What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure - as a mere automaton of duty?
The essential thing ‘in heaven and earth’ is that there should be a long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.
The strongest and most evil spirits have to date advanced mankind the most: they always rekindled the sleeping passions - all orderly arranged society lulls the passions to sleep; they always reawakened the sense of comparison, of contradiction, of delight in the new, the adventurous, the untried; they compelled men to set opinion against opinion, ideal plan against ideal plan.
There are the terrible ones who carry about in themselves the beast of prey, and have no choice except lusts or self-laceration. And even their lusts are self-laceration.
Socrates ... is the first philosopher of life [Lebensphilosoph], ... Thinking serves life, while among all previous philosophers life had served thought and knowledge. ... Thus Socratic philosophy is absolutely practical: it is hostile to all knowledge unconnected to ethical implications.
People buy their necessities in shops and have to pay dearly for them because they have to assist in paying for what is also on sale there but only rarely finds purchasers: the luxury and amusement goods. So it is that luxury continually imposes a tax on the simple people who have to do without it.