When Nietzsche Wept: A Novel Of Obsession

by Irvin D. Yalom

“You suggest,” said Breuer, “that every action I make, every pain I experience, will be experienced through all infinity?” “Yes, eternal recurrence means that every time you choose an action you must be willing to choose it for all eternity. And it is the same for every action not made, every stillborn thought, every choice avoided. And all unlived life will remain bulging inside you, unlived through all eternity. And the unheeded voice of your conscience will cry out to you forever.”

“So, Josef, once again I say, let this thought take possession of you. Now I have a question for you: Do you hate the idea? Or do you love it?” “I hate it!” Breuer almost shouted. “To live forever with the sense that I have not lived, have not tasted freedom—the idea fills me with horror.” “Then,” Nietzsche exhorted, “live in such a way that you love the idea!”

“I meant only that, to fully relate to another, one must first relate to oneself. If we cannot embrace our own aloneness, we will simply use the other as a shield against isolation. Only when one can live like the eagle—with no audience whatsoever—can one turn to another in love; only then is one able to care about the enlargement of the other’s being. Ergo, if one is unable to give up a marriage, then the marriage is doomed.”

the key to living well is first to will that which is necessary and then to love that which is willed.”