The Dawn of Day · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
484.
GOING OUR OWN WAY.—When we take the decisive step, and make up our minds to follow our own path, a secret is suddenly revealed to us: it is clear that all those who had hitherto been friendly to us and on intimate terms with us judged themselves to be superior to us, and are offended now. The best among them are indulgent, and are content to wait patiently until we once more find the “right path”—they know it, apparently. Others make fun of us, and pretend that we have been seized with a temporary attack of mild insanity, or spitefully point out some seducer. The more malicious say we are vain fools, and do their best to blacken our motives; while the worst of all see in us their greatest enemy, some one who is thirsting for revenge after many years of dependence,—and are afraid of us. What, then, are we to do? My own opinion is that we should begin our sovereignty by promising to all our acquaintances in advance a whole year’s amnesty for sins of every kind. _A._ But why this solitude? _B._ I am not angry with anybody. But when I am alone it seems to me that I can see my friends in a clearer and rosier light than when I am with them; and when I loved and felt music best I lived far from it. It would seem that I must have distant perspectives in order that I may think well of things.
GOLD AND HUNGER.—Here and there we meet with a man who changes into gold everything that he touches. But some fine evil day he will discover that he himself must starve through this gift of his. Everything around him is brilliant, superb, and unapproachable in its ideal beauty, and now he eagerly longs for things which it is impossible for him to turn into gold—and how intense is this longing! like that of a starving man for a meal! Query: What will he seize? SHAME.—Look at that noble steed pawing the ground, snorting, longing for a ride, and loving its accustomed rider—but, shameful to relate, the rider cannot mount to-day, he is tired.—Such is the shame felt by the weary thinker in the presence of his own philosophy!
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