There are free insolent minds which would fain conceal and deny that they are broken, proud, incurable hearts (the cynicism of Hamlet--the case of Galiani); and occasionally folly itself is the mask of an unfortunate OVER-ASSURED knowledge .-- From which it follows that it is the part of a more refined humanity to have reverence "for the mask," and not to make use of psychology and curiosity in the wrong place.
271.

That which separates two men most profoundly is a different sense and grade of purity.

What does it matter about all their honesty and reciprocal usefulness, what does it matter about all their mutual good-will: the fact still remains--they "cannot smell each other!" The highest instinct for purity places him who is affected with it in the most extraordinary and dangerous isolation, as a saint: for it is just holiness--the highest spiritualization of the instinct in question.

Any kind of cognizance of an indescribable excess in the joy of the bath, any kind of ardour or thirst which perpetually impels the soul out of night into the morning, and out of gloom, out of "affliction" into clearness, brightness, depth, and refinement:--just as much as such a tendency DISTINGUISHES--it is a noble tendency--it also SEPARATES .-- The pity of the saint is pity for the FILTH of the human, all-too-human.
And there are grades and heights where pity itself is regarded by him as impurity, as filth.
272.

Signs of nobility: never to think of lowering our duties to the rank of duties for everybody; to be unwilling to renounce or to share our responsibilities; to count our prerogatives, and the exercise of them, among our DUTIES.
273.