CHAPTER IV. APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm and Zimmern, Helen
101. A discerning one might easily regard himself at present as the animalization of God.
102. Discovering reciprocal love should really disenchant the lover with regard to the beloved. "What! She is modest enough to love even you? Or stupid enough? Or—or—-"
103. THE DANGER IN HAPPINESS.—"Everything now turns out best for me, I now love every fate:—who would like to be my fate?"
104. Not their love of humanity, but the impotence of their love, prevents the Christians of today—burning us.
105. The pia fraus is still more repugnant to the taste (the "piety") of the free spirit (the "pious man of knowledge") than the impia fraus. Hence the profound lack of judgment, in comparison with the Church, characteristic of the type "free spirit"—as ITS non-freedom.
106. By means of music the very passions enjoy themselves.
107. A sign of strong character, when once the resolution has been taken, to shut the ear even to the best counter-arguments. Occasionally, therefore, a will to stupidity.
108. There is no such thing as moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.
109. The criminal is often enough not equal to his deed: he extenuates and maligns it.
110. The advocates of a criminal are seldom artists enough to turn the beautiful terribleness of the deed to the advantage of the doer.
111. Our vanity is most difficult to wound just when our pride has been wounded.
112. To him who feels himself preordained to contemplation and not to belief, all believers are too noisy and obtrusive; he guards against them.
113. "You want to prepossess him in your favour? Then you must be embarrassed before him."
114. The immense expectation with regard to sexual love, and the coyness in this expectation, spoils all the perspectives of women at the outset.
115. Where there is neither love nor hatred in the game, woman's play is mediocre.
116. The great epochs of our life are at the points when we gain courage to rebaptize our badness as the best in us.
117. The will to overcome an emotion, is ultimately only the will of another, or of several other, emotions.
118. There is an innocence of admiration: it is possessed by him to whom it has not yet occurred that he himself may be admired some day.
119. Our loathing of dirt may be so great as to prevent our cleaning ourselves—"justifying" ourselves.
120. Sensuality often forces the growth of love too much, so that its root remains weak, and is easily torn up.
121. It is a curious thing that God learned Greek when he wished to turn author—and that he did not learn it better.
122. To rejoice on account of praise is in many cases merely politeness of heart—and the very opposite of vanity of spirit.
123. Even concubinage has been corrupted—by marriage.
124. He who exults at the stake, does not triumph over pain, but because of the fact that he does not feel pain where he expected it. A parable.
125. When we have to change an opinion about any one, we charge heavily to his account the inconvenience he thereby causes us.
126. A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at six or seven great men.—Yes, and then to get round them.
127. In the eyes of all true women science is hostile to the sense of shame. They feel as if one wished to peep under their skin with it—or worse still! under their dress and finery.
128. The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more must you allure the senses to it.
129. The devil has the most extensive perspectives for God; on that account he keeps so far away from him:—the devil, in effect, as the oldest friend of knowledge.
130. What a person IS begins to betray itself when his talent decreases,—when he ceases to show what he CAN do. Talent is also an adornment; an adornment is also a concealment.
131. The sexes deceive themselves about each other: the reason is that in reality they honour and love only themselves (or their own ideal, to express it more agreeably). Thus man wishes woman to be peaceable: but in fact woman is ESSENTIALLY unpeaceable, like the cat, however well she may have assumed the peaceable demeanour.
132. One is punished best for one's virtues.
133. He who cannot find the way to HIS ideal, lives more frivolously and shamelessly than the man without an ideal.
134. From the senses originate all trustworthiness, all good conscience, all evidence of truth.
135. Pharisaism is not a deterioration of the good man; a considerable part of it is rather an essential condition of being good.
136. The one seeks an accoucheur for his thoughts, the other seeks some one whom he can assist: a good conversation thus originates.
137. In intercourse with scholars and artists one readily makes mistakes of opposite kinds: in a remarkable scholar one not infrequently finds a mediocre man; and often, even in a mediocre artist, one finds a very remarkable man.
138. We do the same when awake as when dreaming: we only invent and imagine him with whom we have intercourse—and forget it immediately.
139. In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man.
140. ADVICE AS A RIDDLE.—"If the band is not to break, bite it first—secure to make!"