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But I think of what I have done and thought during the day. Thus ruminating, patient as a cow, I ask myself: What were thy ten overcomings? And what were the ten reconciliations, and the ten truths, and the ten laughters with which my heart enjoyed itself? Thus pondering, and cradled by forty thoughts, it overtaketh me all at once—sleep, the unsummoned, the lord of the virtues.
Intoxicating joy is it for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and forget himself. Intoxicating joy and self-forgetting, did the world once seem to me.
To me the convalescent would it now be suffering and torment to believe in such phantoms: suffering would it now be to me, and humiliation. Thus speak I to backworldsmen.
Healing is hard to endure when you think despair is near. And its pain would be your creation
Yea, this ego, with its contradiction and perplexity, speaketh most uprightly of its being—this creating,
willing, evaluing ego, which is the measure and value of things.
A new will teach I unto men: to choose that path which man hath followed blindly, and to approve of it—and no longer to slink aside from it, like the sick and perishing! The sick and perishing—it was they who despised the body and the earth, and invented the heavenly world, and the redeeming blood-drops; but even those sweet and sad poisons they borrowed from the body and the earth!
Many sickly ones have there always been among those who muse, and languish for God; violently they hate the discerning ones, and the latest of virtues, which is uprightness.
"Body am I entirely, and nothing more; and soul is only the name of something in the body."
"Ego," sayest thou, and art proud of that word. But the greater thing—in which thou art unwilling to believe—is thy body with its big sagacity; it saith not "ego," but doeth it.
The Self seeketh with the eyes of the senses, it hearkeneth also with the ears of the spirit.
Behind thy thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord, an unknown sage—it is called Self; it dwelleth in thy body, it is thy body.
No longer can your Self do that which it desireth most:—create beyond itself. That is what it desireth most; that is all its fervour.
An earthly virtue is it which I love: little prudence is therein, and the least everyday wisdom.
Thou implantedst thy highest aim into the heart of those passions: then became they thy virtues and joys.
There is no salvation for him who thus suffereth from himself, unless it be speedy death.
But one thing is the thought, another thing is the deed, and another thing is the idea of the deed. The wheel of causality doth not roll between them.
Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit.
He that writeth in blood and proverbs doth not want to be read, but learnt by heart. In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak, but for that route thou must have long legs. Proverbs should be peaks, and those spoken to should be big and tall.
Ye look aloft when ye long for exaltation; and I look downward because I am exalted.
He who climbeth on the highest mountains, laugheth at all tragic plays and tragic realities. Courageous, unconcerned, scornful, coercive—so wisdom wisheth us; she is a woman, and ever loveth only a warrior.
It is true we love life; not because we are wont to live, but because we are wont to love. There is always some madness in love. But there is always, also, some method in madness.
I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance.
And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity—through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!
The more he seeketh to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthward, downward, into the dark and deep—into the evil."
"This tree standeth lonely here on the hills; it hath grown up high above man and beast. And if it wanted to speak, it would have none who could understand it: so high hath it grown. Now it waiteth and waiteth,—for what doth it wait? It dwelleth too close to the seat of the clouds; it waiteth perhaps for the first lightning?"
My destruction I longed for, when I desired to be on the height, and thou art the lightning for which I waited! Lo! what have I been since thou hast appeared amongst us? It is mine envy of thee that hath destroyed me!"—Thus
It rendeth my heart. Better than thy words express it, thine eyes tell me all thy danger. As yet thou art not free; thou still SEEKEST freedom. Too unslept hath thy seeking made thee, and too wakeful. On the open height wouldst thou be; for the stars thirsteth thy soul. But thy bad impulses also thirst for freedom. Thy wild dogs want liberty; they bark for joy in their cellar when thy spirit endeavoureth to open all prison doors. Still art thou a prisoner—it seemeth to me—who deviseth liberty for himself: ah! sharp becometh the soul of such prisoners, but also deceitful and wicked. To purify
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Know this, that to everybody a noble one standeth in the way.
Also to the good, a noble one standeth in the way: and even when they call him a good man, they want thereby to put him aside. The new, would the noble man create, and a new virtue. The old, wanteth the good man, and that the old should be conserved.
But by my love and hope I conjure thee: cast not away the hero in thy soul! Maintain holy thy highest hope!—
There are the terrible ones who carry about in themselves the beast of prey, and have no choice except lusts or self-laceration. And even their lusts are self-laceration. They have not yet become men, those terrible ones: may they preach desistance from life, and pass away themselves!
There are the spiritually consumptive ones: hardly are they born when they begin to die, and long for doctrines of lassitude and renunciation.
They meet an invalid, or an old man, or a corpse—and immediately they say: "Life is refuted!" But they only are refuted, and their eye, which seeth only one aspect of existence. Shrouded in thick melancholy, and eager for the little casualties that bring death: thus do they wait, and clench their teeth.
To be wicked—that would be their true goodness. But they want to be rid of life; what care they if they bind others still faster with their chains and gifts!—
Ye shall be those whose eyes ever seek for an enemy—for YOUR enemy. And with some of you there is hatred at first sight.
Ye shall only have enemies to be hated, but not enemies to be despised. Ye must be proud of your enemies; then, the successes of your enemies are also your successes.
A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: "I, the state, am the people."
Everything will it give YOU, if YE worship it, the new idol: thus it purchaseth the lustre of your virtue, and the glance of your proud eyes.
The state, I call it, where all are poison-drinkers, the good and the bad: the state, where all lose themselves, the good and the bad: the state, where the slow suicide of all—is called "life."
Flee, my friend, into thy solitude! I see thee deafened with the noise of the great men, and stung all over with the stings of the little ones.
In the world even the best things are worthless without those who represent them: those representers, the people call great men.
But the hour presseth them; so they press thee.
Innumerable are the small and pitiable ones; and of many a proud structure, rain-drops and weeds have been the ruin.
Drugs and alcohol
Exhausted I see thee, by poisonous flies; bleeding I see thee, and torn at a hundred spots; and thy pride will not even upbraid. Blood they would have from thee in all innocence; blood their bloodless souls crave for—and they sting, therefore, in all innocence.
Needles
What we recognise in a man, we also irritate in him. Therefore be on your guard against the small ones!
Our faith in others betrayeth wherein we would fain have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer.
In one's friend one shall have one's best enemy. Thou shalt be closest unto him with thy heart when thou withstandest him.
Change of values—that is, change of the creating ones. Always doth he destroy who hath to be a creator.
As yet humanity hath not a goal.
Ye flee unto your neighbour from yourselves, and would fain make a virtue thereof: but I fathom your "unselfishness."
