On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life
Friedrich Nietzsche
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Without forgetting it is quite impossible to live at all.”
“Human existence basically is──a never to be completed imperfect tense.”
“One who cannot leave himself behind on the threshold of the moment and forget the past, who cannot stand on a single point, like a goddess of victory, without fear or giddiness, will never know what happiness is; and, worse still, will never do anything that makes others happy.”
“Happiness: being able to forget or, to express in a more learned fashion.”
“The crowd of influences streaming on the young soul is so great, the clods of barbarism and violence flung at him so strange and overwhelming, that an assumed stupidity is his only refuge.”
“The beast lives unhistorically; for it 'goes into' the present, like a number, without leaving any curious remainder.”
“As if it were the task of every time to be just to everything before it! Ages and generations have never the right to be the judges of all previous ages and generations: only to the rarest men in them can that difficult mission fall. Who compels you to judge? If it is your wish—you must prove first that you are capable of justice. As judges, you must stand higher than that which is to be judged: as it is, you have only come later. The guests that come last to the table should rightly take the last places: and will you take the first? Then do some great and mighty deed: the place may be prepared for you then, even though you do come last.”
“When death brings at last the desired forgetfulness, it abolishes life and being together, and sets the seal on the knowledge that "being" is merely a continual "has been," a thing that lives by denying and destroying and contradicting itself.”
“What a school of politeness is such a contemplation of the past! To take everything objectively, to be angry at nothing, to love nothing, to understand everything-- makes one gentle and pliable.”
“There is something the child sees that he does not see; something the child hears that he does not hear; and this something is the most important thing of all. Because he does not understand it, his understanding is more childish than the child's and more simple than simplicity itself; in spite of the many clever wrinkles on his parchment face, and the masterly play of his fingers in unravelling the knots.”
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Book Keywords:
death, forgetfulness, overwhelming, wisdom-in-ignorance, personal-history, aging, so-good, living, happiness, youth, history, life, forgetting, amazing, memory, human-existence, lost-wonder, complacency, the-present-moment, consciousness, culture, historical-criticism, apathy