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279. Men of profound sadness betray themselves when they are happy: they
have a mode of seizing upon happiness as though they would choke and
strangle it, out of jealousy--ah, they know only too well that it will
flee from them!

280. "Bad! Bad! What? Does he not--go back?" Yes! But you misunderstand
him when you complain about it. He goes back like every one who is about
to make a great spring.

281.--"Will people believe it of me? But I insist that they believe it
of me: I have always thought very unsatisfactorily of myself and about
myself, only in very rare cases, only compulsorily, always without
delight in 'the subject,' ready to digress from 'myself,' and always
without faith in the result, owing to an unconquerable distrust of the
POSSIBILITY of self-knowledge, which has led me so far as to feel a
CONTRADICTIO IN ADJECTO even in the idea of 'direct knowledge' which
theorists allow themselves:--this matter of fact is almost the most
certain thing I know about myself. There must be a sort of repugnance
in me to BELIEVE anything definite about myself.--Is there perhaps
some enigma therein? Probably; but fortunately nothing for my own
teeth.--Perhaps it betrays the species to which I belong?--but not to
myself, as is sufficiently agreeable to me."

282.--"But what has happened to you?"--"I do not know," he said,
hesitatingly; "perhaps the Harpies have flown over my table."--It
sometimes happens nowadays that a gentle, sober, retiring man becomes
suddenly mad, breaks the plates, upsets the table, shrieks, raves,
and shocks everybody--and finally withdraws, ashamed, and raging at
himself--whither? for what purpose? To famish apart? To suffocate with
his memories?--To him who has the desires of a lofty and dainty soul,
and only seldom finds his table laid and his food prepared, the danger
will always be great--nowadays, however, it is extraordinarily so.
Thrown into the midst of a noisy and plebeian age, with which he does
not like to eat out of the same dish, he may readily perish of hunger
and thirst--or, should he nevertheless finally "fall to," of sudden
nausea.--We have probably all sat at tables to which we did not belong;
and precisely the most spiritual of us, who are most difficult to
nourish, know the dangerous DYSPEPSIA which originates from a sudden
insight and disillusionment about our food and our messmates--the
AFTER-DINNER NAUSEA.

283. If one wishes to praise at all, it is a delicate and at the
same time a noble self-control, to praise only where one DOES NOT
agree--otherwise in fact one would praise oneself, which is contrary
to good taste:--a self-control, to be sure, which offers excellent
opportunity and provocation to constant MISUNDERSTANDING. To be able to
allow oneself this veritable luxury of taste and morality, one must
not live among intellectual imbeciles, but rather among men whose
misunderstandings and mistakes amuse by their refinement--or one will
have to pay dearly for it!--"He praises me, THEREFORE he acknowledges me
to be right"--this asinine method of inference spoils half of the life
of us recluses, for it brings the asses into our neighbourhood and
friendship.