"
483
The enemies of Truth
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
490
The Illusions of Idealists
All idealists imagine that the cause which they serve is essentially better than all other causes, and will not believe that if their cause is really to flourish it requires precisely the same evil-smelling manure which all other human undertakings have need of.
508
Free Nature
We are so fond of being out among Nature, because it has no opinions about of us.
586
The Hour-Hand of Life
Life consists of rare single moments of the greatest importance, and of countless intervals during which, at best, the phantoms of those moments hover around us. Love, the spring, every fine melody, the mountains, the moon, the sea––all speak, but once fully to the heart, if, indeed, they ever do quite attain to speech. For many people have not those moments at all, and are themselves intervals and pauses in the symphony of actual life.
605
The Danger in Free Opinions
Frivolous occupation with free opinions has a charm, like a kind of itching; if one yields further, one begins to chafe the places; until at last an open, painful wound results; that is to say, until the free opinion begins to disturb and torment us in our position in life and in our human relations.
606
Desire for Sore Affliction
When passion is over it leaves behind an obscure longing for it, and even in disappearing it casts a seductive glance at us. It must have afforded a kind of pleasure to have been beaten with this scourge. Compared with it, the more moderate sensations appear insipid; we still prefer, apparently, the more violent displeasure to the languid delight.
625
Lonely People
Some people are so much accustomed to being alone in self-communion that they do not at all compare themselves with others, but spin out their soliloquizing life in a quiet, happy mood, conversing pleasantly, and even hilariously, with themselves. If, however, they are brought to the point of comparing themselves with others, they are inclined to a brooding underestimation of their own worth, so that they have first to be compelled by others to form once more a good and just opinion of themselves, and even from this acquired opinion they will always want to subtract and abate something. We must not, therefore, grudge certain persons their loneliness or foolishly commiserate them on that account, as is often done.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Human, All Too Human: Man Alone by Himself
