"When we hear the old bells ringing out on a Sunday morning, we ask ourselves: can it be possible? This is for a Jew, crucified two thousand years ago, who said he was the son of God. The proof for such a claim is wanting."
Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits is a book by 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, originally published in 1878. A second part, Assorted Opinions and Maxims, was published in 1879, and a third part, The Wanderer and his Shadow, followed in 1880.
"Often enough, and always with great consternation, people have told me that there is something distinctive in all my writings...All of them, I have been told, contain snares and nets for careless birds, and an almost constant, unperceived challenge to reverse ones habitual estimations and esteemed habits. "Whats that? Everything is only—human, all too human?"
Human, All Too Human"So weiss jeder aus Erfahrung, wie schnell der Traeumende einen starken an ihn dringenden Ton, zum Beispiel Glockenlaeuten, Kanonenschuesse in seinen Traum verflicht, das heisst aus ihm hinterdrein erklaert, so dass er zuerst die veranlassenden Umstaende, dann jenen Ton zu erleben meint."
Human, All Too Human"Here lies the antagonism between the individual regions of science and philosophy. The latter wants, as art does, to bestow on life and action the greatest possible profundity and significance; in the former one seeks knowledge and nothing further -- and does in fact acquire it."
Human, All Too Human"Ein wesentlicher Nachtheil, welchen das Aufhoeren metaphysischer Ansichten mit sich bringt, liegt darin, dass das Individuum zu streng seine kurze Lebenszeit ins Auge fasst und keine staerkeren Antriebe empfaengt, an dauerhaften, fuer Jahrhunderte angelegten Institutionen zu bauen."
Human, All Too Human"Man glaubt einer Philosophie etwas Gutes nachzusagen, wenn man sie als Ersatz der Religion fuer das Volk hinstellt."
Human, All Too Human"It is still a long way from this morbid isolation, from the desert of these experimental years, to that enormous, overflowing certainty and health which cannot do without even illness itself, as an instrument and fishhook of knowledge; to that mature freedom of the spirit which is fully as much self-mastery and discipline of the heart, and which permits paths to many opposing ways of thought. It is a long way to inner spaciousness and cosseting of a superabundance which precludes the danger and the sprit might lose itself on its own paths and fall in love and stay put, intoxicated, in some nook; a long way to that excess of vivid healing, reproducing, reviving power, the very sign of great health, an excess that gives free spirit the dangerous privilege of being permitted to live experimentally."
Human, All Too Human