The Advocate of the Devil
“‘Only by our own suffering do we become wise, only by others’ suffering do we become good’ – so runs that strange philosophy which derives all mortality from pity and all intellectuality from the isolation of the individual. Herein this philosophy is the unconscious pleader for all human deterioration. For pity needs suffering, and isolation contempt of others.”
Nietzsche – Human, All Too Human
Continue readingMan as Comic Actor of the World
“If a God created the world, he created man to be his ape, as a perpetual source of amusement in the midst of his rather tedious eternities. For he who invented man as a joke had more intellect and more joy in intellect than has man.”
Man as Comic Actor of the World 2
“Astronomers, who occasionally acquire a horizon outside our world, give us to understand that the drop of life on the earth is without significance for the total character of the mighty ocean of birth and decay.
Even to the eye of the most unbiased astronomer a lifeless world can scarcely appear otherwise than as a shining and swinging star wherein man lies buried.”
Nietzsche – Human, All Too Human
Continue readingThe Press
If we consider how even today all great political transactions glide upon the stage secretly and stealthily; how they are hidden by unimportant events, and seem small when close at hand; how they only show their far-reaching effect, and leave the soil still quaking, long after they have taken place – what significance can we attach to the Press in its present position, with its daily expenditure of lung-power in order to bawl, to deafen, to excite, to terrify? Is it anything more than an everlasting false alarm, which tries to lead our ears and our wits into a false direction?
Continual Acceleration
“Those who begin slowly and find it hard to become familiar with a subject, sometimes acquire afterwards the quality of continual acceleration – so that in the end no one knows where the current will take them.”
The Mark of a Noble Soul
“A noble soul is not that which is capable of the highest flights, but that which rises little and falls little, living always in a free and bright atmosphere and altitude.”
Nietzsche – Human, All Too Human
Continue readingThere Are No Teachers
“As thinkers we ought only to speak of self teaching. The instruction of the young by others is either an experiment performed upon something as yet unknown and unknowable, or else a thorough levelling process, in order to make the new member of society conform to the customs and manners that prevail for the time being. In both cases the result is accordingly unworthy of a thinker – the handiwork of parents and teachers, whom some valiantly honest person has called “our natural enemies”. One day, when, as the world thinks, we have long since finished our education, we discover ourselves. Then begins the task of the thinker, and then is the time to summon him to our aid – not as a teacher, but as a self-taught man who has experience.”
Nietzsche – Human, All Too Human
Continue readingDon’t Touch
“There are dreadful people who, instead of solving a problem, complicate it for those who deal with it and make it harder to solve. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be entreated not to hit the nail at all.”
Nietzsche – Human, All Too Human
Continue readingDemonstrating One’s Vanity to Friend and Foe
“Many a man, from vanity, maltreats even his friends, when in the presence of witnesses to whom he wishes to make his own preponderance clear. Others exaggerate the merits of their enemies, in order to point proudly to the fact that they are worthy of such foes.”
Nietzsche – Human, All Too Human
Continue readingA Necessary Preliminary
“A man who will not become a master of his irritability, his venomous and vengeful feelings, and his lust, and attempts to become master in anything else, is as stupid as the farmer who lays out his field beside a torrent without guarding against that torrent.”
Nietzsche – Human, All Too Human
Continue readingThey That Create and They That Enjoy
“Everyone who enjoys thinks that the principal thing to the tree is the fruit, but in point of fact the principal thing to it is the seed. Herein lies the difference between them that create and them that enjoy.”
Nietzsche – Human, All Too Human
Continue readingBeing Very Clever
“Being very clever keeps men young, but they must put up with being considered, for that very reason, older than they are. For men read the handwriting of the intellect as signs of experience – that is, of having lived much and evilly, of suffering, error, and repentance. Hence, if we are very clever and show it, we appear to them older and wickeder than we are.”
Nietzsche – Human, All Too Human
Continue readingThe philanthropy of the sage sometimes makes him decide to pretend to be excited, enraged, or delighted, so that he may not hurt his surroundings by the coldness and rationality of his true nature.
Nietzsche – Human, All Too Human
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Giuseppe Gillespie Writing 