The Joyful Wisdom · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
321.
_A New Precaution._—Let us no longer think so much about punishing, blaming, and improving! We shall seldom be able to alter an individual, and if we should succeed in doing so, something else may also succeed, perhaps unawares: _we_ may have been altered by him! Let us rather see to it that our own influence on _all that is to come_ outweighs and overweighs his influence! Let us not struggle in direct conflict!—all blaming, punishing, and desire to improve comes under this category. But let us elevate ourselves all the higher! Let us ever give to our pattern more shining colours! Let us obscure the other by our light! No! We do not mean to become _darker_ ourselves on his account, like all that punish and are discontented! Let us rather go aside! Let us look away! _A Simile._—Those thinkers in whom all the stars move in cyclic orbits, are not the most profound. He who looks into himself, as into an immense universe, and carries Milky Ways in himself, knows also how irregular all Milky Ways are; they lead into the very chaos and labyrinth of existence. _Happiness in Destiny._—Destiny confers its greatest distinction upon us when it has made us fight for a time on the side of our adversaries. We are thereby _predestined_ to a great victory.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.