a quote from Nietzsche

“The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.’”

I first read this line around 5 years ago in college and I didn’t quite understand it.  I was thinking of suicide back then too, but not particularly as a good or comforting thing.  Back then, I was afraid of suicide and couldn’t understand why it would be a consolation.

I think that I’m starting to understand this aphorism a lot better now.  In my worst days, suicide was the only thing that I had to look forward to.  In my only slightly better days, I would go to sleep by telling myself “Whelp, I can always kill myself next week!” (although that’s probably not true for me right now…).

A famous German philosophy professor once gave me the following interpretation of Nietzsche: that his books (especially his later books) are his own attempts to convince himself to not commit suicide.  I’ve read most of Nietzsche’s books and I didn’t agree at the time.  But now I may start a re-reading with this interpretation in mind.

Another very famous quote from Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “Many die too late and a few die too early. The doctrine still sounds strange: “Die at the right time.”

And Nietzsche ended up not taking his own advice.  He spent the last decade or so of his life clinically insane…