Friedrich Nietzsche

Daubreak

Book V

437 Privileges. – He who really possesses himself, that is to say he who has definitively conquered himself, henceforth regards it as his own privilege to punish himself, to pardon himself, to take pity on himself: he does not need to concede this to anyone else, but he can freely relinquish it to another, to a friend for example- but he knows that he therewith confers a right and that one can confer rights only out of the possession of power.

438Man and things. – Why does man not see things? He Js himself standing in the way: he conceals things.

440 Do not renounce:– To forego the world without knowing it, like a nun that leads to a fruitless, perhaps melancholy solitude. It has nothing in common with the solitude of the vita contemplativa of the thinker: when he chooses that he is renouncing nothing; on the contrary, it would be renunciation, melancholy, destruction of himself if he
were obliged to persist in the vita practica: he foregoes this because he knows it, because he knows himself. Thus he leaps into his element, thus he gains his cheerfulness.