The really royal calling of the philosopher (as expressed by Alcuin the Anglo-Saxon): To correct what is wrong, and strengthen the right, and raise what is holy.
Mediocrity is the most effective mask a superior spirit can wear, because to the great majority, which is to say, to the mediocre,it will not suggest a disguise:--and yet it is precisely for their sake that he puts it on--so as not to arouse them, and, indeed, not infrequently to avoid this out of pity and benevolence.
Free will appears unfettered, deliberate; it is boundlessly free, wandering, the spirit. But fate is a necessity; unless we believe that world history is a dream-error, the unspeakable sorrows of mankind fantasies, and that we ourselves are but the toys of our fantasies. Fate is the boundless force of opposition against free will. Free will without fate is just as unthinkable as spirit without reality, good without evil. Only antithesis creates the quality.
I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.
Do not be deceived! The busiest people harbor the greatest weariness, their restlessness is weakness--they no longer have the capacity for waiting and idleness.
To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.
The small force that it takes to launch a boat into the stream should not be confused with the force of the stream that carries it along: but this confusion appears in nearly all biographies.