The Gay Science Quotes

“Animals think differently from men with respect to females; with them the female is regarded as the productive being. There is no paternal love among them, but there is such a thing as love of the children of a beloved, and habituation to them. In the young, the females find gratification for their lust of dominion; the young are a property, an occupation, something quite comprehensible to them, with which they can chatter: all this conjointly is maternal love, - it is to be compared to the love of the artist for his work. Pregnancy has made the females gentler, more expectant, more timid, more submissively inclined; and similarly intellectual pregnancy engenders the character of the contemplative, who are allied to women in character: they are the masculine mothers. Among animals the masculine sex is regarded as the beautiful sex.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“In good company one must never want to be entirely and solely right, which is what all pure logic wants [...].”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“Consciousness is the last and latest development of the organic, and consequently also the most unfinished and least powerful of these developments. Innumerable mistakes originate out of consciousness, which, "in spite of fate," as Homer says, cause an animal or a man to break down earlier than might be necessary. If the conserving bond of the instincts were not very much more powerful, it would not generally serve as a regulator: by perverse judging and dreaming with open eyes, by superficiality and credulity, in short, just by consciousness, mankind would necessarily have broken down: or rather, without the former there would long ago have been nothing more of the latter!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“What does your conscience say? — 'You shall become the person you are.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“The greatest advantage of polytheism. — For an individual to posit his own ideal and to derive from it his own law, joys, and rights — that may well have been considered hitherto as the most outrageous human aberration and as idolatry itself; indeed, the few who dared as much always felt the need to apologize to themselves, usually by saying: 'Not I! Not I! But a god through me.' The wonderful art and power of creating gods — polytheism — was that through which this drive could discharge itself, purify, perfect, and ennoble itself; for originally it was a base and undistinguished drive, related to stubbornness, disobedience, and envy. To be hostile to this drive to have one’s own ideal: that was formerly the law of every morality. There was only one norm: ‘the human being’— and every people believed itself to have this one and ultimate norm. But above and outside oneself, in some distant overworld, one was permitted to behold a plurality of norms; one god was not considered the denial or anathema to another god! Here for the first time one allowed oneself individuals; here one first honored the rights of individuals. The invention of gods, heroes, and overmen (Übermenschen) of all kinds, as well as deviant or inferior forms of humanoid life, undermen, dwarfs, fairies, centaurs, satyrs, demons, and devils, was the invaluable preliminary exercise for the justification of the egoism and sovereignty of the individual: the freedom that one conceded to a god in his relation to other gods one finally gave to oneself in relation to laws, customs, and neighbors. Monotheism, in contrast, this rigid consequence of the doctrine of one normal human type — that is, the belief in one normal god beside whom there are only pseudo-gods — was perhaps the greatest danger that has yet confronted humanity. It threatened us with the premature stagnation that, as far as we can see, most other species have long reached; for all of them believe in one normal type and ideal for their species, and they have translated the morality of custom definitively into their own flesh and blood. In polytheism the free-spiritedness and many-spiritedness of humanity received preliminary form — the power to create for ourselves our own new eyes and ever again new eyes that are ever more our own — so that for humans alone among the animals there are no eternal horizons and perspectives.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“Poor. — Today he is poor, not because they have taken everything away from him but because he has thrown everything away. What is that to him? He is used to finding things. It is the poor who misunderstand his voluntary poverty.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“Everything that is of my kind, in nature and history, speaks to me, praises me, spurs me on, comforts me - everything else I don't hear or forget right away. We are always only in our own company.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“Those who inflate themselves are cursed
When pricked by a small pin to burst.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes & an Appendix of Songs

“When I look at this age with the eye of a distant future, I find nothing so remarkable in the man of the present day as his peculiar virtue and sickness called "the historical sense." It is a tendency to something quite new and foreign in history: if this embryo were given several centuries and more, there might finally evolve out of it a marvellous plant, with a smell equally marvellous, on account of which our old earth might be more pleasant to live in than it has been hitherto. We moderns are just beginning to form the chain of a very powerful, future sentiment, link by link, we hardly know what we are doing. It almost seems to us as if it were not the question of a new sentiment, but of the decline of all old sentiments: the historical sense is still something so poor and cold, and many are attacked by it as by a frost, and are made poorer and colder by it. To others it appears as the indication of stealthily approaching age, and our planet is regarded by them as a melancholy invalid, who, in order to forget his present condition, writes the history of his youth. In fact, this is one aspect of the new sentiment He who knows how to regard the history of man in its entirety as his own history, feels in the immense generalisation all the grief of the invalid who thinks of health, of the old man who thinks of the dream of his youth, of the lover who is robbed of his beloved, of the martyr whose ideal is destroyed, of the hero on the evening of the indecisive battle which has brought him wounds and the loss of a friend. But to bear this immense sum of grief of all kinds, to be able to bear it, and yet still be the hero who at the commencement of a second day of battle greets the dawn and his happiness, as one who has an horizon of centuries before and behind him, as the heir of all nobility, of all past intellect, and the obligatory heir (as the noblest) of all the old nobles; while at the same time the first of a new nobility, the equal of which has never been seen nor even dreamt of: to take all this upon his soul, the oldest, the newest, the losses, hopes, conquests, and victories of mankind: to have all this at last in one soul, and to comprise it in one feeling: this would necessarily furnish a happiness which man has not hitherto known, a God's happiness, full of power and love, full of tears and laughter, a happiness which, like the sun in the evening, continually gives of its inexhaustible riches and empties into the sea, and like the sun, too, feels itself richest when even the poorest fisherman rows with golden oars! This divine feeling might then be called humanity!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“The fool interrupts — The writer of this book is no misanthrope; today one pays too dearly for hatred of man.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes & an Appendix of Songs

“Éramos amigos y nos hemos vuelto extraños. Pero está bien así, y no queremos disimularlo ni ocultarlo como si tuviésemos que avergonzarnos de ello. somos dos barcos y cada uno tiene su meta y su rumbo, puede que nos crucemos y celebremos una fiesta juntos, como lo hicimos cuando los probos barcos quedaron fondeados en un mismo puerto y a un mismo sol, tan tranquilos que parecía como si ya hubiesen llegado a su destino y hubiesen tenido un mismo destino.

Pero más tarde la todopoderosa fuerza de nuestra tarea volvió a separarnos, hacia diferentes mares y latitudes, y quizá no nos volvamos a ver nunca más, o tal vez nos volveremos a ver, pero ya no nos reconoceremos: ¡los diferentes mares y vientos nos habrán cambiado! Tener que volvernos extraños el uno para el otro es la ley que está por encima de nosotros: ¡precisamente por eso hemos de ser más venerables uno para el otro! ¡Precisamente por eso ha de ser más sagrado para nosotros el pensamiento de nuestra antigua amistad!

Existe probablemente una tremenda curva y órbita estelar invisible en la que nuestros caminos y metas, tan distintos como son, puede que estén incluidos como pequeños trampos, ¡elevémonos hacia ese pensamiento! Pero nuestra vida es demasiado breve y nuestra vista demasiado débil como para que podamos ser más que amigos en el sentido de aquella sublime posibilidad. Creamos, pues, en nuestra amistad estelar, aun en el caso de que tuviéramos que ser enemigos sobre la tierra.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“What is the seal of liberation?— No longer being ashamed in front of oneself.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes & an Appendix of Songs

“God is dead;1 but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. —And we—we still have to vanquish his shadow, too.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes & an Appendix of Songs

“Meanwhile, however, it is quite otherwise, meanwhile the comedy of existence has not yet " become conscious " of itself, meanwhile it is still the period of tragedy, the period of morals and religions.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“Whom do you call Bad?-Him who always wants to put others to shame.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“Will and Willingness.-Someone brought a youth to a wise man, and said, " See, this is one who is being corrupted by women!" The wise man shook his head and smiled. " It is men," he called out, " who corrupt women; and everything that women lack should be atoned for and improved in men,-for man creates for himself the ideal of woman, and woman moulds herself according to this ideal."-" You are too tender-hearted towards women," said one of the bystanders, " you do not know them !" The wise man answered : " Man's attribute is will, woman's attribute is willingness,- such is the law of the sexes, verily! a hard law for woman! All human beings are innocent of their existence, women, however, are doubly innocent; who could have enough of salve and gentleness for them !"-"What about salve! What about gentleness ! " called out another person in the crowd, " we must educate women better!"-" We must educate men better," said the wise man, and made a sign to the youth to follow him.-The youth, however, did not follow him.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“Conditions for God.-1' God himself cannot subsist without wise men," said Luther, and with good reason ; but " God can still less subsist without unwise men,"-good Luther did not say that!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“Toma cuidado!... Ele está a reflectir: vai defender a sua mentira.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“3- نبيل ووضيع
يبدو للوضعاء من الناس ان كل المشاعر النبيلة والكريمة تخلر من
المنفعة العملية، ولهذا السبب فإنها تثير ريبتهم: فما ان يسمعوا بها حتى
يطرفون بعيونهم كأن لسان حالهم يقول: "لا شك ان الامر يخفي فاثدة ما،
ذلك اننا لا نستطيع ان ندرك كل شيء"، وهم يحتدون على الرجل النبيل
لأنهم يشكون في انه يسعى الى مصلحته بطرق ملتوية. وإذا ما توصلوا الى
الاقتناع بغياب اي مصلحة واي دافع وربح شخصي، يصير الرجل النبيل
بنظرهم مجرد معجنون بائس فيحتقرون افراحه ويسخرون من ضياء عينيه.

"كيف يمكن التمتع بتحمل الأذى، كيف نقبل عليه مع سابق معرفة!
لا بد ان هوى النبيل يعود الى مرض عقلي ما!"، هكذا يفكرون مع نظرة
احتقار.


ان لاعقلانية او عقلانية الهوى
المنحرفة هو ما يحتقره الوضيع عند الرجل النبيل، خاصة عندما يتجه هذا
الهوى نحو مواضيع تبدو له أن قيمتها وهمية أو عبثية، فإذا كان يغضب
لمرأى من يخضع لهوى بطنه، فإنه مع ذلك يفهم تسلط هذه اللذة، إلا أنه
لا يمكنه على الاطلاق ان يفهم، كيف يمكن مثلا، ان نخاطر بصحتنا
وكرامتنا حبا بالمعرفة. يتجه ذوق الطبائع العليا نحو الاستثناءات، ونحو
مواضيع يهملها عادة اغلب البشر، وتبدو بدون اي جاذبية: إن للطبع
الأعلى حكم قيمي خاص، الا انه بشكل عام لا يعتقد ان معياره خاص
بجبلة ذوقه، بل على العكس، فإنه يخمن ان قيمه ولا قيمه الشخصية هى
قيم كونية، لذلك فإنه يقع في سوء الفهم وفي نطاق المتعذر ٠ نادرا جدا ما
يملك الطبع الأعلى من العقل ما يسمح له بفهم ومعاملة الرجل المتوسط
بما هو عليه: إذ انه غالبأ ما يعتقد ان هواه هو الهوى الحميم للجميع،
وهذا الاعتقاد هو ما يملؤه حرارة وتوهجأ. حين لا يشعر هؤلاء الرجال
الاستثنائيون بانهم كذلك، كيف سيتمكنون بالتالي من فهم ذوي الطبع
الوضيع، ويقيمون القاعدة بانصاف! فيتكلمون هم ايضا بالتالي عن
الجنون، وعن فوات الفرص الملائمة، وعن الأحلام الخيالية للبشرية،
مندهشين امام هذا الجري الأخرق للخليقة التي لا تريد ان تقر بـ "الشيء
الوحيد الضروري"، هذا هو التعسف الأبدي للطبائع النبيلة.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“Four very strange and truly poetic human beings in this century have attained mastery in prose, for which this century was not made otherwise—for lack of poetry, as I have suggested. Not including Goethe, who may fairly be claimed by the century that produced him, I regard only Giacomo Leopardi, Prosper Mérimée, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walter Savage Landor, the author of Imaginary Conversations, as worthy of being called masters of prose.35 93”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes & an Appendix of Songs

“and sons are much more considerate of one another than mothers and daughters.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“is not everything that we consider important our betrayer ? It shows where our motives lie, and where our motives are altogether lacking.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“is the most pleasant feeling in those who have not much pride, and have no prospect of great conquests:”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“After a Great Victory.-The best thing in a great victory is that it deprives the conqueror of the fear of defeat. " Why should I not be worsted for once ? " he says to himself, " I am now rich enough to stand it.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“if you therefore want to depress and minimise man's capacity for pain, well, you must also depress and minimise his capacity for enjoyment.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“6 - اعتبار ضاع
لقد فقد التامل كل اعتبار خارجي، لقد حول الطقس والوضعية
الاحتفالية إلى سخرية، ولم يعد بالامكان تحمل حكيم من النمط القديم.
فئحن نفكر بسرعة مفرطة، في الطريق، وفي عز السير وفي خضم الأعمال
من اي نوع كانت، حتى عندما يتعلق الأمر بأخطرها؛ فاننا لا نحتاج إلا
الى القليل من التحضير، وحتى من الصمت: يتم كل شيء كاننا نحمل في
رأسنا آلة تدور باستمرار وتتايع عملها حتى في اسوء الشروط. فيما مضى،
كانت تلحظ مباشرة هيئة من يريد ان يفكر، وكان امرا استثنائيا بدون شك ٠
من يريدإنطلاقأ من لحظة ما ان يكتسب حكمة ويئتظر ان تهل فكرة له؛
فترتسم على وجهه هيئة لائقة كما لو كان يصلي، او يتوقف عن المسير،
نعم، عندما كانت الفكرة تأتي، كان يبقى لساعات متسمرا في الشارع،
على ساق واحدة، او على الساقين، كانت الفكرة تستحق هذا العناء.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“...the way the Americans strive for gold; and their breathless haste in working - the true vice of the new world.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“Every kind of perfection is purchased at a high price on earth, where everything is perhaps purchased too dear; one is an expert in one's department at the price of being also a victim of one's department.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“13- في مذهب الشعور بالاقتدار
نحن نمارس قدرتنا على فعل وإرادة الخير
نحو من يخضع لنا بطريقة او بأخرى (أي الذين من عادتهم أن يفكروا بنا
على أننا مبدأهم) فنريد حقا أن نضاعف قدرتهم الخاصة، لأننا بتلك
الطريقة نضاعف قدرتنا، أو نريد ان نظهر لهم المنفعة التي يجدونها في
خضوعهم لنا، فيشتد بالتالي رضاهم عن وضعهم، ويصيرون أشد عداوة
وضراوة قي مواجهة أعدائنا الخاصين. ولو قدمنا التضحيات للقيام بالخير
او بالشر، فإن ذلك لا يغير من القيمة النهائية لأعمالنا: حتى لو عرضنا
حياتنا للخطر شأننا في ذلك شان شهيد دينه، فإننا نقوم بهذه التضحية
لعطشنا الخاص إلى مقدرتنا، او للحفاظ على الأقل على شعورنا بأننا
نملكها.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“man who loves like a woman becomes thereby a slave ; a woman, however, who loves like a woman”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs