Why I Am so Clever
Penguin Books

Friedrich Nietzsche


WHY I AM SO CLEVER

Translated by
R. J. Hollingdale

Penguin Books
PENGUIN CLASSICS

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Penguin Random House UK

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

Contents

1. Why I Am so Wise

2. Why I Am so Clever

3. Why I Write Such Good Books

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FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Born 1844, Röcken, Kingdom of Prussia

Died 1900, Weimar, German Empire

Ecce Homo was written in 1888 and first published in 1908.

This translation was first published in 1979. This selection is taken from Ecce Homo, Penguin Classics, 2004.

NIETZSCHE IN PENGUIN CLASSICS

A Nietzsche Reader

Beyond Good and Evil

Ecce Homo

Human, All Too Human

On the Genealogy of Morals

The Birth of Tragedy

The Portable Nietzsche

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Twilight of Idols and Anti-Christ

Aphorisms on Love and Hate

Penguin Books

THE BEGINNING

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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.