Beyond Good and Evil, passage 764

Those ancients, indeed, were all of them dilettanti in speaking, consequently connoisseurs, consequently critics--they thus brought their orators to the highest pitch; in the same manner as in the last century, when all Italian ladies and gentlemen knew how to sing, the virtuosoship of song (and with it also the art of melody) reached its elevation.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 948

The UNMANLINESS of that which is called "sympathy" by such groups of visionaries, is always, I believe, the first thing that strikes the eye.--One must resolutely and radically taboo this latest form of bad taste; and finally I wish people to put the good amulet, "GAI SABER" ("gay science," in ordinary language), on heart and neck, as a protection against it.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 453

190. There is something in the morality of Plato which does not really belong to Plato, but which only appears in his philosophy, one might say, in spite of him: namely, Socratism, for which he himself was too noble. "No one desires to injure himself, hence all evil is done unwittingly. The evil man inflicts injury on himself; he would not do so, however, if he knew that evil is evil.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 65

But such replies belong to the realm of comedy, and it is high time to replace the Kantian question, "How are synthetic judgments a PRIORI possible?" by another question, "Why is belief in such judgments necessary?"--in effect, it is high time that we should understand that such judgments must be believed to be true, for the sake of the preservation of creatures like ourselves; though they still might naturally be false judgments!

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 291

And finally, to ordinary men, to the majority of the people, who exist for service and general utility, and are only so far entitled to exist, religion gives invaluable contentedness with their lot and condition, peace of heart, ennoblement of obedience, additional social happiness and sympathy, with something of transfiguration and embellishment, something of justification of all the commonplaceness, all the meanness, all the semi-animal poverty of their souls.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 186

36. Supposing that nothing else is "given" as real but our world of desires and passions, that we cannot sink or rise to any other "reality" but just that of our impulses--for thinking is only a relation of these impulses to one another:--are we not permitted to make the attempt and to ask the question whether this which is "given" does not SUFFICE, by means of our counterparts, for the understanding even of the so-called mechanical (or "material") world?

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 960

296. Alas! what are you, after all, my written and painted thoughts! Not long ago you were so variegated, young and malicious, so full of thorns and secret spices, that you made me sneeze and laugh--and now? You have already doffed your novelty, and some of you, I fear, are ready to become truths, so immortal do they look, so pathetically honest, so tedious! And was it ever otherwise?

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 936

287. What is noble? What does the word "noble" still mean for us nowadays?

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 327

81. It is terrible to die of thirst at sea. Is it necessary that you should so salt your truth that it will no longer--quench thirst?

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 64

Quia est in eo virtus dormitiva, Cujus est natura sensus assoupire.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 670

Its requirements and capacities here, are the same as those assigned by physiologists to everything that lives, grows, and multiplies.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 60

People were beside themselves with delight over this new faculty, and the jubilation reached its climax when Kant further discovered a moral faculty in man--for at that time Germans were still moral, not yet dabbling in the "Politics of hard fact." Then came the honeymoon of German philosophy.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 560

For skepticism is the most spiritual expression of a certain many-sided physiological temperament, which in ordinary language is called nervous debility and sickliness; it arises whenever races or classes which have been long separated, decisively and suddenly blend with one another.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 356

111. Our vanity is most difficult to wound just when our pride has been wounded.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 397

154. Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 650

And if, nevertheless, our honesty should one day grow weary, and sigh, and stretch its limbs, and find us too hard, and would fain have it pleasanter, easier, and gentler, like an agreeable vice, let us remain HARD, we latest Stoics, and let us send to its help whatever devilry we have in us:--our disgust at the clumsy and undefined, our "NITIMUR IN VETITUM," our love of adventure, our sharpened and fastidious curiosity, our most subtle, disguised, intellectual Will to Power and universal conquest, which rambles and roves avidiously around all the realms of the future--let us go with all our "devils" to the help of our "God"!

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 8

It seems that in order to inscribe themselves upon the heart of humanity with everlasting claims, all great things have first to wander about the earth as enormous and awe-inspiring caricatures: dogmatic philosophy has been a caricature of this kind--for instance, the Vedanta doctrine in Asia, and Platonism in Europe.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 343

97. What? A great man? I always see merely the play-actor of his own ideal.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 605

It seems, therefore, that however little we may imagine ourselves to be old-fashioned and grandfatherly respectable in other respects, in one thing we are nevertheless the worthy grandchildren of our grandfathers, we last Europeans with good consciences: we also still wear their pigtail.--Ah! if you only knew how soon, so very soon--it will be different!

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 974

Pinings of youth that might not understand! For which I pined, Which I deemed changed with me, kin of my kind: But they grew old, and thus were doomed and banned: None but new kith are native of my land!

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 489

In cases, however, where it is believed that the leader and bell-wether cannot be dispensed with, attempt after attempt is made nowadays to replace commanders by the summing together of clever gregarious men all representative constitutions, for example, are of this origin.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 231

The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit, it is at the same time subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 465

Our senses are also hostile and averse to the new; and generally, even in the "simplest" processes of sensation, the emotions DOMINATE--such as fear, love, hatred, and the passive emotion of indolence.--As little as a reader nowadays reads all the single words (not to speak of syllables) of a page--he rather takes about five out of every twenty words at random, and "guesses" the probably appropriate sense to them--just as little do we see a tree correctly and completely in respect to its leaves, branches, colour, and shape; we find it so much easier to fancy the chance of a tree.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 837

It is obvious that everywhere the designations of moral value were at first applied to MEN; and were only derivatively and at a later period applied to ACTIONS; it is a gross mistake, therefore, when historians of morals start with questions like, "Why have sympathetic actions been praised?" The noble type of man regards HIMSELF as a determiner of values; he does not require to be approved of; he passes the judgment: "What is injurious to me is injurious in itself;" he knows that it is he himself only who confers honour on things; he is a CREATOR OF VALUES.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 619

"And love?"--What! Even an action for love's sake shall be "unegoistic"? But you fools--!

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 796

254. Even at present France is still the seat of the most intellectual and refined culture of Europe, it is still the high school of taste; but one must know how to find this "France of taste." He who belongs to it keeps himself well concealed:--they may be a small number in whom it lives and is embodied, besides perhaps being men who do not stand upon the strongest legs, in part fatalists, hypochondriacs, invalids, in part persons over-indulged, over-refined, such as have the AMBITION to conceal themselves.

Beyond Good and Evil, passage 220

What they would fain attain with all their strength, is the universal, green-meadow happiness of the herd, together with security, safety, comfort, and alleviation of life for every one, their two most frequently chanted songs and doctrines are called "Equality of Rights" and "Sympathy with All Sufferers"--and suffering itself is looked upon by them as something which must be DONE AWAY WITH.