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Why the nearest Things become ever more distant for Us.—The more we give up our minds to all that has been and will be, the paler will become that which actually is. When we live with the dead and participate in their death, what are our “neighbours” to us? We grow lonelier simply because the entire flood of humanity is surging round about us. The fire that burns within us, and glows for all that is human, is continually increasing—and hence we look upon everything that surrounds us as if it had become more indifferent, more shadowy,—but our cold glance is offensive.

Why the nearest Things become ever more distant for Us.—The more we give up our minds to all that has been and will be, the paler will become that which actually is. When we live with the dead and participate in their death, what are our “neighbours” to us? We grow lonelier simply because the entire flood of humanity is surging round about us. The fire that burns within us, and glows for all that is human, is continually increasing—and hence we look upon everything that surrounds us as if it had become more indifferent, more shadowy,—but our cold glance is offensive.

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
The Dawn of Day (1911 English edition) (1911 AD)

The Dawn of Day, complete printed unit 441; John McFarland Kennedy translation; New York: The MacMillan Company,1911

A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.

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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