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Opposite Means of Avoiding Bitterness.—One temperament finds it useful to be able to give vent to its disgust in words, being made sweeter by speech. Another reaches its full bitterness only by speaking out: it is more advisable for it to have to gulp down something—the restraint that men of this stamp place upon themselves in the presence of enemies and superiors improves their character and prevents it from becoming too acrid and sour.

Opposite Means of Avoiding Bitterness.—One temperament finds it useful to be able to give vent to its disgust in words, being made sweeter by speech. Another reaches its full bitterness only by speaking out: it is more advisable for it to have to gulp down something—the restraint that men of this stamp place upon themselves in the presence of enemies and superiors improves their character and prevents it from becoming too acrid and sour.

Approximate author period: c. 1872 AD · industrial

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Friedrich Nietzsche
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
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Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1872 AD · industrial
author lifetime midpoint (1844–1900); not quotation composition date
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Recorded source
Human, All-Too-Human, Part 2 (1913 English edition) (1913 AD)

Miscellaneous Maxims and Opinions, complete printed aphorism 44; Paul V. Cohn translation; New York: The MacMillan Company,1913

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The voice behind the words.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Photographic portrait, 1882

Author of Human, All-Too-Human, here represented by complete numbered passages in Helen Zimmern’s 1909 and Paul V. Cohn’s 1913 English editions. Catalogue lifetime 1844–1900; historical philosophical arguments and dated viewpoints require context, rather than treating every sentence as general advice.

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