153
What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.
154
Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.
155
The sense of the tragic increases and declines with sensuousness.
156
Insanity in individuals is something rare—but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.
157
The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets successfully through many a bad night.
158
Not only our reason, but also our conscience, truckles to our strongest impulse—the tyrant in us.
159
One must repay good and ill; but why just to the person who did us good or ill?
160
One no longer loves one’s knowledge sufficiently after one has communicated it.
161
Poets act shamelessly towards their experiences: they exploit them.
162
“Our fellow-creature is not our neighbour, but our neighbour’s neighbour”:—so thinks every nation.
163
Love brings to light the noble and hidden qualities of a lover—his rare and exceptional traits: it is thus liable to be deceptive as to his normal character.
164
Jesus said to his Jews: “The law was for servants;—love God as I love him, as his Son! What have we Sons of God to do with morals!”
165
In Sight of Every Party—A shepherd has always need of a bellwether—or he has himself to be a wether occasionally.
166
One may indeed lie with the mouth; but with the accompanying grimace one nevertheless tells the truth.
167
To vigorous men intimacy is a matter of shame—and something precious.
168
Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.
169
To talk much about oneself may also be a means of concealing oneself.
170
In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.
171
Pity has an almost ludicrous effect on a man of knowledge, like tender hands on a Cyclops.
172
One occasionally embraces some one or other, out of love to mankind (because one cannot embrace all); but this is what one must never confess to the individual.
173
One does not hate as long as one disesteems, but only when one esteems equal or superior.
174
Ye Utilitarians—ye, too, love the utile only as a vehicle for your inclinations—ye, too, really find the noise of its wheels insupportable!
175
One loves ultimately one’s desires, not the thing desired.
176
The vanity of others is only counter to our taste when it is counter to our vanity.
177
With regard to what “truthfulness” is, perhaps nobody has ever been sufficiently truthful.
178
One does not believe in the follies of clever men: what a forfeiture of the rights of man!
179
The consequences of our actions seize us by the forelock, very indifferent to the fact that we have meanwhile “reformed.”
180
There is an innocence in lying which is the sign of good faith in a cause.
181
It is inhuman to bless when one is being cursed.
182
The familiarity of superiors embitters one, because it may not be returned.
183
“I am affected, not because you have deceived me, but because I can no longer believe in you.”
184
There is a haughtiness of kindness which has the appearance of wickedness.
185
“I dislike him.”—Why?—“I am not a match for him.”—Did anyone ever answer so?
V
The Natural History of Morals
186
The moral sentiment in Europe at present is perhaps as subtle, belated, diverse, sensitive, and refined, as the “Science of Morals” belonging thereto is recent, initial, awkward, and coarse-fingered:—an interesting contrast, which sometimes becomes incarnate and obvious in the very person of a moralist. Indeed, the expression, “Science of Morals” is, in respect to what is designated thereby, far too presumptuous and counter to good taste—which is always a foretaste of more modest expressions. One ought to avow with the utmost fairness what is still necessary here for a long time, what is alone proper for the present: namely, the collection of material, the comprehensive survey and classification of an immense domain of delicate sentiments of worth, and distinctions of worth, which live, grow, propagate, and perish—and perhaps attempts to give a clear idea of the recurring and more common forms of these living crystallizations—as preparation for a theory of types of morality. To be sure, people have not hitherto been so modest. All the philosophers, with a pedantic and ridiculous seriousness, demanded of themselves something very much higher, more pretentious, and ceremonious, when they concerned themselves with morality as a science: they wanted to give a basis to morality—and every philosopher hitherto has believed that he has given it a basis; morality itself, however, has been regarded as something “given.” How far from their awkward pride was the seemingly insignificant problem—left in dust and decay—of a description of forms of morality, notwithstanding that the finest hands and senses could hardly be fine enough for it! It was precisely owing to moral philosophers’ knowing the moral facts imperfectly, in an arbitrary epitome, or an accidental abridgement—perhaps as the morality of their environment, their position, their church, their Zeitgeist, their climate and zone—it was precisely because they were badly instructed with regard to nations, eras, and past ages, and were by no means eager to know about these matters, that they did not even come in sight of the real problems of morals—problems which only disclose themselves by a comparison of many kinds of morality. In every “Science of Morals” hitherto, strange as it may sound, the problem of morality itself has been omitted: there has been no suspicion that there was anything problematic there!
