It is a self-deception of philosophers and moralists to imagine that they escape decadence by opposing it. That is beyond their will; and, however little they acknowledge it, one later discovers that they were among the most powerful promoters of decadence.
Whoever commits to paper what he suffers becomes a melancholy author: but he becomes a serious author when he tells us what he suffered and why he now reposes in joy.
Every living body continuously eliminates feces, it rejects what is not serviceable to the assimilating organism: what man despises, what arouses his disgust, what he calls evil, are excrements.
It has therewith come to be recognized that the history of moral valuations is at the same time the history of an error, the error of responsibility, which is based upon the error of the freedom of will.
It is far pleasanter to injure and afterwards beg forgiveness than to be injured and grant forgiveness. He who does the former gives evidence of power and afterwards of kindness of character.
The unlucky hand dealt to clear and precise writers is that people assume they are superficial and so do not go to any trouble inreading them: and the lucky hand dealt to unclear ones is that the reader does go to some trouble and then attributes the pleasure he experiences in his own zeal to them.
Willing emancipateth: that is the true doctrine of will and emancipation - so teacheth you Zarathustra. No longer willing, and no longer valuing, and no longer creating! Ah, that that great debility may ever be far from me! And also in discerning do I feel only my will's procreating and evolving delight.
We become aware, however, that all customs, even the hardest, grow pleasanter and milder with time, and that the severest way of life may become a habit and therefore a pleasure.