I discovered life as it were anew, myself included, I tasted all good and even petty things, as others cannot easily taste them,-I made out of
my will to health, to life, my philosophy ... For pay heed to this: it was in the years of my lowest vitality that I ceased to be a
pessimist: the instinct for self-recovery forbade to me a philosophy of indigence and discouragement ... And in what does one really recognize that
someone has turned out well! In that a human being who has turned out well does our senses good: that he is carved out of wood at once hard, delicate
and sweet-smelling. He has a taste only for what is beneficial to him; his pleasure, his joy ceases where the measure of what is beneficial is overstepped. He
divines cures for injuries, he employs ill chances to his own advantage; what does not kill him makes him stronger. Out of everything he sees, hears,
experiences he instinctively collects together his sum: he is a principle of selection, he rejects much. He is always in his company, whether
he traffics with books, people or landscapes: he does honor when he chooses, when he admits, when he trusts. He reacts slowly to
every kind of stimulus, with that slowness which a protracted caution and a willed pride have bred in him,-he tests an approaching stimulus, he is far from
going out to meet it. He believes in neither "misfortune" nor in "guilt": he knows how to forget-he is strong enough for
everything to have to turn out for the best for him.- Very well, I am the opposite of a décadent: for I have just described
myself.
Nietzsche