knowledge seems almost ludicrous, like sensitive hands on a Cyclops.

172

From love of man one sometimes embraces anyone (because one cannot embrace everyone): but one must never let this anyone know it. . .

173

One does not hate so long as one continues to rate low, but only when one has come to rate equal or higher.

174

You utilitarians, you too love everything useful only as a vehicle of your inclinations ‑ you too really find the noise of its wheels intolerable?

175

Ultimately one loves one's desires and not that which is desired.

176

The vanity of others offends our taste only when it offends our vanity.

177

Perhaps no one has ever been sufficiently truthful about what `truthfulness' is.

178

Clever people are not credited with their follies: what a deprivation of human rights!

179

The consequences of our actions take us by the scruff of the neck, altogether indifferent to the fact that we have `improved' in the meantime.

180

There is an innocence in lying which is the sign of good faith in a cause.

181

It is inhuman to bless where one is cursed.

182

The familiarity of the superior embitters, because it may not be returned.

183

`Not that you lied to me but that I no longer believe you - that is what has distressed me ‑.'

184

There is a wild spirit of good‑naturedness which looks like malice.

185

`I do not like it.' ‑ Why? ‑ `I am not up to it.' ‑ Has anyone ever answered like that?