Do you suppose that sacrifice is the hallmark of moral action? – Just stop to consider whether sacrifice is not involved in every action that is done with deliberation, the worst as well as the best.
The moral earth, too, is round! The moral earth, too, has its antipodes! The antipodes, too, have their right to exist! There is still another world to be discovered – and more than one! Set sail, you philosophers!
This is the crux of the moral pessimists: if they really wanted to promote their neighbor’s redemption, then they would have to resolve themselves to spoiling existence for him, and thus to being his misfortune; out of pity, they would have to – become evil!
The enjoyment that all morality has given us to now and that it continues to give us – and so, what has kept it going up to now – lies in everyone’s right, without lengthy investigation, to praise and blame. And who could endure life without praising and blaming!
When horror is associated with what is harmful, evil results, when disgust does, badness.
The golden age, when rambunctious spirits were regarded as the source of evil.
In the end we love our desire and not what it is that we desire.
Beware in the presence of cats: they never give, they do not even retaliate – they only reply, and purr in doing so.
The saying, “The Magyar is much too lazy to be bored,” is worth thinking about. Only the most subtle and active animals are capable of boredom. – A theme for a great poet would be God’s boredom on the seventh day of creation.
Animals know nothing of themselves, and they also know nothing of the world.
We have to learn how to come out of unclean situations cleaner than we were, and even how to wash ourselves with dirty water whenwe need to.
With deep men, as with deep wells, it takes a long time for anything that falls into them to hit bottom. Onlookers, who almost never wait long enough, readily suppose that such men are callous and unresponsive – or even boring.
All idealists imagine that the causes they serve are fundamentally better than any other causes in the world, and they refuse to believe that if their cause is to flourish at all it requires precisely the same foul-smelling manure that is necessary to all other human undertakings.
The most dangerous follower is the one whose defection would destroy the whole party: hence, the best follower.
Unresolved dissonances between the characters and dispositions of the parents continue to reverberate in the nature of the child and make up the history of its inner sufferings.
The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a wheel rolling on its own, a prime movement, a sacred Yes.
Along the journey we commonly forget its goal. Almost every vocation is chosen and entered upon as a means to a purpose but is ultimately continued as a final purpose in itself. Forgetting our objectives is the most frequent stupidity in which we indulge ourselves.
You must await your thirst and allow it to become complete: otherwise you will never discover your spring, which can never be anyone else’s!
Children from humble families must be taught how to command just as other children must be taught how to obey.
If you are too weak to give yourselves your own law, then a tyrant shall lay his yoke upon you and say: “Obey! Clench your teeth and obey!” And all good and evil shall be drowned in obedience to him.