1027.
Man is a combination of the beast and the super-beast; higher man a combination of the monster and the superman:[7] these opposites belong to each other. With every degree of a man's growth towards greatness and loftiness, he also grows downwards into the depths and into the terrible: we should not desire the one without the other;—or, better still: the more fundamentally we desire the one, the more completely we shall achieve the other.
[7] The play on the German words: "Unthier" and "Überthier," "Unmensch" and "Übermensch," is unfortunately not translatable.—Tr.
1028.
Terribleness belongs to greatness: let us not deceive ourselves.
1029.
I have taught the knowledge of such terrible things, that all "Epicurean contentment" is impossible concerning them. Dionysian pleasure is the only adequate kind here: I was the first to discover the tragic. Thanks to their superficiality in ethics, the Greeks misunderstood it. Resignation is not the lesson of tragedy, but only the misunderstanding of it! The yearning for nonentity is the denial of tragic wisdom, its opposite!
1030.
A rich and powerful soul not only gets over painful and even terrible losses, deprivations, robberies, and insults: it actually leaves such dark infernos in possession of still greater plenitude and power; and, what is most important of all, in possession of an increased blissfulness in love. I believe that he who has divined something of the most fundamental conditions of love, will understand Dante for having written over the door of his Inferno: "I also am the creation of eternal love."
1031.