…affirmation of affirmation against that famous negation of the negation.

Affirmation turns back on itself and repeats or reproduces itself. The eternal return is this highest power, the synthesis of affirmation which finds its principle in the will. The lightness of that which affirms against the weight of the negative; the games of the will to power against the labour of the dialectic; the affirmation of affirmation against that famous negation of the negation. (186)

…a complete reversal of the world of representation, and of the sense that ‘identical’ and ‘similar’ had in that world.

The eternal return is indeed the Similar, repetition in the eternal return is indeed the Identical – but precisely the resemblance and the identity do not pre-exist the return of that which returns. The do not in the first instance qualify what returns, they are indistinguishable from its return. It is not the same which returns, it is not the similar which returns; rather, the Same is the returning of that which returns, — in other words, of the Different; the similar is the returning of that which returns, – in other words, of the Dissimilar. The repetition in the eternal return is the same, but the same in so far as it is said uniquely of difference and the different. This is a complete reversal of the world of representation, and of the sense that ‘identical’ and ‘similar’ had in that world. (300)

Deleuze’s curse

Nietzsche announces only a light punishment for those who do not ‘believe’ in eternal return: they will have, and be aware of, only an ephemeral life! (55)

How could the reader believe that Nietzsche, who was the greatest critic of all these categories…

How could the reader believe that Nietzsche, who was the greatest critic of all these categories, implicated Everything, the Same, the Identical, the Similar, the Equal, the I and the Self in the eternal return.? How could it be believed that he understood the eternal return as a cycle, when he opposed ‘his’ hypothesis to every cyclical hypothesis? How could it be believed that he lapsed into the false and insipid idea of an opposition between a circular time and a linear time, an ancient and a modern time? (299)

Lacan’s curse

Let whoever cannot meet at its horizon the subjectivity of his time give it up then. For how could he who knows nothing of the dialectic that engages him in a symbolic movement with so many lives possibly make his being the axis of those lives? (264).

Saying yes to life even in its strangest and hardest problems

Saying yes to life even in its strangest and hardest problems…Not in order to be liberated from terror and pity, not in order to purge oneself of a dangerous affect by vehement discharge…but in order to be oneself, the eternal joy of becoming, beyond all terror and pity—that joy which included even the joy in destroying. (562-563)

Conviction as a means:

Conviction as a means: many things are attained only by means of a conviction. Great passion uses and uses up convictions, it does not succumb to them—it remains sovereign…The believer does not belong to himself, he can only be a means, he must be used up, he requires somebody to use him up. (638-639)

the gift of human language

death as a means can be recognized in every relation in which man is born into the life of history. This is the only life that endures and is true, since it is transmitted without being lost in a tradition passed on from subject to subject. It is impossible not to see how loftily this life transcends that inherited by the animal, in which the individual fades into the species, since no memorial distinguishes its ephemeral appearance from the appearance that reproduces it in the invariability of the type.  (263)

We others, we immoralists,

Let us consider how naïve it is altogether to say: “Man ought to be such and such!” Reality shows us an enchanting wealth of types, the abundance of a lavish play and change of forms—and some loafer of a moralist comments: “No! Man ought to be different.” He even knows what man should be like, this wretched bigot and prig: he paints himself on the wall and comments, “Ecce homo!” But even when the moralist addresses himself only to the single human being and says to him “you ought to be such and such!” he does not cease to make himself ridiculous.

We others, we immoralists, have, conversely, made room in our hearts for every kind of understanding, comprehending, and approving. We do not easily negate; we make it a point of honor to be affirmers. More and more, our eyes have opened to that economy which needs and knows how to utilize all hat the holy witlessness of the priest, of the diseased reason in the priest, rejects—that economy in the law of life which finds an advantage even in the disgusting species of the prigs, the priests, the virtuous, What advantage? We ourselves, we immoralists, are the answer. (491-492)

events explode, phenomena flash, like thunder and lightning

Once communication between heterogeneous series is established…Something ‘passes’ between the borders, events explode, phenomena flash, like thunder and lightning… A pure spatio-temporal dynamism, with its necessary participation in the forced movement, can be experienced only at the borders of the livable, under conditions beyond which it would entail the death of any well-constituted subject endowed with independence and activity. Embryology already displays the truth that there are systematic vital movements, torsions and drifts, that only an embryo can sustain: an adult would be torn apart by them. (118)