A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at six or seven great men—Yes, and then to get round them. 94
From the senses originate all trustworthiness, all good conscience, all evidence of truth. 95
Our vanity would like what we do best to pass precisely for what is most difficult to us.—Concerning the origin of many systems of morals. 96
When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is generally something wrong with her sexual nature. Barrenness itself conduces to a certain virility of taste; man, indeed, if I may say so, is "the barren animal." 96
That which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable echo of what was formerly considered good—the atavism of an old ideal. 97
What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil. 98
Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology. 98
The Jews—-a people "born for slavery," as Tacitus and the whole ancient world say of them; "the chosen people among the nations," as they themselves say and believe—the Jews performed the miracle of the inversion of valuations, by means of which life on earth obtained a new and dangerous charm for a couple of millenniums. Their prophets fused into one the expressions "rich," "godless," "wicked," "violent," "sensual," and for the first time coined the word "world" as a term of reproach. In this inversion of valuations (in which is also included the use of the word "poor" as synonymous with "saint" and "friend") the significance of the Jewish people is to be found; it is with them that the slave-insurrection in morals commences. 117
The beast of prey and the man of prey (for instance, Cæsar Borgia) are fundamentally misunderstood, "nature" is misunderstood, so long as one seeks a "morbidness" in the constitution of these healthiest of all tropical monsters and growths.... 118