Man Alone with Himself

This posthumously published book contains quotes and aphorism from german philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In this book, Nietzsche argues that humans are not content with simply living in the world as it is, they have a fundamental drive for creating, changing[as per their ideals and beliefs] and expressing themselves in this world and this is what give them a purpose and meaning of life.

Although, I’ve not understood substantial part of this book (not sure if the un-understanding is due to some not-used-to-idiomatic english or subject matter needs considerable amount of patience to digest), following are some of my “favroite” [which, I believe, captures the essence of intention of the book] quotes from the book:

We criticize a thinker more sharply when he proposes a tenet that is disagreeable to us; and yet it would be more reasonable to do this when we find his tenet agreeable.

Man is very well defended against himself, against his own spying and sieges; usually he is able to make out no more of himself than his outer fortifications. The actual stronghold is inaccessible to him, even invisible, unless friends and enemies turn traitor and lead him there by a secret path.

Friend. Shared joy, not compassion, makes a friend.

Using high and low tides. For the purpose of knowledge, one must know how to use that inner current that draws us to a thing, and then the one that, after a time, draws us away from it.

Out in nature. We like to be out in nature so much because it has no opinion about us.

Human lot. Whoever thinks more deeply knows that he is always wrong, whatever his acts and judgments.

Made an enemy to one’s advantage. Men who are unable to make their merit completely clear to the world seek to awaken an intense enmity towards themselves. Then they have the comfort of thinking that this stands between their merit and its recognition – and that other people assume the same thing, which is of great advantage to their own importance.

A little knowledge: A little knowledge is more successful than complete knowledge: it conceives things as simpler than they are, thus resulting in opinions that are more comprehensible and persuasive.

Arrogance as the last means of comfort. If a man accounts for a misfortune, or his intellectual inadequacies, or his illness by seeing them as his predetermined fate, his ordeal, or mysterious punishment for something he had done earlier, he is thereby making his own nature interesting, and imagining himself superior to his fellow men. The proud sinner is a familiar figure in all religious sects.

Growth of happiness: Near to the sorrow of the world, and often upon its volcanic earth, man has laid out his little gardens of happiness; whether he approaches life as one who wants only knowledge from existence, or as one who yields and resigns himself, or as one who rejoices in a difficulty overcome – everywhere he will find some happiness sprouting up next to the trouble. The more volcanic the earth, the greater the happiness will be – but it would be ludicrous to say that this happiness justified suffering per se.

Deceptive and yet firm: When walking around the top of an abyss, or crossing a deep stream on a plank, we need a railing, not to hold on to (for it would collapse with us at once), but rather to achieve the visual image of security. Likewise, when we are young, we need people who unconsciously offer us the service of that railing; it is true that they would not help us if we really were in great danger and wanted to lean on them; but they give us the comforting sensation of protection nearby (for example, fathers, teachers, friends, as we generally know all three).

Learning to love: We must learn to love, learn to be kind, and this from earliest youth; if education or chance give us no opportunity to practice these feelings, our soul becomes dry and unsuited even to understanding the tender inventions of loving people. Likewise, hatred must be learned and nurtured, if one wishes to become a proficient hater: otherwise the germ for that, too, will gradually wither.

Love and respect: Love desires; fear avoids. That is why it is impossible, at least in the same time span, to be loved and respected by the same person. For the man who respects another, acknowledges his power; that is, he fears it: his condition is one of awe. But love acknowledges no power, nothing that separates, differentiates, ranks higher or subordinates. Because the state of being loved carries with it no respect, ambitious men secretly or openly balk against it.

?: What is dangerous about free opinions. The casual entertainment of free opinions is like an itch; giving in to it, one begins to rub the area; finally there is an open, aching wound; that is, the free opinion finally begins to disturb and torment us in our attitude to life, in our human relationships.

When, as happens so often, we let our annoyance out on others, while we are actually feeling it about ourselves, we are basically trying to cloud and delude our judgment; we want to motivate our annoyance a posteriori by the oversights and inadequacies of others, so we can lose sight of ourselves. Religiously strict people, who judge themselves without mercy, are also those who have most often spoken ill of mankind in general. There has never been a saint who reserves sins to himself and virtues to others: he is as rare as the man who, following Buddha’s precept, hides his goodness from people and lets them see of himself only what is bad.

People as bad poets: Just as bad poets, in the second half of a line, look for a thought to fit their rhyme, so people in the second half of their lives, having become more anxious, look for the actions, attitudes, relationships that suit those of their earlier life, so that everything will harmonize outwardly. But then they no longer have any powerful thought to rule their life and determine it anew; rather, in its stead, comes the intention of finding a rhyme.

Alienated from the present: There are great advantages in for once removing ourselves distinctly from our time and letting ourselves be driven from its shore back into the ocean of former world views. Looking at the coast from that perspective, we survey for the first time its entire shape, and when we near it again, we have the advantage of understanding it better on the whole than do those who have never left it.

Solitary people: Some people are so used to solitude with themselves that they never compare themselves to others, but spin forth their monologue of a life in a calm, joyous mood, holding good conversations with themselves, even laughing. But if they are made to compare themselves with others, they tend to a brooding underestimation of their selves: so that they have to be forced to learn again from others to have a good, fair opinion of themselves. And even from this learned opinion they will always want to detract or reduce something. Thus one must grant certain men their solitude, and not be silly enough, as often happens, to pity them for it.

“Wherever the thinker behaves like a genius, calling himself one, and looking down like a higher being who deserves authority, he is counting on the class in the overwhelming majority”

Our supreme insights must – and should! – sound like follies, in certain cases like crimes, when they come impermissibly to the ears of those who are not predisposed and predestined for them. The exoteric and the esoteric as philosophers formerly distinguished them, among the Indians as among the Greeks, Persians and Moslems, in short wherever one believed in an order of rank and not in equality and equal rights – differ one from another not so much in that the exoteric stands outside and sees, evaluates, measures, judges from the outside, not from the inside: what is more essential is that this class sees things from below – but the esoteric sees them from above! There are heights of the soul seen from which even tragedy ceases to be tragic; and, taking all the woe of the world together, who could venture to assert that the sight of it would have to seduce and compel us to pity and thus to a doubling of that woe?… What serves the higher type of man as food or refreshment must to a very different and inferior type be almost poison. The virtues of the common man would perhaps indicate vice and weakness in a philosopher; it may be possible that if a lofty type of man degenerated and perished, he would only thus acquire qualities on whose account it would prove necessary in the lower world into which he had sunk henceforth to venerate him as a saint. There are books which possess an opposite value for soul and health depending on whether the lower soul, the lower vitality, or the higher and more powerful avails itself of them: in the former case they are dangerous, disintegrative books, which produces dissolution, in the latter they are herald calls challenging the most courageous to their courage. Books for everybody are always malodorous books: the smell of petty people clings to them. Where the people eats and drinks, even where it worships, there is usually a stink. One should not go into churches if one wants to breathe pure air.