It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!
Examine the life of the best and most productive men and nations, and ask yourselves whether a tree which is to grow proudly skywards can dispense with bad weather and storms. Whether misfortune and opposition, or every kind of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, distrust, severity, greed, and violence do not belong to the favourable conditions without which a great growth even of virtue is hardly possible?
Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves. It is to preserve the distance which separates us from other men. To grow more indifferent to hardship, to severity, to privation, and even to life itself.
Who can attain to anything great if he does not feel in himself the force and will to inflict great pain?
The discipline of suffering, of great suffering - do you not know that it is this discipline alone that has produced all the elevations of humanity so far?
Does not the discipline of the scientific spirit just commence when one no longer harbours any conviction?
There is nothing for which men ask to be paid dearer than for humiliation.
O my brothers, am I then cruel? But I say: that which is falling should also be pushed!
Illusions are certainly expensive amusements; but the destruction of illusions is still more expensive, if looked upon as an amusement, as it undoubtedly is by some people.
You have not yet suffered enough! For you suffer only from yourselves, you have not yet suffered from man.
But are there many honest people who will admit that it is pleasing to give pain?
But not to perish from internal distress and doubt when one inflicts great suffering and hears the cry of suffering : that is great, that belongs to greatness.
But what if pleasure and pain should be so closely connected that he who wants the greatest possible amount of the one must also have the greatest possible amount of the other, that he who wants to experience the "heavenly high jubilation," must also be ready to be "sorrowful unto death"?
One pays dearly for being immortal: one must die many times during his life.
The ability to suffer is a small matter - weak women and even slaves can acheive virtuosity in that.
Doing ill to those on whom we have to make our power felt; for pain is a far more sensitive means for that purpose than pleasure: pain always asks concerning the cause, while pleasure is inclined to keep within itself and not look backward.
I have given a name to my pain, and call it "dog".
He who bears injustice alone is terrible to behold.
Pity is the most pleasant feeling in those who have not much pride and have no prospect of great conquests; for them the easy prey - and that is what all who suffer are - is enchanting.
In pain there is as much wisdom as in pleasure: like the latter it is one of the best self preservatives of a species.
But this word will I say to my enemies: What is all manslaughter in comparison with what you have done to me!
You are treading the path to your greatness: no one shall follow you here! Your passage has effaced the path behind you, and above that path stands written: Impossibility.
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