The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza)
Friedrich Nietzsche
1,346 passages indexed from The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza) (Friedrich Nietzsche) — Page 9 of 27
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The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 982
In case, however, of both being necessary, much trusting _and_ much distrusting, whence then should science derive the absolute belief, the conviction on which it rests, that truth is more important than anything else, even than every other conviction? This conviction could not have arisen if truth _and_ untruth had both continually proved themselves to be useful: as is the case.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 986
Such an intention might perhaps, to express it mildly, be a piece of Quixotism, a little enthusiastic craziness; it might also, however, be something worse, namely, a destructive principle, hostile to life.... "Will to Truth,"—that might be a concealed Will to Death.—Thus the question, Why is there science? leads back to the moral problem: _What in general is the purpose of morality_, if life, nature, and history are "non-moral"?
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1285
So you jest at me, bird, with your scornful graces? So sore indeed is the plight of my head? And my heart, you say, in yet sorrier case is? Beware! for my wrath is a thing to dread! Yet e'en in the hour of his wrath the poet Rhymes you and sings with the selfsame glee. "Yes, yes, good sir, you are a poet," Chirped out the pecker, mocking me.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 666
_The Good Time for Free Spirits._—Free Spirits take liberties even with regard to Science—and meanwhile they are allowed to do so,—while the Church still remains!—In so far they have now their good time.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 863
Foolish with fools, vain with the vain, enthusiastic with enthusiasts? Would that not be reasonable when there is such an inordinate amount of divergence in the main? When I hear of the malignity of others against me—is not my first feeling that of satisfaction? It is well that it should be so!—I seem to myself to say to them—I am so little in harmony with you, and have so much truth on my side: see henceforth that ye be merry at my expense as often as ye can!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1065
In short, the development of speech and the development of consciousness (not of reason, but of reason becoming self-conscious) go hand in hand.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1231
_Why we Seem to be Epicureans._—We are cautious, we modern men, with regard to final convictions, our distrust lies in wait for the enchantments and tricks of conscience involved in every strong belief, in every absolute Yea and Nay: how is this explained?
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 775
_Belief in Oneself._—In general, few men have belief in themselves:—and of those few some are endowed with it as a useful blindness or partial obscuration of intellect (what would they perceive if they could see _to the bottom of themselves_!). The others must first acquire the belief for themselves: everything good, clever, or great that they do, is first of all an argument against the sceptic that dwells in them: the question is how to convince or persuade _this sceptic_, and for that purpose genius almost is needed. They are signally dissatisfied with themselves.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 748
_What dost thou Believe in?_—In this: That the weights of all things must be determined anew.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 355
Even the sympathetic curiosity of the wisest discerner of men does not suffice to divine how this or that woman gets along with the solution of this enigma and the enigma of this solution; what dreadful, far-reaching suspicions must awaken thereby in the poor unhinged soul; and forsooth, how the ultimate philosophy and scepticism of the woman casts anchor at this point!—Afterwards the same profound silence as before: and often even a silence to herself, a shutting of her eyes to herself.—Young wives on that account make great efforts to appear superficial and thoughtless; the most ingenious of them simulate a kind of impudence.—Wives easily feel their husbands as a question-mark to their honour, and their children as an apology or atonement,—they require children, and wish for them in quite another spirit than a husband wishes for them.—In short, one cannot be gentle enough towards women!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 562
After all, however, we have applied the same scepticism to all _religious_ states and processes, such as sin, repentance, grace, sanctification, &c., and have allowed the worm to burrow so well, that we have now the same feeling of subtle superiority and insight even in reading all Christian books:—we know also the religious feelings better!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 444
His bad conscience was the neglect of revenge.—If Chamfort had then been a little more of the philosopher, the Revolution would not have had its tragic wit and its sharpest sting; it would have been regarded as a much more stupid affair, and would have had no such seductive influence on men's minds. But Chamfort's hatred and revenge educated an entire generation; and the most illustrious men passed through his school.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 958
Whether it was death, or the poison, or piety, or wickedness—something or other loosened his tongue at that moment, and he said: "O Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepios." For him who has ears, this ludicrous and terrible "last word" implies: "O Crito, _life is a long sickness_!" Is it possible! A man like him, who had lived cheerfully and to all appearance as a soldier,—was a pessimist!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 797
_To the Preachers of Morality._—I do not mean to moralise, but to those who do, I would give this advice: if you mean ultimately to deprive the best things and the best conditions of all honour and worth, continue to speak of them in the same way as heretofore!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 248
Such an experience, which must in the end cost us our life, is a symbol of the collective effect of great men upon others and upon their epoch:—it is just with their best abilities, with that which only _they_ can do, that they destroy much that is weak, uncertain, evolving, and _willing_, and are thereby injurious.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 891
In truth, they are inordinately assured of their life and in love with it, and full of untold intrigues and subtleties for suppressing everything disagreeable and for extracting the thorn from pain and misfortune.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1009
Have we not in our very laughing just made a further step in despising mankind? And consequently also in Pessimism, in despising the existence cognisable _by us_?
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 471
Wagner's preaching in favour of pity in dealing with animals is Schopenhauerian; Schopenhauer's predecessor here, as is well known, was Voltaire, who already perhaps, like his successors, knew how to disguise his hatred of certain men and things as pity towards animals.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 608
_Spoken in Parable._—A Jesus Christ was only possible in a Jewish landscape—I mean in one over which the gloomy and sublime thunder-cloud of the angry Jehovah hung continually. Here only was the rare, sudden flashing of a single sunbeam through the dreadful, universal and continuous nocturnal-day regarded as a miracle of "love," as a beam of the most unmerited "grace." Here only could Christ dream of his rainbow and celestial ladder on which God descended to man; everywhere else the clear weather and the sun were considered the rule and the commonplace.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 999
But the worth of a precept, "Thou shalt," is still fundamentally different from and independent of such opinions about it, and must be distinguished from the weeds of error with which it has perhaps been overgrown: just as the worth of a medicine to a sick person is altogether independent of the question whether he has a scientific opinion about medicine, or merely thinks about it as an old wife would do.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 599
To what an extent this has succeeded in Europe is traced most accurately in the extent of our alienness to Greek antiquity—a world without the feeling of sin—in our sentiments even at present; in spite of all the good will to approximation and assimilation, which whole generations and many distinguished individuals have not failed to display.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 535
_Cause and Effect._—We say it is "explanation"; but it is only in "description" that we are in advance of the older stages of knowledge and science. We describe better,—we explain just as little as our predecessors. We have discovered a manifold succession where the naïve man and investigator of older cultures saw only two things, "cause" and "effect," as it was said; we have perfected the conception of becoming, but have not got a knowledge of what is above and behind the conception.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 296
_Knowledge of Distress._—Perhaps there is nothing by which men and periods are so much separated from one another, as by the different degrees of knowledge of distress which they possess; distress of the soul as well as of the body.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 977
Does not the discipline of the scientific spirit just commence when one no longer harbours any conviction?... It is probably so: only, it remains to be asked whether, _in order that this discipline may commence_, it is not necessary that there should already be a conviction, and in fact one so imperative and absolute, that it makes a sacrifice of all other convictions.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 720
_To Move the Multitude._—Is it not necessary for him who wants to move the multitude to give a stage representation of himself? Has he not first to translate himself into the grotesquely obvious, and then _set forth_ his whole personality and cause in that vulgarised and simplified fashion!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 864
Here are my defects and mistakes, here are my illusions, my bad taste, my confusion, my tears, my vanity, my owlish concealment, my contradictions! Here you have something to laugh at! Laugh then, and enjoy yourselves!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 316
Hitherto, therefore, it has been the rare in man, and the unconsciousness of this rareness, that has made men noble. Here, however, let us consider that everything ordinary, immediate, and indispensable, in short, what has been most preservative of the species, and generally the _rule_ in mankind hitherto, has been judged unreasonable and calumniated in its entirety by this standard, in favour of the exceptions.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 787
Here there has been a great amount of second nature added, there a portion of first nature has been taken away:—in both cases with long exercise and daily labour at the task. Here the ugly, which does not permit of being taken away, has been concealed, there it has been re-interpreted into the sublime. Much of the vague, which refuses to take form, has been reserved and utilised for the perspectives:—it is meant to give a hint of the remote and immeasurable.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 626
_Where Reformations Originate._—At the time of the great corruption of the church it was least of all corrupt in Germany: it was on that account that the Reformation originated _here_, as a sign that even the beginnings of corruption were felt to be unendurable. For, comparatively speaking, no people was ever more Christian than the Germans at the time of Luther; their Christian culture was just about to burst into bloom with a hundred-fold splendour,—one night only was still lacking; but that night brought the storm which put an end to all.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 570
_The Madman._—Have you ever heard of the madman who on a bright morning lighted a lantern and ran to the market-place calling out unceasingly: "I seek God! I seek God!"—As there were many people standing about who did not believe in God, he caused a great deal of amusement. Why! is he lost? said one. Has he strayed away like a child? said another. Or does he keep himself hidden? Is he afraid of us? Has he taken a sea-voyage? Has he emigrated?—the people cried out laughingly, all in a hubbub.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 23
I still expect that a philosophical _physician_, in the exceptional sense of the word—one who applies himself to the problem of the collective health of peoples, periods, races, and mankind generally—will some day have the courage to follow out my suspicion to its ultimate conclusions, and to venture on the judgment that in all philosophising it has not hitherto been a question of "truth" at all, but of something else,—namely, of health, futurity, growth, power, life....
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 156
_Our Eruptions._—Numberless things which humanity acquired in its earlier stages, but so weakly and embryonically that it could not be noticed that they were acquired, are thrust suddenly into light long afterwards, perhaps after the lapse of centuries: they have in the interval become strong and mature.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 179
It is a question how a person is accustomed to _season_ his life; it is a matter of taste whether a person would rather have the slow or the sudden, the safe or the dangerous and daring increase of power,—he seeks this or that seasoning always according to his temperament.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 549
While we feel law and regulation as constraint and loss, people formerly regarded egoism as a painful thing, and a veritable evil. For a person to be himself, to value himself according to his own measure and weight—that was then quite distasteful. The inclination to such a thing would have been regarded as madness; for all miseries and terrors were associated with being alone.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 361
_The Third Sex._—"A small man is a paradox, but still a man,—but the small woman seems to me to be of another sex in comparison with well-grown ones"—said an old dancing-master. A small woman is never beautiful—said old Aristotle.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1098
A fourth question would be whether also _Schopenhauer_ with his Pessimism, that is to say the problem of _the worth of existence_, had to be a German. I think not.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 130
Besides, it is mostly of the belief that it has _not_ a singular standard of value in its idiosyncrasies of taste; it rather sets up its values and non-values as the generally valid values and non-values, and thus becomes incomprehensible and impracticable.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1214
They have always lived on the "blood" of the philosopher, they always consumed his senses, and indeed, if you will believe me, his "heart" as well. Those old philosophers were heartless: philosophising was always a species of vampirism. At the sight of such figures even as Spinoza, do you not feel a profoundly enigmatical and disquieting sort of impression? Do you not see the drama which is here performed, the constantly _increasing pallor_—, the spiritualisation always more ideally displayed?
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1233
For _this too_ constitutes our pride, this easy tightening of the reins in our headlong impulse after certainty, this self-control of the rider in his most furious riding: for now, as of old we have mad, fiery steeds under us, and if we delay, it is certainly least of all the danger which causes us to delay....
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 646
_In Intercourse with Virtues._—One can also be undignified and flattering towards a virtue.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 644
_An Inconvenient Peculiarity._—To find everything deep is an inconvenient peculiarity: it makes one constantly strain one's eyes, so that in the end one always finds more than one wishes.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 606
This nobility had allowed its power and autocracy to be taken from it, and had become contemptible: in order not to feel this, in order to be able to forget it, an _unequalled_ royal magnificence, royal authority and plenitude of power was needed, to which there was access only for the nobility.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 87
I write not with the hand alone, My foot would write, my foot that capers, Firm, free and bold, it's marching on Now through the fields, now through the papers.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 941
In most benefits which are conferred on the unfortunate there is something shocking in the intellectual levity with which the compassionate person plays the rôle of fate: he knows nothing of all the inner consequences and complications which are called misfortune for _me_ or for _you_!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 761
I would fain do something to make the idea of life even a hundred times _more worthy of their attention_.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 997
The usual error in their premises is their insistence on a certain _consensus_ among human beings, at least among civilised human beings, with regard to certain propositions of morality, and from thence they conclude that these propositions are absolutely binding even upon you and me; or reversely, they come to the conclusion that _no_ morality at all is binding, after the truth has dawned upon them that to different peoples moral valuations are _necessarily_ different: both of which conclusions are equally childish follies.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 586
_The Value of Prayer._—Prayer has been devised for such men as have never any thoughts of their own, and to whom an elevation of the soul is unknown, or passes unnoticed; what shall these people do in holy places and in all important situations in life which require repose and some kind of dignity?
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 892
It seems to me that people always speak _with exaggeration_ about pain and misfortune, as if it were a matter of good behaviour to exaggerate here: on the other hand people are intentionally silent in regard to the number of expedients for alleviating pain; as for instance, the deadening of it, or feverish flurry of thought, or a peaceful position, or good and bad reminiscences, intentions, hopes,—also many kinds of pride and fellow-feeling which have almost the effect of anæsthetics: while in the greatest degree of pain fainting takes place of itself.
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 318
_The Desire for Suffering._—When I think of the desire to do something, how it continually tickles and stimulates millions of young Europeans, who cannot endure themselves and all their ennui,—I conceive that there must be a desire in them to suffer something, in order to derive from their suffering a worthy motive for acting, for doing something. Distress is necessary!
The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza), passage 1277
"_Germany, Germany, above all_": the first line of the German national song.—TR.