The Portable Nietzsche, pg 613

“The very word ‘Christianity’ is a misunderstanding: in truth, there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross. The ‘evangel’ died on the cross. What has been called ‘evangel’ from that moment was actually the opposite of that which he had lived: ‘ill tidings,’ a dysangel. It is false to the point of nonsense to find the mark of the Christian in a ‘faith,’ for instance, in the faith in redemption through Christ: only Christian practice, a life such as he lived who died on the cross, is Christian.

Such a life is still possible today, for certain people even necessary: genuine, original Christianity will be possible at all times.

Not a faith, but a doing; above all, a not doing of many things, another state of being. States of consciousness, any faith, considering something true, for example – every psychologist knows this – are fifth-rank matters of complete indifference compared to the value of the instincts: speaking more strictly, the whole concept of spiritual causality is false. To reduce being a Christian, Christianism, to a matter of considering something true, to a mere phenomenon of consciousness, is to negate Christianism.”

The Portable Nietzsche, pg 608

“This ‘bringer of glad tidings’ died as he had lived, as he had taught – not to ‘redeem men’ but to show how one must live. This practice is his legacy to mankind: his behavior before the judges, before the catchpoles, before the accusers and all kinds of slander and scorn – his behavior on the cross. He does not resist, he does not defend his right, he takes no step which might ward off the worst; on the contrary, he provokes it. And he begs, he suffers, he loves with those, in those, who do him evil. Not to resist, not to be angry, not to hold responsible – to resist not even the evil one – to love him.”

The Portable Nietzsche, pg 552

“In Athens, in the time of Cicero, who expresses his surprise about this, the men and youths were far superior in beauty to the women. But what work and exertion the service of beauty had the male sex there imposed on itself for centuries! For one should make no mistake about the method in this case: a breeding of feelings and thoughts alone is almost nothing; one must first persuade the body. Strict perseverance in significant and exquisite gestures together with the obligation to live only with people who do not ‘let themselves go’ – that is quite enough for one to become significant and exquisite, and in two or three generations all this becomes inward. It is decisive for the lot of a people and of humanity that culture should begin in the right place – not in the ‘soul’ (as was the fateful superstition of the priests and half-priests): the right place is the body, the gesture, the diet, physiology; the rest follows from that. Therefore the Greeks remain the first cultural event in history: they knew, they did, what was needed; and Christianity, which despised the body, has been the greatest misfortune of humanity so far.”

To Have or to Be?

“The nature of the having mode of existence follows from the nature of private property. In this mode of existence all that matters is my acquisition of property and my unlimited right to keep what I have acquired. The having mode excludes others; it does not require any further effort on my part to keep my property or to make productive use of it. The buddha has described this mode of behavior as craving, the Jewish and Christian religions as coveting; it transforms everybody and everything into something dead and subject to another’s power.”

Mere Christianity

“It is easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objects – education, building, missions, holding services. Just as it is easy to think the State has a lot of different objects – military, political, ecnomic, and what not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden – that is what the state is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time. In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time.”

Mere Christianity

“One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting everyone else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons – marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning.”

Living Buddha, Living Christ

“Christians and Buddhists both realize that without concentration, without abandoning distracting thoughts, prayer and meditation will not bear fruit. Concentration and devotion bring calm, peace, stability, and comfort to both Buddhists and Christians. If farmers use farming tools to cultivate their land, practitioners use prayer and meditation to cultivate their consciousness.”

In My Own Way

“If Christ is really God’s search for man, God, to have effectively ‘come down to Earth,’ must be discoverable here in this very place and moment.  But the emulation of the ‘Jesus of history’ obscures the truth.  It concerns itself so much with what happened two thousand years ago that it misses the point, confusing the pointing finger with the truth.  ‘Why seek ye the living among the dead?  He is not here, but is risen.’  The disciples sought him at the tomb; we seek him in the tradition of the Church or the record of the Bible – or in the future, which is merely the past projected ahead.  They are all tombs, and ‘he is not here.’”

In My Own Way

“The best Christian thought has always seen that only Pharisaism comes through trying to be good.  For sanctity is less in wanting to be moral than in loving God and other men.  But the moralism which condemns a man for not loving is simply adding strength to that sense of fear and insecurity which prevents him from loving.”

This Is It

“But are God and nature, spirit and flesh – like individual persons, mutually exclusive?  ‘He that is unmarried,’ said St. Paul, ‘careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord.  But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife.’  Yet this is to say that the divine cannot be loved in and through the things of the this world, and to deny the saying that ‘Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me.’  If the love of God and the love of the world are mutually exclusive, then, on the very premises of theology, God is a finite thing among things – for only finite things exclude one another.  God is dethroned and un-godded by being put in opposition to nature and the world, becoming an object instead of the continuum in which we ‘live and move and have our being.’”