The Greeks, with their truly healthy culture, have once and for all justified philosophy simply by having engaged in it, and having engaged in it more fully than any other people.
Thus the will to power strives towards oppositions, towards displeasure. There is a will to suffering at the foundation of all organic life (contrary to "happiness" as "goal").
Beauty is for the artist something outside all orders of rank, because in beauty opposites are tamed; the highest sign of power, namely power over opposites; moreover, without tension: - that violence is no longer needed: that everything follows, obeys, so easily and so pleasantly - that is what delights the artist's WILL TO POWER.
THE SLOW ARROW OF BEAUTY. The noblest kind of beauty is that which does not transport us suddenly, which does not make stormy and intoxicating impressions such a kind easily arouses disgust but that which slowly filters into our minds.
Mediocrity is the most effective mask a superior spirit can wear, because to the great majority, which is to say, to the mediocre,it will not suggest a disguise:--and yet it is precisely for their sake that he puts it on--so as not to arouse them, and, indeed, not infrequently to avoid this out of pity and benevolence.
When man does not have firm, calm lines on the horizon of his life- mountain and forest lines, as it were- then a man's innermost will becomes agitated, preoccupied, and wistful.
Do you suppose that sacrifice is the hallmark of moral action?--Just stop to consider whether sacrifice is not involved in every action that is done with deliberation, the worst as well as the best.
The 'kingdom of God' is not something one waits for; it has no yesterday or tomorrow, it does not come 'in a thousand years' it is an experience within a heart; it is everywhere, it is nowhere.
As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies—but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters: other kinds of spirit hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.
Socrates and Plato are right: whatever man does he always does well, that is, he does that which seems to him good (useful) according to the degree of his intellect, the particular standard of his reasonableness.