Gay Science 308. The history of every day
What is it that constitutes the history of each day for you? Look at your habits of which it consists: are they the product of numberless little acts of cowardice and laziness, or of your bravery and inventive reason? Although the two cases are so different, it is possible that men might bestow the same praise upon you, and that you might also be equally useful to them in the one case as in the other. But praise and utility and respectability may suffice for him whose only desire is to have a good conscience, not however for you, the "trier of the reins," who has a consciousness of the conscience!