Human, All Too Human A Book for Free Spirits

by Friedrich Nietzsche

and three fourths of all the replies are made in order to inflict some little pain; that is why so many people crave social intercourse: it gives them a sense of their power.

Deception.—In all great deceivers one characteristic is prominent, to which they owe their power. In the very act of deception, amid all the

accompaniments, the agitation in the voice, the expression, the bearing, in the crisis of the scene, there comes over them a belief in themselves; this it is that acts so effectively and irresistibly upon the beholders. Founders of religions differ from such great deceivers in that they never come out of this state of self deception,

Intellect and Ethic.—One must have a good

memory to be able to keep the promises one makes. One must have a strong imagination in order to feel sympathy. So closely is ethics connected with intellectual capacity.

Passion will not wait: the tragic element in the lives of great men does not generally consist in their conflict with time and the inferiority

of their fellowmen but in their inability to put off their work a year or two: they cannot wait.—In

Sancta simplicitas of Virtue.—Every virtue has its privilege: for example, that of contributing its own little bundle of wood to the funeral

pyre of one condemned.

Degree of Moral Susceptibility Unknown.—The fact that one has or has not had certain profoundly moving impressions and insights into things—for example, an unjustly executed, slain or martyred father, a faithless wife, a shattering, serious accident,—is the factor upon which the excitation of

our passions to white heat principally depends, as well as the course of our whole lives. No one knows to what lengths circumstances (sympathy, emotion) may lead him. He does not know the full extent of his own susceptibility. Wretched environment makes him wretched.

It is as a rule not the quality of our experience but its quantity upon which depends the development of our superiority or inferiority, f...

Misunderstanding of Virtue.—Whoever has obtained his experience of vice in connection with pleasure as in the case of one with a youth of wild oats behind him, comes to the conclusion that virtue must be connected with self denial. Whoever, on the other hand, has been very much plagued by his passions and vices, longs to find in virtue the rest and peace of the soul. That is why it is possible for two virtuous people to misunderstand one another wholly.

Honor Transferred from Persons to Things.—Actions prompted by love or by the spirit of self sacrifice for others are universally honored wherever they are manifest.

Hence is magnified the value set upon whatever things may be loved or whatever things conduce to self sacrifice: although in themselves they may be worth nothing much. A valiant army

is evidence of the value of the thing ...