You want, if possible (and no “if possible” is crazier) to abolish suffering. And us? – it looks as though we would prefer it to be heightened and made even worse than it has ever been!… The discipline of suffering, of great suffering – don’t you know that this discipline has been the sole…
A throw that you made had failed. But what of that, you dice-throwers! You have not learnedto play and mock as a man ought to play and mock.Are we not always seated at a great tablefor play and mockery? And if great things you attemptedhave turned out failures,does that mean that you yourselves are…
Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman —a rope over an abyss. A dangerous across, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and stopping. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is…
‘Will a self’ – Active, successful natures act, not according to the dictum ‘know thyself’, but as if there hovered before them the commandment: will a self and thou shalt become a self… Assorted Opinions and Maxims, by Nietzsche, trans. by R. J. Hollingdale, aphorism 366 Gnothi Seauton (γνῶθι σεαυτόν), “know thyself!” is reported…
What is good? -All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man. What is bad? -Everything that is born of weakness. What is happiness? -The feeling that power is growing -That resistance is overcome. The Anti-Christ, by Friedrich Nietzsche, Trans. R. J. Hollingdale. aphorism 2 The good and…
In naturethe rule is not the state of distressit is superfluity, prodigality,even to the point of absurdity. The struggle for existence is only an exception,a temporary restriction of the will of life.The struggle, great and small,everywhere turns on ascendancy, on growth and extension,–in accordance with the will to powerwhich is the will of life….
Day three of recovery from covid. I am feeling somewhat better. I decided to attempt to mow the lawn. There is no doubt that being 75 years of age in combination with covid made the task a challenge. The passage of time. Nothing is absolved from the eroding effects of time. Clearly this varies…
I prefer not to take a break from daily writing. Still, Covid imposed a day off. Monday night I ran a high fever. I had delirious thoughts, attempting to connect ideas that promptly fell apart in my semi conscious misery. Now with Tylenol and Paxlovid I am feeling much better. I cannot get the…
‘Power against which much ill is done and mediated is worth more than impotence when it encounters only good’ -thus the Greeks felt. That is to say: they valued the feeling of power more highly than any sort of utility or good reputation. Daybreak by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, aphorism 360 Nietzsche…
My hometown. I spent several days in Durham to visit with some old friends. Now life has resumed for me in Batavia. I have lived nearly all of my adult life in the Midwest. The values and viewpoint of the middle of the Midwest are the composite self that most easily presents to my…
