Here are 5 more memorable Nietzschean insults,
from the “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man”
section of Twilight of the Idols.
Renan, whenever he risks a Yes or No of a
more general nature,
scores a miss with painful regularity.
To what avail is all free-spiritedness, modernity,
mockery, and wry-neck suppleness, if in one’s
guts one is still a Christian, a Catholic—in
fact a priest!
Renan is most inventive, just like a Jesuit
and father confessor, when it comes to seduction;
his spirituality does not even lack the fat
broad popish smile—like all priests, he
becomes dangerous only when he loves.
Nobody can equal him when it comes to adoring
in a manner endangering life itself.
Nothing of virility, full of petty wrath against
all virile spirits.
Wanders around, cowardly, curious, bored,
eavesdropping—a female at bottom, with a
female’s lust for revenge and a female’s
sensuality.
Poet and half-female enough to sense the great
as a power; always writhing like the famous
worm because he always feels stepped upon.
De imitatione Christi is one of those books
which I cannot hold in my hand without a physiological
reaction: it exudes a perfume of the Eternal-Feminine
which is strictly for Frenchmen—or Wagnerians.
This saint has a way of talking about love
which arouses even Parisian women to curiosity.
They are rid of the Christian God and now
believe all the more firmly that they must
cling to Christian morality.
That is an English consistency; we do not
wish to hold it against little moralistic
females à la Eliot.
In England one must rehabilitate oneself after
every little emancipation from theology by
showing in a veritably awe-inspiring manner
what a moral fanatic one is.
That is the penance they pay there.
I read the first Lettres d’un voyageur:
like everything that is descended from Rousseau,
false, fabricated, bellows, exaggerated.
I cannot stand this motley wallpaper style
any more than the mob aspiration for generous
feelings.
The worst feature, to be sure, is the female’s
coquetry with male attributes, with the manners
of naughty boys.
How cold she must have been throughout, this
insufferable artist!
