/lit/ - Literature

>>19763772
On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche:

The sickly pose the greatest threat to Man, not the wicked, not the ‘beasts of prey’. It is the weakest – those who are failures from the outset, the unfortunate, the oppressed – who most undermine the life of Man, who poison and destroy our trust in life, in Man, in ourselves. Where can we escape from it, that covert glance (which brings about such deep sadness in us), from that averted gaze of him who is doomed from the beginning, that look which betrays what such a man says to himself – that look which is a sigh? ‘If only I were someone else,’ he sighs, ‘but there is no hope. I am what I am. How could I escape from myself? And, truly – I am sick of myself!’

On this soil of self-contempt, this swampy soil, grow weeds and poisonous plants of every sort, and all so tiny, so hidden, so treacherous, so sugary. Here the soil teems with the worms of revenge and vindictiveness; here the stench of things secret and concealed hangs in the air; here the web of the most malignant conspiracy is spun – the conspiracy of the miserable against the strong and victorious; here the very sight of the victorious elicits contempt.

And how disingenuous not to acknowledge this contempt for what it is! Such a pretentious display of big words and grand gestures, such talent for ‘righteous’ slander! These wretches! What noble eloquence gushes from their lips! How much sugary, moist humility and submissiveness wells up in their eyes! What do they really want? At any rate to represent righteousness, love, wisdom, pre-eminence, that is the ambition of the ‘lowly’, the sick! And how clever does such an ambition make them! You cannot help but admire the counterfeiter’s skill with which the stamp of virtue, even the ring, the golden ring of virtue, is here imitated.

They have taken exclusive possession of virtue, these weaklings and wretched invalids; there is no doubt of it; ‘We alone are the good, the righteous,’ they say, ‘we alone are the homines bonae voluntatis.’ They wander in our midst, uttering reproaches and warnings to us – as though health, fitness, strength, pride, the feeling of power were really vicious things in themselves, for which one would have some day to do penance, bitter penance. Oh, how keen they are to exact penance, how willing to be hangmen! Among them we find an abundance of spiteful, vengeful creatures disguised as judges, who hold the word ‘justice’ in their mouths like venomous spittle – with lips always pursed, ready to spit at anyone who does not seem disaffected, but goes blithely on his way. Among them, again, we find many representatives of that most vile sort – the smug contemptible liars who strive to impersonate ‘beautiful souls’, and perhaps also try to pass off their degeneracy, enwrapped in verse and swaddling clothes, as ‘purity of heart’ – the pursuers of ‘self-gratification’, the moral onanists.