Nietzsche Quotes

Mo wrote:

"Today I have climbed this high mountain to catch fish. Has a man ever caught a fish on a high mountain? And if what I want to do up here is a stupidity, better to do it than to become solemn and green and sallow by waiting down there"

(Thus Spoke Zarathustra - The Honey Offering)

---Not sure exactly what it means, but it sounds very profound.

It means, stop Searching, start Finding.

N. meant to say patience is more than passive suffering; waiting is not turning supine, but standing up at the heights, without suffering from both your patience and impatience.

The patient one waiting for a good catch begins to suffer from his impatience.

The Hunter at the heights "knows" his quarry, and so the bait as well. He knows exactly 'what' his bait is capable of luring. He does not suffer pondering at the ponds what will come to catch his bait...
Waiting can also be Active.

"My Happiness.

Since I grew weary of the Search
I taught myself to Find instead.

Since cross winds caused my ship to lurch
I sail with all winds straight ahead." [N., JW, Joke, 2]

Be Master of your game.

"To suspect morality because of belief. No power can maintain itself if only hypocrites represent it. However many "worldly" elements the Catholic Church may have, its strength rests on those priestly natures, still numerous, who make life deep and difficult for themselves, and whose eye and emaciated body speak of nightly vigils, fasting, fervent prayers, perhaps even flagellation. These men shock others and worry them: what if it were necessary to live like that?--this is the horrible question that the sight of them brings to the tongue. By spreading this doubt they keep reestablishing a pillar of their power. Not even the most freeminded dare to resist so selfless a man with the hard sense for truth, and say: "You who are deceived, do not deceive others."
Only a difference of insight separates them from this man, by no means a difference of goodness or badness; but if one does not like a thing, one generally tends to treat it unjustly, too. Thus one speaks of the Jesuits' cunning and their infamous art, but overlooks what self-conquest each single Jesuit imposes upon himself, and how that lighter regimen preached in Jesuit textbooks is certainly not for their own benefit, but rather for the layman's. Indeed, one might ask if we the enlightened, using their tactics and organization, would be such good instruments, so admirably self‑mastering, untiring, and devoted." HAH 55

"To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities - I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not - that one endures." WTP 910

Against Hedonism:

[quote="Nietzsche"]"The "conscious world" cannot serve as a starting point for values: need for an "objective" positing of values. In relation to the vastness and multiplicity of collaboration and mutual opposition encountered in the life of every organism, the conscious world of feelings, intentions, and valuations is a small section. We have no right whatever to posit this piece of consciousness as the aim and wherefore of this total phenomenon of life: becoming conscious is obviously only one more means toward the unfolding and extension of the power of life. Therefore it is a piece of naivete to posit pleasure or spirituality or morality or any other particular of the sphere of consciousness as the highest value -and perhaps even to justify "the world" by means of this.
This is my basic objection to all philosophic-moralistic cosmoand theodicies, to all wheretores and highest values in philosophy and theology hitherto. One kind of means has been misunderstood as an end; conversely, life and the enhancement of its power has been debased to a means." [WTP, 707]

Nietzsche wrote:

"...that not "increase in consciousness" is the aim, but enhancement of power-and in this enhancement the utility of consciousness is included; the same applies to pleasure and displeasure; that one does not take the means as the supreme measure of value (therefore not states of consciousness, such as pleasure and pain, if becoming conscious itself is only a means-)..." [WTP, 711]

HATH.

Quote :

Nobility and gratitude. A noble soul will be happy to feel itself bound in gratitude and will not try anxiously to avoid the occasions when it may be so bound; it will likewise be at ease later in expressing gratitude; while cruder souls resist being bound in any way, or are later excessive and much too eager in expressing their gratitude. This last, by the way, also occurs in people of low origin or oppressed station: they think a favor shown to them is a miracle of mercy.

The hours of eloquence. In order to speak well, one person needs someone who is definitely and admittedly superior to him; another person can speak completely freely and turn a phrase with eloquence only in front of someone whom he surpasses; the reason is the same in both cases: each of them speaks well only when he speaks sans gêne,6 the one because he does not feel the stimulus of rivalry or competition vis à vis the superior man, the other for the same reason vis à vis the lesser man.

Now, there is quite another category of men who speak well only when they speak in competition, intending to win. Which of the two categories is the more ambitious: the one that speaks well when ambition is aroused, or the one that, out of precisely the same motives, speaks badly or not at all?

The talent for friendship. Among men who have a particular gift for friendship, two types stand out. The one man is in a continual state of ascent, and finds an exactly appropriate friend for each phase of his development. The series of friends that he acquires in this way is only rarely interconnected, and sometimes discordant and contradictory, quite in accordance with the fact that the later phases in his development invalidate or compromise the earlier phases. Such a man may jokingly be called a ladder.

The other type is represented by the man who exercises his powers of attraction on very different characters and talents, thereby winning a whole circle of friends; and these come into friendly contact with one another through him, despite all their diversity. Such a man can be called a circle; for in him, that intimate connection of so many different temperaments and natures must somehow be prefigured.

In many people, incidentally, the gift of having good friends is much greater than the gift of being a good friend.

Tactics in conversation. After a conversation with someone, one is best disposed towards his partner in conversation if he had the opportunity to display to him his own wit and amiability in its full splendor. Clever men who want to gain someone's favor use this during a conversation, giving the other person the best opportunities for a good joke and the like. One could imagine an amusing conversation between two very clever people, both of whom want to gain the other's favor and therefore toss the good conversational opportunities back and forth, neither one accepting them-so that the conversation as a whole would proceed without wit or amiability because each one was offering the other the opportunity to demonstrate wit and amiability.

Releasing ill humor. The man who fails at something prefers to attribute the failure to the bad will of another rather than to chance. His injured sensibility is relieved by imagining a person, not a thing, as the reason for his failure. For one can avenge oneself on people, but one must choke down the injuries of coincidence. Therefore, when a prince fails at something, his court habitually points out to him a single person as the alleged cause, and sacrifices this person in the interest of all the courtiers; for the prince's ill humor would otherwise be released on them all, since he can, of course, take no vengeance on Dame Fortune herself.

Assuming the colors of the environment. Why are likes and dislikes so contagious that one can scarcely live in proximity to a person of strong sensibilities without being filled like a vessel with his pros and cons? First, it is very hard to withhold judgment entirely, and sometimes it is virtually intolerable for our vanity. It can look like poverty of thought and feeling, fearfulness, unmanliness; and so we are persuaded at least to take a side, perhaps against the direction of our environment if our pride likes this posture better. Usually, however (this is the second point), we are not even aware of the transition from indifference to liking or disliking, but gradually grow used to the sentiments of our environment; and because sympathetic agreement and mutual understanding are so pleasant, we soon wear all its insignias and party colors.

Irony. Irony is appropriate only as a pedagogical tool, used by a teacher interacting with pupils of whatever sort; its purpose is humiliation, shame, but the salubrious kind that awakens good intentions and bids us offer, as to a doctor, honor and gratitude to the one who treated us so. The ironic man pretends to be ignorant, and, in fact, does it so well that the pupils conversing with him are fooled and become bold in their conviction about their better knowledge, exposing themselves in all kinds of ways; they lose caution and reveal themselves as they are--until the rays of the torch that they held up to their teacher's face are suddenly reflected back on them, humiliating them.
Where there is no relation as between teacher and pupil, irony is impolite, a base emotion. All ironic writers are counting on that silly category of men who want to feel, along with the author, superior to all other men, and regard the author as the spokesman for their arrogance.

Incidentally, the habit of irony, like that of sarcasm, ruins the character; eventually it lends the quality of a gloating superiority; finally, one is like a snapping dog, who, besides biting, has also learned to laugh.

Arrogance. Man should beware of nothing so much as the growth of that weed called arrogance, which ruins every one of our good harvests;7 for there is arrogance in warmheartedness, in marks of respect, in well-meaning intimacy, in caresses, in friendly advice, in confession of errors, in the pity for others--and all these fine things awaken revulsion when that weed grows among them. The arrogant man, that is, the one who wants to be more important than he is or is thought to be, always miscalculates. To be sure, he enjoys his momentary success, to the extent that the witnesses of his arrogance usually render to him, out of fear or convenience, that amount of honor which he demands. But they take a nasty vengeance for it, by subtracting just the amount of excess honor he demands from the value they used to attach to him. People make one pay for nothing so dearly as for humiliation. An arrogant man can make his real, great achievement so suspect and petty in the eyes of others that they tread upon it with dust-covered feet.
One should not even allow himself a proud bearing, unless he can be quite sure that he will not be misunderstood and considered arrogant--with friends or wives, for example. For in associating with men, there is no greater foolishness than to bring on oneself a reputation for arrogance; it is even worse than not having learned to lie politely.

Dialogue. A dialogue is the perfect conversation because everything that the one person says acquires its particular color, sound, its accompanying gesture in strict consideration of the other person to whom he is speaking; it is like letter-writing, where one and the same man shows ten ways of expressing his inner thoughts, depending on whether he is writing to this person or to that. In a dialogue, there is only one single refraction of thought: this is produced by the partner in conversation, the mirror in which we want to see our thoughts reflected as beautifully as possible. But how is it with two, or three, or more partners? There the conversation necessarily loses something of its individualizing refinement; the various considerations clash, cancel each other out; the phrase that pleases the one, does not accord with the character of the other. Therefore, a man interacting with several people is forced to fall back upon himself, to present the facts as they are, but rob the subject matter of that scintillating air of humanity that makes a conversation one of the most agreeable things in the world. Just listen to the tone in which men interacting with whole groups of men tend to speak; it is as if the ground bass8 of all speech were: "That is who I am; that is what I say; now you think what you will about it!" For this reason, clever women whom a man has met in society are generally remembered as strange, awkward, unappealing: it is speaking to and in front of many people that robs them of all intelligent amiability and turns a harsh light only on their conscious dependence on themselves, their tactics, and their intention to triumph publicly; while the same women in a dialogue become females again and rediscover their mind's gracefulness.

"To endure the idea of the recurrence one needs: freedom from morality; new means against the fact of pain (pain conceived as a tool, as the father of pleasure; there is no cumulative consciousness of displeasure); the enjoyment of all kinds of uncertainty, experimentalism, as a counterweight to this extreme fatalism; abolition of the concept of necessity; abolition of the 'will'; abolition of 'knowledge-in-itself.'" (WP 1060)

Quote :

"'We have invented happiness,' say the last men, and they blink." [N.]

Not Nietzsche but Lou Salome:

Quote :

How very much we think alike about it and how we virtually take the words out of each other's mouth. During these three weeks, we virtually talk ourselves to death and peculiarly enough, he can endure 10 hours daily of it. During our evenings, when the light, covered with ta red cloth like an invalid so as not to hurt his eyes, is only dimly shining in the room, we return to discussing common projects and how glad am I to have before me a recognized certain task. He has completely abandoned his plan to become my teacher, he says that I must never have such assistance but rather I have to search ahead entirely independently, – I should also never behave merely like a pupil, but rather, I should learn while I am creating and create while I am learning. – It is peculiar that in our discussions, we come close to those pinnacles, to those dizzying places that we might have climbed alone, before, in order to look into the abyss. We have always chose the paths of the mountain goats and if someone would have listened to us he would have thought that two devils were talking to each other.

Are we quite close? No, we are not, in spite of all of this. It is like a shadow of those imaginations regarding my feelings that Nietzsche was filled with only a couple of weeks ago, that is separating us and that is coming between us. And in some deeply hidden recesses of our natures, we are worlds apart from each other – in his nature, like in an old castle, N. has many a dark dungeon and hidden cellar that does not surface in the course of a brief acquaintance, yet could contain his very essence.

It is strange, lately, the thought went through me with a sudden force, that some day, we could even confront each other as enemies.

Nietzsche wrote:

Man's soul, however, is deep, its current gusheth in subterranean caverns: woman surmiseth its force, but comprehendeth it not

Quote :

"Calm is the bottom of my sea: who would guess that it hides troll monsters!

Unmoved is my depth: but it sparkles with swimming enigmas and laughters.

A sublime one saw I today, a solemn one, a penitent of the spirit: Oh, how my soul laughed at his ugliness!

With upraised breast, and like those who draw in their breath: thus did he stand, the sublime one, and in silence:

O'erhung with ugly truths, the spoil of his hunting, and rich in torn raiment; many thorns also hung on him- but I saw no rose. Not yet had he learned laughing and beauty. Gloomy did this hunter return from the forest of knowledge.

From the fight with wild beasts returned he home: but even yet a wild beast gazes out of his seriousness- an unconquered wild beast!

As a tiger does he ever stand, on the point of springing; but I do not like those strained souls; ungracious is my taste towards all those self-engrossed ones.

And you tell me, friends, that there is to be no dispute about taste and tasting? But all life is a dispute about taste and tasting!

Taste: that is weight at the same time, and scales and weigher; and alas for every living thing that would live without dispute about weight and scales and weigher!

Should he become weary of his sublimeness, this sublime one, then only will his beauty begin- and then only will I taste him and find him savory.

And only when he turns away from himself will he o'erleap his own shadow- and verily! into his sun.

Far too long did he sit in the shade; the cheeks of the penitent of the spirit became pale; he almost starved on his expectations.

Contempt is still in his eye, and loathing hides in his mouth. To be sure, he now rests, but he has not yet taken rest in the sunshine.

As the ox ought he to do; and his happiness should smell of the earth, and not of contempt for the earth.

As a white ox would I like to see him, which, snorting and lowing, walks before the plough-share: and his lowing should also laud all that is earthly!

Dark is still his countenance; the shadow of his hand dances upon it. O'ershadowed is still the sense of his eye.

His deed itself is still the shadow upon him: his doing obscures the doer. Not yet has he overcome his deed.

To be sure, I love in him the shoulders of the ox: but now do I want to see also the eye of the angel.

Also his hero-will has he still to unlearn: an exalted one shall he be, and not only a sublime one:- the ether itself should raise him, the will-less one!

He has subdued monsters, he has solved enigmas. But he should also redeem his monsters and enigmas; into heavenly children should he transform them.

As yet has his knowledge not learned to smile, and to be without jealousy; as yet has his gushing passion not become calm in beauty.

Not in satiety shall his longing cease and disappear, but in beauty! Gracefulness belongs to the munificence of the magnanimous.

His arm across his head: thus should the hero repose; thus should he also overcome his repose.

But precisely to the hero is beauty the hardest thing of all. Unattainable is beauty by all ardent wills.

A little more, a little less: precisely this is much here, it is the most here.

To stand with relaxed muscles and with unharnessed will: that is the hardest for all of you, you sublime ones!

When power becomes gracious and descends into the visible- I call such condescension, beauty.

And from no one do I want beauty so much as from you, you powerful one: let your goodness be your last self-conquest.

All evil do I accredit to you: therefore do I desire of you the good.

I have often laughed at the weaklings, who think themselves good because they have crippled paws!

The virtue of the pillar shall you strive after: more beautiful does it ever become, and more graceful- but internally harder and more sustaining- the higher it rises.

Yes, you sublime one, one day shall you also be beautiful, and hold up the mirror to your own beauty.

Then will your soul thrill with divine desires; and there will be adoration even in your vanity!

For this is the secret of the soul: when the hero has abandoned it, then only approach it in dreams- the super-hero.-

Thus spoke Zarathustra." [TSZ, The Sublime Ones]

Quote :

That I may one day be ready and ripe in the great noon-tide:
ready and ripe like the glowing ore, the lightning-bearing cloud,
and the swelling milk-udder:-
-Ready for myself and for my most hidden Will: a bow eager for its
arrow, an arrow eager for its star:-
-A star, ready and ripe in its noontide, glowing, pierced,
blessed, by annihilating sun-arrows:-
-A sun itself, and an inexorable sun-will, ready for annihilation in
victory!
O Will, thou change of every need, my needfulness! Spare me for
one great victory!-

Quote :

A thousand goals have there been hitherto, for a thousand peoples
have there been. Only the fetter for the thousand necks is still
lacking; there is lacking the one goal. As yet humanity hath not a
goal.

Quote :

And to be consistent with my way of thinking and my latest philosophy, I must even have an absolute victory – that is, the transformation of experience into gold and use of the highest order.

Quote :

The destruction of ideals, the new desert; new arts by means of which we can endure, we amphibians.

Nietzsche the alchemist?

For one starting to read Nietzsche would does anyone have a suggestion as to the best order to read his works. And are there some translations that are significantly better than others?

Stuart- wrote:

For one starting to read Nietzsche would does anyone have a suggestion as to the best order to read his works. And are there some translations that are significantly better than others?

I would begin with The Birth of Tragedy first. Acquiring an understanding of his Dionysian and Apollonian dynamics is necessary for the study of all his other works. His Zarathustra should follow after. As far as translators go, I think Walter Kaufmann is highly competent. His added commentary in Zarathustra was impressively insightful.

Stuart- wrote:

For one starting to read Nietzsche would does anyone have a suggestion as to the best order to read his works. And are there some translations that are significantly better than others?

I started with Human, All Too Human (coherent, comprehensive aphorisms) upon indication from a friend, and TSZ (life giving and altering), then whatever moved me from there, pending availability (whatever local libraries had, for instance.)

Thank you.

RJ Hollingdale is an alternative to Kaufman. His introduction to TSZ in the Penguin publication is a clear and concise summary of the general meaning of the whole, which shows his value as a reader and translator of N.

His first book I read was Zarathustra - his words about laughter stay with me, to laugh at the pitiful and the miserable - it meant a lot to me, to not suffer together with those begging for pity. His own autobiography is great as well.

A "scientific" explanation of the world, as you understand, might therefore still be one of the most stupid of all possible interpretations of the world, meaning
that it would be one of the poorest in meaning. This thought is intended for the ears and consciences of our mechanists who nowadays like to pass as philosophers
and insist that mechanics is the doctrine of the first and last laws on which all existence must be based as on the ground floor. But an essentially mechanical world
would be an essentially meaningless world. Assuming that one estimated the value of a piece of music according to how much of it could be counted, calculated and
expressed in formulas: how absurd would such a "scientific" estimation of music be! What would one have comprehended, understood, grasped of it? Nothing, really
nothing of what is "music" in it!" ---Friedrich Nietzsche

lilynate wrote:

A "scientific" explanation of the world, as you understand, might therefore still be one of the most stupid of all possible interpretations of the world, meaning
that it would be one of the poorest in meaning. This thought is intended for the ears and consciences of our mechanists who nowadays like to pass as philosophers
and insist that mechanics is the doctrine of the first and last laws on which all existence must be based as on the ground floor. But an essentially mechanical world
would be an essentially meaningless world. Assuming that one estimated the value of a piece of music according to how much of it could be counted, calculated and
expressed in formulas: how absurd would such a "scientific" estimation of music be! What would one have comprehended, understood, grasped of it? Nothing, really
nothing of what is "music" in it!" ---Friedrich Nietzsche

In between the absolutism of monism, as a beyond, above, underneath, and one of a projected utopia, an immanent oneness, we exist.
Nihilism has two poles....one I call pure, or negative, it makes of world into a no-thing, the other is "positive"using words to replace deeds, actions, creating linguistic paradoxes as the effect of its hypocrisy, and this is Modernity, Americanism....Judeo-Christianity <> Secular Humanism/Marxism....1/0 , one/nil, both sides representing a different take on the same absolute nullification of existence, as dynamic, fluid, (inter)active, uncertain, fluctuating...

Moderns are trapped within the binary dialogue between the two poles of Nihilism, thinking they are making progress.
This creates an artificial space, a noetic universe, a manmade cosmos. A matrix around reality with no contact with it, hovering above it, separate, detached...concealing it.

The relationship to the following emanates from more than just spending the better part of the day amidst the epicenter of concentrated decadence of the world; that is, FB, but it is inordinately enough to portray a vivid and finalized picture:

Nietzsche wrote:

What a mad, unhappy animal is man!
What strange notions occur to him; what perversities, what paroxysms of nonsense, what bestialities of ideas burst from him, the moment he is prevented ever so little from being a beast of action! . . . All this is exceedingly curious and interesting, but dyed with such a dark, somber, enervating sadness that one must resolutely tear away one's gaze. Here, no doubt, is sickness, the most terrible sickness that has wasted man thus far. And if one is still able to hear -- but how few these days have ears to hear it! -- in this night of torment and absurdity the cry love ring out, the cry of rapt longing, of redemption in love, he must turn away with a shudder of invincible horror . . . Man harbors too much horror; the earth has been a lunatic asylum for too long.
[The Genealogy of Morals]

Lyssa wrote:

Nietzsche wrote:

"Finding a motivefor one'spoverty. - There is clearly no trick that enables us to turn a poor virtue into a rich and overflowing one, but we can surely reinterpret its poverty nicely into a necessity, so that its sight no longer offends us and we no longer make reproachful faces at fate on its account. That is what the wise gardener does when he places the poor little stream in his garden in the arms of a nymph and thus finds a motive for its poverty: and who wouldn't need nymphs as he does?" [JW, 17]

This, this coping, this deception, this bleakness paralyzer or artistic and naturalistic colorizer and tectonicizer, I came to meet head on and stomach on, where my head was in my stomach and my stomach in my head, the other late morning, that seems like yesterday but now amnesic to its intrusion and its illusion and its inconclusive conclusion, following a proceeding aggregated occurrence of comedic tragedy which left me nothing with on which to stand or which to fall.
I grabbed at it because I had to and I squeezed so tightly so as not to break it, but how to grip something which is unbreakable, but which has the cleanest innocence, a definably undefined form and discontented content.
So then, it must have been that I was reaching for my own hand, but it was too pale too locate and too inseparable to unify.
I stood motionless, but I was fleeting toward the stars or those little giants I figured I could always believe in and pretend a superposition and duplicate myself from their vantage, but this time again there was neither gazing up nor looking down.
I paced with an effortless heaviness like I was all head and no heart, but with a heart which directed and a head which listened, and a head which pumped and a heart which-direction, only to orbit around an oblong axis back to the beginning.
It was as all standardized and measurable time halted and entrapped me in an airy airless womb I could familiarize but not materialize, where there was no going backward or forward, no longer under its spell, but still wishing for it to cast away.
It was a situational uncontrolled: a waiting and staring which neither impatience nor patience could change its course. An indifferent desire for something to transpire prematurely and inappropriately in order to quiet the disquiet and silence the quiet.
What now, when something so revealing that it tears down all facades therein only to offer a way out through the way in: detach the cord of which feeds you the accepted to instead mend and weave by acceptance: forget with a forgetlessness, or forget with a forgetfulness, all that does not matter but what matters all World, Nature and Life, deceiving, coping, with your own deceptions and deceiving, and not those deceptions of the deceivers and the deceivers of deceptions.

You putatively deceive yourself with a deception: "I can longer deceive myself that these deceptions are more than deceptions." Then you must deceive your deception: "If I had the disciplinary and intellectual and creative deceptive capacities then I could deceive myself with impenetrable deceptions of an artist of deception.

Supra-Aryanist wrote:

what matters all World, Nature and Life, deceiving, coping, with your own deceptions and deceiving, and not those deceptions of the deceivers and the deceivers of deceptions.

But its more than that.

There's another example he gives. You see a poor man, and he says, the best thing you can do for the both [so you dont end up pitying and he doesnt end up insulted] is to ask him, 'can you help me?'... and the poor man is supposed to feel uplifted. Good enough that he could give someone something... he begins to self-respect...

Its a way of raising someone.

Give respect, so one stops asking for it.. and making the whole air filthy.