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Origin of Pessimists.—A snack of good food often decides whether we are to look to the future with hollow eye or in hopeful mood. The same influence extends to the very highest and most intellectual states. Discontent and reviling of the world are for the present generation an inheritance from starveling ancestors. Even in our artists and poets we often notice that, however exuberant their life, they are not of good birth, and have often, from oppressed and ill-nourished ancestors, inherited in their blood and brain much that comes out as the subject and even the conscious colouring of their work. The culture of the Greeks is a culture of men of wealth, in fact, inherited wealth. For a few centuries they lived better than we do (better in every sense, in particular far more simply in food and drink). Then the brain finally became so well-stored and subtle, and the blood flowed so quickly, like a joyous, clear wine, that the best in them came to light no longer as gloomy, distorted, and violent, but full of beauty and sunshine.
Origin of Pessimists.—A snack of good food often decides whether we are to look to the future with hollow eye or in hopeful mood. The same influence extends to the very highest and most intellectual states. Discontent and reviling of the world are for the present generation an inheritance from starveling ancestors. Even in our artists and poets we often notice that, however exuberant their life, they are not of good birth, and have often, from oppressed and ill-nourished ancestors, inherited in their blood and brain much that comes out as the subject and even the conscious colouring of their work. The culture of the Greeks is a culture of men of wealth, in fact, inherited wealth. For a few centuries they lived better than we do (better in every sense, in particular far more simply in food and drink). Then the brain finally became so well-stored and subtle, and the blood flowed so quickly, like a joyous, clear wine, that the best in them came to light no longer as gloomy, distorted, and violent, but full of beauty and sunshine.
Approximate author period: c. 1872 AD · industrial
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- Author or tradition
- Friedrich Nietzsche
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- Approximate author period: c. 1872 AD · industrial
author lifetime midpoint (1844–1900); not quotation composition date
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken. - Recorded source
- Human, All-Too-Human, Part 2 (1913 English edition) (1913 AD)
The Wanderer and His Shadow, complete printed aphorism 184; Paul V. Cohn translation; New York: The MacMillan Company,1913
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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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