The Dawn of Day · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
566.
LIVING CHEAPLY.—The cheapest and most innocent mode of life is that of the thinker; for, to mention at once its most important feature, he has the greatest need of those very things which others neglect and look upon with contempt. In the second place he is easily pleased and has no desire for any expensive pleasures. His task is not difficult, but, so to speak, southern; his days and nights are not wasted by remorse; he moves, eats, drinks, and sleeps in a manner suited to his intellect, in order that it may grow calmer, stronger, and clearer. Again, he takes pleasure in his body and has no reason to fear it; he does not require society, except from time to time in order that he may afterwards go back to his solitude with even greater delight. He seeks and finds in the dead compensation for the living, and can even replace his friends in this way—viz., by seeking out among the dead the best who have ever lived.—Let us consider whether it is not the contrary desires and habits which have made the life of man expensive, and as a consequence difficult and often unbearable. In another sense, however, the thinker’s life is certainly the most expensive, for nothing is too good for him; and it would be an intolerable privation for him to be deprived of the best.
IN THE FIELD.—“We should take things more cheerfully than they deserve; especially because for a very long time we have taken them more seriously than they deserved.” So speak the brave soldiers of knowledge. POET AND BIRD.—The bird Phœnix showed the poet a glowing scroll which was being gradually consumed in the flames. “Be not alarmed,” said the bird, “it is your work! It does not contain the spirit of the age, and to a still less extent the spirit of those who are against the age: so it must be burnt. But that is a good sign. There is many a dawn of day.” TO THE LONELY ONES.—If we do not respect the honour of others in our soliloquies as well as in what we say publicly, we are not gentlemen. LOSSES.—There are some losses which communicate to the soul a sublimity in which it ceases from wailing, and wanders about silently, as if in the shade of some high and dark cypresses. THE BATTLE-FIELD DISPENSARY OF THE SOUL.—What is the most efficacious remedy?—Victory. LIFE SHALL COMFORT US.—If, like the thinker, we live habitually amid the great current of ideas and feelings, and even our dreams follow this current, we expect comfort and peacefulness from life, while others wish to rest from life when they give themselves up to meditation. CASTING ONE’S SKIN.—The snake that cannot cast its skin perishes. So too with those minds which are prevented from changing their views: they cease to be minds. NEVER FORGET!—The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.