the most unjust condition in the world

think of a man tossed and torn by a powerful passion for a woman or a great thought: how his world is changed! Glancing backwards he feels blind, listening sideways he hears what is foreign as a dull meaningless sound; what he perceives at all he has never perceived so before, so tangibly near, coloured, full of sound and light as though he were apprehending it with all his senses at once. All evaluations are changed and devalued; there is so much he can no longer value because he can hardly feel it: he asks himself whether he has been fooled the whole time by alien words and alien opinions; he is astonished that his memory so tirelessly runs in circles and is yet too weak and too tired to leap even once out of this circle. It is the most unjust condition in the world, narrow, ungrateful to the past, blind to dangers, deaf to warnings, a little living whirlpool in a dead sea of night and forgetting …

Nietzsche, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life §1

self-evident

All theology and its opposition aside, it is self-evident that the world is not good and not evil, let alone the best or the worst, and that these concepts "good" and "evil" make sense only in refer­ence to men. Perhaps even there, as they are generally used, they are not justified: we must in every case dispense with both the reviling and the glorifying view of the world. 

Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human 28

what kind of thing

With all the things that attract you or that are useful or that are appreciated remember to say what kind of thing it is, starting from the smallest things. If you are fond of a jug, say, "I am fond of a jug"; for if it gets broken, you will not be upset. If you kiss your child or wife, say that you are kissing a human being; for when it dies you will not be upset. 

The Enchiridion Ch. 3

Fear and love

– Fear has furthered the universal knowl­edge of humanity more than love, for fear wants to discern who the other person is, what he can do and what he wants: to deceive oneself here would mean danger and disadvantage. Inversely, love has a secret impulse to see in the other as much of the beautiful as possible or to elevate the other as high as possible: for love to deceive itself here would mean pleasure and advantage – and so it does. 

Nietzsche, The Dawn 309

Stoical

–There is a serenity the Stoic possesses whenever he feels constricted by the duties he has prescribed for his way of life; he takes pleasure in himself as the ruler. 

Nietzsche, The Dawn 251

The two directions

 If we attempt to examine the mirror in itself, we uncover, finally, nothing but the things upon it. If we want to seize hold of the things, we come up, in the end, with nothing but the mirror. – This is, in the most general terms, the history of knowledge. 

Nietzsche, The Dawn 243

People with misspent lives.

Some are of such material that society may fashion this or that of them: do with them what one will, they will consider themselves content and find no reason to bemoan a misspent life. Others are made of too exceptional a material – it needn't be, for all that, exceptionally fine, but merely uncommon – not to consider they are sure to fare ill unless, as the sole exception, they are able to live in keeping with their sole purpose in life: in all other cases so­ciety will suffer the subsequent damages. For everything that appears to the individual as part of a misspent, failed life, his whole load of despondence, paralysis, malaise, irritability, cov­etousness, he hurls back onto society – and thus there forms around society a bad, stifling atmosphere and, in the most fa­vorable case, a storm cloud. 

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn 213

the philosopher-artist

Something is wrong with the world.– So exclaims the eternal gadfly of those two most impertinent career-seminarists, the classical philosopher and the modern artist. What creator is not driven by the insatiable perception of an existence gone off-kilter, of a world in need of improvement? (Perhaps it is only the blinding vision of the priestly class which exceeds the candour of the creators of systems and the diamond-chislers of insight in their passion for edification.) These visionaries – and it is indeed their inflated sense of vision which impels them – have been graced with an endless reserve of stamina, allowing them to dip more frequently than most into the blather of criticism and unfulfilled desires that ceaselessly rages below the banal language of every-day living, as fodder for a system of impressive manoeuvres.

Perhaps, one could say, there are some who attempt to capture and reflect the wonderful things in life, the most harmonious of concordances or the most accidental of beauties, and put this positivity into the world, as a monument. Ha! Artists no longer, mere craftsmen, condemned to languish in the factory-houses of "decorative arts." The successful modern artist has become as much of a system builder as the classical philosopher, both hanging their perceptions in the esoteric veil of principles. Creation has become nothing but an edifying flourish, an inside joke, dependent for its success upon the prestige of those who "get it." A recourse to prestige; what statement of knowledge is not undermined by its own backwards movement? A backwards movement made all the more insidious by the very fact that the trumpets which accompany it blare the endless ditty of edification - even if the goal is no longer moral cohesion or "happiness" but merely awareness.

the tip of the triangle

The profiteers of limited resources have no greater interest than sustaining demand for that resource: the scarcer it is, the more labour that goes into refining it for consumption, the higher its market price, and the more profit that can be siphoned into the off-shore accounts of the 1% (of course, including those loyal servants in the civil service who have made it their prerogative to convince the people that if only we keep doing what we've been doing, if only we milk the honey out of our inheritance – no matter how caked in the rust of our primitive selves' fear it may be - if only we play the part, then, ultimately, will we rest assured of security and salvation - maybe not for all, but at least for those who have made themselves deserving of control). It would seem that innovation and advancement – evolution, dare the word be uttered– is no less stifled by the weak, sick, and the last than it is by the strong, proud, and the first.

justice & freedom

Without having anything against jus­tice, one may be allowed to point out that the word conceals the profound truth of its contrary, which is precisely freedom. Under the mask of justice, it is true that general freedom takes on the lackluster and neutral appearance of existence subjected to the necessities: if anything, it is a narrowing of lim­its to what is most just; it is not a dangerous breaking-loose, a meaning that the word has lost. It is a guarantee against the risk of servitude, not a will to assume those risks without which there is no freedom.

Bataille, The Accursed Share Vol. 1 (38)

existence itself as a punishment

People of diligence and goodwill, lend a hand in the one work of eradicating from the face of the earth the concept of punishment, which has overrun the whole world! There is no more noxious weed! Nor only has it been implanted into the consequences of our modes of behaviour – and how horrible and repulsive to reason this alone is: to interpret cause and effect as cause and punishment! – but they've gone further still and, with this infamous art of interpreting the concept of punishment, they have robbed of its innocence the whole, pure contingency of events. Indeed, they have driven this madness to such an ex­treme as to bid us experience existence itself as a punishment­ – it is as if, heretofore, the phantasms of jailers and hangmen had been conducting the education of the human race. 

Nietzsche, Dawn 13