The Body's Despair
Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus Spake Zarathustra

A vision suggesting that the concept of an 'other world' is merely a product of the body's despair and that existence can only be understood through human experience.

...To me the convalescent would it now be suffering and torment to believe in such phantoms: suffering would it now be to me, and humiliation. Thus speak I to backworldsmen. Suffering was it, and impotence—that created all backworlds; and the short madness of happiness, which only the greatest sufferer experienceth. Weariness, which seeketh to get to the ultimate with one leap, with a death-leap; a poor ignorant weariness, unwilling even to will any longer: that created all Gods and backworlds.
Believe me, my brethren! It was the body which despaired of the body—it groped with the fingers of the infatuated spirit at the ultimate walls. Believe me, my brethren! It was the body which despaired of the earth—it heard the bowels of existence speaking unto it. And then it sought to get through the ultimate walls with its head—and not with its head only—into “the other world.” But that “other world” is well concealed from man, that dehumanised, inhuman world, which is a celestial naught; and the bowels of existence do not speak unto man, except as man. Verily, it is difficult to prove all being, and hard to make it speak.
Tell me, ye brethren, is not the strangest of all things best proved? Yea, this ego, with its contradiction and perplexity, speaketh most uprightly of its being—this creating, willing, evaluing ego, which is the measure and value of things. And this most upright existence, the ego—it speaketh of the body, and still implieth the body, even when it museth and raveth and fluttereth with broken wings. Always more uprightly learneth it to speak, the ego; and the more it learneth, the more doth it...
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The Chaotic Soul
Friedrich Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil

The author describes the 'modern soul' as a chaotic repository of past cultures, arguing that our 'historical sense' is an ignoble but useful tool that allows us access to the 'semi-barbarity' of all previous civilizations.

...y, or an individual has lived, the "divining instinct" for the relationships of these valuations, for the relation of the authority of the valuations to the authority of the operating forces),--this historical sense, which we Europeans claim as our specialty, has come to us in the train of the enchanting and mad semi-barbarity into which Europe has been plunged by the democratic mingling of classes and races--it is only the nineteenth century that has recognized this faculty as its sixth sense.
Owing to this mingling, the past of every form and mode of life, and of cultures which were formerly closely contiguous and superimposed on one another, flows forth into us "modern souls"; our instincts now run back in all directions, we ourselves are a kind of chaos: in the end, as we have said, the spirit perceives its advantage therein. By means of our semi-barbarity in body and in desire, we have secret access everywhere, such as a noble age never had; we have access above all to the labyrinth of imperfect civilizations, and to every form of semi-barbarity that has at any time existed on earth; and in so far as the most considerable part…
For instance, we enjoy Homer once more: it is perhaps our happiest acquisition that we know how to appreciate Homer, whom men of distinguished culture (as the French of the seventeenth century, like Saint-Evremond, who reproached him for his ESPRIT VASTE, and even Voltaire, the last echo of the century) cannot and could not so easily appropriate--whom they scarcely permitted themselves to enjoy. The very decided Yea and Nay of their palate, their promptly ready disgust, their hesitating relucta...
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Creation's Uncleanliness
Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus Spake Zarathustra

Nietzsche observes that the act of creation is inherently painful and 'unclean,' much like childbirth. He suggests that creators must distance themselves and 'wash their souls' after the filth of bringing something new into the world.

...e it is said “like and like,” and “hand washeth hand”:—they have neither the right nor the power for YOUR self-seeking! In your self-seeking, ye creating ones, there is the foresight and foreseeing of the pregnant! What no one’s eye hath yet seen, namely, the fruit—this, sheltereth and saveth and nourisheth your entire love. Where your entire love is, namely, with your child, there is also your entire virtue! Your work, your will is YOUR “neighbour”: let no false values impose upon you! 12.
Ye creating ones, ye higher men! Whoever hath to give birth is sick; whoever hath given birth, however, is unclean. Ask women: one giveth birth, not because it giveth pleasure. The pain maketh hens and poets cackle. Ye creating ones, in you there is much uncleanliness. That is because ye have had to be mothers. A new child: oh, how much new filth hath also come into the world! Go apart! He who hath given birth shall wash his soul!
13. Be not virtuous beyond your powers! And seek nothing from yourselves opposed to probability! Walk in the footsteps in which your fathers’ virtue hath already walked! How would ye rise high, if your fathers’ will should not rise with you? He, however, who would be a firstling, let him take care lest he also become a lastling! And where the vices of your fathers are, there should ye not set up as saints! He whose fathers were inclined for women, and for strong wine and flesh of wildboar...
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Senses as Foundation
Friedrich Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil

The author asserts that all reliable truth and certainty are fundamentally rooted in sensory experience rather than abstract reasoning.

...131. The sexes deceive themselves about each other: the reason is that in reality they honour and love only themselves (or their own ideal, to express it more agreeably). Thus man wishes woman to be peaceable: but in fact woman is ESSENTIALLY unpeaceable, like the cat, however well she may have assumed the peaceable demeanour. 132. One is punished best for one's virtues. 133. He who cannot find the way to HIS ideal, lives more frivolously and shamelessly than the man without an ideal. 134.
From the senses originate all trustworthiness, all good conscience, all evidence of truth.
135. Pharisaism is not a deterioration of the good man; a considerable part of it is rather an essential condition of being good. 136. The one seeks an accoucheur for his thoughts, the other seeks some one whom he can assist: a good conversation thus originates. 137. In intercourse with scholars and artists one readily makes mistakes of opposite kinds: in a remarkable scholar one not infrequently finds a mediocre man; and often, even in a mediocre artist, one finds a very remarkable man. 13...
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Failure's Fertility
Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus Spake Zarathustra

The author encourages 'higher men' to embrace their failures as signs of the struggling future within them, urging them to find hope in small, perfect things and the ability to laugh at themselves.

...led—thus, ye higher men, have I often seen you slink aside. A CAST which ye made had failed. But what doth it matter, ye dice-players! Ye had not learned to play and mock, as one must play and mock! Do we not ever sit at a great table of mocking and playing? And if great things have been a failure with you, have ye yourselves therefore—been a failure? And if ye yourselves have been a failure, hath man therefore—been a failure? If man, however, hath been a failure: well then! never mind! 15.
The higher its type, always the seldomer doth a thing succeed. Ye higher men here, have ye not all—been failures? Be of good cheer; what doth it matter? How much is still possible! Learn to laugh at yourselves, as ye ought to laugh! What wonder even that ye have failed and only half-succeeded, ye half-shattered ones! Doth not—man’s FUTURE strive and struggle in you? Man’s furthest, profoundest, star-highest issues, his prodigious powers—do not all these foam through one another in your vessel? What wonder that many a vessel shattereth! Learn to laugh at yourselves, as ye ought to laugh! Ye higher men, O, how much is still possible! And…
16. What hath hitherto been the greatest sin here on earth? Was it not the word of him who said: “Woe unto them that laugh now!” Did he himself find no cause for laughter on the earth? Then he sought badly. A child even findeth cause for it. He—did not love sufficiently: otherwise would he also have loved us, the laughing ones! But he hated and hooted us; wailing and teeth-gnashing did he promise us. Must one then curse immediately, when one doth not love? That—seemeth to me bad taste. Thu...
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