Free The Portable Nietzsche by Friedrich Nietzsche Page B

sphere of politics. For that reason everyone should now study at least one science from the bottom up: then he will know what method means and how important is the utmost circumspection. . . .

FROM Mixed Opinions and Maxims
EDITOR’S NOTE
    In 1879 Nietzsche brought out another collection of aphorisms under this title, as a sequel to Human, All-Too-Human , published the year before.
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    [77]
    Dissipation. The mother of dissipation is not joy but joylessness.
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    [95]
    â€œ Love .” The most subtle artifice that distinguishes Christianity from other religions is a word: it speaks of love . Thus it became the lyrical religion (whereas in both their other creations the Semites presented the world with heroic-epic religions). There is something so ambiguous and suggestive about the word love, something that speaks to memory and to hope, that even the lowest intelligence and the coldest heart still feel something of the glimmer of this word. The cleverest woman and the most vulgar man recall the relatively least selfish moments of their whole life, even if Eros has taken only a low flight with them; and for those countless ones who miss love, whether from their parents or their children or their beloved, and especially for people with sublimated sexuality, Christianity has always been a find.
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    [129]
    Readers of aphorisms . The worst readers of aphorisms are the author’s friends if they are intent on guessing back from the general to the particular instance to which the aphorism owes its origin; for with such pot-peeking they reduce the author’s whole effort to nothing; so that they deservedly gain, not a philosophic outlook or instruction, but—at best, or at worst—nothing more than the satisfaction of vulgar curiosity.
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    [141]
    Sign of rank . All poets and writers who are in love with the superlative want more than they are capable of.
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    [202]
    Jokes. A joke is the epigram on the death of a feeling.
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    [231]
    Humaneness in friendship and mastership. “If thou wilt go toward morning, then I will go toward evening”: to feel this way is a high sign of humaneness in a closer association: without this feeling, every friendship, every discipleship and pupilship, becomes at one time or another hypocrisy.
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    [248]
    Way to a Christian virtue. Learning from one’s enemies is the best way toward loving them; for it makes us grateful to them.
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    [271]
    Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life . The stage of life at which a philosopher found his doctrine reverberates through it; he cannot prevent this, however far above time and hour he may feel. Thus Schopenhauer’s philosophy remains the reflection of ardent and melancholy youth —it is no way of thinking for older people. And Plato’s philosophy recalls the middle thirties, when a cold and a hot torrent often roar toward each other, so that a mist and tender little clouds form—and under favorable circumstances and the rays of the sun, an enchanting rainbow.
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    [301]
    The party man . The true party man learns no longer —he only experiences and judges; while Solon, who was never a party man but pursued his goal alongside and above the parties, or against them, is characteristically the father of that plain maxim in which the health and inexhaustibility of Athens is contained: “I grow old and always continue to learn.”
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    [357]
    Unfaithfulness, a condition of mastership. Nothing avails: every master has but one disciple, and that one becomes unfaithful to him, for he too is destined for mastership.
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    [408]
    The journey to Hades. I too have been in the underworld, like Odysseus, and I shall yet return there often; and not only sheep have I sacrificed to be able to talk with a few of the dead, but I have not spared my own blood. Four pairs did not deny themselves to me as I sacrificed: Epicurus and Montaigne, Goethe and Spinoza, Plato and Rousseau, Pascal and