Friedrich Nietzsche

Day 3227, Spinoza.

Daily picture, My thoughts, Video

Almost thirty years ago, I read about Spinoza for the first time, and he became one of my inspirations to dive deeper into the world of philosophy. Every now and then, I will get a reminder of why he inspires me so much, and this video is one of those. 

I dare to say that without Spinoza, there would be no Nietzsche, maybe a little exaggerated, but not in my world where Nietzsche followed Spinoza. Here is a quote from Nietzsche from one of his letters.

“I am utterly amazed, utterly enchanted! I have a precursor, and what a precursor! I hardly knew Spinoza: that I should have turned to him just now, was inspired by “instinct.” Not only is his overtendency like mine—namely to make all knowledge the most powerful affect—but in five main points of his doctrine I recognize myself; this most unusual and loneliest thinker is closest to me precisely in these matters: he denies the freedom of the will, teleology, the moral world-order, the unegoistic, and evil. Even though the divergencies are admittedly tremendous, they are due more to the difference in time, culture, and science. In summa: my lonesomeness, which, as on very high mountains, often made it hard for me to breathe and make my blood rush out, is now at least a twosomeness.”

Day 3221, error.

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

Human, All Too Human
From the Souls of Artists and Writers

149 The slow arrow of beauty. -The noblest sort of beauty does not sweep us away all at once, does not make stormy and intoxicating assaults (such beauty easily awakens disgust), but is instead the slowly penetrating sort that we carry around with us almost unnoticed and that we encounter again at times in a dream, but that finally, after it has laid discreetly upon our heart for a long time, takes full possession of us and fills our eyes with tears, our hearts with yearning. -What do we yearn for at the sight of beauty? To be beautiful: we imagine that there must be much happiness bound up in this. -But that is an error.

Day 3214, poverty.

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

The Gay Science
Book One

17 Finding a motive for one ‘s poverty. – There is clearly no trick that enables us to turn a poor virtue into a rich and overflowing one, but we can surely reinterpret its poverty nicely into a necessity, so that its sight no longer offends us and we no longer make reproachful faces at fate on its account. That is what the wise gardener does when he places the poor little stream in his garden in the arms of a nymph and thus finds a motive for its poverty: and who wouldn’t need nymphs as he does?

Day 3207, mask.

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

Beyond Good and Evil
What is noble

278 – Wanderer, who are you? I watch you go on your way, without scorn, without love, with impenetrable eyes – damp and downhearted, like a plumb line that returns unsatisfied from every depth back into the light (what was it looking for down there?), with a breast that does not sigh, with lips that hide their disgust, with a hand that only grips slowly: who are you? What have you done? Take a rest here, this spot is hospitable to everyone, – relax! And whoever you may be: what would you like now? What do you find relaxing? Just name it: I’ll give you whatever I have! – “Relaxing? Relaxing? How inquisitive you are! What are you saying! But please, give me – –” What? What? Just say it! – “Another mask! A second mask!” …

Day 3204, it arouse doubts.

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

The Will to Power
Book Two: Critique of Highest Values

313 It would arouse doubts in us concerning a man if we heard he needed reasons for remaining decent: certainly, we would avoid him. The little word “for” can be compromising in certain cases; one can even refute oneself now and then with a single “for.” Now, if we hear further that such an aspirant to virtue needed bad reasons for remaining respectable, this would be no reason for us to feel an increased respect for him. But he goes further, he comes to us and tells us to our face: “Unbeliever, you are disturbing my morality with your unbelief; as long as you do not  believe in my bad reasons, which is to say in God, in a punishment in the beyond, in freedom of will, you hamper my virtueMoral: unbelievers must be abolished: they hamper the moralization of the masses.”

Day 3194, the result.

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

The Gay Science
Book One

41 Against remorse.– A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions – as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all. To be annoyed or feel remorse because something goes wrong – that he leaves to those who act because they have received orders and who have to reckon with a beating when his lordship is not satisfied with the result.

Day 3189, three times.

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

Human. All Too Human
On The History Of Moral Feelings

4 1 The unchangeable character. In the strict sense, it is not true that one’s character is unchangeable; rather, this popular tenet means only that during a man’s short lifetime the motives affecting him cannot normally cut deeply enough to destroy the imprinted writing of many millennia. If a man eighty thousand years old were conceivable, his character would in fact be absolutely variable, so that out of him little by little an abundance of different individuals would develop. The brevity of human life misleads us to many an erroneous assertion about the qualities of man.

59 Intellect and morality. One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one has given. One must have strong powers of imagination to be able to have pity. So closely is morality bound to the quality of the intellect.

82 The skin of the soul. Just as the bones, flesh, intestines, and blood vessels are enclosed by skin, which makes the sight of a man bearable, so the stirrings and passions of the soul are covered up by vanity: it is the skin of the soul.

Day 3186,

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

Human, All Too Human
On The History Of Moral Feelings

70 Executions. How is it that every execution offends us more than a murder? It is the coldness of the judges, the painful preparations, the understanding that a man is here being used as a means to deter others. For guilt is not being punished, even if there were guilt; guilt lies in the educators, the parents, the environment, in us, not in the murderer, I am talking about the motivating circumstances.

Day 3179, For many people.

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Friedrich Nietzsche

Human, All Too Human
By Oneself Alone

586 Of the hour hand ef /life. -Life consists of rare individual moments of the highest significance and countless intervals of time in which at best the shadowy images of those moments hover around us. Love, spring, every beautiful melody, mountains, the moon, the sea – only once do all those things speak fully to the heart: if in fact they ever do find their way completely into words. For many people do not have any such moments and are themselves intervals and pauses in the symphony of real life.

Day 3172, three times.

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

The Gay Science
Joke, Cunning, and Revenge

18 Narrow Souls
Narrow souls I cannot abide;
There’s almost no good or evil inside.

21 Against Airs
Those who inflate themselves are cursed
When pricked by a small pin to burst.

25 Request
The minds of others I know well;
But who I am. I cannot tell:

My eye is much too close to me,
I am not what I saw and see.
It would be quite a benefit
If only I could sometimes sit
Farther away; but my foes are
Too distant; close friends. still too far;
Between my friends and me, the middle
Would do. My wish? You guess my riddle.

Day 3167, pretender.

Daily picture, My thoughts

Being honest with yourself is the most frustrating thing. I still remember the first time I learned something new that put what I thought before to shame.  Maybe you have had that too; you were so sure about a fact of life, an important life choice, or your self-image that it got turned around to the point that you don’t understand you could have ever thought differently, let alone the way you felt before, the day before. I have had these moments in my life, and though I have gotten new beliefs instead of the old ones, the new ones stand on shakier ground. What if these new beliefs are also wrong? I didn’t doubt myself before, so the absence of doubt now is not a guarantee anymore. 

If you are honest with yourself, you know that your opinions are not worth much. This strong opinion that I have about this subject is caught in some kind of contradiction. I have to doubt my opinion, which you have to doubt. 

I have always known that life is just a play, and we all play a role. Most people probably don’t know that they play a role and that the script is handed to them when they are born. When I was around 16, my favorite teeshirt was one with Freddy Mercury on it with big letters saying “The Great Pretender.” Back then, I already knew that something fishy was going on, that I was just playing my role, one that people seemed to expect, or at least I thought they did. But it took another 10 years before I knew that what we think is true is just that, we think it is true, and the role I play is just that. 

Continue reading →

Day 3164, far away.

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

Human, all too Human
From the Souls of Artists and Writers

148 Poets as the easers of life. -The poets, insofar as they, too, want to make our lives easier, either turn our gaze away from the toilsome present or help the present acquire new colors by shining light upon it from the past. To be capable of this, they must themselves be turned back toward the past in many respects: so that we can use them as bridges to far away times and ideas, to dying or deceased religions and cultures. They are, in fact, always and necessarily epigones. Admittedly, we can say some unfavorable things about the means that they use to make life easier: they soothe and heal only temporarily, only for the moment; they even keep people from working toward genuine improvement of their circumstances, because they suspend and, by palliating it, discharge the passion that impels dissatisfied people toward action. 

Day 3152, yardstick.

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Friedrich Nietzsche

Daybreak
Book II

139 Said to be higher! – You say that the morality of pity is a higher morality than that of stoicism? Prove it! but note that ‘higher’ and ‘ lower’ in morality is not to be measured by a moral yardstick: for there is no absolute morality. So take your yardstick from elsewhere and – watch out!

Day 3148, eternity.

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

Thus Spoke Zarathustra
The Seven Seals (or the yes and amen song)

3 If ever one breath came to me of the creative breath and of that heavenly need that constrains even accidents to dance star-dances; if I ever laughed the laughter of creative lightning which is followed obediently but grumblingly by the long thunder of the deed; if I ever played dice with gods at the gods’ table, the earth, till the earth quaked and burst and snorted up floods of fire-for the earth is a table for gods and trembles with creative new words and gods’ throws: Oh, how should I not lust after eternity and after the nuptial ring of rings, the ring of recurrence? Never yet have I found the woman from whom I wanted children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love you, 0 eternity. For I love you, 0 eternity!