Friedrich Nietzsche

Two superb sentences in the ‘Of Reading and Writing’ chapter of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, presented here in a 1961 translation by R.J. Hollingdale. The second quote confirms John Carey’s stance in Intellectuals and the Masses that Nietzsche was a philosopher to the cultural elitist and pessimists, the first quote shows Nietzsche as a great prose-poet:

1. Of all writings I love only that which is written with blood.
2. That everyone can learn to read will ruin in the long run not only writing, but thinking too.

More from the same page:

Of all writings I love only that which is written with blood. Write with blood: and you will experience that blood is spirit.

It is not an easy thing to understand unfamiliar blood: I hate the reading idler.

He who knows the reader, does nothing further for the reader. Another century of readers — and spirit itself will stink.

That everyone can learn to read will ruin in the long run not only writing, but thinking too.

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.

He who writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read, he wants to be learned by heart….

You tell me: ‘Life is hard to bear.’ But if it were otherwise why should you have your pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening?

Life is hard to bear, but do not pretend to be so tender! We are all of us pretty fine asses and assesses of burden!

What have we in common with the rosebud, which trembles because a drop of dew is lying on it?….