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.
65a
The
charm of knowledge would be small if so much shame did not have to be overcome
on the road to it.
65b
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.
73a
He who attains his ideal by that very fact transcends it.
73b
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 known 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 glowing 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 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 phenomenal 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
Pharisaicism 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 e mala femmina vuol bastone'. Sacchetti, Nov.
[18]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 us 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
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 require 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
nonetheless 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 spirits 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?