Ikigai Daily
Menu
StillnessQuote

What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

LiteraturePhilosophy

The story behind the card

This is aphorism 153 of Beyond Good and Evil (1886). It belongs to Part Four, a set of short sayings modelled on French writers such as La Rochefoucauld. In German: “Was aus Liebe gethan wird, geschieht immer jenseits von Gut und Böse.” The first English translator, Helen Zimmern, knew Nietzsche personally. Nietzsche (1844–1900) argued that good and evil are not fixed opposites. The aphorism does not say that love excuses everything, only that an act of love does not come from weighing rules, so moral bookkeeping cannot fully judge it.

Türkçe oku
Sevgiyle yapılan her şey daima iyinin ve kötünün ötesinde olur.
Friedrich Nietzsche, İyinin ve Kötünün Ötesinde

Bu söz, Nietzsche'nin İyinin ve Kötünün Ötesinde (1886) kitabındaki 153. aforizmadır. Kitabın dördüncü bölümü, La Rochefoucauld gibi Fransız yazarları örnek alan kısa ve özlü sözlerden, yani aforizmalardan oluşur. Almancası şöyledir: “Was aus Liebe gethan wird, geschieht immer jenseits von Gut und Böse.” Kitabı İngilizceye ilk çeviren Helen Zimmern, Nietzsche'yi şahsen tanıyordu. Nietzsche (1844-1900), iyiyle kötünün değişmez karşıtlar olmadığını savunuyordu. Aforizma, sevginin her şeyi mazur gösterdiğini söylemez. Söylediği şudur: Sevgiyle yapılan bir iş, kurallar tartılarak yapılmaz; bu yüzden alışılmış ahlak hesabıyla tam olarak yargılanamaz.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Friedrich Nietzsche
Get the mobile appAbout our cards

Related cards

These cards share a subject or reading mode with the card above.

StillnessLiterature

The wound is where the light enters you.

The sentence condenses lines by Coleman Barks, the American poet whose free versions made Rumi a bestseller in English; Barks did not read Persian and reworked scholarly translations. His poem “Childhood Friends” (1990) urges the reader to keep looking at “the bandaged place”, where the light enters. It draws on the Masnavi of Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet and Sufi mystic of Konya, who tells the wounded not to turn away from the plaster a spiritual guide lays on them: the healing comes from its light, not from themselves.

Attributed to Rumi; exact English sentence not matched to a standard textRead card
StillnessLiterature

The rose's lover must endure the thorn.

The Turkish Language Association's dictionary explains that people put up with the troubles that come with someone, or some work, they love. The rose and its thorn are an old pair in Turkish and Persian poetry; in classical Ottoman verse the nightingale longs for the rose, and the thorn often stands for the pain of love. English has “No rose without a thorn”, as does Turkish, “Dikensiz gül olmaz”, but this proverb adds that whoever loves the rose accepts its thorn.

Turkish, Persian variants ProverbRead card
StillnessLiterature

In every religion there is love, yet love has no religion.

This sentence has not been found in Rumi's writings, but it echoes a story in his Masnavi, the long Persian poem he dictated in Konya. Moses hears a shepherd offering, in homely words, to mend God's shoes, comb his hair and bring him milk. Moses scolds him, and God rebukes Moses: he was sent to bring people closer, not to drive them away. God's answer includes the line “The religion of love is apart from all religions.” When Rumi died in 1273, Christians and Jews joined his mourners.

Rumi (popular attribution)Read card
StillnessLiterature

Do not waste your life trying to solve the sky. No one came back with the answer. Sit, breathe, and taste this hour.

A modern verse inspired by the Rubáiyát, not a translation of Omar Khayyam. Khayyam (1048–1131) was a Persian mathematician and astronomer from Nishapur who led the team behind the Jalali calendar, the basis of Iran's calendar today. Four-line poems, rubáiyát, were credited to him after his death, and how many are really his is still debated. The verse echoes Edward FitzGerald's famous English version: of all who passed through “the door of Darkness”, “Not one returns to tell us of the Road”.

Modern verse after the Rubáiyát of Omar KhayyamRead card
StillnessReligion & Belief

The wise argue about heaven and hell. The cup in your hand asks a simpler question: are you awake to this moment?

A modern verse inspired by the Rubáiyát, the four-line poems credited to the Persian poet Omar Khayyam (1048–1131), not a translation. Its contrast between learned debate and the cup in hand runs through Edward FitzGerald's English version. In one quatrain the young poet eagerly hears scholars and holy men argue, “but evermore / Came out by the same door where in I went”. In another he sends his soul to bring back news of the afterlife, and it answers: “I Myself am Heav'n and Hell.”

Modern verse after the Rubáiyát of Omar KhayyamRead card
Next card in the archiveIt is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship, that makes unhappy marriages.Read next →