Ecce Homo Quotes

I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous — a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.

What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure - as a mere automaton of duty?

My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary—but love it

إن العالم ينفق كليّة طاقاته في مقولات الـ (نعم)و (لا) ضمن نقد ما فكر فيه غيره؛ أما هو فإنه لم يعد يفكر

But I need solitude--which is to say, recovery, return to myself, the breath of a free, light, playful air.

I am no man, I am dynamite.

To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying but an ancient, mighty, human, all-too-human principle [....] Without cruelty there is no festival.

How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare?

Resentment, born of weakness, harms no one more than the weak person himself.

Ultimately no one can hear in things―books included―more than he already knows. If you have no access to something from experience, you will have no ear for it.

وأنا لا أعرف قراءة مثيرة للوجع بالقدر الذي تثيره قراءة شكسبير: كم من الآلام ينبغي على المرء أن يكون قد تحمل كي ما يغدو في حاجة إلى أن يجعل نفسه سخيفاً إلى هذا الحد!-هل نفهم هملت؟ لا ليس الشك، بل اليقين هو الذي يقود إلى الجنون..

One has to know the size of one's stomach.

No other German writer of comparable stature has been a more extreme critic of German nationalism than Nietzsche.

To get up in the morning, in the fullness of youth, and open a book--now that’s what I call vicious!

Water is sufficient...the spirit moves over water.

i have never pondered over questions that are not questions.

Every achievement, every step forward in knowledge, is the consequence of courage, of toughness towards oneself, of sincerity to oneself

Saying yes to life, even in its strangest and hardest problems.

I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus, and I would prefer to be even a satyr than a saint.

Generally speaking, punishment makes men hard and cold; it concentrates; it sharpens the feeling of alienation; it strengthens the power of resistance

It is not doubt but certainty that drives you mad...

Every acquisition, every step forward in knowledge is the result of courage, of severity toward oneself, of cleanliness with respect to oneself.

Energy wasted on negative ends.

I attack only things that are triumphant — if necessary, I wait until they become triumphant.

People have always wanted to 'improve' human beings; for the most part, this has been called morality.

إذ الإنسان يفضل أن يريد اللاشيء على لأن لا يريد شيئاً

عبارة "العقل الحر" لا يمكن أن تفهم هنا إلا بهذا المعنى: إنه عقل محرر قد استعاد تملكه بذاته

I would prefer to be a satyr rather than a saint.

Pain is not seen as an objection to life: 'If you have no happiness left to give me, well then! you still have your pain...

How much blood and horror is at the bottom of all 'good things'!

Every kind of contempt for sex, every impurification of it by means of the concept "impure", is the crime par excellence against life--is the real sin against the holy spirit of life

What good is all this free-thinking, modernity, and turncoat flexibility if at some gut level you are still a Christian, a Catholic, and even a priest!

وكي ما أعتقد بأن الخمر يبعث الانشراح فلا بد لي أن أكون مسيحياً؛ أعني بذلك أن أكون مؤمناً، وهو أمر يعد بالنسبة لي أنا بالذات عبثاً

As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies—but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters: other kinds of spirit hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.

Every characteristic absence of spirituality, every piece of common vulgarity, is due to an inability to resist a stimulus - you have to react, you follow every impulse.

إن المساواة مع العدو هى الشرط الأول لنزال شريف, وحيثما يوجد مجال للإحتقار لا يمكن للمرء أن يخوض حربا

إنسانيّتى هى تجاوز متواصل للذات, إلا إننى بحاجة للعزلة

من بر تقدير خود واقفم: روزى نام من قرين خاطره ى امرى عظيم خواهد شد، خاطره ى بحرانى كه زمين مانندش را به خود نديده، ژرف ترين تصادم وجدان، اراده اى كه ظاهر شد تا بر هر آن چه تاكنون به باور درآمده، مطلوب انگاشته شده، و تقديس گشته بشورد. من انسان نيستم، من ديناميتم!

Read from a distant star, the majuscule script of our earthly existence would perhaps lead to the conclusion that the earth was the distinctively ascetic planet, a nook of disgruntled, arrogant creatures filled with a profound disgust with themselves, at the earth, at all life, who inflict as much pain on themselves as they possibly can out of pleasure in inflicting pain which is probably their only pleasure.

I don't want to be mistaken for anyone―so I mustn't mistake myself.

إن إنسانيّتى لا تتمثل فى التعاطف مع الإنسان فى وجوده، بل فى أن أتحمل الشعور به إلى جانبى

What really arouses indignation against suffering is not suffering as such but the senselessness of suffering...

Pain does not count as an objection to life

To become what one is, one must not have the faintest notion of what one is... The whole surface of consciousness - for consciousness -is- a surface - must be kept clear of all great imperatives. Beware even of every great word, every great pose! So many dangers that the instinct comes too soon to "understand itself" --. Meanwhile, the organizing idea that is destined to rule keeps growing deep down - it begins to command, slowly it leads us back from side roads and wrong roads; it prepares single qualities and fitnesses that will one day prove to be indispensable as a means toward a whole - one by one, it trains all subservient capacities before giving any hint of the dominant task, "goal," "aim," or "meaning.

...good men never tell the truth. The good taught you false shores and false securities: you were born and kept in the lies of the good. Everything has been distorted and twisted down to its very bottom through the good

ابتداءً من تلك اللحظة ستغدو كتاباتي كلها صنارات صيد - لعل لي خبرة في الصيد أكثر من أي كان؟.. وإذا ما لم يكن هنالك من صيد قد حصل، فذلك ليس ذنبي. السمك هو الذي لا يوجد..

I found life easy, easiest, when it demanded the most difficult things of me.

Not every end is the goal. The end of a melody is not its goal; and yet: as long as the melody has not reached its end, it also hasn't reached its goal. A parable.

The Church today is more likely to alienate than to seduce...

A hearty meal is easier to digest than one that is too small.

إن الاخلاقيات - سيرك البشرية - قد زيفت كل شيء سيكولوجيًا من البداية حتى النهاية

فى حالة المرض يغدو الإنسان عاجزا عن التخلّص من أى شئ, عاجزا عن الحسم فى أى شئ, وعاجزا عن رد اى شئ, كل شئ يغدو جارحا؟

We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge--and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves--how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves?

الرسالة الأكثر خشونة تظل أكثر فضلا وأكثر شرفا من الصمت

My paradise is in the shadow of my sword.

Forgetfulness is not just a vis inertiae, as superficial people believe, but is rather an active ability to suppress, positive in the strongest sense of the word, to which we owe the fact that what we simply live through, experience, take in, no more enters our consciousness during digestion (one could call it spiritual ingestion) than does the thousand-fold process which takes place with our physical consumption of food, our so-called ingestion. To shut the doors and windows of consciousness for a while; not to be bothered by the noise and battle which our underworld of serviceable organs work with and against each other;a little peace, a little tabula rasa of consciousness to make room for something new, above all for the nobler functions and functionaries, for ruling, predicting, predetermining (our organism runs along oligarchic lines, you see) - that, as I said, is the benefit of active forgetfulness, like a doorkeeper or guardian of mental order, rest and etiquette: from which can immediately see how there could be no happiness, cheerfulness, hope, pride, immediacy, without forgetfulness.

إنّ الفلسفةَ - كما كنتُ دومًا أفهمُها و أعيشُها - هي الحياةُ طوعًا في الجليد و فوق الجبال الشاهقة ؛ البحثُ عن كلِّ ما هو غريبٌ و إشكاليٌّ في الوجود ، و عن كلِّ ما ظلّ إلى حدّ الآن منبوذًا مِن قِبَل الأخلاق

To be incapable of taking one's enemies, one's accidents, even one's misdeeds seriously for very long—that is the sign of strong, full natures in whom there is an excess of the power to form, to mold, to recuperate and to forget (a good example of this in modem times is Mirabeau, who had no memory for insults and vile actions done him and was unable to forgive simply because he—forgot). Such a man shakes off with a single shrug many vermin that eat deep into others; here alone genuine 'love of one's enemies' is possible—supposing it to be possible at all on earth. How much reverence has a noble man for his enemies!—and such reverence is a bridge to love.—For he desires his enemy for himself, as his mark of distinction; he can endure no other enemy than one in whom there is nothing to despise and very much to honor! In contrast to this, picture 'the enemy' as the man of ressentiment conceives him—and here precisely is his deed, his creation: he has conceived 'the evil enemy,' 'the Evil One,' and this in fact is his basic concept, from which he then evolves, as an afterthought and pendant, a 'good one'—himself!

There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective "knowing"; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our "concept" of this thing, our "objectivity," be.

But grant me from time to time—if there are divine goddesses in the realm beyond good and evil—grant me the sight, but one glance of something perfect, wholly achieved, happy, mighty, triumphant, something still capable of arousing fear! Of a man who justifies man, of a complementary and redeeming lucky hit on the part of man for the sake of which one may still believe in man!

Dante, I think, committed a crude blunder when, with a terror-inspiring ingenuity, he placed above the gateway of his hell the inscription, 'I too was created by eternal love'--at any rate, there would be more justification for placing above the gateway to the Christian Paradise...the inscription 'I too was created by eternal hate'...

There are no egoistic or unegoistic actions: both concepts are psychological absurdities.

الاخلاق هى الحساسية المرضية للمنحط مع النية الخفية فى الانتقام من الحياة

Like a last signpost to the other path, Napoleon appeared, the most isolated and late-born man there has even been, and in him the problem of the noble ideal as such made flesh--one might well ponder what kind of problem it is; Napoleon this synthesis of the inhuman and the superhuman

Affirmation of life even in its strangest and sternest problems; the will to life rejoicing in its own inexhaustibility through the sacrifice of its highest types - that is what I call dionysian

You revere me: but what if your reverence should some day collapse? Be careful lest a statue fall and kill you!

Solitude has seven skins; nothing gets through any more.

جعلت من رغبتى فى أن أكون معافا ومن رغبتى فى الحياة فلسفتى الخاصة

إن "الطيز الخامل" كما قلت ذلك ذات مرة, لهو الخطيئة الحقيقية ضد الروح القدس.

لقد أخذت مصيرى بيدى, وعالجت نفسى بنفسى

أنا نقيض لكل ما يحمل طابعا بطوليا

تحطيم الأصنام هي حرفتي ، ذلك أنّه ما أن ابتُدِعَتْ أكذوبة عالَمِ المُثُل قد تمَّ تجريد الواقع مِن قيمتِهِ ، و مِن معناه ، و مِن حقيقتِهِ

The knight of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends.

Another thing is war. I am naturally warlike. Attacking is one of my instincts. Being able to be an enemy, being an enemy — these require a strong nature, perhaps; in any case every strong nature presupposes them. It needs resistances, so it seeks resistance: aggressive pathos is just as integrally necessary to strength as the feeling of revenge and reaction is to weakness. Woman, forinstance, is vengeful: that is a condition of her weakness, as is her sensitivity to other people’s afflictions. — The strength of anattacker can in a way be gauged by the opposition he requires; allgrowth makes itself manifest by searching out a more powerful opponent — or problem: for a philosopher who is warlike challenges problems to duels, too. The task is not to master all resistances, but only those against which one has to pit one’s entire strength, suppleness, and mastery-at-arms — opponents who are equal...

What is it that I especially find utterly unendurable? That I cannot cope with, that makes me choke and faint? Bad air! Bad air! The approach of some ill-constituted thing; that I have to smell the entrails of some ill-constituted soul!

I don't want to be a saint, and would rather be a buffoon...

This workshop where ideals are manufactured--it seems to me it stinks of so many lies

Have you understood me? Dionysus versus Christ.

الشفقة لا تمثّل فضيلة، إلا بالنسبة للمنحطين

If you invest all your energy in economics, world commerce, parliamentarianism, military engagements, power and power politics, -if you take the quantum of intelligence, seriousness, will, and self-overcoming that you embody and expend it all in this one direction, there there won't be any left for the other direction. Culture and the state - let us be honest with ourselves - these are adversaries.

For this is how things are: the diminution and leveling of European man constitutes our greatest danger, for the sight of him makes us weary.—We can see nothing today that wants to grow greater, we suspect that things will continue to go down, down, to become thinner, more good-natured, more prudent, more comfortable, more mediocre, more indifferent, more Chinese, more Christian—there is no doubt that man is getting 'better' all the time.

Îmi cunosc soarta. Cândva se va lega de numele meu amintirea a ceva monstruos – a unei crize cum nu a mai existat pe pământ, a celei mai profunde ciocniri de conştiinţe, a unei decizii conjurate împotriva a tot ceea ce se crezuse, se ceruse, se considerase sfânt până atunci. Eu nu sunt om, eu sunt dinamită.

Equality before the enemy—first precondition for an honest duel.

Have I been understood?―Dionysus against the crucified one...

Forgetfulness is a property of all action. The man of action is also without knowledge: he forgets most things in order to do one, he is unjust to what is behind him, and only recognizes one law - the law of that which is to be.

While the noble man lives in trust and openness with himself (gennaios 'of noble descent' underlines the nuance 'upright' and probably also 'naïve'), the man of ressentiment is neither upright nor naive nor honest and straightforward with himself. His soul squints; his spirit loves hiding places, secret paths and back doors, everything covert entices him as his world, his security, his refreshment; he understands how to keep silent, how not to forget, how to wait, how to be provisionally self-deprecating and humble. A race of such men of ressentiment is bound to become eventually cleverer than any noble race; it will also honor cleverness to a far greater degree: namely, as a condition of existence of the first importance; while with noble men cleverness can easily acquire a subtle flavor of luxury and subtlety—for here it is far less essential than the perfect functioning of the regulating unconscious instincts or even than a certain imprudence, perhaps a bold recklessness whether in the face of danger or of the enemy, or that enthusiastic impulsiveness in anger, love, reverence, gratitude, and revenge by which noble souls have at all times recognized one another. Ressentiment itself, if it should appear in the noble man, consummates and exhausts itself in an immediate reaction, and therefore does not poison: on the other hand, it fails to appear at all on countless occasions on which it inevitably appears in the weak and impotent.

I fail to remember ever having made an effort — no trace of struggle is detectable in my life, I am the opposite of a heroic nature. To “want” something, to “strive” for something, to have an “end,” a “desire” in mind — I know none of this from my experience. Even at this moment I look out upon my future — a broad future! — as upon a smooth sea: no desire ripples upon it. Not in the least do I want anything to be different from what it is; I myself do not want to be any different ... But thus I have always lived.

إنّ رجل العلم الذي لا يقوم على العموم سوي بـ"تقليب" الكتب - عمليّة ترتفع لدي الفيلولوجي من النوع المتوسّط الى عدد ال 200 يومياً- يفتقد مع الوقت القدرة على التفكير بصفة مستقلّة.وإذا لم يقلّب فإنّه لا يفكّر .إنّه يستجيب لمثير عندما يفكّر.

The lie of the ideal has till now been the curse on reality; on its account humanity itself has become fake and false right down to its deepest instincts - to the point of worshipping values opposite to the only ones which would guarantee it a flourishing, a future, the exaled right to a future.

When the oppressed, downtrodden, outraged exhort one another with the vengeful cunning of impotence: "let us be different from the evil, namely good! And he is good who does not outrage, who harms nobody, who does not attack, who does not requite, who leaves revenge to God, who keeps himself hidden as we do, who avoids evil and desires little from life, like us, the patient, humble, and just" -- this, listened to calmly and without previous bias, really amounts to no more than: "we weak ones are, after all, weak; it would be good if we did nothing for which we are not strong enough"; but this dry matter of fact, this prudence of the lowest order which even insects possess (popsing as dead, when in great danger, so as not to do "too much"), has, thanks to counterfeit and self-deception of impotence, clad itself in the ostentatious garb of the virtue of quiet, calm resignation, just as if the weakness of the weak -- that is to say, their essence, their effects, their sole ineluctable, irremovable reality - were a voluntary achievement, willed, chosen, a deed, a meritous act.

Was it not part of the secret black art of truly grand politics of revenge, of a farseeing, subterranean, slowly advancing, and premeditated revenge, that Israel must itself deny the real instrument of its revenge before all the world as a mortal enemy and nail it to the cross, so that 'all the world,' namely all the opponents of Israel, could unhesitatingly swallow just this bait? And could spiritual subtlety imagine any more dangerous bait than this? Anything to equal the enticing, intoxicating, overwhelming, and undermining power of that symbol of the 'holy cross,' that ghastly paradox of a 'God on the cross,' that mystery of an unimaginable ultimate cruelty and self-crucifixion of God for the salvation of man?

L'ateismo, per me, non è un risultato, e tanto meno un avvenimento - come tale non lo conosco: io lo intendo per istinto. Sono troppo curioso, troppo problematico, troppo tracotante, perché possa piacermi una risposta grossolana. Dio è una risposta grossolana, un'indelicatezza verso noi pensatori - in fondo è solo un grossolano divieto che ci viene fatto: non dovete pensare!

Supposing that what is at any rate believed to be the 'truth' really is true, and the meaning of all culture is the reduction of the beast of prey 'man' to a tame and civilized animal, a domestic animal, then one would undoubtedly have to regard all those instincts of reaction and ressentiment through whose aid the noble races and their ideals were finally confounded and overthrown as the actual instruments of culture; which is not to say that the bearers of these instincts themselves represent culture. Rather is the reverse not merely probable—no! today it is palpable! These bearers of the oppressive instincts that thirst for reprisal, the descendants of every kind of European and non-European slavery, and especially of the entire pre-Aryan populace—they represent the regression of mankind! These 'instruments of culture' are a disgrace to man and rather an accusation and counterargument against 'culture' in general!

At the centre of all these noble races we cannot fail to see the blond beast of prey, the magnificent blond beast avidly prowling round for spoil and victory; this hidden centre needs release from time to time, the beast must out again, must return to the wild: - Roman, Arabian, Germanic, Japanese nobility, Homeric heroes, Scandinavian Vikings - in this requirement they are all alike. It was the noble races which left the concept of 'barbarian' in their traces wherever they went; even their highest culture betrays the fact that they were conscious of this and indeed proud of it.

It is the noble races that have left behind them the concept 'barbarian' wherever they have gone; even their highest culture betrays a consciousness of it and even a pride in it (for example, when Pericles says to the Athenians in his famous funeral oration 'our boldness has gained access to every land and sea, everywhere raising imperishable monuments to its goodness and wickedness"). This 'boldness' of noble races, mad, absurd, and sudden in its expression, the incalculability, even incredibility of their undertakings—Pericles specially commends the rhathymia of the Athenians—their indifference to and contempt for security, body, life, comfort, their hair-raising cheerfulness and profound joy in all destruction, in all the voluptuousness of victory and cruelty—all this came together, in the minds of those who suffered from it, in the image of the 'barbarian,' the 'evil enemy,' perhaps as the 'Goths,' the 'Vandals.

Zarathustra, the first to recognize that the optimist is just as degenerate as the pessimist though perhaps more detrimental says: “Good men never speak the truth.  The Good preach of false shores and false security.  You were born and bred in the lies of the good.  Through the good everything has become false and twisted down to the very roots”.  Fortunately the world is not built solely to serve good natured herd animals their little happiness  ; to desire everybody to become a “good man”, “a herd animal”, blue-eyed, benevolent, “a beautiful soul”— or, as Herbert Spencer wished—altruistic, would mean robbing existence of its great character, to castrate mankind and reduce humanity to a sort of wretched Chinadom. And this some have tried to do!  It is precisely this that men have called morality. 

Let us finally consider how naive it is altogether to say: "Man ought to be such and such!" Reality shows us an enchanting wealth of types, the abundance of a lavish play and change of forms — and some wretched loafer of a moralist comments: "No! Man ought to be different." He even knows what man should be like, this wretched bigot and prig: he paints himself on the wall and comments, "Ecce homo!" But even when the moralist addresses himself only to the single human being and says to him, "You ought to be such and such!" he does not cease to make himself ridiculous. The single human being is a piece of fatum from the front and from the rear, one law more, one necessity more for all that is yet to come and to be. To say to him, "Change yourself!" is to demand that everything be changed, even retroactively. And indeed there have been consistent moralists who wanted man to be different, that is, virtuous — they wanted him remade in their own image, as a prig: to that end, they negated the world! No small madness! No modest kind of immodesty! Morality, insofar as it condemns for its own sake, and not out of regard for the concerns, considerations, and contrivances of life, is a specific error with which one ought to have no pity — an idiosyncrasy of degenerates which has caused immeasurable harm. We others, we immoralists, have, conversely, made room in our hearts for every kind of understanding, comprehending, and approving. We do not easily negate; we make it a point of honor to be affirmers. More and more, our eyes have opened to that economy which needs and knows how to utilize everything that the holy witlessness of the priest, the diseased reason in the priest, rejects — that economy in the law of life which finds an advantage even in the disgusting species of the prigs, the priests, the virtuous. What advantage? But we ourselves, we immoralists, are the answer.

Zarathustra calls the good “the last men” and then ‘the beginning of the end”; and above all he considers them as the most harmful kind of men because they secure their existence at the cost of Truth and at the cost of the Future.  “The good—they cannot create; they are always the beginning of the end.  They crucify him who writes new values on new law tables; they sacrifice the future to themselves; they crucify the whole future of humanity!  The good—they are always the beginning of the end.  And whatever harm the slanderers of the world may do, the harm of the good is the most harmful of all”. 

We don't know ourselves, we knowledgeable people—we are personally ignorant about ourselves. And there's good reason for that. We've never tried to find out who we are. How could it ever happen that one day we'd discover our own selves? With justice it's been said that "Where your treasure is, there shall your heart be also." Our treasure lies where the beehives of our knowledge stand. We are always busy with our knowledge, as if we were born winged creatures—collectors of intellectual honey. In our hearts we are basically concerned with only one thing, to "bring something home." As far as the rest of life is concerned, what people call "experience"—which of us is serious enough for that? Who has enough time? In these matters, I fear, we've been "missing the point." Our hearts have not even been engaged—nor, for that matter, have our ears! We've been much more like someone divinely distracted and self-absorbed into whose ear the clock has just pealed the twelve strokes of noon with all its force and who all at once wakes up and asks himself "What exactly did that clock strike?"—so we rub ourselves behind the ears afterwards and ask, totally surprised and embarrassed "What have we really just experienced? And more: "Who are we really?" Then, as I've mentioned, we count—after the fact—all the twelve trembling strokes of the clock of our experience, our lives, our being—alas! in the process we keep losing the count. So we remain necessarily strangers to ourselves, we do not understand ourselves, we have to keep ourselves confused. For us this law holds for all eternity: "Each man is furthest from himself." Where we ourselves are concerned, we are not "knowledgeable people.

Later on, towards the middle of my life, I grew more and more opposed to alcoholic drinks: I, an opponent of vegetarianism, who have experienced what vegetarianism is, — just as Wagner, who converted me back to meat, experienced it, — cannot with sufficient earnestness advise all more spiritual natures to abstain absolutely from alcohol. Water answers the purpose. . . . I have a predilection in favour of those places where in all directions one has opportunities of drinking from running brooks. In vino Veritas: it seems that here once more I am at variance with the rest of the world about the concept 'Truth' — with me spirit moves on the face of the waters. . . . Here are a few more indications as to my morality. A heavy meal is digested more easily than an inadequate one. The first principle of a good digestion is that the stomach should become active as a whole. A man ought, therefore, to know the size of his stomach. For the same reasons all those interminable meals, which I call interrupted sacrificial feasts, and which are to be had at any table d'hôte, are strongly to be deprecated. Nothing should be eaten between meals, coffee should be given up — coffee makes one gloomy. Tea is beneficial only in the morning. It should be taken in small quantities, but very strong. It may be very harmful, and indispose you for the whole day, if it be taken the least bit too weak. Everybody has his own standard in this matter, often between the narrowest and most delicate limits. In an enervating climate tea is not a good beverage with which to start the day: an hour before taking it an excellent thing is to drink a cup of thick cocoa, feed from oil. Remain seated as little as possible, put no trust in any thought that is not born in the open, to the accompaniment of free bodily motion — nor in one in which even the muscles do not celebrate a feast. All prejudices take their origin in the intestines. A sedentary life, as I have already said elsewhere, is the real sin against the Holy Spirit.