_Sub specie æterni._--A: "You withdraw faster and faster from the living; they will soon strike you out of their lists!"--B: "It is the only way to participate in the privilege of the dead." A: "In what privilege?"--B: "No longer having to die."
_Without Vanity._--When we love we want our defects to remain concealed,--not out of vanity, but lest the person loved should suffer therefrom. Indeed, the lover would like to appear as a God,--and not out of vanity either.
_What we Do._--What we do is never understood, but only praised and blamed.
_Ultimate Scepticism._--But what after all are man's truths?--They are his _irrefutable_ errors.
_Where Cruelty is Necessary._--He who is great is cruel to his second-rate virtues and judgments.
_With a high Aim._--With a high aim a person is superior even to justice, and not only to his deeds and his judges.
_What makes Heroic?_--To face simultaneously one's greatest suffering and one's highest hope.
_What dost thou Believe in?_--In this: That the weights of all things must be determined anew.
_What Saith thy Conscience?_--"Thou shalt become what thou art."
_Where are thy Greatest Dangers?_--In pity.
_What dost thou Love in others?_--My hopes.
_Whom dost thou call Bad?_--Him who always wants to put others to shame.
_What dost thou think most humane?_--To spare a person shame.
_What is the Seal of Attained Liberty?_--To be no longer ashamed of oneself.
Thou who with cleaving fiery lances The stream of my soul from its ice dost free, Till with a rush and a roar it advances To enter with glorious hoping the sea: Brighter to see and purer ever, Free in the bonds of thy sweet constraint,-- So it praises thy wondrous endeavour, January, thou beauteous saint!
_For the New Year._--I still live, I still think; I must still live, for I must still think. _Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum._ To-day everyone takes the liberty of expressing his wish and his favourite thought: well, I also mean to tell what I have wished for myself to-day, and what thought first crossed my mind this year,--a thought which ought to be the basis, the pledge and the sweetening of all my future life! I want more and more to perceive the necessary characters in things as the beautiful:--I shall thus be one of those who beautify things. _Amor fati:_ let that henceforth be my love! I do not want to wage war with the ugly. I do not want to accuse, I do not want even to accuse the accusers. _Looking aside,_ let that be my sole negation! And all in all, to sum up: I wish to be at any time hereafter only a yea-sayer!