Etc. etc. etc.

The spiritualization of sensuality is called love: it represents a great triumph over Christianity. Another triumph is our spiritualization of hostility. It consists in a profound appreciation of the value of having enemies: in short, it means acting and thinking in the opposite way from that which has been the rule. The church always wanted the destruction of its enemies; we, we immoralists and Antichristians, find our advantage in this, that the church exists. In the political realm too, hostility has now become more spiritual—much more sensible, much more thoughtful, much more considerate. Almost every party understands how it is in the interest of its own self-preservation that the opposition should not lose all strength; the same is true of power politics. A new creation in particular—the new Reich, for example—needs enemies more than friends: in opposition alone does it feel itself necessary, in opposition alone does it become necessary.

Our attitude to the “internal enemy” is no different: here too we have spiritualized hostility; here too we have come to appreciate its value. The price of fruitfulness is to be rich in internal opposition; one remains young only as long as the soul does not stretch itself and desire peace. Nothing has become more alien to us than that desideratum of former times, “peace of soul,” the Christian desideratum; there is nothing we envy less than the moralistic cow and the fat happiness of the good conscience. One has renounced the great life when one renounces war.

Life will perpetuate itself, events will go on happening, spiritual conflicts will be resolved, and I will play no part in them. I have nothing to hope for on either side, moral or physical. For me there is perpetual sorrow and shadow, the night of the soul, and I have no voice to cry out.

Cast your riches far from this numb body, for it is insensible to the seasons of the spirit or the flesh.

I have chosen the domain of sorrow and shadow as others have chosen that of the glow and the accumulation of things.
I do not labor within the scope of any domain.
My only labor is in eternity itself.