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Irony, which in Socrates’ case consists of saying “too little,” functions for him just as hyperbole, which is saying “too much,” functions for Nietzsche.

— Alexander Nehamas Nietzsche: Life as Literature (1985)

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More quotes by Alexander Nehamas

To study the art of living is to engage in one of its forms.

The Art of Living (1998)

The one reaction Nietzsche cannot tolerate is indifference, and this is what his use of hyperbole is designed to eliminate.

Nietzsche: Life as Literature (1985)

For Socrates, virtue was nothing but its own pursuit. And only the promise of happiness is happiness itself.

Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art (2010)

Both dogmatism and metaphysics … are attempts to project one’s own views on the world, and they are just as much attempts to hide precisely this projection from themselves as well as from their audience.

Nietzsche: Life as Literature (1985)

According to Heidegger, the blind desire for manipulation [of nature] came about because modernity turned reason—which was, for the ancients, and even for the medievals, a source of valuable goals—into a purely instrumental faculty.

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