_Sub specie aeterni._—A: "You withdraw faster and faster from the living; they will soon strike you out of their lists!"—B: "It is the only way to participate in the privilege of the dead." A: "In what privilege?"—B: "No longer having to die."
_Without Vanity._—When we love we want our defects to remain concealed,—not out of vanity, but lest the person loved should suffer therefrom. Indeed, the lover would like to appear as a God,—and not out of vanity either.
_What we Do._—What we do is never understood, but only praised and blamed.
_Ultimate Scepticism._—But what after all are man's truths?—They are his _irrefutable_ errors.
_Where Cruelty is Necessary._—He who is great is cruel to his second-rate virtues and judgments.
_With a high Aim._—With a high aim a person is superior even to justice, and not only to his deeds and his judges.
_What makes Heroic?_—To face simultaneously one's greatest suffering and one's highest hope.
_What dost thou Believe in?_—In this: That the weights of all things must be determined anew.
_What Saith thy Conscience?_—"Thou shalt become what thou art."
_Where are thy Greatest Dangers?_—In pity.
_What dost thou Love in others?_—My hopes.
_Whom dost thou call Bad?_—Him who always wants to put others to shame.
_What dost thou think most humane?_—To spare a person shame.
_What is the Seal of Liberty Attained?_—To be no longer ashamed of oneself.
This means that true love does not look for reciprocity.—TR.
Thou who with cleaving fiery lances The stream of my soul from its ice dost free, Till with a rush and a roar it advances To enter with glorious hoping the sea: Brighter to see and purer ever, Free in the bonds of thy sweet constraint,— So it praises thy wondrous endeavour, January, thou beauteous saint!
_For the New Year._—I still live, I still think; I must still live, for I must still think. _Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum._ To-day everyone takes the liberty of expressing his wish and his favourite thought: well, I also mean to tell what I have wished for myself to-day, and what thought first crossed my mind this year,—a thought which ought to be the basis, the pledge and the sweetening of all my future life! I want more and more to perceive the necessary characters in things as the beautiful:—I shall thus be one of those who beautify things. _Amor fati_: let that henceforth be my love! I do not want to wage war with the ugly. I do not want to accuse, I do not want even to accuse the accusers. _Looking aside_, let that be my sole negation! And all in all, to sum up: I wish to be at any time hereafter only a yea-sayer!