Friedrich Nietzsche

Actions can be promised, but not feelings, for these are involuntary.

It seems that in or­der to in­scribe them­selves upon the heart of hu­man­ity with ever­last­ing claims, all great things have first to wander about the earth as enorm­ous and awe-in­spir­ing ca­ri­ca­tures:

And in fact, I myself do not believe that anybody ever looked into the world with a distrust as deep as mine,

some play upon words

the Ved­anta doc­trine in Asia, and Platon­ism in Europe

Sup­pos­ing, in ef­fect, that man is not just the “meas­ure of things.”

To re­cog­nise un­truth as a con­di­tion of life;

said a mor­al­istic ped­ant and trifle-re­tailer, “that I hon­our and re­spect an un­selfish man: not, how­ever, be­cause he is un­selfish, but be­cause I think he has a right to be use­ful to an­other man at his own ex­pense.

That as men of the “his­tor­ical sense” we have our vir­tues, is not to be dis­puted:—we are un­pre­ten­tious, un­selfish, mod­est, brave, ha­bitu­ated to self-con­trol and self-re­nun­ci­ation, very grate­ful, very pa­tient, very com­plais­ant—but with all this we are per­haps not very “taste­ful.”

The ten­sion of soul in mis­for­tune which com­mu­nic­ates to it its en­ergy, its shud­der­ing in view of rack and ruin, its in­vent­ive­ness and bravery in un­der­go­ing, en­dur­ing, in­ter­pret­ing, and ex­ploit­ing mis­for­tune, and whatever depth, mys­tery, dis­guise, spirit, ar­ti­fice, or great­ness has been be­stowed upon the soul—has it not been be­stowed through suf­fer­ing, through the dis­cip­line of great suf­fer­ing? In man creature and cre­ator are united: in man there is not only mat­ter, shred, ex­cess, clay, mire, folly, chaos;