The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1014

In fact, around all these positivist systems there fume the vapours of a certain pessimistic gloom, something of weariness, fatalism, disillusionment, and fear of new disillusionment—or else manifest animosity, ill-humour, anarchic exasperation, and whatever there is of symptom or masquerade of the feeling of weakness.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 407

When the proper tension and harmony of the soul were lost a person had to _dance_ to the measure of the singer,—that was the recipe of this medical art. By means of it Terpander quieted a tumult, Empedocles calmed a maniac, Damon purged a love-sick youth; by means of it even the maddened, revengeful Gods were treated for the purpose of a cure.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 158

We have all hidden gardens and plantations in us; and by another simile, we are all growing volcanoes, which will have their hours of eruption:—how near or how distant this is, nobody of course knows, not even the good God.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1177

For you know well enough that all great modern artists suffer from bad consciences?...)

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 119

Everyone looks at you with strange eyes, and continues to make use of his scales, calling this good and that bad; and no one blushes for shame when you remark that these weights are not the full amount,—there is also no indignation against you; perhaps they laugh at your doubt.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1251

People will not easily behead us, shut us up, or banish us; they will not even ban or burn our books.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 288

_The Believed Motive._—However important it may be to know the motives according to which mankind has really acted hitherto, perhaps the _belief_ in this or that motive, and therefore that which mankind has assumed and imagined to be the actual mainspring of its activity hitherto, is something still more essential for the thinker to know. For the internal happiness and misery of men have always come to them through their belief in this or that motive,—_not_ however, through that which was actually the motive! All about the latter has an interest of secondary rank.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 113

he does not at all want us to _laugh_ at existence, nor even at ourselves—nor at himself; to him an individual is always an individual, something first and last and immense, to him there are no species, no sums, no noughts.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 948

Indeed, the opinion of the present-day preachers of the morality of compassion goes so far as to imply that just this, and this alone is moral:—to stray from _our_ course to that extent and to run to the assistance of our neighbour. I am equally certain that I need only give myself over to the sight of one case of actual distress, and I, too, _am_ lost!

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1221

It is just the same with the belief with which at present so many materialistic natural-scientists are content, the belief in a world which is supposed to have its equivalent and measure in human thinking and human valuations, a "world of truth" at which we might be able ultimately to arrive with the help of our insignificant, four-cornered human reason! What?

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 396

_Translations._—One can estimate the amount of the historical sense which an age possesses by the way in which it makes _translations_ and seeks to embody in itself past periods and literatures. The French of Corneille, and even the French of the Revolution, appropriated Roman antiquity in a manner for which we would no longer have the courage—owing to our superior historical sense.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 762

_Stellar Friendship._—We were friends, and have become strangers to each other. But this is as it ought to be, and we do not want either to conceal or obscure the fact, as if we had to be ashamed of it.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 989

But what if this itself always becomes more untrustworthy, what if nothing any longer proves itself divine, except it be error, blindness, and falsehood;—what if God himself turns out to be our most persistent lie?—

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 307

_Sense for Truth._—Commend me to all scepticism where I am permitted to answer: "Let us put it to the test!" But I don't wish to hear anything more of things and questions which do not admit of being tested. That is the limit of my "sense for truth": for bravery has there lost its right.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 954

All these, however, are so rarely united at the same time that I am inclined to believe that the highest summit of all that is good, be it work, deed, man, or nature, has hitherto remained for most people, and even for the best, as something concealed and shrouded:—that, however, which unveils itself to us, _unveils itself to us but once_.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 547

_The Herd's Sting of Conscience._—In the longest and remotest ages of the human race there was quite a different sting of conscience from that of the present day. At present one only feels responsible for what one intends and for what one does, and we have our pride in ourselves. All our professors of jurisprudence start with this sentiment of individual independence and pleasure, as if the source of right had taken its rise here from the beginning.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1311

Since I baffle their advances, Will not clutch their leading-string, They would wither me with glances Bitter-sweet, with hopeless envy sting.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 550

At that time the "free will" had bad conscience in close proximity to it; and the less independently a person acted, the more the herd-instinct, and not his personal character, expressed itself in his conduct, so much the more moral did he esteem himself. All that did injury to the herd, whether the individual had intended it or not, then caused him a sting of conscience—and his neighbour likewise, indeed the whole herd!—It is in this respect that we have most changed our mode of thinking.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1143

Falsity with a good conscience; delight in dissimulation breaking forth as power, pushing aside, overflowing, and sometimes extinguishing the so-called "character"; the inner longing to play a rôle, to assume a mask, to put on an _appearance_; a surplus of capacity for adaptations of every kind, which can no longer gratify themselves in the service of the nearest and narrowest utility: all that perhaps does not pertain _solely_ to the actor in himself?...

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 357

In the young, the females find gratification for their lust of dominion; the young are a property, an occupation, something quite comprehensible to them, with which they can chatter: all this conjointly is maternal love,—it is to be compared to the love of the artist for his work.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 180

An easy booty is something contemptible to proud natures; they have an agreeable sensation only at the sight of men of unbroken spirit who could be enemies to them, and similarly, also, at the sight of all not easily accessible possession; they are often hard toward the sufferer, for he is not worthy of their effort or their pride,—but they show themselves so much the more courteous towards their _equals_, with whom strife and struggle would in any case be full of honour, _if_ at any time an occasion for it should present itself.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 43

Where you're standing, dig, dig out: Down below's the Well: Let them that walk in darkness shout: "Down below—there's Hell!"

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1032

Over the whole of English Darwinism there hovers something of the suffocating air of over-crowded England, something of the odour of humble people in need and in straits. But as an investigator of nature, a person ought to emerge from his paltry human nook: and in nature the state of distress does not _prevail_, but superfluity, even prodigality to the extent of folly.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 157

In some ages this or that talent, this or that virtue seems to be entirely lacking, as it is in some men; but let us wait only for the grandchildren and grandchildren's children, if we have time to wait,—they bring the interior of their grandfathers into the sun, that interior of which the grandfathers themselves were unconscious. The son, indeed, is often the betrayer of his father; the latter understands himself better since he has got his son.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1224

Would the reverse not be quite probable, that the most superficial and external characters of existence—its most apparent quality, its outside, its embodiment—should let themselves be apprehended first? perhaps alone allow themselves to be apprehended?

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1174

I bless you even on account of your humps! And also because like me you despise the littérateurs and parasites of culture! And because you do not know how to make merchandise of your intellect! And have so many opinions which cannot be expressed in money value! And because you do not represent anything which you _are_ not!

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 815

Society feels with satisfaction that it has a reliable _tool_ ready at all times in the virtue of this one, in the ambition of that one, and in the reflection and passion of a third one,—it honours this _tool-like nature_, this self-constancy, this unchangeableness in opinions, efforts, and even in faults, with the highest honours.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 876

In pain I hear the commanding call of the ship's captain: "Take in sail!" "Man," the bold seafarer, must have learned to set his sails in a thousand different ways, otherwise he could not have sailed long, for the ocean would soon have swallowed him up.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 552

Gladness and covetousness are united in the stronger person, who wants to transform something to his function: gladness and desire-to-be-coveted in the weaker person, who would like to become a function.—The former case is essentially pity, a pleasant excitation of the instinct of appropriation at the sight of the weaker: it is to be remembered, however, that "strong" and "weak" are relative conceptions.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 630

That Luther's Reformation succeeded in the north, is a sign that the north had remained backward in comparison with the south of Europe, and still had requirements tolerably uniform in colour and kind; and there would have been no Christianising of Europe at all, if the culture of the old world of the south had not been gradually barbarized by an excessive admixture of the blood of German barbarians, and thus lost its ascendency.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1106

When we thus reject the Christian interpretation, and condemn its "significance" as a forgery, we are immediately confronted in a striking manner with the _Schopenhauerian_ question: _Has existence then a significance at all?_—the question which will require a couple of centuries even to be completely heard in all its profundity.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 849

_Stoic and Epicurean._—The Epicurean selects the situations, the persons, and even the events which suit his extremely sensitive, intellectual constitution; he renounces the rest—that is to say, by far the greater part of experience—because it would be too strong and too heavy fare for him.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 417

I mean to say that they are not themselves the valuers of happiness and of the happy ones, but they always press close to these valuers with the greatest curiosity and longing, in order immediately to use their valuations advantageously. As besides their impatience, they have also the big lungs of heralds and the feet of runners, they are likewise always among the first to glorify the _new_ excellency, and often _seem_ to be those who first of all called it good and valued it as good.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 960

_The Heaviest Burden._—What if a demon crept after thee into thy loneliest loneliness some day or night, and said to thee: "This life, as thou livest it at present, and hast lived it, thou must live it once more, and also innumerable times; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and every sigh, and all the unspeakably small and great in thy life must come to thee again, and all in the same series and sequence—and similarly this spider and this moonlight among the trees, and similarly this moment, and I myself.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 482

At present, when all courts have become caricatures of past and present times, one is astonished to find even Voltaire unspeakably reserved and scrupulous on this point (for example, in his judgments concerning such stylists as Fontenelle and Montesquieu),—we are now, all of us, emancipated from court taste, while Voltaire was its _perfecter_!

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1056

_The "Genius of the Species."_—The problem of consciousness (or more correctly: of becoming conscious of oneself) meets us only when we begin to perceive in what measure we could dispense with it: and it is at the beginning of this perception that we are now placed by physiology and zoology (which have thus required two centuries to overtake the hint thrown out in advance by Leibnitz).

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 766

_Architecture for Thinkers._—An insight is needed (and that probably very soon) as to what is specially lacking in our great cities—namely, quiet, spacious, and widely extended places for reflection, places with long, lofty colonnades for bad weather, or for too sunny days, where no noise of wagons or of shouters would penetrate, and where a more refined propriety would prohibit loud praying even to the priest: buildings and situations which as a whole would express the sublimity of self-communion and seclusion from the world.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1324

Stern belfry, rising as with lion's leap Sheer from the soil in easy victory, That fill'st the Square with peal resounding, deep, Wert thou in French that Square's "accent aigu"? Were I for ages set In earth like thee, I know what silk-meshed net.... My bliss! My bliss!

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 380

It is to the advantage of his reputation that he has not really arrived at his goal.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 851

Stoicism may be quite advisable for men with whom fate improvises, for those who live in violent times and are dependent on abrupt and changeable individuals. He, however, who _anticipates_ that fate will permit him to spin "a long thread," does well to make his arrangements in Epicurean fashion; all men devoted to intellectual labour have done it hitherto!

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1034

_In Honour of Homines Religiosi._—The struggle against the church is most certainly (among other things—for it has a manifold significance) the struggle of the more ordinary, cheerful, confiding, superficial natures against the rule of the graver, profounder, more contemplative natures, that is to say, the more malign and suspicious men, who with long continued distrust in the worth of life, brood also over their own worth:—the ordinary instinct of the people, its sensual gaiety, its "good heart," revolts against them.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1054

He understood that such a type of man, with all its _vis inertiae_, had inevitably to glide into a belief which promises _to avoid_ the return of earthly ill (that is to say, labour and activity generally),—this "understanding" was his genius. The founder of a religion possesses psychological infallibility in the knowledge of a definite, average type of souls, who have not yet _recognised_ themselves as akin.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 546

By morality the individual is taught to become a function of the herd, and to ascribe to himself value only as a function. As the conditions for the maintenance of one community have been very different from those of another community, there have been very different moralities; and in respect to the future essential transformations of herds and communities, states and societies, one can prophesy that there will still be very divergent moralities. Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 650

_Those who Seek Repose._—I recognise the minds that seek repose by the many _dark_ objects with which they surround themselves: those who want to sleep darken their chambers, or creep into caverns. A hint to those who do not know what they really seek most, and would like to know!

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 852

For it would be a supreme loss to them to forfeit their fine sensibility, and acquire the hard, stoical hide with hedgehog prickles in exchange.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 374

There is _shame_ in it, the artist has lowered himself in his own sight, and could not even avoid blushing: we are ashamed with him, and are so hurt because we surmise that he believed he had to lower himself on our account.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza)

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