Friedrich Nietzsche

Daybreak

Book V

530 Thinker’s digressions. -With many thinkers, the course of their thought as a whole is rigorous and inexorably bold, indeed sometimes cruel towards themselves, while in detail they are gentle and flexible; with benevolent hesitation they circle around a thing ten times, though in the end they resume their rigorous path. They are rivers with many meanderings and secluded hermitages; there are places in their course where the river plays hide-and-seek with itself and creates for itself a brief idyll, with islands, trees, grottos and waterfalls: and then it goes on again, past rocky cliffs and breaking its way through the hardest stone.

FriedrichNietzsche

Daybreak

Book V

524 Jealousy of the solitary. – Between sociable and solitary natures there exists this distinction (presupposing they both possess spirit!): the former will be happy, or almost happy with a thing, whatever it may be, from the moment they have found in their spirita communicable and pleasing way of expressing it – this will reconcile them to the Devil himselfl The solitary, however, have their enjoyment or their torment ofa thing in silence, they hate a clever and glittering display of their innermost problems as they hate to see their beloved too carefully dressed: they gaze at her with melancholy eyes, as though becoming prey to the suspicion she wants to appear pleasing to others! This is the jealousy which all solitary thinkers and passionate dreamers feel towards esprit.