The Portable Nietzsche by Friedrich Nietzsche

Schopenhauer. With these I must come to terms when I have long wandered by myself; they shall tell me whether I am right or wrong; to them I want to listen when, in the process, they tell each other whether they are right or wrong. . . .

FROM The Wanderer and His Shadow
EDITOR’S NOTE
    This collection of aphorisms was first published in 1880, as the final sequel to Human, All-Too-Human .
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    [38]
    The bite of conscience . The bite of conscience, like the bite of a dog into a stone, is a stupidity.
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    [48]
    Prohibitions without reasons . A prohibition, the reason for which we do not understand or admit, is almost a command not only for the stubborn but also for those who thirst for knowledge: one risks an experiment to find out why the prohibition was pronounced. Moral prohibitions, like those of the Decalogue, are suitable only for an age of subjugated reason: now, such a prohibition as “Thou shalt not kill” or “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” presented without reasons, would have a harmful rather than a useful effect.
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    [85]
    The persecutor of God . Paul thought up the idea, and Calvin re-thought it, that for innumerable people damnation has been decreed from eternity, and that this beautiful world plan was instituted to reveal the glory of God: heaven and hell and humanity are thus supposed to exist—to satisfy the vanity of God! What cruel and insatiable vanity must have flared in the soul of the man who thought this up first, or second. Paul has remained Saul after all—the persecutor of God.
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    [86]
    Socrates . If all goes well, the time will come when, to develop oneself morally-rationally, one will take up the memorabilia of Socrates rather than the Bible, and when Montaigne and Horace will be employed as precursors and guides to the understanding of the simplest and most imperishable mediator-sage, Socrates. The roads of the most divergent philosophic ways of life lead back to him; at bottom they are the ways of life of the different temperaments, determined by reason and habit, and in all cases pointing with their peaks to joy in life and in one’s own self—from which one might well infer that the most characteristic feature of Socrates was that he shared in all temperaments. Above the founder of Christianity, Socrates is distinguished by the gay kind of seriousness and that wisdom full of pranks which constitute the best state of the soul of man. Moreover, he had the greater intelligence.
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    [124]
    The Faust idea . A little seamstress is seduced and made unhappy; a great scholar in all four branches of learning is the evildoer. Surely that could not have happened without supernatural interference? No, of course not! Without the aid of the incarnate devil the great scholar could never have accomplished this.
    Should this really be the greatest German “tragic idea,” as is said among Germans? But for Goethe even this idea was still too terrible. His mild heart could not help putting the little seamstress, “the good soul who forgot herself but once,” close to the saints after her involuntary death; indeed, by a trick played on the devil at the decisive moment, he even brought the great scholar to heaven at just the right time—“the good man” with the “darkling aspiration”! And there, in heaven, the lovers find each other again.
    Goethe once said that his nature was too conciliatory for the truly tragic.
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    [217]
    Classical and romantic. The classically disposed spirits no less than those romantically inclined—as these two species always exist—carry a vision of the future: but the former out of a strength of their time; the latter, out of its weakness.
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    [239]
    Why beggars still live. If all alms were given only from pity, all beggars would have starved long ago.
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    [240]
    Why beggars still live. The greatest giver of alms is cowardice.
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    [261]
    Letter . A letter is an unannounced visit;