Friedrich Nietzsche

Daybreak

Book IV

381 Knowing one’s ‘individuality’. – We are too prone to forget that in the eyes of people who are seeing us for the first time we are something quite different from what we consider ourselves to be: usually we are nothing more than a single individual trait which leaps to the eye and determines the whole impression we make. Thus the gentlest and most reasonable of men can, if he wears a large moustache, sit as it were in its shade and feel safe there – he will usually be seen as no more than the appurtenance of a large moustache, that is to say a military type, easily angered and occasionally violent – and as such he will be treated.

385 The vain. – We are like shop windows in which we are continually arranging, concealing or illuminating the supposed qualities others ascribe to us- in order to deceive ourselves.

390 Concealing mind. -When we catch someone concealing his mind from us we call him evil: and all the more so, indeed, if we suspect that he has done so out of politeness and philanthropy.

419 Party courage. – The poor sheep say to their shepherd: ‘go on ahead and we shall never lack the courage to follow you’. The poor shepherd, however, thinks to himself: ‘follow me and I shall never lack the courage to lead you’.