Wednesday, October 7, 2009

The art of having something to say: Part 2

19 proverb-like utterances from Herr Nietzsche. Work them into conversation at your own risk. Commentary is surely superfluous.

Cynicism is the only form in which mean souls touch honesty.

In declining cultures only the actor arouses great enthusiasm.

That which is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.

An animal which could speak said: Humanity is a prejudice of which we animals at least are free.

He who possesses little is so much the less possessed. Praised by a moderate poverty.

Whosoever has at some time built a new heaven has found the strength for it only in his own hell.

All truth is simple: Is that not a compound lie?

Without music, life would be a mistake.

To have to combat one’s instincts – that is the formula for decadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness and instinct are one.

He who despises himself still nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.

We are from the very beginning illogical and thus unjust beings and can recognise this: this is one of the greatest and most irresolvable discords of existence.

He who cannot find greatness in God will never find it. He must either create it or deny it.

Terrible experiences make one wonder whether he who experiences them is not something terrible.

The golden fleece of self-love is proof against cudgel blows but not against pinpricks.

Not every end is a goal. The end of a melody is not its goal; however, if the melody has not reached its end, it would also not have reached its goal. A parable.

A joke is an epitaph on an emotion.

We possess art lest we perish of the truth.

In every religion, the religious person is the exception.

The same drive which calls art into life as the completion and perfection of existence, which seduces the living into living on, also brought into being the Olympian world in which the Hellenic "will" holds up before itself a transfiguring mirror. So the gods justify the life of men be living it themselves - the only adequate theodicy!

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