ISBN: 9798480886139

My rating: 69/100

See Book Notes for other books I have read. If you like my notes, go buy it!

Key Points and Themes

I ended up taking very few notes in this book, and feel that it was not as great as many of his other works. Unless your goal is to read all of Nietzsche’s works then it’s probably worth skipping. Better content can be found elsewhere in his writings.

The Psychologist Speaks

Profound suffering makes noble; it separates.

Epilogue

Only great suffering is the ultimate emancipator of spirit, for it teaches one that vast suspiciousness

Only great suffering … forces us philosophers to descend into our nethermost depths, and to not let go of all trustfulness, all good-nature, all whittling down, all mildness, all mediocrity.

Supposing we withdraw from pain into nonentity, into the deaf, dumb, and rigid sphere of self-surrender; self-forgetfulness, self-effacement: one is another person when one leaves these protracted and dangerous exercises in the art of self-mastery one has one note of interrogation the more, and above all one has the will henceforth to ask more, deeper, sterner, harder, more wicked, and more silent questions, than anyone has ever asked on earth before … Trust in life has vanished; life itself has become a problem. – But let no one think that one has therefore become a spirit of gloom or a blind owl! Even love of life is still possible, – but it is a different kind of love … It is the love for a woman whom we doubt …

How much more repulsive pleasure now is to him, that coarse, heavy, buff colored pleasure.

How the stage-cry of passion now stings in our ears; how strange to our taste the whole romantic riot and sensuous bustle, which the cultured mob are so fond of, together with its aspirations to the sublime, to the exalted and the distorted, have become.