Living cheaply. - The cheapest and most inoffensive way o...

Living cheaply. - The cheapest and most inoffensive way of living is that of the thinker; for, to get at once to the main point, the things he needs most are precisely those which others despise and throw away -. Then: he is easily pelased and has no expensive pleasures; his work is not hard but as it were southerly; his days and nights are not spoiled by pangs of conscience; he moves about, eats, drinks and sleeps in proportion as his mind grows ever calmer, stronger and brighter; he rejoices in his body and has no reason to be afraid of it; he has no need of company, except now and then so as afterwards to embrace his solitude the more tenderly; as a substitute for the living he has the dead, and even for friends he has a substitute: namely the best who have ever lived. - Consider whether it is not the opposite desires and habits that make the life of men expensive and consequently arduous and often insupportable. - In another sense, to be sure, the life of the thinker is the most expensive - nothing is too good for him; and to be deprived of the best would here be an unendurable deprivation.

Nietzsche, Daybreak