The Book in 3 Sentences
- In a paradigm where God is dead and with him every external source of meaning, Zarathustra calls humanity to become a bridge to the Übermensch - a being who creates their own values and says a full yes to life as it is.
- The greatest obstacle is the spirit of gravity: pity, herd morality, resentment and the longing for an afterlife, all of which are ways of saying no to this life and to oneself.
- The test of whether you truly affirm life is the eternal recurrence - could you will to live this exact life, with every joy and every suffering, again and again for eternity, and love it?
Overview & Impressions
I found Thus Spoke Zarathustra to be quite dense and hard to follow. It's written as a winding, often confusing story told in parables and poetic speeches, and I'm not sure it was the best entry point to Nietzsche. Even so, a lot of his central ideas come through clearly, particularly around the Übermensch and the will to power. I think I would have got much more out of it coming in with more context or reading it alongside some commentary. Probably worth reading, but go about it differently to how I did.
Top Quotes
Man is something that should be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?
You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?
One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil.
He who wants to learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and to walk and to run and to climb and to dance - you cannot learn to fly by flying!
Was that life? Well then! Once more!
Summary, Quotes & Notes
Zarathustra’s Prologue
Great star! What would your happiness be, if you had not those for whom you shine!
Man is something that should be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?
‘We have discovered happiness,’ say the Ultimate Men and blink.
The man looked up mistrustfully. ‘If you are speaking the truth,’ he said then, ‘I leave nothing when I leave life. I am not much more than an animal which has been taught to dance by blows and starvation.’ ‘Not so,’ said Zarathustra. ‘You have made danger your calling, there is nothing in that to despise. Now you perish through your calling: so I will bury you with my own hands.’
I want to teach men the meaning of their existence: which is the Superman, the lightning from the dark cloud man. But I am still distant from them, and my meaning does not speak to their minds.
He who feeds the hungry refreshes his own soul: thus speaks wisdom.
And straightway he fell asleep, weary in body but with a soul at rest.
But I need living companions who follow me because they want to follow themselves - and who want to go where I want to go.
I wish I were wise! I wish I were wise from the heart of me, like my serpent! ‘But I am asking the impossible: therefore I ask my pride always to go along with my wisdom! ‘And if one day my wisdom should desert me - ah, it loves to fly away! - then may my pride too fly with my folly!’ Thus began Zarathustra’s down-going.
I
The weight-bearing spirit takes upon itself all these heaviest things: like a camel hurrying laden into the desert, thus it hurries into its desert. But in the loneliest desert the second metamorphosis occurs: the spirit here becomes a lion; it wants to capture freedom and be lord in its own desert.
The child is innocence and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a sport, a self-propelling wheel, a first motion, a sacred Yes.
Few know it, but one must have all the virtues in order to sleep well. Shall I bear false witness? Shall I commit adultery? Shall I covet my neighbour’s maidservant? None of this would be consistent with good sleep.
Purer and more honest of speech is the healthy body, perfect and square-built: and it speaks of the meaning of the earth.
To have many virtues is to be distinguished, but it is a hard fate; and many a man has gone into the desert and killed himself because he was tired of being a battle and battleground of virtues.
Man is something that must be overcome.
Just look at these superfluous people! They steal for themselves the works of inventors and the treasures of the wise: they call their theft culture - and they turn everything to sickness and calamity.
They are always ill, they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper. They devour one another and cannot even digest themselves.
They acquire wealth and make themselves poorer with it.
A free life still remains for great souls. Truly, he who possesses little is so much the less possessed: praised be a moderate poverty!
All great things occur away from glory and the marketplace: the inventors of new values have always lived away from glory and the market-place.
Flee, my friend, into your solitude: I see you stung by poisonous flies. Flee to where the raw, rough breeze blows!
Everything that is thought about a great deal is finally thought suspicious.
Flee, my friend, into your solitude and to where the raw, rough breeze blows! It is not your fate to be a fly-swat.
I LOVE the forest. It is bad to live in towns: too many of the lustful live there.
Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer than into the dreams of a lustful woman?
Those to whom chastity is difficult should be dissuaded from it, lest it become the way to Hell - that is, to filth and lust of the soul.
Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.
Truly, there are those who are chaste from the very heart: they are more gentle of heart and they laugh more often and more heartily than you. They laugh at chastity too, and ask: ‘What is chastity? ‘Is chastity not folly? But this folly came to us and not we to it. ‘We offered this guest love and shelter: now it lives with us - let it stay as long as it wishes!’
I and Me are always too earnestly in conversation with one another: how could it be endured, if there were not a friend? For the hermit the friend is always the third person: the third person is the cork that prevents the conversation of the other two from sinking to the depths.
Our faith in others betrays wherein we would dearly like to have faith in ourselves.
In your friend you should possess your best enemy. Your heart should feel closest to him when you oppose him.
Zarathustra has found no greater power on earth than good and evil.
A table of values hangs over every people.
Evaluation is creation: hear it, you creative men!
YOU crowd together with your neighbours and have beautiful words for it. But I tell you: Your love of your neighbour is your bad love of yourselves.
Higher than love of one’s neighbour stands love of the most distant man and of the man of the future.
You cannot endure to be alone with yourselves and do not love yourselves enough.
One man runs to his neighbour because he is looking for himself, and another because he wants to lose himself. Your bad love of yourselves makes solitude a prison to you.
But you must understand how to be a sponge if you want to be loved by overflowing hearts.
Alas, there are so many great ideas that do no more than a bellows: they inflate and make emptier.
But you yourself will always be the worst enemy you can encounter; you yourself lie in wait for yourself in caves and forests.
You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?
I love him who wants to create beyond himself, and thus perishes.
Everything about woman is a riddle, and everything about woman has one solution: it is called pregnancy.
For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child. But what is the woman for the man? The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.
Man should be trained for war and woman for the recreation of the warrior: all else is folly.
The warrior does not like fruit that is too sweet. Therefore he likes woman; even the sweetest woman is still bitter.
Woman understands children better than a man, but man is more childlike than woman.
A child is concealed in the true man: it wants to play. Come, women, discover the child in man! Let woman be a plaything, pure and fine like a precious stone illumined by the virtues of a world that does not yet exist.
But let this be your honour: always to love more than you are loved and never to be second in this.
‘Behold, now the world has become perfect!’ - thus thinks every woman when she obeys with all her love.
‘Give me your little truth, woman!’ I said. And thus spoke the little old woman: ‘Are you visiting women? Do not forget your whip!’
Shared injustice is half justice.
A little revenge is more human than no revenge at all. And if the punishment be not also a right and an honour for the transgressor, then I do not like your punishment.
It is more noble to declare yourself wrong than to maintain you are right, especially when you are right. Only you must be rich enough for it.
To him who wants to be just from the very heart even a lie becomes philanthropy.
You are young and desire marriage and children. But I ask you: are you a man who ought to desire a child?
Are you the victor, the self-conqueror, the ruler of your senses, the lord of your virtues? Thus I ask you. Or do the animal and necessity speak from your desire? Or isolation? Or disharmony with yourself?
You should build beyond yourself. But first you must be built yourself, square-built in body and soul.
Yes, I wish that the earth shook with convulsions when a saint and a goose mate together.
One must stop permitting oneself to be eaten when one tastes best: this is understood by those who want to be loved long.
In your death, your spirit and your virtue should still glow like a sunset glow around the earth: otherwise yours is a bad death.
Tell me: how did gold come to have the highest value? Because it is uncommon and useless and shining and mellow in lustre; it always bestows itself.
The highest virtue is uncommon and useless, it is shining and mellow in lustre: the highest virtue is a bestowing virtue.
All names of good and evil are images: they do not speak out, they only hint. He is a fool who seeks knowledge from them.
When your heart surges broad and full like a river, a blessing and a danger to those who live nearby: that is when your virtue has its origin and beginning. When you are exalted above praise and blame, and your will wants to command all things as the will of a lover: that is when your virtue has its origin and beginning. When you despise the soft bed and what is pleasant and cannot make your bed too far away from the soft-hearted: that is when your virtue has its origin and beginning. When you are the willers of a single will, and you call this dispeller of need your essential and necessity: that is when your virtue has its origin and beginning.
Lead, as I do, the flown-away virtue back to earth - yes, back to body and life: that it may give the earth its meaning, a human meaning!
The body purifies itself through knowledge; experimenting with knowledge it elevates itself; to the discerning man all instincts are holy; the soul of the elevated man grows joyful.
Physician, heal yourself: thus you will heal your patient too. Let his best healing-aid be to see with his own eyes him who makes himself well.
Man and man’s earth are still unexhausted and undiscovered.
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil.
Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you.
‘All gods are dead: now we want the Superman to live’
II
Thus months and years passed over the solitary; but his wisdom increased and caused him pain by its abundance.
Once you said ‘God’ when you gazed upon distant seas; but now I have taught you to say ‘Superman’.
God is a supposition; but I want your supposing to teach no further than your creating will.
But you could surely create the Superman. Perhaps not you yourselves, my brothers! But you could transform yourselves into forefathers and ancestors of the Superman: and let this be your finest creating!
Creation - that is the great redemption from suffering, and life’s easement. But that the creator may exist, that itself requires suffering and much transformation.
Yes, there must be much bitter dying in your life, you creators!
All feeling suffers in me and is in prison: but my willing always comes to me as my liberator and bringer of joy.
The noble man resolves not to make others ashamed: he resolves to feel shame before all sufferers.
If I must be compassionate I still do not want to be called compassionate; and if I am compassionate then it is preferably from a distance.
And I should also prefer to cover my head and flee away before I am recognized: and thus I bid you do, my friends!
Truly, I did this and that for the afflicted; but it always seemed to me I did better things when I learned to enjoy myself better.
As long as men have existed, man has enjoyed himself too little: that alone, my brothers, is our original sin!
And if we learn better to enjoy ourselves, we best unlearn how to do harm to others and to contrive harm.
Great obligations do not make a man grateful, they make him resentful; and if a small kindness is not forgotten it becomes a gnawing worm.
Beggars, however, should be entirely abolished! Truly, it is annoying to give to them and annoying not to give to them.
But if you have a suffering friend, be a resting-place for his suffering, but a resting-place like a hard bed, a camp-bed: thus you will serve him best.
One should hold fast to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, how soon one loses one’s head, too!
Thus spoke the Devil to me once: ‘Even God has his Hell: it is his love for man.’ And I lately heard him say these words: ‘God is dead; God has died of his pity for man.’
All great love is above pity: for it wants - to create what is loved!
False values and false scriptures: they are the worst monsters for mortal men - fate sleeps and waits long within them. But at last it comes and awakes and eats and devours all that have built their huts upon it.
There has never yet been a Superman.
ONE has to speak with thunder and heavenly fireworks to feeble and dormant senses. But the voice of beauty speaks softly: it steals into only the most awakened souls.
For that man may be freed from the bonds of revenge: that is the bridge to my highest hope.
Genuine - that is what I call him who goes into godforsaken deserts and has broken his venerating heart.
Hungered, violent, solitary, godless: that is how the lion-will wants to be. Free from the happiness of serfs, redeemed from gods and worship, fearless and fearful, great and solitary: that is how the will of the genuine man is.
Spirit is the life that itself strikes into life: through its own torment it increases its own knowledge - did you know that before?
What the people believe to be good and evil betrays to me an ancient will to power.
All living creatures are obeying creatures.
He who cannot obey himself will be commanded.
Commanding is more difficult than obeying.
And life itself told me this secret: ‘Behold,’ it said, ‘I am that which must overcome itself again and again. ‘To be sure, you call it will to procreate or impulse towards a goal, towards the higher, more distant, more manifold: but all this is one and one secret.
Truly, I say to you: Unchanging good and evil does not exist!
But it is precisely to the hero that beauty is the most difficult of all things. Beauty is unattainable to all violent wills.
To stand with relaxed muscles and unharnessed wills: that is the most difficult thing for all of you, you sublime men!
When power grows gracious and descends into the visible: I call such descending beauty.
May your goodness be your ultimate self-overpowering.
You should aspire to the virtue of the pillar: the higher it rises, the fairer and more graceful it grows, but inwardly harder and able to bear more weight.
I will make light of you, since I have heavy things to carry; and what do I care if beetles and dragonflies sit themselves on my bundle!
I will make amends to my children for being the child of my fathers.
Every honest man’s step speaks out: but the cat steals along over the ground.
‘And let this be called by me immaculate perception of all things: that I desire nothing of things, except that I may lie down before them like a mirror with a hundred eyes.’ Oh, you sentimental hypocrites, you lustful men! You lack innocence in desire: and therefore you now slander desiring!
He who wants to create beyond himself has the purest will.
But now your emasculated leering wants to be called ‘contemplation’! And that which lets cowardly eyes touch it shall be christened ‘beautiful’! Oh, you befoulers of noble names!
He who does not believe in himself always lies.
And this I call knowledge: all that is deep shall rise up - to my height!
I am too hot and scorched by my own thought: it is often about to take my breath away. Then I have to get into the open air and away from all dusty rooms.
Like those who stand in the street and stare at the people passing by, so they too wait and stare at thoughts that others have thought. If one takes hold of them, they involuntarily raise a dust like sacks of flour; but who could guess that their dust derived from corn and from the golden joy of summer fields?
Why?’ said Zarathustra. ‘You ask why? I am not one of those who may be questioned about their Why. ‘Do my experiences date from yesterday? It is a long time since I experienced the reasons for my opinions.
Should I not have to be a barrel of memory, if I wanted to carry my reasons, too, about with me? ‘It is already too much for me to retain even my opinions; and many a bird has flown away.
But all poets believe this: that he who, lying in the grass or in lonely bowers, pricks up his ears, catches a little of the things that are between heaven and earth. And if they experience tender emotions, the poets always think that nature herself is in love with them.
I have grown weary of the poets, the old and the new: they all seem to me superficial and shallow seas. They have not thought deeply enough: therefore their feeling - has not plumbed the depths.
The greatest events - they are not our noisiest but our stillest hours.
The world revolves, not around the inventors of new noises, but around the inventors of new values; it revolves inaudibly.
‘For the state wants to be absolutely the most important beast on earth; and it is believed to be so, too!’
A teaching went forth, a belief ran beside it: Everything is empty, everything is one, everything is past! And from every hill it resounded: Everything is empty, everything is one, everything is past!
Thus did Zarathustra hear a prophet speak; and his prophecy went to Zarathustra’s heart and transformed him. He went about sad and weary; and he became like those of whom the prophet had spoken.
I have never believed the people when they talked about great men - and I held to my belief that it was an inverse cripple, who had too little of everything and too much of one thing.
Powerless against that which has been done, the will is an angry spectator of all things past.
The will cannot will backwards; that it cannot break time and time’s desire - that is the will’s most lonely affliction.
‘Punishment’ is what revenge calls itself: it feigns a good conscience for itself with a lie.
Your souls are so unfamiliar with what is great that the Superman would be fearful to you in his goodness! And you wise and enlightened men, you would flee from the burning sun of wisdom in which the Superman joyfully bathes his nakedness! You highest men my eyes have encountered! This is my doubt of you and my secret laughter: I think you would call my Superman - a devil!
‘What has the hide of my humility not already endured? I live at the foot of my heights: how high are my peaks? No one has yet told me. But I know my valleys well.’
To perform great things is difficult: but more difficult is to command great things. ‘This is the most unpardonable thing about you: You have the power and you will not rule.’ And I answered: ‘I lack the lion’s voice for command.’ Then again something said to me as in a whisper: ‘It is the stillest words which bring the storm. Thoughts that come on doves’ feet guide the world.
‘The pride of youth is still in you, you have become young late: but he who wants to become a child must overcome even his youth.’
III
And when all footholds disappear, you must know how to climb upon your own head: how could you climb upward otherwise? ‘Upon your own head and beyond your own heart! Now the gentlest part of you must become the hardest.
In order to see much one must learn to look away from oneself - every mountain-climber needs this hardness. ‘But he who, seeking enlightenment, is over-eager with his eyes, how could he see more of a thing than its foreground!
Love is the danger for the most solitary man, love of any thing if only it is alive!
For courage is the best destroyer - courage that attacks: for in every attack there is a triumphant shout.
Courage also destroys giddiness at abysses: and where does man not stand at an abyss? Is seeing itself not - seeing abysses? Courage is the best destroyer: courage also destroys pity. Pity, however, is the deepest abyss: as deeply as man looks into life, so deeply does he look also into suffering. Courage, however, is the best destroyer, courage that attacks: it destroys even death, for it says: ‘Was that life? Well then! Once more!’
Towards morning, however, Zarathustra laughed to his heart and said ironically: ‘Happiness runs after me. That is because I do not run after women. Happiness, however, is a woman.’
The god is veiled by his beauty: thus you hide your stars. You do not speak: thus you proclaim to me your wisdom.
Good and evil themselves, however, are only intervening shadows and damp afflictions and passing clouds.
Here I am still like a cockerel in a strange farmyard, who is pecked at even by the hens; but I am not unfriendly to these hens on that account. I am polite towards them, as towards every small vexation; to be prickly towards small things seems to me the wisdom of a hedgehog.
He who praises appears to be giving back, in truth however he wants to be given more!
I go among this people and keep my eyes open: they have become smaller and are becoming ever smaller: and their doctrine of happiness and virtue is the cause.
For only he who is sufficiently a man will - redeem the woman in woman.
Fundamentally they want one thing most of all: that nobody shall do them harm. So they steal a march on everyone and do good to everyone. This, however, is cowardice: although it be called ‘virtue’.
To them, virtue is what makes modest and tame: with it they make the wolf into a dog and man himself into man’s best domestic animal.
This, however, is - mediocrity: although it be called moderation.
They are surprised that I am not prepared to improve and sharpen their cleverness: as if they had not already sufficient wiseacres, whose voices grate on me like slate-pencils!
Only my disgust stops me from cracking them.
Among this people I am my own forerunner, my own cock-crow through dark lanes.
If I ever lied, I lied from love. For that reason I am joyful even in my winter bed. A meagre bed warms me more than an opulent one, for I am jealous of my poverty. And it is most faithful to me in the winter.
Long silence is also a good, wanton thing.
But the clear, the honest, the transparent - they seem to me the shrewdest silent men: those whose profundity is so deep that even the clearest water does not - betray it.
They even pity my accidents and chances: but my doctrine is: ‘Let chance come to me: it is as innocent as a little child!’
For one person, solitude is the escape of an invalid; for another, solitude is escape from the invalids.
Where one can no longer love, one should - pass by! Thus spoke Zarathustra and passed by the fool and the great city.
All these young hearts have already grown old - and not even old! only weary, common, comfortable: they describe it: ‘We have grown pious again.’
But it is a disgrace to pray! Not for everyone, but for you and me and for whoever else has his conscience in his head. For joy it is a disgrace to pray!
The cowardly devil in you who would like to clasp his hands and to fold his arms and to take it easier: - it was this cowardly devil who persuaded you: ‘There is a God!’
Loneliness is one thing, solitude another.
He who wants to understand all things among men has to touch all things. But my hands are too clean for that.
Stung by poisonous flies and hollowed out like a stone by many drops of wickedness: that is how I sat among them and still told myself: ‘Everything small is innocent of its smallness!’
The stupidity of the good is unfathomable.
Sensual pleasure: innocent and free to free hearts, the earth’s garden-joy, an overflowing of thanks to the present from all the future. Sensual pleasure: a sweet poison only to the withered, but to the lion-willed the great restorative and reverently-preserved wine of wines.
And then it also happened - and truly, it happened for the first time! - that his teaching glorified selfishness, the sound, healthy selfishness that issues from a mighty soul - from a mighty soul, to which pertains the exalted body, the beautiful, victorious, refreshing body, around which everything becomes a mirror; the supple, persuasive body, the dancer whose image and epitome is the self-rejoicing soul. The self-rejoicing of such bodies and souls calls itself: ‘Virtue’.
Entirely hateful and loathsome to it is he who will never defend himself, who swallows down poisonous spittle and evil looks, the too-patient man who puts up with everything, is content with everything: for that is the nature of slaves.
The ostrich runs faster than any horse, but even he sticks his head heavily into heavy earth: that is what the man who cannot yet fly is like.
But he who wants to become light and a bird must love himself - thus do I teach.
One must learn to love oneself with a sound and healthy love, so that one may endure it with oneself and not go roaming about - thus do I teach.
Man is difficult to discover, most of all to himself; the spirit often tells lies about the soul. The Spirit of Gravity is the cause of that. But he has discovered himself who says: This is my good and evil: he has silenced thereby the mole and dwarf who says: ‘Good for all, evil for all.’
Truly, I too have learned to wait, I have learned it from the very heart, but only to wait for myself. And above all I have learned to stand and to walk and to run and to jump and to climb and to dance.
He who wants to learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and to walk and to run and to climb and to dance - you cannot learn to fly by flying!
I disturbed this somnolence when I taught that nobody yet knows what is good and evil - unless it be the creator! But he it is who creates a goal for mankind and gives the earth its meaning and its future: he it is who creates the quality of good and evil in things.
I found again my old devil and arch-enemy, the Spirit of Gravity, and all that he created: compulsion, dogma, need and consequence and purpose and will and good and evil.
He who cannot command himself should obey.
One should not wish to enjoy where one has not given enjoyment.
Good men never tell the truth; to be good in that way is a sickness of the spirit.
Once people believed in prophets and astrologers: and therefore people believed: ‘Everything is fate: you shall, for you must!’ Then again people mistrusted all prophets and astrologers: and therefore people believed: ‘Everything is freedom: you can, for you will!’
‘You shall not steal! You shall not kill!’ - such words were once called holy; in their presence people bowed their knees and their heads and removed their shoes. But I ask you: Where have there ever been better thieves and killers in the world than such holy words have been?
When such words were called holy was not truth itself - killed?
For many noblemen are needed, and noblemen of many kinds, for nobility to exist!
All that has a price is of little value.
‘Wherefore live? All is vanity! To live - that means to thrash straw; to live - that means to burn oneself and yet not become warm.’ Ancient rigmarole like this still counts as ‘wisdom’; and it is the more honoured because it is old and smells damp. Even mould ennobles.
There is much filth in the world: so much is true! But the world itself is not yet a filthy monster on that account!
‘Wisdom makes weary, nothing is worth while; you shall not desire!’ - I found this new law-table hanging even in public market-places. Shatter, O my brothers, shatter this new law-table too!
Life is a fountain of delight: but all wells are poisoned for him from whom an aching stomach, the father of affliction, speaks.
And you should first learn from me even how to learn, how to learn well!
There are many excellent inventions on earth, some useful, some pleasant: the earth is to be loved for their sake. And there are many things so well devised that they are like women’s breasts: at the same time useful and pleasant.
You world-weary people! You should be given a stroke of the cane!
How should the highest soul not possess the worst parasites?
And him you do not teach to fly, teach - to fall faster!
I love the brave: but it is not enough to be a swordsman, one must also know against whom to be a swordsman! And there is often more bravery in containing oneself and passing by: in order to spare oneself for a worthier enemy!
This is how I would have man and woman: the one fit for war, the other fit for bearing children, but both fit for dancing with head and heels.
Let that wisdom be false to us that brought no laughter with it!
I want honest people to say to one another: ‘We love each other: let us see to it that we stay in love! Or shall our promise be a mistake?
The good have to crucify him who devises his own virtue! That is the truth!
This new law-table do I put over you, O my brothers: Become hard!
How sweet it is, that words and sounds of music exist: are words and music not rainbows and seeming bridges between things eternally separated?
Life was dearer to me than all my Wisdom had ever been.
Never yet did I find the woman by whom I wanted children, unless it be this woman, whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!
IV
Not impatient, not patient, on the contrary one who has unlearned even patience, because he no longer ‘suffers in patience’.
Thus sighed the prophet; with his last sigh, however, Zarathustra again became cheerful and assured, like one emerging from a deep chasm into the light. ‘No! No! Thrice No!’ he cried vigorously, and stroked his beard. ‘I know better! There still are blissful islands! Do not talk about such things, you sighing sack-cloth!
For in the evening we must both be in good spirits, ‘in good spirits and glad that this day has ended! And you yourself shall dance to my songs as my dancing bear. ‘You do not believe it? You are shaking your head? Very well! Go on, old bear! But I too - am a prophet!’
Truly, better to live among hermits and goat-herds than with our gilded, false, painted rabble - although it calls itself “good company”, ‘although it calls itself “nobility”.
I think the finest and dearest man today is a healthy peasant, uncouth, cunning, obstinate, enduring: that is the noblest type today.
Everything is mixed up with everything else, saint and scoundrel and gentleman and Jew and every beast out of Noah’s Ark.
With the sword of these words you have cut through the thickest darkness of our hearts. You have discovered our distress, for behold! we are on our way to find the Higher Man - ‘the man who is higher than we: although we are kings.
There is no harder misfortune in all human destiny than when the powerful of the earth are not also the first men. Then everything becomes false and awry and monstrous.
‘Once on a time - ’twas A.D. One, I think - Thus spoke the Sybil, drunken without drink: “How bad things go! Decay! Decay! Ne’er sank the world so low! Rome is now a harlot and a brothel too, Rome’s Caesar’s a beast, and God himself - a Jew!”’
AND Zarathustra walked thoughtfully farther and deeper through forests and past swampy places; but, as happens with those who think on difficult things, on his way he unintentionally trod on a man. And behold, all at once a cry of pain and two curses and twenty little invectives spurted up into his face: so that in his fright he raised his stick and brought it down on the man he had trodden on.
Better to know nothing than half-know many things! Better to be a fool on one’s own account than a wise man at the approval of others!
How long have I probed this one thing, the brain of the leech, so that slippery truth should here no longer slip away from me! Here is my kingdom! ‘For its sake I have cast away all others, for its sake I have grown indifferent to all others; and close beside my knowledge couches my black ignorance. ‘The conscience of my spirit demands of me that I know one thing and apart from that know nothing: I am disgusted by all the semi-intellectual, all the vaporous, hovering, visionary. ‘Where my honesty ceases I am blind and want to be blind. But where I want to know I also want to be honest, that is, severe, stern, strict, cruel, inexorable.
I wanted to appear a great man and I convinced many: but this lie has been beyond my strength. I am collapsing under it. ‘O Zarathustra, everything about me is a lie; but that I am collapsing - this is genuine!’
Whoever honours him as a god of love does not think highly enough of love itself. Did this god not also want to be judge? But the lover loves beyond reward and punishment.
He was also indistinct. How angry he was with us, this shorter of wrath, because we mistook his meaning! But why did he not speak more clearly? ‘And if our ears were to blame, why did he give us ears that were unable to hear him properly? If there was dirt in our ears, very well! who put it there? ‘He had too many failures, this potter who had not learned his craft! But that he took vengeance on his pots and creations because they had turned out badly - that was a sin against good taste.
Better no god, better to produce destiny on one’s own account, better to be a fool, better to be God oneself!
Most of all I should like to set every sad and sorrowful person again on firm land and firm legs.
‘For this old god no longer lives: he is quite dead.’
Man, however, is something that must be overcome.
What do I seek here?’ he answered: ‘the same as you seek, you peace-breaker! That is, happiness on earth. ‘To that end, however, I may learn from these cows. For, let me tell you, I have already been talking to them half a morning and they were just about to reply to me. Why do you disturb them? ‘If we do not alter and become as cows, we shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. For there is one thing we should learn from them: rumination. ‘And truly, if a man should gain the whole world and not learn this one thing, rumination: what would it profit him! He would not be free from his affliction, ‘his great affliction: that, however, is today called disgust. Who today has not his heart, mouth, and eyes filled with disgust? You too! You too! But regard these cows!’
Is harder to give well than to take well, and that to give well is an art and the ultimate, subtlest master-art of kindness.
AND Zarathustra ran and ran and found no one else and was alone and found himself again and again and enjoyed and relished his solitude and thought of good things, for hours on end.
‘Happiness; how little attains happiness!’ Thus I spoke once and thought myself wise. But it was a blasphemy: I have learned that now.
Precisely the least thing, the gentlest, lightest, the rustling of a lizard, a breath, a moment, a twinkling of the eye - little makes up the quality of the best happiness. Soft!
Like all the ugly, he loved to disguise and embellish himself.
‘Not everyone is a born water-drinker, like Zarathustra. Neither is water of any use to weary and drooping men: we ought to have wine - that alone brings sudden recovery and unpremeditated health!’
“Praised be a moderate poverty!”
‘The best belongs to me and mine; and if we are not given it, we take it: the best food, the purest sky, the most robust thoughts, the fairest women!’ Thus spoke Zarathustra.
In the market-place no one believes in Higher Men. And if you want to speak there, very well, do so! But the mob blink and say: ‘We are all equal.’
You Higher Men, this God was your greatest danger.
The most cautious people ask today: ‘How may man still be preserved?’ Zarathustra, however, asks as the sole and first one to do so: ‘How shall man be overcome? ’
Do you possess courage, O my brothers? Are you stouthearted? Not courage in the presence of witnesses, but hermits’ and eagles’ courage, which not even a god observes any more? I do not call cold-spirited, mulish, blind, or intoxicated men stout-hearted. He possesses heart who knows fear but masters fear; who sees the abyss, but sees it with pride. He who sees the abyss, but with an eagle’s eyes - he who grasps the abyss with an eagle’s claws: he possesses courage.
‘Man must grow better and more evil’ - thus do I teach. The most evil is necessary for the Superman’s best.
Neither does every word belong in every mouth.
Life must be harder and harder for you. Only thus, only thus does man grow to the height where the lightning can strike and shatter him.
You have not yet suffered enough!
My wisdom has long collected itself like a cloud, it is growing stiller and darker. Thus does every wisdom that shall one day give birth to lightnings.
I count nothing more valuable and rare today than honesty.
Keep your reasons secret!
Be on your guard, too, against the learned!
Inability to lie is far from being love of truth.
He who cannot lie does not know what truth is.
If you want to rise high, use your own legs! Do not let yourselves be carried up, do not sit on the backs and heads of strangers!
Unlearn this ‘for’, you creators: your very virtue wants you to have nothing to do with ‘for’ and ‘for the sake of and ‘because’. You should stop your ears to these false little words. This ‘for one’s neighbour’ is the virtue only of petty people.
Do not be virtuous beyond your powers! And do not ask anything improbable of yourselves!
You should not pretend to be saints in those matters in which your fathers were vicious!
It is what one takes into solitude that grows there, the beast within included. And so, many should be dissuaded from solitude.
The higher its type, the less often does a thing succeed. You Higher Men here, are you not all - failures?
Learn to laugh at yourselves as a man ought to laugh!
Oh how much is still possible! And truly, how much has already succeeded! How rich this earth is in good little perfect things, in well-constituted things! Set good little perfect things around you, you Higher Men!
Perfect things teach hope.
You Higher Men, the worst about you is: none of you has learned to dance as a man ought to dance - to dance beyond yourselves! What does it matter that you are failures! How much is still possible! So learn to laugh beyond yourselves! Lift up your hearts, you fine dancers, high! higher! and do not forget to laugh well!
Good songs want to echo well; one should be long silent after good songs.
‘“Was that - life?” I will say to death. “Very well! Once more!”’
The old prophet, however, danced with pleasure; and even if he was then full of sweet wine, as some narrators believe, he was certainly fuller still of sweet life and had renounced all weariness.
The world is deep: deeper than day can comprehend!
All things are chained and entwined together, all things are in love.
You Higher Men, learn this, learn that joy wants eternity, joy wants the eternity of all things, wants deep, deep, deep eternity!