The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza)
Friedrich Nietzsche
1,346 passages indexed from The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza) (Friedrich Nietzsche) — Page 21 of 27
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The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 311
I have _discovered_ for myself that the old humanity and animality, yea, the collective primeval age, and the past of all sentient being, continues to meditate, love, hate, and reason in me,—I have suddenly awoke in the midst of this dream, but merely to the consciousness that I just dream, and that I _must_ dream on in order not to perish; just as the sleep-walker must dream on in order not to tumble down. What is it that is now "appearance" to me!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 276
For these are really ready for _slavery_ of every kind, provided that the superior class above them constantly shows itself legitimately superior, and _born_ to command—by its noble presence!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 37
We no longer believe that truth remains truth when the veil is withdrawn from it: we have lived long enough to believe this. At present we regard it as a matter of propriety not to be anxious either to see everything naked, or to be present at everything, or to understand and "know" everything. "Is it true that the good God is everywhere present?" asked a little girl of her mother: "I think that is indecent":—a hint to philosophers!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 600
"Only when thou _repentest_ is God gracious to thee"—that would arouse the laughter or the wrath of a Greek: he would say, "Slaves may have such sentiments." Here a mighty being, an almighty being, and yet a revengeful being, is presupposed; his power is so great that no injury whatever can be done to him, except in the point of honour. Every sin is an infringement of respect, a _crimen læsæ majestatis divinæ_—and nothing more!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 685
_In Applause._—In applause there is always some kind of noise: even in self-applause.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 523
Moreover, those propositions became the very standards of knowledge according to which the "true" and the "false" were determined—throughout the whole domain of pure logic. The _strength_ of conceptions does not, therefore, depend on their degree of truth, but on their antiquity, their embodiment, their character as conditions of life. Where life and knowledge seemed to conflict, there has never been serious contention; denial and doubt have there been regarded as madness.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 9
The whole book is really nothing but a revel after long privation and impotence: the frolicking of returning energy, of newly awakened belief in a to-morrow and after-to-morrow; of sudden sentience and prescience of a future, of near adventures, of seas open once more, and aims once more permitted and believed in. And what was now all behind me!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 424
Oh, who will narrate to us the whole history of narcotics!—It is almost the history of "culture," the so-called higher culture!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1156
Woman wants to be taken and accepted as a possession, she wishes to be merged in the conceptions of "possession" and "possessed"; consequently she wants one who _takes_, who does not offer and give himself away, but who reversely is rather to be made richer in "himself"—by the increase of power, happiness and faith which the woman herself gives to him.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 332
Oh, those men of former times understood how to _dream_, and did not need first to go to sleep!—and we men of the present day also still understand it too well, with all our good-will for wakefulness and daylight!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 284
_What the Laws Betray._—One makes a great mistake when one studies the penal laws of a people, as if they were an expression of its character; the laws do not betray what a people is, but what appears to them foreign, strange, monstrous, and outlandish. The laws concern themselves with the exceptions to the morality of custom; and the severest punishments fall on acts which conform to the customs of the neighbouring peoples.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 772
For that end many brave pioneers are now needed, who, however, cannot originate out of nothing,—and just as little out of the sand and slime of present-day civilisation and the culture of great cities: men silent, solitary and resolute, who know how to be content and persistent in invisible activity: men who with innate disposition seek in all things that which is _to be overcome_ in them: men to whom cheerfulness, patience, simplicity, and contempt of the great vanities belong just as much as do magnanimity in victory and indulgence to the trivial vanities of all the vanquished: men with an acute and independent judgment regarding all victors, and concerning the part which chance has played in the winning of victory and fame: men with their own holidays, their own work-days, and their own periods of mourning; accustomed to command with perfect assurance, and equally ready, if need be, to obey, proud in the one case as in the other, equally serving their own interests: men more imperilled, more productive, more happy!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 564
_Knowledge more than a Means._—Also _without_ this passion—I refer to the passion for knowledge—science would be furthered: science has hitherto increased and grown up without it.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1053
Buddha, in like manner, found the same type of man,—he found it in fact dispersed among all the classes and social ranks of a people who were good and kind (and above all inoffensive), owing to indolence, and who likewise owing to indolence, lived abstemiously, almost without requirements.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1235
_We Homeless Ones._—Among the Europeans of to-day there are not lacking those who may call themselves homeless ones in a way which is at once a distinction and an honour; it is by them that my secret wisdom and _gaya scienza_ is expressly to be laid to heart. For their lot is hard, their hope uncertain; it is a clever feat to devise consolation for them. But what good does it do! We children of the future, how _could_ we be at home in the present?
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 716
_Dreaming._—Either one does not dream at all, or one dreams in an interesting manner. One must learn to be awake in the same fashion:—either not at all, or in an interesting manner.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 391
_Grecian Taste._—"What is beautiful in it?"—asked a certain geometrician, after a performance of the _Iphigenia_—"there is nothing proved in it!" Could the Greeks have been so far from this taste? In Sophocles at least "everything is proved."
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1085
Precisely thereby another species of man is always more and more injured, and in the end made impossible: above all the great "architects"; the building power is now being paralysed; the courage that makes plans for the distant future is disheartened; there begins to be a lack of organising geniuses. Who is there who would now venture to undertake works for the completion of which millenniums would have to be _reckoned_ upon?
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 277
The commonest man feels that nobility is not to be improvised, and that it is his part to honour it as the fruit of protracted race-culture,—but the absence of superior presence, and the notorious vulgarity of manufacturers with red, fat hands, brings up the thought to him that it is only chance and fortune that has here elevated the one above the other; well then—so he reasons with himself—let _us_ in our turn tempt chance and fortune! Let us in our turn throw the dice!—and socialism commences.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1228
We cannot see round our corner: it is hopeless curiosity to want to know what other modes of intellect and perspective there _might_ be: for example, whether any kind of being could perceive time backwards, or alternately forwards and backwards (by which another direction of life and another conception of cause and effect would be given).
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 516
Judged by our reason, the unlucky casts are far oftenest the rule, the exceptions are not the secret purpose; and the whole musical box repeats eternally its air, which can never be called a melody,—and finally the very expression, "unlucky cast" is already an anthropomorphising which involves blame. But how could we presume to blame or praise the universe!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 151
The same is true of the determining of the reasons for the differences of the moral climates ("_on what account_ does this sun of a fundamental moral judgment and standard of highest value shine here—and that sun there?"). And there is again a new labour which points out the erroneousness of all these reasons, and determines the entire essence of the moral judgments hitherto made.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 915
We are always finally recompensed for our good-will, our patience, reasonableness and gentleness towards what is unfamiliar, by the unfamiliar slowly throwing off its veil and presenting itself to us as a new, ineffable beauty:—that is its _thanks_ for our hospitality. He also who loves himself must have learned it in this way: there is no other way. Love also has to be learned.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 819
It is probable that for many millenniums knowledge was afflicted with a bad conscience, and that there must have been much self-contempt and secret misery in the history of the greatest intellects.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 636
All events were of a different lustre, for a God shone forth in them; and similarly of all resolutions and peeps into the distant future: for people had oracles, and secret hints, and believed in prognostication. "Truth" was conceived in quite a different manner, for the insane could formerly be regarded as its mouthpiece—a thing which makes _us_ shudder, or laugh.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1172
Every kind of _perfection_ is purchased at a high price on earth, where everything is perhaps purchased too dear; one is an expert in one's department at the price of being also a victim of one's department. But you want to have it otherwise—"more reasonable," above all more convenient—is it not so, my dear contemporaries? Very well!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 441
_Growth after Death._—Those few daring words about moral matters which Fontenelle threw into his immortal _Dialogues of the Dead_, were regarded by his age as paradoxes and amusements of a not unscrupulous wit; even the highest judges of taste and intellect saw nothing more in them,—indeed, Fontenelle himself perhaps saw nothing more. Then something incredible takes place: these thoughts become truths! Science proves them! The game becomes serious! And we read those dialogues with a feeling different from that with which Voltaire and Helvetius read them, and we involuntarily raise their originator into another and _much higher_ class of intellects than they did.—Rightly? Wrongly?
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 226
But one is accustomed to overlook the fact that the old national energy and national passion, which acquired a magnificent splendour in war and in the tourney, has now transferred itself into innumerable private passions, and has merely become less visible; indeed in periods of "corruption" the quantity and quality of the expended energy of a people is probably greater than ever, and the individual spends it lavishly, to such an extent as could not be done formerly—he was not then rich enough to do so!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 781
Nevertheless it could some day produce such men also—when a multitude of favourable conditions have been created and established, which at present even the happiest chance is unable to throw together.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 877
We must also know how to live with reduced energy: as soon as pain gives its precautionary signal, it is time to reduce the speed—some great danger, some storm, is approaching, and we do well to "catch" as little wind as possible.—It is true that there are men who, on the approach of severe pain, hear the very opposite call of command, and never appear more proud, more martial, or more happy, than when the storm is brewing; indeed, pain itself provides them with their supreme moments!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 106
To laugh at oneself as one would have to laugh in order to laugh _out of the veriest truth_,—to do this the best have not hitherto had enough of the sense of truth, and the most endowed have had far too little genius! There is perhaps still a future even for laughter!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 930
Let us _confine_ ourselves, therefore, to the purification of our opinions and appreciations, and to the _construction of new tables of value of our own_:—we will, however, brood no longer over the "moral worth of our actions"! Yes, my friends! As regards the whole moral twaddle of people about one another, it is time to be disgusted with it! To sit in judgment morally ought to be opposed to our taste!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1007
This error had its last expression in modern Pessimism; an older and stronger manifestation in the teaching of Buddha; but Christianity also contains it, more dubiously, to be sure, and more ambiguously, but none the less seductive on that account.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 121
In certain pious people I have found a hatred of reason, and have been favourably disposed to them for it: their bad, intellectual conscience still betrayed itself, at least in this manner!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 116
But with all this corrective laughter, human nature has on the whole been changed by the ever new appearance of those teachers of the design of existence,—human nature has now an additional requirement, the very requirement of the ever new appearance of such teachers and doctrines of "design." Man has gradually become a visionary animal, who has to fulfil one more condition of existence than the other animals: man _must_ from time to time believe that he knows _why_ he exists; his species cannot flourish without periodically confiding in life!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1120
One overlooks the fact readily enough at present that as regards all cardinal questions concerning power Luther was badly endowed; he was fatally short-sighted, superficial and imprudent—and above all, as a man sprung from the people, he lacked all the hereditary qualities of a ruling caste, and all the instincts for power; so that his work, his intention to restore the work of the Romans, merely became involuntarily and unconsciously the commencement of a work of destruction.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1184
Wagner possessed, along with all other instincts, the dictatorial instinct of a great actor in all and everything, and as has been said, also as a musician.—I once made this clear with some trouble to a thorough-going Wagnerian, and I had reasons for adding:—"Do be a little more honest with yourself: we are not now in the theatre. In the theatre we are only honest in the mass; as individuals we lie, we belie even ourselves.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 755
Is there a more dangerous temptation to rid ourselves of the belief in the Gods of Epicurus, those careless, unknown Gods, and believe in some anxious and mean Divinity, who knows personally every little hair on our heads, and feels no disgust in rendering the most wretched services? Well—I mean in spite of all this!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 478
The way in which a thinker succeeds in tracing the effect of his thoughts, and their transforming and convulsing power, is almost a comedy: it sometimes seems as if those who have been operated upon felt profoundly injured thereby, and could only assert their independence, which they suspect to be threatened, by all kinds of improprieties.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1008
The whole attitude of "man _versus_ the world," man as world-denying principle, man as the standard of the value of things, as judge of the world, who in the end puts existence itself on his scales and finds it too light—the monstrous impertinence of this attitude has dawned upon us as such, and has disgusted us,—we now laugh when we find, "Man _and_ World" placed beside one another, separated by the sublime presumption of the little word "and"! But how is it?
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 12
_Incipit tragœdia_, it is said at the conclusion of this seriously frivolous book; let people be on their guard! Something or other extraordinarily bad and wicked announces itself: _incipit parodia_, there is no doubt...
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1059
_What_ then is _the purpose_ of consciousness generally, when it is in the main _superfluous_?—Now it seems to me, if you will hear my answer and its perhaps extravagant supposition, that the subtlety and strength of consciousness are always in proportion to the _capacity for communication_ of a man (or an animal), the capacity for communication in its turn being in proportion to the _necessity for communication_: the latter not to be understood as if precisely the individual himself who is master in the art of communicating and making known his necessities would at the same time have to be most dependent upon others for his necessities.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 643
_Mentiri._—Take care!—he reflects: he will have a lie ready immediately. This is a stage in the civilisation of whole nations. Consider only what the Romans expressed by _mentiri_!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 853
_In Favour of Criticism._—Something now appears to thee as an error which thou formerly lovedst as a truth, or as a probability: thou pushest it from thee and imaginest that thy reason has there gained a victory. But perhaps that error was then, when thou wast still another person—thou art always another person,—just as necessary to thee as all thy present "truths," like a skin, as it were, which concealed and veiled from thee much which thou still mayst not see.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 913
Aye, perhaps in our struggling interior there is much concealed _heroism_, but certainly nothing divine, or eternally-reposing-in-itself, as Spinoza supposed. _Conscious_ thinking, and especially that of the philosopher, is the weakest, and on that account also the relatively mildest and quietest mode of thinking: and thus it is precisely the philosopher who is most easily misled concerning the nature of knowledge.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 350
_The Mistresses of the Masters._—A powerful contralto voice, as we occasionally hear it in the theatre, raises suddenly for us the curtain on possibilities in which we usually do not believe; all at once we are convinced that somewhere in the world there may be women with high, heroic, royal souls, capable and prepared for magnificent remonstrances, resolutions, and self-sacrifices, capable and prepared for domination over men, because in them the best in man, superior to sex, has become a corporeal ideal.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 212
The praise of the unselfish, self-sacrificing, virtuous person—he, consequently, who does not expend his whole energy and reason for _his own_ conservation, development, elevation, furtherance and augmentation of power, but lives as regards himself unassumingly and thoughtlessly, perhaps even indifferently or ironically,—this praise has in any case not originated out of the spirit of unselfishness! The "neighbour" praises unselfishness because _he profits by it_!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 812
So it is with me as regards foods, thoughts, men, cities, poems, music, doctrines, arrangements of the day, and modes of life.—On the other hand, I hate _permanent_ habits, and feel as if a tyrant came into my neighbourhood, and as if my life's breath _condensed_, when events take such a form that permanent habits seem necessarily to grow out of them: for example, through an official position, through constant companionship with the same persons, through a settled abode, or through a uniform state of health.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 233
There is then so little certainty with regard to the future; people live only for the day: a condition of mind which enables every deceiver to play an easy game,—people of course only let themselves be misled and bribed "for the present," and reserve for themselves futurity and virtue.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 919
Therefore, when a man decides that '_this is right_,' when he accordingly concludes that '_it must therefore be done_,' and thereupon _does_ what he has thus recognised as right and designated as necessary—then the nature of his action is _moral_!" But, my friend, you are talking to me about three actions instead of one: your deciding, for instance, that "this is right," is also an action,—could one not judge either morally or immorally?