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This selection first published in Penguin Classics in 2016
Translation copyright© R. J. Hollingdale, 2004
The moral right of the translator has been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-241-25186-7
1. Why I Am so Wise
2. Why I Am so Clever
3. Why I Write Such Good Books
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On this perfect day, when everything has become ripe and not only the grapes are growing brown, a ray of sunlight has fallen on to my life: I looked behind me, I looked before me, never have I seen so many and such good things together. Not in vain have I buried my forty-fourth year today, I was entitled to bury it – what there was of life in it is rescued, is immortal. The first book of the Revaluation of all Values, the Songs of Zarathustra, the Twilight of the Idols, my attempt to philosophize with a hammer – all of them gifts of this year, of its last quarter even! How should I not be grateful to my whole life? – And so I tell myself my life.