______________________________________________________
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 December 2013]
[Table of Contents for Beyond Good and Evil]
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 let oneself be robbed, deceived, and exploited could be the shame of a god
among men.
67
Love of one person is a barbarity: for it is practised
at the expense of all the rest. Also the love of 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
Many 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 in 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 does not itself love reveals its bottom layers—its lowest stuff
comes up.
80
A matter which is explained ceases to concern us.—What did 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 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 emotions in men and women have, nonetheless, a different
tempo. That’s the reason man and woman do not
cease misunderstanding each other.
86
Behind all personal vanity women themselves always 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 they 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 many
assume he is 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 the 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.1
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 associated with the type “free spirit,”—as his lack
of freedom.
106
Thanks to music even the passions enjoy themselves.
107
Once the decision has been made, to shut your ears even to the
best counter-arguments: a sign of a strong character. Hence,
an occasional will to stupidity.
108
There are no moral phenomena 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 when 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 involves 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 emotion is, in the final analysis, only
the will of another emotion or of several other emotions.
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 where
he expected to. 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 perspectives 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 [Gut-sein].2
136
One man seeks a midwife for his ideas; another seeks someone 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 a
mediocre human being, and be-hind a mediocre
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 that envelops the body.”3
143
What we do best our vanity wishes to count as the thing that is
most difficult for us. On 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 old Florentine novels, and in addition from life: buona femmina e
mala femmina vuol
bastone [the good woman and the bad woman want a
stick]. Sacchetti, Nov. 86.4
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
Objection, evasion, cheerful mistrust, and love of mockery are
indications of health: everything absolute belongs to 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 a bad 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 did good or bad things to us?
160
We no longer love our knowledge enough, once we have communicated
it.
161
Poets are shameless about their experiences: they exploit them.
162
“Our neighbour [Nächster] is not our neighbour [Nachbar] but
our neighbour’s neighbour”—that’s
how every nation thinks.5
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 always needs
to have a bellwether—or he himself must from time to time be a wether.
166
People do lie with their mouths, but by the way they distort 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. Instead 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.
Pity in a man of knowledge seems almost laughable, like soft hands
on a Cyclops.6
172
From love of humanity people sometimes embrace anyone (because
they cannot embrace everyone): but that’s something they cannot reveal to this
anyone. . . .
173
A man does not hate so long as his assessments are still low, but
only when his assessments are equal or higher.
174
You utilitarians, even you love
everything utile [useful] only as a cart to
carry your inclinations—and don’t you really find the noise of its wheels
unbearable?
175
Ultimately one loves one’s desire and not the object one desires.
176
The vanity of others goes against our taste only when it offends
our vanity.
177
Concerning what “truthfulness” is, 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 indicates good faith in a
cause.
181
It is inhuman to bless where one is cursed.
182
The familiarity of a superior person embitters, because it cannot
be returned.
183
“What has shaken me is not that you lied to me but that I no
longer believe you.”—
184
There is a high-spirited goodness which looks like malice.
185
“I dislike him.”—Why?—”I’m no match for him.”—Has a person ever
answered in this way?
NOTES
1Nausikaa:
a young princess in Homer’s Odyssey. [Back to Text]
2Pharisaism: hypocritical observance
of religious or moral laws. [Back to Text]
3Nietzsche quotes the
French: “Dans le véritable amour c’est l’âme, qui enveloppe le
corps.” [Back to Text]
4Franco Sacchetti (c. 1335-c.1400), Florentine writer. [Back to Text]
5This
enigmatic sentence seems to mean that our neighbour
in a religious sense (“Love thy neighbour as
thyself”) is not the person nearest to us (i.e., our literal neighbour) but rather the neighbour
of someone else living close beside us. [Back to Text]
6Cyclops:
in Greek mythology a giant, one-eyed monster. [Back to Text]
[Table of Contents for Beyond Good and Evil]
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