Daybreak

572

Life must offer us a rest.  If, as the thinker does, one usually dwells in a great stream of thought and feeling, and pursues this stream even in nocturnal dreams: then what one desires of life is rest and silence   while others, conversely, want to take a rest from life when they give themselves over to meditation.

Friedrich NietzscheDaybreak: Book V - Aphorism #57217913 years, 1 month ago 

573

Sloughing one's skin.  The snake that cannot slough its skin, perishes. Likewise spirits which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be spirits.

Friedrich NietzscheDaybreak: Book V - Aphorism #57321913 years, 1 month ago 

574

Do not forget!  The higher we soar, the smaller we seem to those who cannot fly.

Friedrich NietzscheDaybreak: Book V - Aphorism #57420713 years, 1 month ago 

575

We aeronauts of the spirit!  All those brave birds which fly out into the distance, into the farthest distance  it is certain! somewhere or other they will be unable to go on and will perch on a mast or a bare cliffface  and they will even be thankful for this miserable accommodation! But who could venture to infer from that, that there was not an immense open space before them, that they had flown as far as one could fly! All our great teachers and predecessors have at last come to a stop and it is not with the noblest or most graceful of gestures that weariness comes to a stop: it will be the same with you and me! But what does that matter to you and me! Other birds will fly farther! This insight and faith of ours vies with them in flying up and away; it rises above our heads and above our impotence into the heights and from there surveys the distance and sees before it the flocks of birds which, far stronger than we, still strive whither we have striven, and where everything is sea, sea, sea!  And whither then would we go? Would we cross the sea? Whither does this mighty longing draw us, this longing that is worth more to us than any pleasure? Why just in this direction, thither where all the suns of humanity have hitherto gone down? Will it perhaps be said of us one day that we too, steering westward, hoped to reach an India  but that it was our fate to be wrecked against infinity? Or, my brothers. Or?

Friedrich NietzscheDaybreak: Book V - Aphorism #57533313 years, 1 month ago