Friedrich Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil
[This document, which
has been prepared by Ian Johnston of Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, BC,
has certain copyright restrictions. For information, please consult Copyright.
Editorial comments and translations in square brackets and italics are by Ian
Johnston; comments in normal brackets are from Nietzsche's text. Last
revised in January 2009]
Part Four
Aphorisms and Interludes
63
Whoever is
fundamentally a teacher takes all things seriously only in relation to his
students—including even himself.
64
“Knowledge for
its own sake,”—that is the ultimate snare which morality sets: with that one
gets fully entangled once again in morality.
65
The charm of
knowledge would be slight, if there were not so much embarrassment to overcome
on the route to knowledge.
65a
Man is most
dishonest in relation to his god: he is not permitted to sin!
66
The inclination
to diminish oneself, to rob oneself, to let oneself be deceived and exploited
could be the embarrassment of a god among men.
67
Love of one man
is a barbarity: for it is practised at the expense of all the rest. Also the
love for God.
68
“I have done
that” says my memory. I could not have done that—says my pride and remains
implacable. Finally—my memory gives up.
69
One has watched
life badly if one has not also seen the hand which, in a considerate
manner—kills.
70
If a person has
character, he still has his typical experience, which always repeats itself.
71
The wise man as
astronomer—so long as you still feel the stars as something “above you,” you
still lack the eye of a man who knows.
72
It’s not the
strength but the duration of the lofty sensation that makes lofty people.
73
Whoever attains
his ideal, in the act of doing just that goes beyond it.
73a
Some peacocks
hide their peacock’s tails from all eyes—and call that their pride.
74
A man with
genius is unendurable if he does not possess at least two things in addition:
gratitude and cleanliness.
75
The degree and
type of the sexuality of a man extend all the way to the ultimate peak of his
spirit.
76
Under
conditions of peace the warlike man attacks himself.
77
With their
principles people want to tyrannize their habits or justify them or honour them
or abuse them or hide them:—two men with the same principles probably want them
for fundamentally different things.
78
Anyone who
despises himself nonetheless still respects himself as the one doing the
despising.
79
A soul which
knows that it is loved but which does not love itself reveals its bottom
layers—its deepest stuff comes up.
80
A matter which
is explained ceases to concern us.—What does that god mean who advised “Know
thyself”? Does that not perhaps mean “Stop being concerned about yourself!
Become objective!”—And Socrates? —And the “scientific man”?—
81
It is dreadful
to die of thirst in the sea. Must you then salt your truth so much that it can
no longer—quench your thirst?
82
“Pity for
everyone”—that would hard and tyrannical for you, my neighbour.
83
Instinct—when the house
is burning, people forget even their noonday meal.—Indeed, but people later
haul it out of the ashes.
84
Woman learns to
hate to the extent that she forgets how to enchant.
85
The same
emotional affects in men and women have, nonetheless, a different tempo. That’s
the reason man and women do not cease misunderstanding each other.
86
Behind all
personal vanity women themselves still have their impersonal contempt—for
“woman.”
87
Bound heart,
free spirit.—When one binds one’s heart firmly and keeps it imprisoned, one can
provide one’s spirit many freedoms: I have said that already once. But people
do not believe me, provided that they do not already know it. . . .
88
We begin to
mistrust very clever people when they become embarrassed.
89
Dreadful
experiences lead one to wonder whether the person who undergoes them is not
something dreadful.
90
Heavy,
melancholy men become lighter precisely through what makes other people heavy,
through hate and love, and for a while come to their surface.
91
So cold, so icy
that we burn our fingers on him! Every hand that grasps him pulls back!—And for
that very reason some assume he’s glowing hot.
92
For the sake of
his good reputation who has not once—sacrificed himself?
93
In affability
there is no hatred for humanity, but for that very reason there is too much
contempt for humanity.
94
Maturity in a
man: that means having found once again that seriousness which man had as a
child, in play.
95
For someone to
be ashamed of his immorality: that is a step on the staircase at the end of
which he is also ashamed of his morality.
96
People should
depart from life in the way Odysseus separated from Nausikaa—blessing it rather
than in love with it.*
97
What? A great
man? I always see only the actor of his own ideal.
98
If we train our
conscience, it will kiss us at the very moment it bites us.
99
The
disappointed man speaks:—“I listened for the echo, and I heard only praise—”
100
We all present
ourselves to ourselves as more simple than we are: in this way we give
ourselves a rest from our fellow human beings.
101
Today a man
with knowledge might easily feel like god transformed into an animal.
102
To discover
that one is loved in return should really bring the lover down about his
beloved. “How’s that? Is this person modest enough to love even you? Or stupid
enough? Or—or—. . .”
103
The danger in
happiness—“Now everything is turning out the best for me; now I love every
destiny:—Who feels like being my destiny?”
104
It is not their
love of humanity but the impotence of their love of humanity that prevents
today’s Christians—from burning us.
105
For the free
spirit, the “pious man of discovery”—the pia fraus [pious fraud] is even
more contrary to his taste (against his “piety”) than the impia fraus
[impious fraud]. Hence his deep lack of understanding of the church, the
sort that is associated with the type “free spirit,”—his unfreedom.
106
Thanks to music
the passions enjoy themselves.
107
Once the
decision has been made, to shut your ears even to the best counterarguments: a
sign of a strong character. Also an occasional will to stupidity.
108
There are no
moral phenomenon at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena. . . .
109
The criminal is
often enough not equal to his action: he diminishes and disparages it.
110
The lawyers for
a criminal are rarely sufficiently artistic to turn the beautiful terror of his
action to the benefit of the person who did it.
111
Our vanity is
most difficult to injure at the very point where our pride has just been hurt.
112
Anyone who
feels himself predestined to observe and not to believe finds all those who
believe too noisy and pushy: he fends them off.
113
“Do you want to
win him over for yourself? Then make yourself embarrassed in front of him.—”
114
The immense
expectation concerning sexual love and the shame in this expectation ruin all
perspective in women from the beginning.
115
Where the game
has neither love nor hate, woman plays indifferently.
116
The great
epochs of our lives occur when we acquire the courage to rename our evil
quality our best quality.
117
The will to
overcome an emotional affect is ultimately only the will of another emotional
affect or of several other emotional affects.
118
There is an
innocence in admiration: such innocence belongs to the man who does not yet
have any idea that he, too, could at some point be admired.
119
The disgust
with filth can be so great that it prevents us from cleansing ourselves—from
“justifying” ourselves.
120
Sensuality
often makes the growth of love too fast, so that the root remains weak and easy
to rip out.
121
There’s
something fine about the fact that God learned Greek when he wanted to become a
writer—and that he did not learn it better.
122
To be happy
over praise is with some men only a courtesy of the heart—and exactly the
opposite of vanity of the spirit.
123
Even
concubinage has been corrupted—by marriage.
124
The man who
still rejoices while being burned at the stake is not triumphing over the pain
but over the fact that he feels none of the pain which he expected. A parable.
125
When we have to
change our minds about anyone, we hold the awkwardness which he has thus
created for us very much against him.
126
A people is
nature’s detour to produce six or seven great men.—Yes, and then to get around
them.
127
Science offends
the modesty of all real women. With it they feel as if someone wanted to peek
under their skin—or even worse, under their dress and finery.
128
The more
abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more you must still seduce the senses
to it.
129
The devil has
the widest perspective for God; that’s why he keeps himself so far away from
Him—for the devil is the oldest friend of knowledge.
130
What someone is
begins to show itself when his talent subsides—when he stops showing what he can
do. Talent is also finery, and finery is also a hiding place.
131
The sexes
deceive themselves about each other: this happens because basically they honour
and love only themselves (or, to put the matter more pleasantly, only their own
ideal—). Hence the man wants the woman to be peaceful—but woman, like a cat, is
essentially not peaceful, however much she may have practised an
appearance of peacefulness.
132
People are best
punished for their virtues.
133
The man who
does not know how to find the way to his own ideal lives more carelessly
and impudently than the man without an ideal.
134
All
credibility, all good conscience, all appearance of the truth come only from
the senses.
135
Pharisaism is
not degeneration in a good man: a good part of it is rather the condition of
all being-good.*
136
One man seeks a
midwife for his ideas, another seeks someone whom he can help: that’s how a
good conversation arises.
137
By associating
with scholars and artists one easily makes mistakes in reverse directions:
behind a remarkable scholar we not infrequently find an average human being,
and behind an average artist we often find—a very remarkable human being.
138
We act while
awake as we do in a dream: we invent and fabricate the person with whom we
associate—and then we immediately forget the fact.
139
In revenge and
love woman is more barbaric than man.
140
Advice as
riddle:—“If the bond is not to break—you must first bite down on it.”
141
The lower
abdomen is the reason man does not so easily consider himself a god.
142
The most demure
saying I have ever heard: “In true love it’s the soul which envelops the body.”*
143
What we do best
our vanity wishes to value as the thing which is most difficult for us. The
origin of many a morality.
144
When a woman
has scholarly inclinations, then something is usually wrong with her sexuality.
Infertility itself tends to encourage a certain masculinity of taste, for man
is, if I may say so, “the infertile animal.”
145
In comparing
man and woman in general we can say that woman would not have the genius for
finery if she did not have the instinct for the secondary role.
146
Anyone who
fights with monsters should make sure that he does not in the process become a
monster himself. And when you look for a long time into an abyss, the abyss
also looks into you.
147
From an old
Florentine novella, and in addition from life: buona femmina e mala femmina
vuol bastone [the good and the bad woman wants a stick]. Sacchetti, Nov.
86.
148
To seduce a
neighbour into a good opinion and, beyond that, to believe faithfully in this
opinion of one’s neighbour: who can match women in performing this trick?—
149
What an age
finds evil is commonly an anachronistic echo of what previously was found to be
good—the atavism of an older ideal.
150
Around the hero
everything becomes a tragedy, around the demi-god everything becomes a satyr
play, and around God everything becomes —what? Perhaps a “world”?—
151
Having a talent
is not enough: one must also have your permission to have it—isn’t that so, my
friends?
152
“Where the tree
of knowledge stands is always paradise”: that’s what the oldest and the most
recent serpents declare.
153
What is done
out of love always happens beyond good and evil.
154
Objections,
evasions, cheerful mistrust, and love of mockery are indications of health:
everything absolute belongs with pathology.
155
A sense of
tragedy ebbs and flows with sensuality.
156
With
individuals madness is something rare—but with groups, parties, peoples, and
ages it’s the rule.
157
The thought of
suicide is a strong consolation: with it people get through many an evil night.
158
Not only our
reason but also our conscience submits to our strongest drive, the tyrant in
us.
159
People must
repay good and bad things, but why directly to the person who does good or bad
things to us?
160
We don’t love
our knowledge enough any more, once we have communicated it.
161
Poets are
shameless about their experiences: they exploit them.
162
“The one next
to us is not our neighbour but our neighbour’s neighbour”—that’s how every
people thinks.
163
Love brings to
light the high and the hidden characteristics of the person who loves—what is
rare and exceptional about him: to that extent it easily misleads us about what
is normal in him.
164
Jesus said to
his Jews: “The law was for slaves—love god as I love him, as his son! What do
we sons of God have to do with morality!”’
165
Concerning
every party: a shepherd must still always have a bell wether—or he himself must
from time to time be a wether.
166
People do lie
with their mouths, but by the way they shape their mouths in doing so they
nonetheless still speak the truth.
167
With hard
people intimacy is shameful thing—and something precious.
168
Christianity
gave Eros poison to drink—but he didn’t die from that. He degenerated into a
vice.*
169
To talk a lot
about oneself can also be a means of hiding oneself.
170
In praise there
is more pushiness than in blame.
171
Pity in a man
of knowledge seems almost laughable, like soft hands on a Cyclops.*
172
From love of
humanity people sometimes embrace anyone (because they cannot embrace
everybody): but that’s something they cannot reveal to this anyone. . . .
173
A man does not
hate so long as he still rates something low, but only when he rates something
equal or higher.
174
You
utilitarians, you also love everything useful only as a cart to
carry your inclinations—and you too find the noise of its wheels really
unbearable?
175
Ultimately one
loves one’s desires and not the object one desires.
176
The vanity of
others offends our taste only when it offends our vanity.
177
Concerning what
“truthfulness” perhaps no one has yet been sufficiently truthful.
178
We do not
believe in the foolishness of clever men: what a loss of human rights!
179
The
consequences of our actions grab us by the hair, extremely indifferent to
whether we have “improved” in the meantime.
180
There is an
innocence in lying which is the sign of good faith in something.
181
It is inhuman
to bless where a man is cursed.
182
The familiarity
of a superior person embitters, because it cannot be returned.
183
“Not that you
lied to me but that I no longer believe you has shaken me.”—
184
There is a
high-spirited goodness which looks like malice.
185
“I dislike
him.”—Why?—“I’m no match for him.”—Has a human being ever answered in this way?
Notes
. . . Nausikaa: a young princess in Homer’s Odyssey. [Back to Text]
Pharisaism: hypocritical observance of religious or moral laws. [Back to Text]
Nietzsche
quotes the French: “Dans le véritable amour c’est l’âme, qui enveloppe le
corps.” [Back to
Text]
Eros: in Greek mythology the god of erotic love. [Back to Text]
Cyclops: in Greek mythology a giant, one-eyed, cannibal monster. [Back to Text]
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