Thought Trajectories

We must therefore allow certain people their solitude and not be so stupid, as we so often are, as to pity them for it.

But this is an old and never-ending story...as soon as a philosophy begins to believe in itself, it always creates the world in its own image, it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical drive itself, the most spiritual will to power, to 'creation of the world,' to causa prima.

For every drive is tyrannical: and it is as such that it tries to philosophize.

"...every great philosophy has hitherto been a confession on the part of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir."

The greatest hazard of all, losing the self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly.

A self is the last thing the world cares about and the most dangerous thing of all for a person to show signs of having.

It seems that, in order to inscribe themselves in the hearts of humanity with eternal demands, all great things have first to wander the earth as monstrous and fear-inspiring grotesques...

Above all, one should not wish to divest existence of its rich ambiguity: that is a dictate of good taste, gentlemen, the taste of reverence for everything that lies beyond your horizon.

Unless I discover the alchemical trick of turning this muck into gold, I am lost.

"...the path to one's own heaven always leads through the voluptuousness of one's own hell."

Formerly, one wished to acquire fame and be spoken of. Now that is no longer enough because the market has grown too large; nothing less than screaming will do.

"We fail to recognize our best power and underestimate ourselves, the contemplatives, just a little. We are neither as proud nor as happy as we might be."

All life must pass through the fire of contradiction; contradiction is the driving force and innermost nature of life.

"Whenever the reformation of a whole people fails and it is only sects that elevate their leader, we may conclude that the people had become relatively heterogeneous and has begun to move away from rude herd instincts and the morality of mores: they are hovering in an interesting intermediate position that is usually dismissed as a mere decay of morals and corruption, although in fact it proclaims that the egg is approaching maturity and that the eggshell is about to be broken."