THE ANTI-CHRIST

20
Buddhism is a hundred times more realistic than Christianity: posing problems objectively and coolly
is part of its inheritance, for Buddhism comes after a philosophic movement which spanned centuries.
The concept of ―God‖ has long been disposed of when it arrived. Buddhism is the only genuinely
positivistic religion in history. This applies even to its theory of knowledge (a strict phenomenalism):
it no longer says ―struggle again sin‖ but, duly respectful of reality, ―struggle against suffering.‖
Buddhism is profoundly distinguished from Christianity by the fact that the self-deception of the moral
concepts lies far behind it. In my terms, it stands beyond good and evil.
The two physiological facts on which it is based and which it keeps in mind are: first, an
excessive sensitivity, which manifests itself in a refined susceptibility to pain; and second, an
overspiritualization, an all-too-long preoccupation with concepts and logical procedures, which has
damaged the instinct of personality by subordinating it to the ―impersonal‖ (both states which at least
some of my readers, those who are ―objective‖ like myself, will know from experience). These
physiological conditions have led to a depression, and the Buddha proceeds against this with hygienic
measures. Against it he recommends life in the open air, the wandering life; moderation in eating and a
careful selection of foods; wariness of all intoxicants; wariness also of all emotions that activate the
gall bladder or heat the blood; no worry either for oneself or for others. He prescribes ideas which are
either soothing or cheering, and he invests means for weaning oneself from all the others. He
understands goodness and graciousness as health-promoting.
Prayer is ruled out, and so is asceticism; there is no categorical imperative, no compulsion
whatever, not even in the monastic societies (one may leave again). All these things would merely
increase the excessive sensitivity we mentioned. For the same reason, he does not ask his followers to
fight those who think otherwise: there is nothing to which his doctrine is more opposed than the
feeling of revenge, antipathy, ressentiment (―it is not by enmity that enmity is ended‖—that is the
stirring refrain of all Buddhism). And all this is quite right: these emotions would indeed be utterly
unhealthy in view of the basic hygienic purpose.

21
Buddhism presupposes a very mild climate, customs of great gentleness and liberality, and the absence
of militarism; moreover, the movement had to originate among the higher, and even scholarly, classes.
Cheerfulness, calm, and freedom from desire are the highest goal, and the goal is attained. Buddhism
is not a religion in which one merely aspires to perfection: perfection is the normal case.

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

84
Woman learns to hate to the extent to which her charms – decrease.

98
If we train our conscience, it kisses us while it hurts us.

133
Whoever does not know how to find the way to his ideal lives more frivolously and impudently than
the man without an ideal.
146
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when
you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

169
Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

175
In the end one loves one's desire and not what is desired.

273
A human being who strives for something great considers everyone he meets on his way either as a
means or as a delay and obstacle—or as a temporary resting place. His characteristic high-grade
graciousness towards his fellow men becomes possible only once he has attained his height and rules.
Impatience and his consciousness that until then he is always condemned to comedy—for even war is a
comedy and conceals, just as every means conceals the end—spoil all of his relations to others: this
type of man knows solitude and what is most poisonous in it.

274
The problem of those who are waiting. – It requires strokes of luck and much that is incalculable if a
higher man in whom the solution of a problem lies dormant is to get around to action in time – to
―eruption,‖ one might say. In the average case it does not happen, and in nooks all over the earth sit
many who are waiting, scarcely knowing in what way they are waiting, much less that they are waiting
in vain. Occasionally the call that awakens – that accident which gives the ―permission‖ to act – comes
too late, when the best youth and strength for action has already been used up by sitting still; and many
have found to their horror when they ―leaped up‖ that their limbs had gone to sleep and their spirit had
become too heavy. ―It is too late,‖ they said to themselves, having lost their faith in themselves and
henceforth forever useless.
Could it be that in the realm of the spirit ―Raphael without hands,‖ taking this phrase in the
widest sense, is perhaps not the exception but the rule?
Genius is perhaps not so rare after all – but the five hundred hands it requires to tyrannize the
kairos, ―the right time,‖ seizing chance by its forelock.

DAYBREAK

225
How to make yourself despised quickly. – A man who says a lot and says it quickly sinks extraordinarily
low in our estimation after even the briefest acquaintanceship and even if he talks sense – not merely to
the degree that he is burdensome to us but much lower than that. For we divine to how many men he
has already been a burden, and add to the ill-humor he creates the contempt in which we suppose he is
generally held.

281
The ego wants everything. – It seems that the sole purpose of human action is possession: this idea is, at
least, contained in the various languages, which regard all past action as having put us in possession of
something (‗I have spoken, struggled, conquered‘: that is to say, I am now in possession of my speech,
struggle, victory). How greedy man appears here! He does not want to extricate himself even from the
past, but wants to continue to have it!
282
Danger in beauty. – This woman is beautiful and clever: but how much cleverer she would have
become if she were not beautiful.

365
Vanity. – Vanity is the fear of appearing original: it is thus a lack of pride, but not necessarily a lack of
originality.

491
Another reason for solitude! – A: So you intend to return to your desert? – B: I am not quick moving, I
have to wait for myself – it is always late before the water comes to light out of the well of my self, and
I often have to endure thirst for longer than I have patience. That is why I got into solitude – so as not
to drink out of everybody‘s cistern. When I am among the many I live as the many do, and I do not
think as I really think; after a time it always seems as though they want to banish me from myself and
rob me of my soul – and I grow angry with everybody and fear everybody. I then require the desert, so
as to grow good again.

ECCE HOMO

Why I Am So Clever, 8
Another counsel of prudence and self-defense is to react as rarely as possible, and to avoid situations
and relationships that would condemn one to suspend, as it were, one‘s ―freedom‖ and initiative and to
become a mere reagent. As a parable I choose association with books. Scholars who at bottom do little
nowadays but thumb books—philologists, at a moderate estimate, about 200 a day—ultimately lose
entirely their capacity to think for themselves. When they don‘t thumb, they don‘t think. They respond
to a stimulus (a thought they have read) whenever they think—in the end, they do nothing but react.
Scholars spend all of their energies on saying Yes and No, on criticism of what others have thought—
they themselves no longer think.

Why I Am So Clever, 12
One will ask me why on earth I‘ve been relating all these small things which are generally considered
matters of complete indifference: I only harm myself, the more so if I am destined to represent great
tasks. Answer: these small things—nutrition, place, climate, recreation, the whole casuistry of
selfishness—are inconceivably more important than everything one has taken to be important so far.
Precisely here one must begin to relearn.

THE GAY SCIENCE

14
The things people call love. – Avarice and love: what different feelings these two terms evoke!
Nevertheless it could be the same instinct that has two names – once deprecated by those who have, in
who the instinct has calmed down to some extent, and who are afraid for their ―possessions,‖ and the
other time seen from the point of view of those who are not satisfied but still thirsty and who therefore
glorify the instinct as ―good.‖ Our love of our neighbor – is it not a lust for new possessions? And
likewise our love of knowledge, of truth, and altogether any lust for what is new? Gradually we
become tired of the old, of what we safely possess, and we stretch out our hands again. Even the most
beautiful scenery is no longer assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some
more distant coast attracts our avarice: possessions are generally diminished by possession.

121
Life no argument. – We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we can live – by positing bodies,
lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content; without these articles of faith
nobody now could endure life. But that does not prove them. Life is no argument. The conditions of
life might include error.

209
The way to happiness. – A sage asked a fool about the way to happiness. The fool answered instantly
as if he had merely asked about the way to the nearest town: ―Admire yourself and live in the street.‖
―No,‖ replied the said, ―you are asking too much; it is quite sufficient to admire oneself.‖ The fool shot
back: ―But how can one constantly admire without constantly feeling contempt?‖

232
Dreams. – We have no dreams at all or interesting ones. We should learn to be awake the same way –
not at all or in an interesting manner.

275
What is the seal of attained freedom? – No longer being ashamed in front of oneself.

290
One thing is needful. – To ―give style‖ to one's character – a great and rare art! It is practiced by those
who survey all the strengths and weaknesses of their nature and then fit them into an artistic plan until
every one of them appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye. Here a large mass of
second nature has been added; there a piece of original nature has been removed – both times through
long practice and daily work at it. Here the ugly that could not be removed is concealed; there it has
been reinterpreted and made sublime. Much that is vague and resisted shaping has been saved and
exploited for distant views; it is meant to beckon toward the far and the immeasurable. In the end,
when the work is finished, it becomes evident how the constraint of a single taste governed and formed
everything large and small. Whether this taste was good or bad is less important than one might
suppose, it only it was a single taste!
It will be the strong and domineering natures that enjoy their finest gaiety in such constraint and
perfection under a law of their own; the passion of their tremendous will relents in the face of all
stylized nature, of all conquered and serving nature. Even when they have to build palaces and design
gardens they demur at giving nature freedom.
Conversely, it is the weak characters without power over themselves that hate the constraint of
style. They feel that if this bitter and evil constraint were imposed upon them they would be
demeaned; they become slaves as soon as they serve; they hate to serve. Such spirits—and they may
be of the first rank—are always out to shape and interpret their environment as free nature: wild,
arbitrary, fantastic, disorderly, and surprising. And they are well advised because it is only in this way
that they can give pleasure to themselves. For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain
satisfaction with himself, whether it be by means of this or that poetry and art; only then is a human
being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is continually ready for revenge,
and we others will be his victims, if only by having to endure his ugly sight. For the sight of what is
ugly makes one bad and gloomy.

308
The history of every day. – What is the history of every day in your case? Look at your habits that
constitute it: are they the product of innumerable little cowardices and lazinesses or of your courage
and inventive reason? However different these two cases are, people might very well praise you
equally and you might actually profit them equally this way and that. But praise and profit and
respectability may suffice these who merely wish to have a good conscience – but not you who try the
heart and reins and make even conscience an object of science!

312
My dog. – I have given a name to my pain and call it ―dog‖: it is just as faithful, just as obtrusive and
shameless, just as entertaining, just as clever as any other dog – and I can scold it and vent my bad
moods on it, as others do with their dogs, servants, and wives.

GENEALOGY OF MORALS

3, 8
A philosopher may be recognized by the fact that he avoids three glittering and loud things: fame,
princes, and women—which is not to say they do not come to him… Ultimately they ask for little
enough, these philosophers: their motto is ―he who possesses is possessed‖—not, as I must say again
and again, from virtue, from a laudable will to contentment and simplicity, but because their supreme
lord demands this from them, prudently and inexorably: he is concerned with one thing alone, and
assembles and saves up everything—time, energy, love, and interest—only for that one thing.

HUMAN ALL TOO HUMAN, VOLUME I

129
Forbidden generosity. – There is not enough love and goodness in the world for us to be permitted to
give any of it away to imaginary things.

163
The serious workman. – Do not talk about giftedness, inborn talents! One can name great men of all
kinds who were very little gifted. They acquired greatness, became ‗geniuses‘ (as we put it), through
qualities the lack of which no one who knew what they were would boast of: they all possessed that
seriousness of the efficient workman which first learns to construct the parts properly before it ventures
to fashion a great whole; they allowed themselves time for it, because they took more pleasure in
making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole. The recipe for becoming
a good novelist, for example, is easy to give, but to carry it out presupposes qualities one is accustomed
to overlook when one says ‗I do not have enough talent.‘ One has only to make a hundred or so
sketches for novels, none longer than two pages but of such distinctness that every word in them is
necessary; one should write down anecdotes each day until one has learned how to give them the most
pregnant and effective form; one should be tireless in collecting and describing human types and
characters; one should above all relate things to others and listen to others relate, keeping one‘s eyes
and ears open for the effect produced on those present, one should travel like a landscape painter or
costume designer; one should excerpt for oneself out of the individual sciences everything that will
produce an artistic effect when it is well described, one should, finally, reflect on the motives of human
actions, disdain no signpost to instruction about them and be a collector of these things by day and
night. One should continue in this many-sided exercise some ten years: what is then created in the
workshop, however, will be fit to go out into the world. – What, however, do most people do? They
begin, not with the parts, but with the whole. Perhaps they chance to strike a right note, excite attention
and from then on strike worse and worse notes, for good, natural reasons. – Sometimes, when the
character and intellect needed to formulate such a life-plan are lacking, fate and need take their place
and lead the future master step by step through all the stipulations of his trade.

288
Incidental success. – He who seriously wants to become free will at the same time unconstrainedly
loses any tendency to faults and vices; he will likewise be assailed by annoyance and ill-humor less and
less often. For his will will desire nothing more earnestly than knowledge and the means to it, that is to
say the enduring condition in which he is at his most efficient in acquiring knowledge.

292
Forward. – And with that, forward on the path of wisdom with a bold step and full of confidence!
However you may be, serve yourself as your own source of experience! Throw off discontent with
your nature, forgive yourself your own ego, for in any event you possess in yourself a ladder with a
hundred rungs upon which you can climb to knowledge. The age in which with regret you feel
yourself thrown counts you happy on account of this good fortune it calls to you to participate in
experiences that men of a later age will perhaps have to forgo…

482
And to say it once more. Public opinions—private lazinesses.

486
The one thing needful. – There is one thing one has to have: either a cheerful disposition by nature or a
disposition made cheerful by art and knowledge.

586
Of the hour-hand of life. – Life consists of rare individual moments of the highest significance and
countless intervals in which at best the phantoms of those moments hover about us. Love, spring, a
beautiful melody, the mountains, the moon, the sea – they all speak truly to our heart only once: if they
ever do in fact truly find speech. For many people never experience these moments at all but are
themselves intervals and pauses in the symphony of real life.

589
The first thought of the day. – The best way of beginning each day well is to think on awakening
whether one cannot this day give pleasure to at any rate one person. If this could count as a substitute
for the religious practice of prayer, then this substitution would be to the benefit of one‘s fellow men.

HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN, VOLUME II

24
Applause itself as a continuation of the play. – Radiant eyes and a benevolent smile is the kind of
applause rendered to the whole great universal comedy of existence – but at the same time a comedy
within a comedy aimed at seducing the other spectators to a ‗plaudite amici‘.

85
Making plans. – To make plans and project designs brings with it many good sensations; and whoever
had the strength to be nothing but a forger of plans his whole life would be a very happy man; but he
would occasionally have to take a rest from this activity by carrying out a plan – and then come the
vexation and the sobering up.

310
Danger in riches. – Only he who has spirit ought to have possessions: otherwise possessions are a
public danger. For the possessor who does not know how to make use of the free time which his
possessions could purchase him will always continue to strive after possessions: this striving will
constitute his entertainment, his strategy in his war against boredom. Thus in the end the moderate
possessions that would suffice the man of spirit are transformed into actual riches – riches which are in
fact the glittering product of spiritual dependence and poverty. They only appear quite different from
what their wretched origin would lead one to expect because they are able to mask themselves with art
and culture: for they are, of course, able to purchase masks. By these means they arouse envy in the
poorer and the uncultivated – who at bottom are envying culture and fail to recognize the masks as
masks – and gradually prepare a social revolution: for gilded vulgarity and histrionic self-inflation in a
supposed ‗enjoyment of culture‘ instill into the latter the idea ‗it is only a matter of money‘ – whereas,
while it is to some extent a matter of money, it much more a matter of spirit.

364
Ground of much ill-humor. – He who prefers the beautiful in life to the useful will, like a child who
prefers sweets to bread, certainly end by ruining his digestion and will look out on the world very ill-
humoredly.

HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN, VOLUME III

53
Overcoming of the passions. – The man who has overcome his passions has entered into possession of
the most fertile ground; like the colonist who has mastered the forests and swamps. To sow the seeds
of good spiritual works in the soil of the subdued passions is then the immediate urgent task. The
overcoming itself is only a means, not a goal; if it is not so viewed, all kinds of weeds and devilish
nonsense will quickly spring up in this rich soil now unoccupied, and soon there will be more rank
confusion than there ever was before.

202
Pleasure tourists. – They climb the hill like animals, stupid and perspiring; no one has told them there
are beautiful views on the way.

342
Disturbances while thinking. – The thinker must regard everything that interrupts his thoughts (disturbs
them, as we say) with equanimity, as though it were a new model coming in to offer herself to the artist.
Interruptions are the ravens which bring food to the solitary.

NIETZSCHE CONTRA WAGNER

Epilogue
I have often asked myself whether I am not more heavily obligated to the hardest years of my life than
to any others. As my inmost nature teaches me, whatever is necessary – as seen from the heights and in
the sense of a great economy – is also the useful par excellence: one should not only bear it, one
should love it. Amor fati: that is my inmost nature. And as for my long sickness, do I not owe it
indescribably more than I owe to my health? I owe it a higher health – one which is made stronger by
whatever does not kill it. I also owe my philosophy to it.

SCHOPENHAUR AS EDUCATOR

But even if the future gave us no cause for hope – the fact of our existing at all in this here-and-now
must be the strongest incentive to use to live according to our own laws and standards: the inexplicable
fact that we live precisely today, when we had all infinite time in which to come into existence, that we
possess only a short-lived today in which to demonstrate why and to what end we came into existence
now and at no other time. We are responsible to ourselves for our own existence: consequently we
want to be the true helmsman of this existence and refuse to allow our existence to resemble a mindless
act of chance. One has to take a somewhat bold and dangerous line with this existence: especially as,
whatever happens, we are bound to lose it. Why go on clinging to this clod of earth, this way of life,
why pay heed to what your neighbor says?

TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS

8
Out of life's school of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.

9
Help yourself, then everyone will help you. Principle of neighbor-love.

33
How little is required for pleasure! The sound of a bagpipe. Without music, life would be an error.
The German imagines even God signing songs.

44
The formula of my happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal.

THE WILL TO POWER

55
The European form of Buddhism: the energy of knowledge and strength compel this belief. It is the
most scientific of possible hypotheses. We deny end goals: if existence had one it would have to have
been reached.

342
a. The consistent type. Here it is grasped that one must not hate even evil, that one must not oppose it,
that one must not make war even against oneself; that one should not merely acquiesce in the suffering
that such a way of life entails; that one should live entirely in positive feelings; that one should take the
side of one‘s opponent in word and deed; that through a superfetation of the peaceable, good-natured,
conciliatory, helpful, and loving states one impoverishes the soil in which other states grow—that one
requires a perpetual way of living. What is achieved here?—The Buddhist type or the perfect cow.
 This standpoint is possible only when no moral fanaticism prevails, i.e., when evil is hated, not
for its own sake, but only because it opens the way to states that are harmful to us (unrest, work, care,
entanglements, dependence).
This is the Buddhist standpoint: here sin is not hated, here the concept ―sin‖ is lacking.

414
The reabsorption of semen by the blood is the strongest nourishment and, perhaps more than any other
factor, it prompts the stimulus of power, the unrest of all forces toward the overcoming of resistances,
the thirst for contradiction and resistance. The feeling of power has so far mounted highest in abstinent
priests and hermits (for example, among the Brahmins).

522
Rational thought is interpretation according to a scheme which we cannot escape.

768
The ―ego‖ subdues and kills: it operates like an organic cell: it is a robber and violent. It wants to
regenerate itself—pregnancy. It wants to give birth to its god and see all mankind at his feet.

894
What I fight against: that an exceptional type should make war on the rule—instead of grasping that
the continued existence of the rule is the precondition for the value of the exception. For example, the
ladies who, instead of feeling their abnormal thirst for scholarship as a distinction, want to disrupt the
status of woman in general.

919
I wish men would begin by respecting themselves: everything else follows from that. To be sure, as
soon as one does this one is finished for others: for this is what they forgive last: ―What? A man who
respects himself?‖—
This is something different from the blind drive to love oneself: nothing is more common, in
the love of the sexes as well as of that duality which is called ―I‖, than contempt for what one loves:--
fatalism in love.

933
In Summa: domination of the passions, not their weakening or extirpations!—The greater the
dominating power of a will, the more freedom may the passions be allowed.
The ―great man‖ is great owing to the free play and scope of his desires and to the yet greater
power that knows how to press these magnificent monsters into service.

946
To desire no praise: one does what profits one, or what gives one pleasure, or what one must.