When Nietzsche Wept (2007)

Ben Cross: Josef Breuer

Quotes 

• Josef Breuer : How could I have given up everything?

  Nietzsche : You'd given up everything long before you met me.

  Josef Breuer : Yes, but now I have nothing.

  Nietzsche : Nothing *is* everything. In order to grow strong, you must first sink your roots deep into nothingness. Learn to face your loneliest loneliness.

• Josef Breuer : [despondently about a patient]  I left her weakened. Crippled.

  Nietzsche : You are responsible for all of your thoughts and deeds, but she, by virtue of this so-called illness, she is exonerated for everything? Who has damaged whom? Who has weakened whom? Doesn't this crippled person, as you call her, have greater power over you?

• Josef Breuer : I often think of ending my life.

  Nietzsche : I cannot help you with this. I have no training.

  Josef Breuer : Who is trained? Such healing is not part of the medical discipline.

  Nietzsche : What do I know of this?

  Josef Breuer : You know more than any man alive. Aren't your books entire treatises on despair?

  Nietzsche : I can't cure despair. I only know how to tolerate it.

• Nietzsche : Tell me about you illness.

  Josef Breuer : Would it be more efficient to read my previous consultations?

  Nietzsche : I'm sure they're excellent physicians, thank you. But I make my own diagnosis before reviewing those of my colleagues, just as I prefer to see a play before reading the reviews.

• Nietzsche : Living safely is dangerous.

  Josef Breuer : Living safely is dangerous?

• Josef Breuer : I should have been I before I became we!

  Mathilda : Words, words, Josef, you cannot live in words!

• Nietzsche : It's the first time I've revealed my loneliness, it's melting. It's melting away.

  Josef Breuer : It's a paradox. Isolation exists only in isolation. When shared it evaporates. My dear friend...

  Nietzsche : We *are* friends. I like saying that.

  [welling up] 

  Nietzsche : No one ever said this to me.

• Josef Breuer : I am a scientist yet science has no colour. I need passion. I need magic. That's what Berthe represents. Life without passion, without mystery... who can live such a life?

• [last lines] 

  Josef Breuer : Have a safe journey, my dear friend.

• Josef Breuer : You write that your mission is to save humankind from illusion, and aimlessness... to create a new code of behaviour, a new morality free from superstition. It's all there! In your books...