3 Everything has its day.– When man gave all things a sex he thought, not that he was playing, but that he had gained a profound insight: – it was only very late that he confessed to himself what an enormous error this was, and perhaps even now he has not confessed it completely. – In the same way man has ascribed to all that exists a connection with morality and laid an ethical significance on the world’s back. One day this will have as much value, and no more, as the belief in the masculinity or femininity of the sun has today.
373 Arrogance. -There is nothing against which we should guard more carefully than against the growth of the weed that is called arrogance and that spoils all we reap; for there is an arrogance in affection, in signs of respect, in benevolent familiarity, in caresses, in friendly advice, in admission of errors, in pity for others, and all these beautiful things arouse repugnance if that weed sprouts among them. An arrogant person, that is, anyone who wants to seem more important than he is or is considered to be, always miscalculates. To be sure, he has a momentary success in his favor, insofar as those people in whose presence he behaves arrogantly generally pay him the degree of honor that he demands, whether out of fear or indolence; but they take a terrible revenge for this by subtracting exactly as much from the value that they previously ascribed to him as there is excess in the amount that he has demanded. There is nothing for which people make us pay more dearly than humiliating them. An arrogant person can make his genuinely great merit so suspect and so small in the eyes of others that they trample it into the dust.-Even a proud demeanor is something that we should allow ourselves only where we can be quite certain not to be misunderstood or to be considered arrogant, in front of friends or wives, for example. For there is no greater folly in our relations with other people than acquiring a reputation for being arrogant; it is even worse than not having learned how to tell lies politely.
487 The passion for things. -Anyone who directs his passion toward things (sciences, the public welfare, cultural interests, arts) takes much of the fire away from his passion for people (even when they are representatives of those things, as statesmen, philosophers, artists are the representatives of their creations).
118 If anything at all has been achieved, it is a more innocuous relation to the senses, a more joyous, benevolent, Goethean attitude toward sensuality; also a prouder feeling regarding the search for knowledge, so that the “pure fool” is not given much credit.
123 The unfinished problems I pose anew: the problem of civilization, the fight between Rousseau and Voltaire around 1760. Man becomes more profound, mistrustful, “immoral,” stronger, more confident of himself -and to this extent “more natural”: this is “progress.”- At the same time, in accordance with a kind of division of labor, the strata that have become more evil are separated from those that have become milder and tamer-so that the overall fact is not noticed immediately.- It is characteristic of strength, of the self-control and fascination of strength, that these stronger strata possess the art of making others experience their progress in evil as something higher. It is characteristic of every “progress” that the strengthened elements are reinterpreted as “good.”
65 Whither honesty can lead. – Someone had the bad habit of occasionally examining the motives of his actions, which were as good and bad as the motives of everyone else, and honestly saying what they were. He excited at first revulsion, then suspicion, gradually became altogether proscribed and declared an outlaw in society, until finally the law took notice of this infamous being on occasions when usually it closed its eyes. Lack of ability to keep silent about the universal secret, and the irresponsible tendency to see what no one wants to see – himself – brought him to prison and a premature death.
491 Self-observation. – Man is very well defended against himself, against being reconnoitred and besieged by himself, he is usually able to perceive of himself only his outer walls. The actual fortress is inaccessible, even invisible to him, unless his friends and enemies play the traitor and conduct him in by a secret path.
1. We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers: and for a good reason. We have never sought ourselves—how then should it happen that we find ourselves one day? It has rightly been said: “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”; our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge stand. We are forever underway toward them, as born winged animals and honey-gatherers of the spirit, concerned with all our heart about only one thing “bringing home” something. As for the rest of life, the so-called “experiences”—who of us even has enough seriousness for them? Or enough time? In such matters I’m afraid we were never really “with it”: we just don’t have our heart there—or even our ear! Rather, much as a divinely distracted, self-absorbed person into whose ear the bell has just boomed its twelve strokes of noon suddenly awakens and wonders, “what did it actually toll just now?” so we rub our ears afterwards and ask, completely amazed, completely disconcerted, “what did we actually experience just now?” still more: “who are we actually?” and count up, afterwards, as stated, all twelve quavering bellstrokes of our experience, of our life, of our being—alas! and miscount in the process … We remain of necessity strangers to ourselves, we do not understand ourselves, we must mistake ourselves, for us the maxim reads to all eternity: “each is furthest from himself,”—with respect to ourselves we are not “knowers” …
349 In a dispute. -If we simultaneously contradict an opinion and lay out our own, our continual consideration of that other opinion generally disturbs the natural delivery of our own: it appears more purposeful, more severe, perhaps somewhat exaggerated.
473 The intellect cannot criticize itself, simply because it cannot be compared with other species of intellect and because its capacity to know would be revealed only in the presence of “true reality,” i.e., because in order to criticize the intellect we should have to be a higher being with “absolute knowledge.” This presupposes that, distinct from every perspective kind of outlook or sensual-spiritual appropriation, something exists, an “in-itself.”- But the psychological derivation of the belief in things forbids us to speak of ”things-in-themselves.”
99 Wherein we are all irrational. – We still draw the conclusions of judgments we consider false, of teachings in which we no longer believe – our feelings make us do it
485 Full of character. – A man appears full of character much more often because he always obeys his temperament than because he always obeys his principles.
356 Modest, industrious, benevolent, temperate: is that how you would have men? good men? But to me that seems only the ideal slave, the slave of the future.
201 Philosophers’ error.-The philosopher supposes that the value of his philosophy lies in the whole, in the structure; but posterity finds its value in the stone which he used for building, and which is used many more times after that for building-better. Thus it finds the value in the fact that the structure can be destroyed and nevertheless retains value as building material.
I name you three metamorphoses of the spirit: how the spirit shall become a camel, and the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child. There are many heavy things for the spirit, for the strong, weight-bearing spirit in which dwell respect and awe: its strength longs for the heavy, for the heaviest. What is heavy? thus asks the weight-bearing spirit, thus it kneels down like the camel and wants to be well laden. What is the heaviest thing, you heroes? so asks the weight – bearing spirit, that I may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength. Is it not this: to debase yourself in order to injure your pride? To let your folly shine out in order to mock your wisdom? Or is it this: to desert our cause when it is celebrating its victory? To climb high mountains in order to tempt the tempter? Or is it this: to feed upon the acorns and grass of knowledge and for the sake of truth to suffer hunger of the soul? Or is it this: to be sick and to send away comforters and make friends with the deaf, who never hear what you ask? Or is it this: to wade into dirty water when it is the water of truth, and not to disdain cold frogs and hot toads? Or is it this: to love those who despise us and to offer our hand to the ghost when it wants to frighten us? The weight-bearing spirit takes upon itself all these heaviest things: like a camel hurrying laden into the desert, thus it hurries into its desert. But in the loneliest desert the second metamorphosis occurs: the spirit here becomes a lion; it wants to capture freedom and be lord in its own desert. It seeks here its ultimate lord: it will be an enemy to him and to its ultimate God, it will struggle for victory with the great dragon. What is the great dragon which the spirit no longer wants to call lord and God? The great dragon is called ‘Thou shalt’. But the spirit of the lion says ‘I will!’ ‘Thou shalt’ lies in its path, sparkling with gold, a scale-covered beast, and on every scale glitters golden ‘Thou shalt’. Values of a thousand years glitter on the scales, and thus speaks the mightiest of all dragons: ‘All the values of things – glitter on me. ‘All values have already been created, and all created values – are in me. Truly, there shall be no more “I will”!’ Thus speaks the dragon. My brothers, why is the lion needed in the spirit? Why does the beast of burden, that renounces and is reverent, not suffice? To create new values – even the lion is incapable of that: but to create itself freedom for new creation – that the might of the lion can do. To create freedom for itself and a sacred No even to duty: the lion is needed for that, my brothers. To seize the right to new values – that is the most terrible proceeding for a weight-bearing and reverential spirit Truly, to this spirit it is a theft and a work for an animal of prey. Once it loved this ‘Thou shalt’ as its holiest thing: now it has to find illusion and caprice even in the holiest, that it may steal freedom from its love: the lion is needed for this theft. But tell me, my brothers, what can the child do that even the lion cannot? Why must the preying lion still become a child? The child is innocence and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a sport, a self-propelling wheel, a first motion, a sacred Yes. Yes, a sacred Yes is needed, my brothers, for the sport of creation: the spirit now wills its own will, the spirit sundered from the world now wins its own world. I have named you three metamorphoses of the spirit: how the spirit became a camel, and the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child. Thus spoke Zarathustra. And at that time he was living in the town called The Pied Cow.
Nochrisis 