203 In the moment before the solution. -In science, it happens all the time that someone remains standing directly in front of the solution, convinced now that his effort has been wholly in vain -like someone who, untying a bow, hesitates in the moment when it has practically been undone: for that is precisely when it looks most like a knot.
44 Formula for my happiness: a yes, a no, a straight line, a goal . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus Spake Zarathustra
The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.
279 Not mistrusting our feelings. -The womanly saying that we should not mistrust our feelings means nothing more than: we should eat what tastes good to us. This may even be a good everyday rule, especially for moderate natures. Different natures, however, must live according to a different principle: “you must eat not only with your mouth, but also with your head, so that your mouth’s sweet tooth does not destroy you.”
251 In parting.- Not in how one soul draws near to another, but in how it distances itself from the other, do I recognize its relation to and affinity with the other.
Of three metamorphoses of the spirit I tell you: how the spirit becomes a camel; and the camel, a lion; and the lion, finally, a child.
There is much that is difficult for the spirit, the strong reverent spirit that would bear much: but the difficult and the most difficult are what its strength demands. What is difficult? asks the spirit that would bear much, and kneels down like a camel wanting to be well loaded. What is most difficult, 0 heroes, asks the spirit that would bear much, that I may take it upon myself and exult in my strength? Is it not humbling oneself to wound one’s haughtiness? Letting one’s folly shine to mock one’s wisdom?
Or is it this: parting from our cause when it triumphs? Climbing high mountains to tempt the tempter?
Or is it this: feeding on the acorns and grass of knowledge and, for the sake of the truth, suffering hunger in one’s soul?
Or is it this: being sick and sending home the comforters and making friends with the deaf, who never hear what you want?
Or is it this: stepping into filthy waters when they are the waters of truth, and not repulsing cold frogs and hot toads?
Or is it this: loving those who despise us and offering a hand to the ghost that would frighten us?
All these most difficult things the spirit that would bear much takes upon itself: like the camel that, burdened, speeds into the desert, thus the spirit speeds into its desert.
For the last twenty-five years, I have been at a crossroad. After a while, I realized I better sit down, realizing it would be a long wait. It took even longer to learn where the different roads would lead to but to be honest, I am still not sure.
Somewhere during that time, I wrote down that I was pretty lucky. I at least realized there was a crossroad where I was; so many people only find this out when they are a long way in one or another direction. Looking back, they only see the decisions they could have made, waving at me from a distance. But maybe there is something to say for hindsight instead of unclear foresight. I let life decide a lot of directions; I am pretty sure I even believe that I choose most of them willingly and freely; they are mostly related to the mundane parts of life, like where to live and what job to take to pay the bills. The crossroad I am sitting on, waiting, decides the direction…it determines how you deal with your own consciousness in a corrupt(ting) society and maybe even a corrupt human nature.
Many people pass me where I sit and tell me that they know that there is nothing to know, and they go on to live for their own till an empty end where they take their contradictions with them into their oblivion. Others are certain of the direction to take, joining all the others on that path as individuals in a traffic jam. The certainty that leads you on this path is the other side of the first one; they both have the same value, but only for the believer.
Friedrich Nietzsche
I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things:—then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love from henceforth!
226 We immoralists! – This world as it concerns us, in which we need to love and be afraid, this almost invisible, inaudible world of subtle command, subtle obedience, a world of the “almost” in every respect, twisted, tricky, barbed, and loving: yes, it is well defended against clumsy spectators and friendly curiosity! We have been woven into a strong net and shirt of duties, and cannot get out of it –, in this sense we are “people of duty,” – even us! It is true that we sometimes dance quite well in our “chains” and between our “swords”; it is no less true that more often we grind our teeth and feel impatient at all the secret harshness of our fate. But we can do as we please: fools and appearances will speak up against us, claiming “those are people without duties” – fools and appearances are always against us
31 The illogical necessary. – Among the things that can reduce a thinker to despair is the knowledge that the illogical is a necessity for mankind, and that much good proceeds from the illogical. It is implanted so firmly in the passions, in language, in art, in religion, and in general in everything that lends value to life, that one cannot pull it out of these fair things without mortally injuring them. Only very naive people are capable of believing that the nature of man could be transformed into a purely logical one; but if there should be degrees of approximation to this objective, what would not have to be lost if this course were taken! Even the most rational man from time to time needs to recover nature, that is to say his illogical original relationship with all things.
75 Love and duality. -What then is love besides understanding and rejoicing in the fact that someone else lives, acts, and feels in a different and opposite way than we do? If love is to use joy to bridge over oppositions, it must not suspend or deny them. -Even love of self assumes an unalloyable duality (or multiplicity) within a single person as its precondition.
270 The eternal child. -We believe that fairy tales and games belong to childhood: shortsighted as we are! As if we would like to live without fairy tales and games at any age! Admittedly, we call it something else and experience it differently, but this is precisely what speaks for it being exactly the same thing-for the child, too, feels that games are his work and fairy tales his truth. The brevity of life should preserve us from pedantically separating the ages oflife-as if each one brought something new-and a poet should sometime present to us a human being two hundred years old who really does live without fairy tales and games.
Thus the sands of life run out and the best of friends hear and see nothing of each other! Aye, the trick is no easy one-to live and .Yet not to be discontented. How often do I not feel as if I should like to beg a loan from my robust, flourishing and brave old friend Rohde, when I am in sore need of a “transfusion” of strength, not of lamb’s but of lion’s blood. But there he dwells away in Tubingen, immersed in books and married life, and in every respect i accessible to me. Ah, dear friend, to live for ever on my own fat seems to be my lot, or, as every one knows who has tried it, to drink my own blood! Life then becomes a matter of not losing one’s thirst for oneself and also of not drinking oneself dry.
486 The one thing needful. – There is one thing one has to have: either a cheerful disposition by nature or a disposition made cheerful by art and knowledge.
62 Revelling in revenge. – Uncultivated people who feel insulted are accustomed to set the degree of insultingness as high as possible and to recount the cause of the insult in strongly exaggerated terms, so as to be able really to revel in the feeling of hatred and revengefulness thus engendered
Nochrisis 