The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza)
Friedrich Nietzsche
1,346 passages indexed from The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza) (Friedrich Nietzsche) — Page 17 of 27
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The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 28
It is great pain only, the long slow pain which takes time, by which we are burned as it were with green wood, that compels us philosophers to descend into our ultimate depths, and divest ourselves of all trust, all good-nature, veiling, gentleness, and averageness, wherein we have perhaps formerly installed our humanity. I doubt whether such pain "improves" us; but I know that it _deepens_ us.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 767
The time is past when the Church possessed the monopoly of reflection, when the _vita contemplativa_ had always in the first place to be the _vita religiosa_: and everything that the Church has built expresses this thought.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1176
(Even genius does not help a person to get over such a defect, however well it may be able to deceive with regard to it: one understands this if one has once looked closely at our most gifted painters and musicians,—who almost without exception, can artificially and supplementarily appropriate to themselves (by means of artful inventions of style, make-shifts, and even principles), the _appearance_ of that genuineness, that solidity of training and culture; to be sure, without thereby deceiving themselves, without thereby imposing perpetual silence on their bad consciences.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 504
In order that a doctrine may become a tree, it must be believed in for a considerable period; in order that it may be believed in it must be regarded as irrefutable. Storms and doubts and worms and wickedness are necessary to the tree, that it may manifest its species and the strength of its germ; let it perish if it is not strong enough!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1010
Have we not just thereby become liable to a suspicion of an opposition between the world in which we have hitherto been at home with our venerations—for the sake of which we perhaps _endure_ life—and another world _which we ourselves are_: an inexorable, radical, most profound suspicion concerning ourselves, which is continually getting us Europeans more annoyingly into its power, and could easily face the coming generation with the terrible alternative: "Either do away with your venerations, or—_with yourselves_!" The latter would be Nihilism—but would not the former also be Nihilism?
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 262
_Historia abscondita._—Every great man has a power which operates backward; all history is again placed on the scales on his account, and a thousand secrets of the past crawl out of their lurking-places—into _his_ sunlight. There is absolutely no knowing what history may be some day. The past is still perhaps undiscovered in its essence! There are yet so many retroactive powers needed!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 438
_Warfare is the father of all good things_, it is also the father of good prose!—There have been four very singular and truly poetical men in this century who have arrived at mastership in prose, for which otherwise this century is not suited, owing to lack of poetry, as we have indicated.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 649
_After a Great Victory._—The best thing in a great victory is that it deprives the conqueror of the fear of defeat. "Why should I not be worsted for once?" he says to himself, "I am now rich enough to stand it."
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1128
"Modern ideas" also belong to this peasant insurrection of the north against the colder, more ambiguous, more suspicious spirit of the south, which has built itself its greatest monument in the Christian Church.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 847
Whatever may henceforth drive him, draw him, allure or impel him, whether internally or externally—it always seems to this sensitive being, as if his self-control were in danger: he is no longer at liberty to trust himself to any instinct, to any free flight, but stands constantly with defensive mien, armed against himself, with sharp distrustful eye, the eternal watcher of his stronghold, to which office he has appointed himself. Yes, he can be _great_ in that position!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 415
Is it not a very funny thing that the most serious philosophers, however anxious they are in other respects for strict certainty, still appeal to _poetical sayings_ in order to give their thoughts force and credibility?—and yet it is more dangerous to a truth when the poet assents to it than when he contradicts it! For, as Homer says, "The singers speak much falsehood!"—
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1123
He gave back to the priest sexual intercourse: but three-fourths of the reverence of which the people (and above all the women of the people) are capable, rests on the belief that an exceptional man in this respect will also be an exceptional man in other respects. It is precisely here that the popular belief in something superhuman in man, in a miracle, in the saving God in man, has its most subtle and insidious advocate.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 680
_The "Open-hearted" Man._—That man acts probably always from concealed motives; for he has always communicable motives on his tongue, and almost in his open hand.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 503
_Music as Advocate._—"I have a longing for a master of the musical art," said an innovator to his disciple, "that he may learn from me my ideas and speak them more widely in his language: I shall thus be better able to reach men's ears and hearts. For by means of tones one can seduce men to every error and every truth: who could _refute_ a tone?"—"You would, therefore, like to be regarded as irrefutable?" said his disciple. The innovator answered: "I should like the germ to become a tree.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 194
Since then mountains and torrents, and whatever separates and alienates, have interposed between us, and even if we wanted to come to one another, we could no longer do so! When, however, you now remember that small plank, you have no longer words,—but merely sobs and amazement.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 196
_Ancient Pride._—The ancient savour of nobility is lacking in us, because the ancient slave is lacking in our sentiment. A Greek of noble descent found such immense intermediate stages, and such a distance betwixt his elevation and that ultimate baseness, that he could hardly even see the slave plainly: even Plato no longer saw him entirely. It is otherwise with us, accustomed as we are to the _doctrine_ of the equality of men, although not to the equality itself.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 467
Whatever good reasons, therefore, Wagner might have had to be on the outlook for other philosophers than Schopenhauer, the enchantment to which he succumbed in respect to this thinker, not only made him blind towards all other philosophers, but even towards science itself; his entire art is more and more inclined to become the counterpart and complement of the Schopenhauerian philosophy, and it always renounces more emphatically the higher ambition to become the counterpart and complement of human knowledge and science.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 539
An intellect which could see cause and effect as a _continuum_, which could see the flux of events not according to our mode of perception, as things arbitrarily separated and broken—would throw aside the conception of cause and effect, and would deny all conditionality.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 267
_Owing to three Errors._—Science has been furthered during recent centuries, partly because it was hoped that God's goodness and wisdom would be best understood therewith and thereby—the principal motive in the soul of great Englishmen (like Newton); partly because the absolute utility of knowledge was believed in, and especially the most intimate connection of morality, knowledge, and happiness—the principal motive in the soul of great Frenchmen (like Voltaire); and partly because it was thought that in science there was something unselfish, harmless, self-sufficing, lovable, and truly innocent to be had, in which the evil human impulses did not at all participate—the principal motive in the soul of Spinoza, who felt himself divine, as a knowing being:—it is consequently owing to three errors that science has been furthered.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1117
But that which is strangest is that those who have exerted themselves most to retain and preserve Christianity, have been precisely those who did most to destroy it,—the Germans. It seems that the Germans do not understand the essence of a Church. Are they not spiritual enough, or not distrustful enough to do so?
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 428
He knows the weary shuffling along of the soul which can no longer leap or fly, yea, not even walk; he has the shy glance of concealed pain, of understanding without comfort, of leave-taking without avowal; yea, as the Orpheus of all secret misery, he is greater than anyone; and in fact much has been added to art by him which was hitherto inexpressible and not even thought worthy of art, and which was only to be scared away, by words, and not grasped—many small and quite microscopic features of the soul: yes, he is the master of miniature.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 887
"_Life as a means to knowledge_"—with this principle in one's heart, one can not only be brave, but can even _live joyfully and laugh joyfully_! And who could know how to laugh well and live well, who did not first understand the full meaning of war and victory!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 551
_Benevolence._—Is it virtuous when a cell transforms itself into the function of a stronger cell? It must do so. And is it wicked when the stronger one assimilates the other? It must do so likewise: it is necessary, for it has to have abundant indemnity and seeks to regenerate itself. One has therefore to distinguish the instinct of appropriation, and the instinct of submission, in benevolence, according as the stronger or the weaker feels benevolent.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 854
Thy new life, and not thy reason, has slain that opinion for thee: _thou dost not require it any longer_, and now it breaks down of its own accord, and the irrationality crawls out of it as a worm into the light. When we make use of criticism it is not something arbitrary and impersonal,—it is, at least very often, a proof that there are lively, active forces in us, which cast a skin.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 793
I always see the builder, how he casts his eye on all that is built around him far and near, and likewise on the city, the sea, and the chain of mountains; how he expresses power and conquest in his gaze: all this he wishes to fit into _his_ plan, and in the end make it his _property_, by its becoming a portion of the same.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 207
The praise of the virtues is the praise of something which is privately injurious to the individual; it is praise of impulses which deprive man of his noblest self-love, and the power to take the best care of himself. To be sure, for the teaching and embodying of virtuous habits a series of effects of virtue are displayed, which make it appear that virtue and private advantage are closely related,—and there is in fact such a relationship!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1155
A man who loves like a woman becomes thereby a slave; a woman, however, who loves like a woman becomes thereby a _more perfect_ woman.... The passion of woman in its unconditional renunciation of its own rights presupposes in fact that there does _not_ exist on the other side an equal _pathos_, an equal desire for renunciation: for if both renounced themselves out of love, there would result—well, I don't know what, perhaps a _horror vacui_?
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1152
_How each Sex has its Prejudice about Love._—Notwithstanding all the concessions which I am inclined to make to the monogamic prejudice, I will never admit that we should speak of _equal_ rights in the love of man and woman: there are no such equal rights. The reason is that man and woman understand something different by the term love,—and it belongs to the conditions of love in both sexes that the one sex does _not_ presuppose the same feeling, the same conception of "love," in the other sex.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1339
Sweep away all sad grimaces, Whirl the dust into the faces Of the dismal sick and cold! Hunt them from our breezy places, Not for them the wind that braces, But for men of visage bold.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 393
Logic appears to them as necessary as bread and water, but also like these as a kind of prison-fare, as soon as it is to be taken pure and by itself.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 682
_The Limits of our Sense of Hearing._—We hear only the questions to which we are capable of finding an answer.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 529
Knowledge, thus became a portion of life itself, and as life it became a continually growing power: until finally the cognitions and those primeval, fundamental, errors clashed with each other, both as life, both as power, both in the same man. The thinker is now the being in whom the impulse to truth and those life-preserving errors wage their first conflict, now that the impulse to truth has also _proved_ itself to be a life-preserving power.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 707
_Vicariousness of the Senses._—"We have also eyes in order to hear with them,"—said an old confessor who had grown deaf; "and among the blind he that has the longest ears is king."
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 375
_What we should be Grateful for._—It is only the artists, and especially the theatrical artists who have furnished men with eyes and ears to hear and see with some pleasure what everyone is in himself, what he experiences and aims at: it is only _they_ who have taught us how to estimate the hero that is concealed in each of these common-place men, and the art of looking at ourselves from a distance as heroes, and as it were simplified and transfigured,—the art of "putting ourselves on the stage" before ourselves.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 383
This kind of _deviation from nature_ is perhaps the most agreeable repast for man's pride: he loves art generally on account of it, as the expression of high, heroic unnaturalness and convention.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 260
_Undesirable Disciples._—What shall I do with these two youths! called out a philosopher dejectedly, who "corrupted" youths, as Socrates had once corrupted them,—they are unwelcome disciples to me. One of them cannot say "Nay," and the other says "Half and half" to everything. Provided they grasped my doctrine, the former would _suffer_ too much, for my mode of thinking requires a martial soul, willingness to cause pain, delight in denying, and a hard skin,—he would succumb by open wounds and internal injuries. And the other will choose the mediocre in everything he represents, and thus make a mediocrity of the whole,—I should like my enemy to have such a disciple.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 282
For the thinker and for all inventive spirits ennui is the unpleasant "calm" of the soul which precedes the happy voyage and the dancing breezes; he must endure it, he must _await_ the effect it has on him:—it is precisely _this_ which lesser natures cannot at all experience! It is common to scare away ennui in every way, just as it is common to labour without pleasure.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 579
He does not notice anything of a problem therein, but the feeling of _willing_ suffices to him, not only for the acceptance of cause and effect, but also for the belief that he _understands_ their relationship. Of the mechanism of the occurrence and of the manifold subtle operations that must be performed in order that the blow may result, and likewise of the incapacity of the Will in itself to effect even the smallest part of those operations—he knows nothing.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1024
There are philosophers who are at bottom nothing but systematising brains—the formal part of the paternal occupation has become its essence to them. The talent for classifications, for tables of categories, betrays something; it is not for nothing that a person is the child of his parents. The son of an advocate will also have to be an advocate as investigator: he seeks as a first consideration, to carry the point in his case, as a second consideration, he perhaps seeks to be in the right.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 321
They do not know what to make of themselves—and so they paint the misfortune of others on the wall; they always need others! And always again other others!—Pardon me, my friends, I have ventured to paint my _happiness_ on the wall.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1203
The will to _perpetuation_ requires equally a double interpretation. It may on the one hand proceed from gratitude and love:—art of this origin will always be an art of apotheosis, perhaps dithyrambic, as with Rubens, mocking divinely, as with Hafiz, or clear and kind-hearted as with Goethe, and spreading a Homeric brightness and glory over everything (in this case I speak of _Apollonian_ art).
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 777
Who will give thee the strength to do so? No one has yet had this strength!"—There is a lake which one day refused to flow away, and threw up a dam at the place where it had hitherto flowed away: since then this lake has always risen higher and higher. Perhaps the very renunciation will also furnish us with the strength with which the renunciation itself can be borne; perhaps man will ever rise higher and higher from that point onward, when he no longer _flows out_ into a God.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 161
Perhaps they were demanded and presupposed; it was impossible to become great with them, for indeed there was also no danger of becoming insane and solitary with them.—It is principally in the _old-established_ families and castes of a people that such after-effects of old impulses present themselves, while there is no probability of such atavism where races, habits, and valuations change too rapidly.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 901
The proof of this is the _clumsy perspicuity_ which is now everywhere demanded in all positions where a person would like to be sincere with his fellows, in intercourse with friends, women, relatives, children, teachers, pupils, leaders and princes,—one has no longer either time or energy for ceremonies, for roundabout courtesies, for any _esprit_ in conversation, or for any _otium_ whatever.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 72
In yonder region travelling, take good care! An hast thou wit, then be thou doubly ware! They'll smile and lure thee; then thy limbs they'll tear: Fanatics' country this where wits are rare!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 757
We do not want either to think too highly of this dexterity of our wisdom, when the wonderful harmony which results from playing on our instrument sometimes surprises us too much: a harmony which sounds too well for us to dare to ascribe it to ourselves. In fact, now and then there is one who plays _with_ us—beloved Chance: he leads our hand occasionally, and even the all-wisest Providence could not devise any finer music than that of which our foolish hand is then capable.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 165
Before a function is fully formed and matured, it is a danger to the organism: all the better if it be then thoroughly tyrannised over! Consciousness is thus thoroughly tyrannised over—and not least by the pride in it! It is thought that here is _the quintessence_ of man; that which is enduring, eternal, ultimate, and most original in him! Consciousness is regarded as a fixed, given magnitude! Its growth and intermittences are denied!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 42
Weary of Seeking had I grown, So taught myself the way to Find: Back by the storm I once was blown, But follow now, where drives the wind.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 223
The superstitious man is always much more of a "person," in comparison with the religious man, and a superstitious society will be one in which there are many individuals, and a delight in individuality. Seen from this standpoint superstition always appears as a _progress_ in comparison with belief, and as a sign that the intellect becomes more independent and claims to have its rights.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 459
_The Followers of Schopenhauer._—What one sees at the contact of civilized peoples with barbarians,—namely, that the lower civilization regularly accepts in the first place the vices, weaknesses, and excesses of the higher; then, from that point onward, feels the influence of a charm; and finally, by means of the appropriated vices and weaknesses, also allows something of the valuable influence of the higher culture to leaven it:—one can also see this close at hand and without journeys to barbarian peoples, to be sure, somewhat refined and spiritualised, and not so readily palpable.