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Virtue was not Invented by the Germans.—Goethe's nobleness and freedom from envy, Beethoven's fine hermitical resignation, Mozart's cheerfulness and grace of heart, Handel's unbending manliness and freedom under the law, Bach's confident and luminous inner life, such as does not even need to renounce glamour and success—are these qualities peculiarly German?—If they are not, they at least prove to what goal Germans should strive and to what they can attain.
Virtue was not Invented by the Germans.—Goethe's nobleness and freedom from envy, Beethoven's fine hermitical resignation, Mozart's cheerfulness and grace of heart, Handel's unbending manliness and freedom under the law, Bach's confident and luminous inner life, such as does not even need to renounce glamour and success—are these qualities peculiarly German?—If they are not, they at least prove to what goal Germans should strive and to what they can attain.
Approximate author period: c. 1872 AD · industrial
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- Author or tradition
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
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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)
Miscellaneous Maxims and Opinions, complete printed aphorism 298; Paul V. Cohn translation; New York: The MacMillan Company,1913
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The voice behind the words.
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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