Beyond Good and Evil, passage 782

One should make advances with all prudence, and with selection, pretty much as the English nobility do It stands to reason that the more powerful and strongly marked types of new Germanism could enter into relation with the Jews with the least hesitation, for instance, the nobleman officer from the Prussian border it would be interesting in many ways to see whether the genius for money and patience (and especially some intellect and intellectuality--sadly lacking in the place referred to) could not in addition be annexed and trained to the hereditary art of commanding and obeying--for both of which the country in question has now a classic reputation But here it is expedient to break off my festal discourse and my sprightly Teutonomania for I have already reached my SERIOUS TOPIC, the "European problem," as I understand it, the rearing of a new ruling caste for Europe.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 514

In NEW PHILOSOPHERS--there is no other alternative: in minds strong and original enough to initiate opposite estimates of value, to transvalue and invert "eternal valuations"; in forerunners, in men of the future, who in the present shall fix the constraints and fasten the knots which will compel millenniums to take NEW paths.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 643

Well-being, as you understand it--is certainly not a goal; it seems to us an END; a condition which at once renders man ludicrous and contemptible--and makes his destruction DESIRABLE! The discipline of suffering, of GREAT suffering--know ye not that it is only THIS discipline that has produced all the elevations of humanity hitherto?

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 310

65A. We are most dishonourable towards our God: he is not PERMITTED to sin.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 238

This latter doubt is justified by the fact that one of the most regular symptoms among savage as well as among civilized peoples is the most sudden and excessive sensuality, which then with equal suddenness transforms into penitential paroxysms, world-renunciation, and will-renunciation, both symptoms perhaps explainable as disguised epilepsy?

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 966

Friends, ye are there! Woe me,--yet I am not He whom ye seek? Ye stare and stop--better your wrath could speak! I am not I? Hand, gait, face, changed? And what I am, to you my friends, now am I not?

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 632

Owing to this mingling, the past of every form and mode of life, and of cultures which were formerly closely contiguous and superimposed on one another, flows forth into us "modern souls"; our instincts now run back in all directions, we ourselves are a kind of chaos: in the end, as we have said, the spirit perceives its advantage therein.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 558

and Nay!--they seem to him opposed to morality; he loves, on the contrary, to make a festival to his virtue by a noble aloofness, while perhaps he says with Montaigne: "What do I know?" Or with Socrates: "I know that I know nothing." Or: "Here I do not trust myself, no door is open to me." Or: "Even if the door were open, why should I enter immediately?" Or: "What is the use of any hasty hypotheses? It might quite well be in good taste to make no hypotheses at all.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 720

This kind of music expresses best what I think of the Germans: they belong to the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow--THEY HAVE AS YET NO TODAY.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 550

His love is constrained, his hatred is artificial, and rather UN TOUR DE FORCE, a slight ostentation and exaggeration. He is only genuine so far as he can be objective; only in his serene totality is he still "nature" and "natural." His mirroring and eternally self-polishing soul no longer knows how to affirm, no longer how to deny; he does not command; neither does he destroy. "JE NE MEPRISE PRESQUE RIEN"--he says, with Leibniz: let us not overlook nor undervalue the PRESQUE!

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 746

He digests his events badly; he never gets "done" with them; and German depth is often only a difficult, hesitating "digestion." And just as all chronic invalids, all dyspeptics like what is convenient, so the German loves "frankness" and "honesty"; it is so CONVENIENT to be frank and honest!--This confidingness, this complaisance, this showing-the-cards of German HONESTY, is probably the most dangerous and most successful disguise which the German is up to nowadays: it is his proper Mephistophelean art; with this he can "still achieve much"!

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 621

And after all, truth is a woman; one must not use force with her.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 552

If he has been so long confounded with the PHILOSOPHER, with the Caesarian trainer and dictator of civilization, he has had far too much honour, and what is more essential in him has been overlooked--he is an instrument, something of a slave, though certainly the sublimest sort of slave, but nothing in himself--PRESQUE RIEN!

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 615

If any one were to say to them "A lofty spirituality is beyond all comparison with the honesty and respectability of a merely moral man"--it would make them furious, I shall take care not to say so.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 402

159. One MUST repay good and ill; but why just to the person who did us good or ill?

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 808

Owing to the morbid estrangement which the nationality-craze has induced and still induces among the nations of Europe, owing also to the short-sighted and hasty-handed politicians, who with the help of this craze, are at present in power, and do not suspect to what extent the disintegrating policy they pursue must necessarily be only an interlude policy--owing to all this and much else that is altogether unmentionable at present, the most unmistakable signs that EUROPE WISHES TO BE ONE, are now overlooked, or arbitrarily and falsely misinterpreted.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 126

Never yet did a PROFOUNDER world of insight reveal itself to daring travelers and adventurers, and the psychologist who thus "makes a sacrifice"--it is not the sacrifizio dell' intelletto, on the contrary!--will at least be entitled to demand in return that psychology shall once more be recognized as the queen of the sciences, for whose service and equipment the other sciences exist. For psychology is once more the path to the fundamental problems.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 582

Even the great Chinaman of Konigsberg was only a great critic.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 404

161. Poets act shamelessly towards their experiences: they exploit them.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 256

52. In the Jewish "Old Testament," the book of divine justice, there are men, things, and sayings on such an immense scale, that Greek and Indian literature has nothing to compare with it.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 871

He whose task and practice it is to investigate souls, will avail himself of many varieties of this very art to determine the ultimate value of a soul, the unalterable, innate order of rank to which it belongs: he will test it by its INSTINCT FOR REVERENCE.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 943

290. Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood. The latter perhaps wounds his vanity; but the former wounds his heart, his sympathy, which always says: "Ah, why would you also have as hard a time of it as I have?"

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 884

The notion of "favour" has, INTER PARES, neither significance nor good repute; there may be a sublime way of letting gifts as it were light upon one from above, and of drinking them thirstily like dew-drops; but for those arts and displays the noble soul has no aptitude. His egoism hinders him here: in general, he looks "aloft" unwillingly--he looks either FORWARD, horizontally and deliberately, or downwards--HE KNOWS THAT HE IS ON A HEIGHT.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 826

259. To refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from exploitation, and put one's will on a par with that of others: this may result in a certain rough sense in good conduct among individuals when the necessary conditions are given (namely, the actual similarity of the individuals in amount of force and degree of worth, and their co-relation within one organization).

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 829

Even the organization within which, as was previously supposed, the individuals treat each other as equal--it takes place in every healthy aristocracy--must itself, if it be a living and not a dying organization, do all that towards other bodies, which the individuals within it refrain from doing to each other it will have to be the incarnated Will to Power, it will endeavour to grow, to gain ground, attract to itself and acquire ascendancy--not owing to any morality or immorality, but because it LIVES, and because life IS precisely Will to Power.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 912

Any kind of cognizance of an indescribable excess in the joy of the bath, any kind of ardour or thirst which perpetually impels the soul out of night into the morning, and out of gloom, out of "affliction" into clearness, brightness, depth, and refinement:--just as much as such a tendency DISTINGUISHES--it is a noble tendency--it also SEPARATES.--The pity of the saint is pity for the FILTH of the human, all-too-human.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 963

MIDDAY of Life! Oh, season of delight! My summer's park! Uneaseful joy to look, to lurk, to hark-- I peer for friends, am ready day and night,-- Where linger ye, my friends? The time is right!

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 549

there are enough of cases in which he has to atone for these virtues of his!--and as man generally, he becomes far too easily the CAPUT MORTUUM of such virtues. Should one wish love or hatred from him--I mean love and hatred as God, woman, and animal understand them--he will do what he can, and furnish what he can. But one must not be surprised if it should not be much--if he should show himself just at this point to be false, fragile, questionable, and deteriorated.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 338

92. Who has not, at one time or another--sacrificed himself for the sake of his good name?

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 575

Finally, let us only understand profoundly enough Napoleon's astonishment when he saw Goethe it reveals what had been regarded for centuries as the "German spirit" "VOILA UN HOMME!"--that was as much as to say "But this is a MAN! And I only expected to see a German!"

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 299

One has to thank them for invaluable services; and who is sufficiently rich in gratitude not to feel poor at the contemplation of all that the "spiritual men" of Christianity have done for Europe hitherto!

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 908

Profound suffering makes noble: it separates.--One of the most refined forms of disguise is Epicurism, along with a certain ostentatious boldness of taste, which takes suffering lightly, and puts itself on the defensive against all that is sorrowful and profound. They are "gay men" who make use of gaiety, because they are misunderstood on account of it--they WISH to be misunderstood.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 769

And similarly, among the gifted nations, there are those on whom the woman's problem of pregnancy has devolved, and the secret task of forming, maturing, and perfecting--the Greeks, for instance, were a nation of this kind, and so are the French; and others which have to fructify and become the cause of new modes of life--like the Jews, the Romans, and, in all modesty be it asked: like the Germans?--nations tortured and enraptured by unknown fevers and irresistibly forced out of themselves, amorous and longing for foreign races (for such as "let themselves be fructified"), and withal imperious, like everything conscious of being full of generative force, and consequently empowered "by the grace of God." These two kinds of geniuses seek each other like man and woman; but they also misunderstand each other--like man and woman.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 203

There are proceedings of such a delicate nature that it is well to overwhelm them with coarseness and make them unrecognizable; there are actions of love and of an extravagant magnanimity after which nothing can be wiser than to take a stick and thrash the witness soundly: one thereby obscures his recollection. Many a one is able to obscure and abuse his own memory, in order at least to have vengeance on this sole party in the secret: shame is inventive.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 111

One should not wrongly MATERIALISE "cause" and "effect," as the natural philosophers do (and whoever like them naturalize in thinking at present), according to the prevailing mechanical doltishness which makes the cause press and push until it "effects" its end; one should use "cause" and "effect" only as pure CONCEPTIONS, that is to say, as conventional fictions for the purpose of designation and mutual understanding,--NOT for explanation.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 208

41. One must subject oneself to one's own tests that one is destined for independence and command, and do so at the right time. One must not avoid one's tests, although they constitute perhaps the most dangerous game one can play, and are in the end tests made only before ourselves and before no other judge. Not to cleave to any person, be it even the dearest--every person is a prison and also a recess.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 17

The problem of the value of truth presented itself before us--or was it we who presented ourselves before the problem? Which of us is the Oedipus here? Which the Sphinx? It would seem to be a rendezvous of questions and notes of interrogation. And could it be believed that it at last seems to us as if the problem had never been propounded before, as if we were the first to discern it, get a sight of it, and RISK RAISING it? For there is risk in raising it, perhaps there is no greater risk.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 93

Willing seems to me to be above all something COMPLICATED, something that is a unity only in name--and it is precisely in a name that popular prejudice lurks, which has got the mastery over the inadequate precautions of philosophers in all ages.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 898

He is easily silenced by the judgment of others; he hears with unmoved countenance how people honour, admire, love, and glorify, where he has PERCEIVED--or he even conceals his silence by expressly assenting to some plausible opinion.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 58

He was proud of having DISCOVERED a new faculty in man, the faculty of synthetic judgment a priori. Granting that he deceived himself in this matter; the development and rapid flourishing of German philosophy depended nevertheless on his pride, and on the eager rivalry of the younger generation to discover if possible something--at all events "new faculties"--of which to be still prouder!--But let us reflect for a moment--it is high time to do so.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 529

In fine, I found most frequently, behind the proud disdain of philosophy in young scholars, the evil after-effect of some particular philosopher, to whom on the whole obedience had been foresworn, without, however, the spell of his scornful estimates of other philosophers having been got rid of--the result being a general ill-will to all philosophy.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 418

176. The vanity of others is only counter to our taste when it is counter to our vanity.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 518

these are the heavy distant thoughts and storms which sweep across the heaven of OUR life.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 648

Occasionally, it is true, we dance in our "chains" and betwixt our "swords"; it is none the less true that more often we gnash our teeth under the circumstances, and are impatient at the secret hardship of our lot. But do what we will, fools and appearances say of us: "These are men WITHOUT duty,"--we have always fools and appearances against us!

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 452

Viewed from a higher standpoint, whole generations and epochs, when they show themselves infected with any moral fanaticism, seem like those intercalated periods of restraint and fasting, during which an impulse learns to humble and submit itself--at the same time also to PURIFY and SHARPEN itself; certain philosophical sects likewise admit of a similar interpretation (for instance, the Stoa, in the midst of Hellenic culture, with the atmosphere rank and overcharged with Aphrodisiacal odours).--Here also is a hint for the explanation of the paradox, why it was precisely in the most Christian period of European history, and in general only under the pressure of Christian sentiments, that the sexual impulse sublimated into love (amour-passion).

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 417

175. One loves ultimately one's desires, not the thing desired.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 2

The following is a reprint of the Helen Zimmern translation from German into English of "Beyond Good and Evil," as published in The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (1909-1913). Some adaptations from the original text were made to format it into an e-text. Italics in the original book are capitalized in this e-text, except for most foreign language phrases that were italicized. Original footnotes are put in brackets "[]" at the points where they are cited in the text. Some spellings were altered. "To-day" and "To-morrow" are spelled "today" and "tomorrow." Some words containing the letters "ise" in the original text, such as "idealise," had these letters changed to "ize," such as "idealize." "Sceptic" was changed to "skeptic."

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 82

I would repeat it, however, a hundred times, that "immediate certainty," as well as "absolute knowledge" and the "thing in itself," involve a CONTRADICTIO IN ADJECTO; we really ought to free ourselves from the misleading significance of words!

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 109

The desire for "freedom of will" in the superlative, metaphysical sense, such as still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated, the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one's actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society therefrom, involves nothing less than to be precisely this CAUSA SUI, and, with more than Munchausen daring, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the slough of nothingness.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 611

As this is growing wearisome, I would now recommend for a change something else for a pleasure--namely, the unconscious astuteness with which good, fat, honest mediocrity always behaves towards loftier spirits and the tasks they have to perform, the subtle, barbed, Jesuitical astuteness, which is a thousand times subtler than the taste and understanding of the middle-class in its best moments--subtler even than the understanding of its victims:--a repeated proof that "instinct" is the most intelligent of all kinds of intelligence which have hitherto been discovered.