“Twofold misjudgement. - The misfortune suffered by clear-minded and easily understood writers is that they are taken for shallow and thus little effort is expended on reading them: and the good fortune that attends the obscure is that the reader toils at them and ascribes to them the pleasure he has in fact gained from his own zeal.”

German philosopher and writer

Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher and writer. He began as a classical philologist, then turned to philosophy early in his academic career, and is known for a body of work that drew wide scholarly attention and lasting popular interest. In 1869 he became Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Basel, but he resigned in 1879 because of long-standing health problems. After that he lived as an independent writer, often in solitude and financial insecurity, moving between Switzerland, Italy, and southern France. He completed much of his main work in the following decade, before a neurological collapse in 1889 ended his working life.