The Joyful Wisdom · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
304.
_In Doing we Leave Undone._—In the main all those moral systems are distasteful to me which say: "Do not do this! Renounce! Overcome thyself!" On the other hand I am favourable to those moral systems which stimulate me to do something, and to do it again from morning till evening, and dream of it at night, and think of nothing else but to do it _well_, as well as it is possible for _me_ alone! From him who so lives there fall off one after the other the things that do not pertain to such a life: without hatred or antipathy, he sees _this_ take leave of him to-day, and _that_ to-morrow, like the yellow leaves which every livelier breeze strips from the tree: or he does not see at all that they take leave of him, so firmly is his eye fixed upon his goal, and generally forward, not sideways, backward, nor downward. "Our doing must determine what we leave undone; in that we do, we leave undone"—so it pleases me, so runs _my placitum_. But I do not mean to strive with open eyes for my impoverishment; I do not like any of the negative virtues whose very essence is negation and self-renunciation.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.