“You run ahead? Are you doing it as a shepherd? Or as an exception? A third case would be as a fugitive. First question of conscience.
Are you genuine? Or merely an actor? A representative? Or that which is represented? In the end, perhaps you are merely a copy of an actor. Second question of conscience.
Are you one who looks on? Or one who lends a hand? Or one who looks away and walks off? Third question of conscience.
Do you want to walk along? Or walk ahead? Or walk by yourself? One must know what one wants and that one wants. Fourth question of conscience.”
― Twilight of the Idols
Are you genuine? Or merely an actor? A representative? Or that which is represented? In the end, perhaps you are merely a copy of an actor. Second question of conscience.
Are you one who looks on? Or one who lends a hand? Or one who looks away and walks off? Third question of conscience.
Do you want to walk along? Or walk ahead? Or walk by yourself? One must know what one wants and that one wants. Fourth question of conscience.”
― Twilight of the Idols
“You preachers of equality, the tyrannomania of impotence clamors thus out of you for equality: your most secret ambitions to be tyrants thus shroud themselves in words of virtue. Aggrieved conceit, repressed envy—perhaps the conceit and envy of your fathers—erupt from you as a flame and as the frenzy of revenge.”
― Thus Spoke Zarathustra
― Thus Spoke Zarathustra
“Behold the good and just! Whom do they hate most? The man who breaks their tables of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker:- yet he is the creator.”
― Thus Spoke Zarathustra
― Thus Spoke Zarathustra
“You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power—how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live—is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"—how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise—and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves—Stoicism is self-tyranny—Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature?... But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima.”
― Beyond Good and Evil
― Beyond Good and Evil
“Why should one live? All is vain! To live - that is to thresh straw; to
live - that is to burn oneself and yet not get warm.-
Such ancient babbling still passes for "wisdom"; because it is old,
however, and smells mustily, therefore is it the more honoured. Even
mould ennobles.-
Children might thus speak: they shun the fire because it has burnt
them! There is much childishness in the old books of wisdom.
And he who ever "threshes straw," why should he be allowed to rail at
threshing! Such a fool one would have to muzzle!
Such persons sit down to the table and bring nothing with them, not
even good hunger: - and then do they rail: "All is vain!"
But to eat and drink well, my brothers, is truly no
hath burnt them! There is much childishness in the old
books of wisdom.
And he who ever “thrasheth straw,” why should he be
allowed to rail at thrashing! Such a fool one would have
to muzzle!
Such persons sit down to the table and bring nothing
with them, not even good hunger:—and then do they
rail: “All is vain!”
But to eat and drink well, my brethren, is verily no vain
art! Break up, break up for me the tables of the never-joyous
ones!”
― Thus Spoke Zarathustra
live - that is to burn oneself and yet not get warm.-
Such ancient babbling still passes for "wisdom"; because it is old,
however, and smells mustily, therefore is it the more honoured. Even
mould ennobles.-
Children might thus speak: they shun the fire because it has burnt
them! There is much childishness in the old books of wisdom.
And he who ever "threshes straw," why should he be allowed to rail at
threshing! Such a fool one would have to muzzle!
Such persons sit down to the table and bring nothing with them, not
even good hunger: - and then do they rail: "All is vain!"
But to eat and drink well, my brothers, is truly no
hath burnt them! There is much childishness in the old
books of wisdom.
And he who ever “thrasheth straw,” why should he be
allowed to rail at thrashing! Such a fool one would have
to muzzle!
Such persons sit down to the table and bring nothing
with them, not even good hunger:—and then do they
rail: “All is vain!”
But to eat and drink well, my brethren, is verily no vain
art! Break up, break up for me the tables of the never-joyous
ones!”
― Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Jimmy’s 2024 Year in Books
Take a look at Jimmy’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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