---
title: "Beyond Good and Evil"
author: "Friedrich Nietzsche"
translator: "Helen Zimmern"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Philosophy"
section: 7 of 13
url: https://scriptura.si/works/nietzsche-beyond-good-and-evil/7/
cite: "Friedrich Nietzsche, tr. Helen Zimmern, Beyond Good and Evil, section 7. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/nietzsche-beyond-good-and-evil/7/"
---

# Beyond Good and Evil

*Friedrich Nietzsche, tr. Helen Zimmern*

Aphorisms and short essays that question philosophers, morals and the will to truth.

## 7. IV. Apophthegms and Interludes · 3 of 3

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/nietzsche-beyond-good-and-evil/7/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/nietzsche-beyond-good-and-evil/7/#p-N

[¶0] 151. It is not enough to possess a talent: one must also have your permission to possess it;—eh, my friends?

[¶1] 152. “Where there is the tree of knowledge, there is always Paradise”: so say the most ancient and the most modern serpents.

[¶2] 153. What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.

[¶3] 154. Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.

[¶4] 155. The sense of the tragic increases and declines with sensuousness.

[¶5] 156. Insanity in individuals is something rare—but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.

[¶6] 157. The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets successfully through many a bad night.

[¶7] 158. Not only our reason, but also our conscience, truckles to our strongest impulse—the tyrant in us.

[¶8] 159. One must repay good and ill; but why just to the person who did us good or ill?

[¶9] 160. One no longer loves one’s knowledge sufficiently after one has communicated it.

[¶10] 161. Poets act shamelessly towards their experiences: they exploit them.

[¶11] 162. “Our fellow-creature is not our neighbour, but our neighbour’s neighbour”:—so thinks every nation.

[¶12] 163. Love brings to light the noble and hidden qualities of a lover—his rare and exceptional traits: it is thus liable to be deceptive as to his normal character.

[¶13] 164. Jesus said to his Jews: “The law was for servants;—love God as I love him, as his Son! What have we Sons of God to do with morals!”

[¶14] 165. In sight of every party.—A shepherd has always need of a bell-wether—or he has himself to be a wether occasionally.

[¶15] 166. One may indeed lie with the mouth; but with the accompanying grimace one nevertheless tells the truth.

[¶16] 167. To vigorous men intimacy is a matter of shame—and something precious.

[¶17] 168. Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.

[¶18] 169. To talk much about oneself may also be a means of concealing oneself.

[¶19] 170. In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.

[¶20] 171. Pity has an almost ludicrous effect on a man of knowledge, like tender hands on a Cyclops.

[¶21] 172. One occasionally embraces some one or other, out of love to mankind (because one cannot embrace all); but this is what one must never confess to the individual.

[¶22] 173. One does not hate as long as one disesteems, but only when one esteems equal or superior.

[¶23] 174. Ye Utilitarians—ye, too, love the utile only as a vehicle for your inclinations,—ye, too, really find the noise of its wheels insupportable!

[¶24] 175. One loves ultimately one’s desires, not the thing desired.

[¶25] 176. The vanity of others is only counter to our taste when it is counter to our vanity.

[¶26] 177. With regard to what “truthfulness” is, perhaps nobody has ever been sufficiently truthful.

[¶27] 178. One does not believe in the follies of clever men: what a forfeiture of the rights of man!

[¶28] 179. The consequences of our actions seize us by the forelock, very indifferent to the fact that we have meanwhile “reformed.”

[¶29] 180. There is an innocence in lying which is the sign of good faith in a cause.

[¶30] 181. It is inhuman to bless when one is being cursed.

[¶31] 182. The familiarity of superiors embitters one, because it may not be returned.

[¶32] 183. “I am affected, not because you have deceived me, but because I can no longer believe in you.”

[¶33] 184. There is a haughtiness of kindness which has the appearance of wickedness.

[¶34] 185. “I dislike him.”—Why?—“I am not a match for him.”—Did any one ever answer so?