MAXIMS AND MISSILES
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, Levy, Oscar, and Ludovici, Anthony M. (Anthony Mario)
Idleness is the parent of all psychology. What? Is psychology then a—vice?
Even the pluckiest among us has but seldom the courage of what he really knows.
Aristotle says that in order to live alone, a man must be either an animal or a god. The third alternative is lacking: a man must be both—a philosopher.
“All truth is simple.”—Is not this a double lie?
Once for all I wish to be blind to many things.—Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge.
A man recovers best from his exceptional nature—his intellectuality—by giving his animal instincts a chance.
Which is it? Is man only a blunder of God? Or is God only a blunder of man?
From the military school of life.—That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.
Help thyself, then everyone will help thee. A principle of neighbour-love.
10
A man should not play the coward to his deeds. He should not repudiate them once he has performed them. Pangs of conscience are indecent.
11
Can a donkey be tragic?—To perish beneath a load that one can neither bear nor throw off? This is the case of the Philosopher.
12
If a man knows the wherefore of his existence, then the manner of it can take care of itself. Man does not aspire to happiness; only the Englishman does that.
13
Man created woman—out of what? Out of a rib of his god,—of his “ideal.”
14
What? Art thou looking for something? Thou wouldst fain multiply thyself tenfold, a hundredfold? Thou seekest followers? Seek ciphers!
15
Posthumous men, like myself, are not so well understood as men who reflect their age, but they are heard with more respect. In plain English: we are never understood—hence our authority.
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Among women.—“Truth? Oh, you do not know truth! Is it not an outrage on all our pudeurs?”—
17
There is an artist after my own heart, modest in his needs: he really wants only two things, his bread and his art—panem et Circem.
18
He who knows not how to plant his will in things, at least endows them with some meaning: that is to say, he believes that a will is already present in them. (A principle of faith.)
19
What? Ye chose virtue and the heaving breast, and at the same time ye squint covetously at the advantages of the unscrupulous.—But with virtue ye renounce all “advantages” ... (to be nailed to an Antisemite’s door).
20
The perfect woman perpetrates literature as if it were a petty vice: as an experiment, en passant, and looking about her all the while to see whether anybody is noticing her, hoping that somebody is noticing her.