1. Idleness is the beginning of psychology. What? Could psychology be – a vice?2. Even the bravest of us rarely has the courage for what he really knows . . .
3. To live alone one must be an animal or a god – says Aristotle. There is yet a third case: one must be both – a philosopher.
4. ‘All truth is simple’ – is that not a compound lie? –
5. Once and or all, there is a great deal I do not want to know. – Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge.
6. It is by being ‘natural’ that one best recovers from one’s unnaturalness, from one’s spirituality . . .
7. Which is it? Is man only God’s mistake or God only man’s mistake? –
8. From the military school of life – What does not kill me makes me stronger.
9. Help thyself: then everyone will help thee too. Principle of Christian charity.
10. Let us not be cowardly in face of our actions! Let us not afterwards leave them in the lurch! – Remorse of conscience is indecent.
11. Can an ass be tragic? – to be crushed by a burden one can neither bear nor throw off? . . . The case of the philosopher.
12. If we possess our why of life we can put up with almost any how. – Man does not strive after happiness; only the Englishman does that.
13. Man created woman – but what out of? Out of a rib of his God, of his ‘ideal’ . . .
14. What? You are seeking? You want to multiply yourself by ten, by a hundred? You are seeking followers? – Seek noughts!
15. Posthumous men – like me, for instance – are not so well understood as timely men, but they are listened to better. More precisely: we are never understood – and hence our authority …
16. Among women. – ‘Truth? Oh, you don’t know the truth, do you! Is it not an outrage on all our pudeurs?’ –
17. This is an artist as an artist should be, modest in his requirements: there are only two things he really wants, his bread and his art – panem et circen . . .
18. He who does not know how to put his will into things at least puts a meaning into them: that is, he believes there is a will in them already (principle of ‘belief’).
-Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
