The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1089

_The old Problem: "What is German?"_—Let us count up apart the real acquisitions of philosophical thought for which we have to thank German intellects: are they in any allowable sense to be counted also to the credit of the whole race?

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 127

An animal, which at the risk of life protects its young, or in the pairing season follows the female where it meets with death, does not think of the risk and the death; its reason pauses likewise, because its delight in its young, or in the female, and the fear of being deprived of this delight, dominate it exclusively; it becomes stupider than at other times, like the noble and magnanimous person.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 719

_Spirit and Character._—Many a one attains his full height of character, but his spirit is not adapted to the elevation,—and many a one reversely.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1062

Consciousness is properly only a connecting network between man and man,—it is only as such that it has had to develop; the recluse and wild-beast species of men would not have needed it.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 352

_On Female Chastity._—There is something quite astonishing and extraordinary in the education of women of the higher class; indeed, there is perhaps nothing more paradoxical. All the world is agreed to educate them with as much ignorance as possible _in eroticis_, and to inspire their soul with a profound shame of such things, and the extremest impatience and horror at the suggestion of them.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 346

_Will and Willingness._—Some one brought a youth to a wise man and said, "See, this is one who is being corrupted by women!" The wise man shook his head and smiled.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 613

_Frankincense._—Buddha says: "Do not flatter thy benefactor!" Let one repeat this saying in a Christian church:—it immediately purifies the air of all Christianity.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 55

He shot an empty word Into the empty blue; But on the way it met A woman whom it slew.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1169

In the book of a learned man there is almost always something oppressive and oppressed: the "specialist" comes to light somewhere, his ardour, his seriousness, his wrath, his over-estimation of the nook in which he sits and spins, his hump—every specialist has his hump. A learned book also always mirrors a distorted soul: every trade distorts. Look at our friends again with whom we have spent our youth, after they have taken possession of their science: alas!

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 736

_Against Embarrassment._—He who is always thoroughly occupied is rid of all embarrassment.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 714

_Lack of Reserve._—His whole nature fails to _convince_—that results from the fact that he has never been reticent about a good action he has performed.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1026

Observe Jewish scholars with regard to this matter,—they all lay great stress on logic, that is to say, on _compelling_ assent by means of reasons; they know that they must conquer thereby, even when race and class antipathy is against them, even where people are unwilling to believe them. For in fact, nothing is more democratic than logic: it knows no respect of persons, and takes even the crooked nose as straight.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 592

_A Dangerous Resolution._—The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 413

People could do everything with it: they could make labour go on magically; they could compel a God to appear, to be near at hand, and listen to them; they could arrange the future for themselves according to their will; they could unburden their own souls of any kind of excess (of anxiety, of mania, of sympathy, of revenge), and not only their own soul, but the souls of the most evil spirits,—without verse a person was nothing, by means of verse a person became almost a God.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 811

But one day the habit has had its time: the good thing separates from me, not as something which then inspires disgust in me—but peaceably and as though satisfied with me, as I am with it; as if we had to be mutually thankful, and _thus_ shook hands for farewell. And already the new habit waits at the door, and similarly also my belief—indestructible fool and sage that I am!—that this new habit will be the right one, the ultimate right one.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1223

That a world-interpretation is alone right by which _you_ maintain your position, by which investigation and work can go on scientifically in _your_ sense (you really mean _mechanically_?), an interpretation which acknowledges numbering, calculating, weighing, seeing and handling, and nothing more—such an idea is a piece of grossness and naïvety, provided it is not lunacy and idiocy.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 305

With this violence done to himself, however, with this mockery of his impulse to revenge, even still so powerful, he merely yields to the new impulse, the disgust which has become powerful, and does this just as impatiently and licentiously, as a short time previously he _forestalled_, and as it were exhausted, the joy of revenge with his fantasy. In magnanimity there is the same amount of egoism as in revenge, but a different quality of egoism.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 862

_Broken Lights._—We are not always brave, and when we are weary, people of our stamp are liable to lament occasionally in this wise:—"It is so hard to cause pain to men—oh, that it should be necessary! What good is it to live concealed, when we do not want to keep to ourselves that which causes vexation? Would it not be more advisable to live in the madding crowd, and compensate individuals for sins that are committed and must be committed against mankind in general?

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 858

_Will and Wave._—How eagerly this wave comes hither, as if it were a question of its reaching something! How it creeps with frightful haste into the innermost corners of the rocky cliff! It seems that it wants to forestall some one; it seems that something is concealed there that has value, high value.—And now it retreats somewhat more slowly, still quite white with excitement,—is it disappointed? Has it found what it sought?

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 203

One praises the diligent man though he injures his sight, or the originality and freshness of his spirit, by his diligence; the youth is honoured and regretted who has "worn himself out by work," because one passes the judgment that "for society as a whole the loss of the best individual is only a small sacrifice! A pity that this sacrifice should be necessary!

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 571

The insane man jumped into their midst and transfixed them with his glances. "Where is God gone?" he called out. "I mean to tell you! _We have killed him_,—you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? Whither does it now move? Whither do we move? Away from all suns? Do we not dash on unceasingly?

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 269

_Altered Taste._—The alteration of the general taste is more important than the alteration of opinions; opinions, with all their proving, refuting, and intellectual masquerade, are merely symptoms of altered taste, and are certainly _not_ what they are still so often claimed to be, the causes of the altered taste. How does the general taste alter?

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 655

_Avowed Enemies._—Bravery in presence of an enemy is a thing by itself: a person may possess it and still be a coward and an irresolute numskull. That was Napoleon's opinion concerning the "bravest man" he knew, Murat:—whence it follows that avowed enemies are indispensable to some men, if they are to attain to _their_ virtue, to their manliness, to their cheerfulness.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 450

But he is at the height of his power when he resists the impetuous storm of his feeling, and as it were scorns it; it is then only that his spirit emerges fully from its concealment, a spirit logical, mocking, and playful, but nevertheless awe-inspiring.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 575

This prodigious event is still on its way, and is travelling,—it has not yet reached men's ears. Lightning and thunder need time, the light of the stars needs time, deeds need time, even after they are done, to be seen and heard. This deed is as yet further from them than the furthest star,—_and yet they have done it!_"—It is further stated that the madman made his way into different churches on the same day, and there intoned his _Requiem aeternam deo_.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 44

_A._ Was I ill? and is it ended? Pray, by what physician tended? I recall no pain endured! _B._ Now I know your trouble's ended: He that can forget, is cured.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 22

One may always primarily consider these audacious freaks of metaphysic, and especially its answers to the question of the _worth_ of existence, as symptoms of certain bodily constitutions; and if, on the whole, when scientifically determined, not a particle of significance attaches to such affirmations and denials of the world, they nevertheless furnish the historian and psychologist with hints so much the more valuable (as we have said) as symptoms of the bodily constitution, its good or bad condition, its fullness, powerfulness, and sovereignty in history; or else of its obstructions, exhaustions, and impoverishments, its premonition of the end, its will to the end.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 568

"Science is something of secondary rank, nothing ultimate or unconditioned, no object of passion"—this judgment was kept back in Leo's soul: the truly Christian judgment concerning science! In antiquity its dignity and appreciation were lessened by the fact that, even among its most eager disciples, the striving after _virtue_ stood foremost, and that people thought they had given the highest praise to knowledge when they celebrated it as the best means to virtue.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 455

Do we perhaps stand before some sombre event or adventure of the poet's own soul, which has remained unknown, and of which he only cared to speak symbolically? What is all Hamlet-melancholy in comparison with the melancholy of Brutus!—and perhaps Shakespeare also knew this, as he knew the other, by experience!

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1039

The people venerate an entirely different type of man when on their part they form the ideal of a "sage," and they are a thousand times justified in rendering homage with the highest eulogies and honours to precisely that type of men—namely, the gentle, serious, simple, chaste, priestly natures and those related to them,—it is to them that the praise falls due in the popular veneration of wisdom.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 557

And then only would it be time to turn our thoughts to the health and disease of the _soul_ and make the special virtue of everyone consist in its health; but, to be sure, what appeared as health in one person might appear as the contrary of health in another.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 778

_A Digression._—Here are hopes; but what will you see and hear of them, if you have not experienced glance and glow and dawn of day in your own souls? I can only suggest—I cannot do more! To move the stones, to make animals men—would you have me do that? Alas, if you are yet stones and animals, seek first your Orpheus!

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1073

The known, that is to say, what we are accustomed to, so that we no longer marvel at it, the commonplace, any kind of rule to which we are habituated, all and everything in which we know ourselves to be at home:—what? is our need of knowing not just this need of the known? the will to discover in everything strange, unusual, or questionable, something which no longer disquiets us? Is it not possible that it should be the _instinct of fear_ which enjoins upon us to know?

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 323

But are not ye also in your unveiled condition still extremely passionate and dusky beings compared with the fish, and still all too like an enamoured artist?[8]—and what is "reality" to an enamoured artist! Ye still carry about with you the valuations of things which had their origin in the passions and infatuations of earlier centuries! There is still a secret and ineffaceable drunkenness embodied in your sobriety! Your love of "reality," for example—oh, that is an old, primitive "love"!

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 382

We have now, all of us, thanks to the Greeks, accustomed ourselves to this unnaturalness on the stage, as we endure that other unnaturalness, the _singing_ passion, and willingly endure it, thanks to the Italians.—It has become a necessity to us, which we cannot satisfy out of the resources of actuality, to hear men talk well and in full detail in the most trying situations: it enraptures us at present when the tragic hero still finds words, reasons, eloquent gestures, and on the whole a bright spirituality, where life approaches the abysses, and where the actual man mostly loses his head, and certainly his fine language.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1278

Our aims all are thwarted By the World-wheel's blind roll: "Doom," says the downhearted, "Sport," says the fool.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 994

I miss in this connection even the attempts of scientific curiosity, and the fastidious, groping imagination of psychologists and historians, which easily anticipates a problem and catches it on the wing, without rightly knowing what it catches.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 582

The propositions, "No effect without a cause," and "Every effect again implies a cause," appear as generalisations of several less general propositions:—"Where there is operation there has been _willing_," "Operating is only possible on _willing_ beings." "There is never a pure, resultless experience of activity, but every experience involves stimulation of the Will" (to activity, defence, revenge or retaliation).

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 822

_What one should Learn from Artists._—What means have we for making things beautiful, attractive, and desirable, when they are not so?—and I suppose they are never so in themselves! We have here something to learn from physicians, when, for example, they dilute what is bitter, or put wine and sugar into their mixing-bowl; but we have still more to learn from artists, who in fact, are continually concerned in devising such inventions and artifices.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 402

The wildly beautiful irrationality of poetry refutes you, ye utilitarians! The wish _to get rid of_ utility in some way—that is precisely what has elevated man, that is what has inspired him to morality and art!" Well, I must here speak for once to please the utilitarians,—they are so seldom in the right that it is pitiful!

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1193

I recognised—who knows from what personal experiences?—the philosophical pessimism of the nineteenth century as the symptom of a higher power of thought, a more daring courage and a more triumphant _plenitude_ of life than had been characteristic of the eighteenth century, the age of Hume, Kant, Condillac, and the sensualists: so that the tragic view of things seemed to me the peculiar _luxury_ of our culture, its most precious, noble, and dangerous mode of prodigality; but nevertheless, in view of its overflowing wealth, a _justifiable_ luxury.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1288

For I could no longer stay, To crawl in slow German way; So I called to the birds, bade the wind Lift me up and bear me away To the South!

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 254

Their repute is continually in process of mutation, like their character, for their changing methods require this change, and they show and _exhibit_ sometimes this and sometimes that actual or fictitious quality on the stage; their friends and associates, as we have said, belong to these stage properties. On the other hand, that which they aim at must remain so much the more steadfast, and burnished and resplendent in the distance,—and this also sometimes needs its comedy and its stage-play.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1116

The belief in God is overthrown, the belief in the Christian ascetic ideal is now fighting its last fight. Such a long and solidly built work as Christianity—it was the last construction of the Romans!—could not of course be demolished all at once; every sort of earthquake had to shake it, every sort of spirit which perforates, digs, gnaws and moulders had to assist in the work of destruction.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 692

_A Great Man!_—Because a person is "a great man," we are not authorised to infer that he is a man. Perhaps he is only a boy, or a chameleon of all ages, or a bewitched girl.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1047

Not that I mean hereby that human wickedness and baseness, in short, the evil wild beast in us, should be disguised; on the contrary, my idea is that it is precisely as _tame animals_ that we are an ignominious spectacle and require moral disguising,—that the "inner man" in Europe is far from having enough of intrinsic evil "to let himself be seen" with it (to be _beautiful_ with it).

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 240

China is an instance of a country in which dissatisfaction on a grand scale and the capacity for transformation have died out for many centuries; and the Socialists and state-idolaters of Europe could easily bring things to Chinese conditions and to a Chinese "happiness," with their measures for the amelioration and security of life, provided that they could first of all root out the sicklier, tenderer, more feminine dissatisfaction and Romanticism which are still very abundant among us.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 839

_Two Happy Ones._—Certainly this man, notwithstanding his youth, understands the _improvisation of life_, and astonishes even the acutest observers. For it seems that he never makes a mistake, although he constantly plays the most hazardous games. One is reminded of the improvising masters of the musical art, to whom even the listeners would fain ascribe a divine _infallibility_ of the hand, notwithstanding that they now and then make a mistake, as every mortal is liable to do.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 358

Pregnancy has made the females gentler, more expectant, more timid, more submissively inclined; and similarly intellectual pregnancy engenders the character of the contemplative, who are allied to women in character:—they are the masculine mothers.—Among animals the masculine sex is regarded as the beautiful sex.

The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1137

_Two Kinds of Causes which are Confounded._—It seems to me one of my most essential steps and advances that I have learned to distinguish the cause of the action generally from the cause of action in a particular manner, say, in this direction, with this aim.