Part Four
63
Whoever is a teacher through and through takes all things seriously only in relation to his students—even himself.
64
“Knowledge for its own sake”—that is the last snare of morality: with that one becomes completely entangled in it once more.
65
The attraction of knowledge would be small if one did not have to overcome so much shame on the way.
65a1
One is most dishonest to one’s god: he is not allowed to sin.
66
The inclination to depreciate himself, to let himself be robbed, lied to, and taken advantage of, could be the modesty2 of a god among men.
67
Love of one is a barbarism; for it is exercised at the expense of all others. The love of God, too.
68
“I have done that,” says my memory. “I cannot have done that,” says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually—memory yields.3
69
One has watched life badly if one has not also seen the hand that considerately—kills.
70
If one has character one also has one’s typical experience, which recurs repeatedly.
71
The sage as astronomer.—As long as you still experience the stars as something “above you” you lack the eye of knowledge.
72
Not the intensity but the duration of high feelings makes high men.
73
Whoever reaches his ideal transcends it eo ipso.
73a4
Many a peacock hides his peacock tail from all eyes—and calls that his pride.
74
A man with spirit is unbearable if he does not also have at least two other things: gratitude5 and cleanliness.
75
The degree and kind of a man’s sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit.
76
Under peaceful conditions a warlike man sets upon himself.
77
With one’s principles one wants to bully one’s habits, or justify, honor, scold, or conceal them: two men with the same principles probably aim with them at something basically different.
78
Whoever despises himself still respects himself as one who despises.
79
A soul that knows it is loved but does not itself love betrays its sediment: what is at the bottom comes up.
80
A matter that becomes clear ceases to concern us.—What was on the mind of that god who counseled: “Know thyself!” Did he mean: “Cease to concern yourself! Become objective!”— And Socrates?— And “scientific men”?—
81
It is terrible to die of thirst in the ocean. Do you have to salt your truth so heavily that it does not even—quench thirst any more?
82
“Pity for all”—would be hardness and tyranny toward you, my dear neighbor!—
83
Instinct.—When the house burns one forgets even lunch.—Yes, but one eats it later in the ashes.
84
Woman learns to hate to the extent to which her charms—decrease.
85
The same affects in man and woman are yet different in tempo: therefore man and woman do not cease to misunderstand each other.
86
Women themselves always still have in the background of all personal vanity an impersonal contempt—for “woman.”—
87
Tethered heart, free spirit.—If one tethers one’s heart severely arid imprisons it, one can give one’s spirit many liberties: I have said that once before. But one does not believe me, unless one already knows it—
88
One begins to mistrust very clever people when they become embarrassed.
89
Terrible experiences pose the riddle whether the person who has them is not terrible.
90
Heavy, heavy-spirited people become lighter precisely through what makes others heavier, through hatred and love, and for a time they surface.
91
So cold, so icy that one burns one’s fingers on him! Every hand is startled when touching him.— And for that very reason some think he glows.
92
Who has not, for the sake of his good reputation—sacrificed himself once?—
93
Affability contains no hatred of men, but for that very reason too much contempt for men.
94
A man’s maturity—consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child, at play.
95
To be ashamed of one’s immorality—that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one’s morality.
96
One should part from life as Odysseus parted from Nausicaa—blessing it rather than in love with it.
97
What? A great man? I always see only the actor of his own ideal.
98
If we train our conscience, it kisses us while it hurts us.
99
The voice of disappointment:6 “I listened for an echo and heard nothing but praise—”
100
In front of ourselves we all pose as simpler than we are: thus we take a rest from our fellow men.
101
Today the man of knowledge might well feel like God become animal.
102
Discovering that one is loved in return really ought to disenchant the lover with the beloved. “What? this person is modest enough to love even you? Or stupid enough? Or—or—”
103
Danger in happiness.7—“Now everything redounds to my best, now I love every destiny—who feels like being my destiny?”
104
Not their love of men but the impotence of their love of men keeps the Christians of today from—burning us.8
105
The pia fraus9 offends the taste (the “piety”) of the free spirit, who has “the piety of the search for knowledge,” even more than the impia fraus. Hence his profound lack of understanding for the church, a characteristic of the type “free spirit”—his un-freedom.
106
In music the passions enjoy themselves.
107
Once the decision has been made, close your ear even to the best counterargument: sign of a strong character. Thus an occasional will to stupidity.
108
There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena—
109
A criminal is frequently not equal to his deed: he makes it smaller and slanders it.10
110
The lawyers defending a criminal are rarely artists enough to turn the beautiful terribleness of his deed to his advantage.
111
Our vanity is hardest to wound when our pride has just been wounded.
112
Those who feel predestined to see and not to believe will find all believers too noisy and obtrusive: they fend them off.
113
“You want to prepossess him in your favor? Then pretend to be embarrassed in his presence—”
114
The enormous expectation in sexual love and the sense of shame in this expectation spoils all perspective for women from the start.
115
Where neither love nor hatred is in the game, a woman’s game is mediocre.
116
The great epochs of our life come when we gain the courage to rechristen our evil as what is best in us,
117
The will to overcome an affect is ultimately only the will of another, or of several other, affects.
118
There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.
119
The disgust with dirt can be so great that it keeps us from cleaning ourselves—from “justifying” ourselves.
120
Sensuality often hastens the growth of love so much that the roots remain weak and are easily torn up.
121
It was subtle of God to learn Greek when he wished to become an author—and not to learn it better.
122
Enjoying praise is in some people merely a courtesy of the heart—and just the opposite of vanity of the spirit.
123
Even concubinage has been corrupted—by marriage.
124
Whoever rejoices on the very stake triumphs not over pain but at the absence of pain that he had expected. A parable.
125
When we have to change our mind about a person, we hold the inconvenience he causes us very much against him.
126
A people11 is a detour of nature to get to six or seven great men.—Yes, and then to get around them.
127
Science offends the modesty of all real women. It makes them feel as if one wanted to peep under their skin—yet worse, under their dress and finery.
128
The more abstract the truth is that you would teach, the more you have to seduce the senses to it.
129
The devil has the broadest perspectives for God; therefore he keeps so far away from God—the devil being the most ancient friend of wisdom.
130
What a man is begins to betray itself when his talent decreases—when he stops showing what he can do. Talent, too, is finery; finery, too, is a hiding place.
131
The sexes deceive themselves about each other—because at bottom they honor and love only themselves (or their own ideal, to put it more pleasantly). Thus man likes woman peaceful—but woman is essentially unpeaceful, like a cat, however well she may have trained herself to seem peaceable.
132
One is best punished for one’s virtues.
133
Whoever does not know how to find the way to his ideal lives more frivolously and impudently than the man without an ideal.
134
All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.
135
Pharisaism is not a degeneration in a good man: a good deal of it is rather the condition of all being good.
136
One seeks a midwife for his thoughts, another someone whom he can help: origin of a good conversation.
137
When associating with scholars and artists we easily miscalculate in opposite directions: behind a remarkable scholar one finds, not infrequently, a mediocre man, and behind a mediocre artist quite often—a very remarkable man.
138
When we are awake we also do what we do in our dreams: we invent and make up the person with whom we associate—and immediately forget it.
139
In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man.
140
Rule as a riddle.—“If the bond shan’t burst—bite upon it first.”
141
The abdomen is the reason why man does not easily take himself for a god.
142
The chastest words I have heard: “Dans le veritable amour c’est l’âme, qui enveloppe le corps.”12
143
Our vanity desires that what we do best should be considered what is hardest for us. Concerning the origin of many a morality.
144
When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is usually something wrong with her sexually. Sterility itself disposes one toward a certain masculinity of taste; for man is, if I may say so, “the sterile animal.”
145
Comparing man and woman on the whole, one may say: woman would not have the genius for finery if she did not have an instinct for a secondary role.
146
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
147
From old Florentine novels; also—from life: “Buona femmina e mala femmina vuol bastone”13 Sacchetti, Nov. 86.
148
Seducing one’s neighbor to a good opinion and afterwards believing piously in this opinion—who could equal women in this art?—
149
What a time experiences as evil is usually an untimely echo of what was formerly experienced as good—the atavism of a more ancient ideal.
150
Around the hero everything turns into a tragedy; around the demigod, into a satyr play; and around God—what? perhaps into “world”?—
151
Having a talent is not enough: one also requires your permission for it—right, my friends?
152
“Where the tree of knowledge stands, there is always Paradise”: thus speak the oldest and the youngest serpents.
153
Whatever is done from love always occurs beyond good and evil.
154
Objections, digressions, gay mistrust, the delight in mockery are signs of health: everything unconditional belongs in pathology.
155
The sense of the tragic gains and wanes with sensuality.
156
Madness is rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.
157
The thought of suicide is a powerful comfort: it helps one through many a dreadful night.
158
To our strongest drive, the tyrant in us, not only our reason bows but also our conscience.
159
One has to repay good and ill—but why precisely to the person who has done us good or ill?
160
One no longer loves one’s insight enough once one communicates it.
161
Poets treat their experiences shamelessly: they exploit them.
162
“Our neighbor14—is not our neighbor but his neighbor”—thus thinks every nation.
163
Love brings the high and concealed characteristics of the lover into the light—what is rare and exceptional in him: to that extent it easily deceives regarding his normality.
164
Jesus said to his Jews: “The law was for servants—love God as I love him, as his son! What are morals to us sons of God!”
165
Regarding all parties.—A shepherd always needs a bellwether—or he himself must occasionally be a wether.
166
Even when the mouth lies, the way it looks still tells the truth.
167
In men who are hard, intimacy involves shame—and is precious.
168
Christianity gave Eros poison to drink: he did not die of it but degenerated—into a vice.
169
Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
170
Praise is more obtrusive than a reproach.
171
In a man devoted to knowledge, pity seems almost ridiculous, like delicate hands on a cyclops.
172
From love of man one occasionally embraces someone at random (because one cannot embrace all): but one must not tell him this—
173
One does not hate as long as one still despises, but only those whom one esteems equal or higher.
174
You utilitarians, you, too, love everything useful only as a vehicle for your inclinations; you, too, really find the noise of its wheels insufferable?
175
In the end one loves one’s desire and not what is desired.
176
The vanity of others offends our taste only when it offends our vanity.
177
Perhaps nobody yet has been truthful enough about what “truthfulness” is.
178
One does not credit clever people with their follies: what a loss of human rights!
179
The consequences of our actions take hold of us, quite indifferent to our claim that meanwhile we have “improved.”
180
There is an innocence in lying which is the sign of good faith in a cause.
181
It is inhuman to bless where one is cursed.
182
The familiarity of those who are superior embitters because it may not be returned.—
183
“Not that you lied to me, but that I no longer believe you, has shaken me”—
184
The high spirits of kindness may look like malice.
185
“I don’t like him.”—Why?—“I am not equal to him.”—Has any human being ever answered that way?
1In the original edition of 1886 and in the second edition of 1891 this section bears the same number (65) as that preceding it. In the third and fourth editions of 1893 and 1894, the editor introduced minor changes and renumbered all the sections from this point on. In the standard editions (the so-called Grossoktav and the Musarion editions) this section is distinguished from the one preceding it by the addition of an “a.” Schlechta, whose edition of the works in three volumes is widely considered impeccable philologically, follows the standard editions although he purports to follow the edition of 1886. Similar instances will be noted in subsequent notes.
2Scham: in most other places (see sections 40 and 65 above) this word has been translated as “shame.”
3Freud’s theory of repression in nuce—or in ovo. Other sections that put one in mind of Freud include 3 above and 75 below; but this list could easily be lengthened.
4See section 65a, note 1, above.
5Again, as in sections 49 and 58, gratitude is virtually an antonym of resentment.
6Emphasized in most editions, but not in that of 1886 nor in Schlechta’s.
7See note 6 above.
8If Christians were really passionately concerned for the salvation of their fellow men in the hereafter, they would still burn those whose heresies lead legions into eternal damnation.
9“Pious fraud” or holy lie; here juxtaposed with “impious fraud” or unholy lie. The former means deceiving men for the sake of their own salvation, as in Plato’s Republic, 414C.
10One of Sartre’s leitmotifs; cf. Electra in Les Mouches (The Flies) and the problem of Les Mains sales (Dirty Hands).
11Ein Volk: the polemical and sarcastic thrust of this epigram depends on the heavy reliance of German nationalism—both in Nietzsche’s time and in the twentieth century—on the mystique of the Volk.
12“In true love it is the soul that envelops the body.”
13“Good and bad women want a stick.”
14In the religious sense.