The Portable Nietzsche

by Friedrich Nietzsche

“Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea to be able to receive a polluted stream without becoming unclean. Behold, I teach you the overman: he is this sea; in him your great contempt can go under. “What is the greatest experience you can have? It is the hour of the great contempt. The hour in which your happiness, too, arouses your disgust, and even your reason and your virtue. “The hour when you say, ‘What matters my happiness? It is poverty and filth and wretched contentment. But my happiness ought to justify existence itself.’ “The hour when you say, ‘What matters my reason? Does it crave knowledge as the lion his food? It is poverty and filth and wretched contentment.’ “The hour when you say, ‘What matters my virtue? As yet it has not made me rage. How weary I am of my good and my evil! All that is poverty and filth and wretched contentment.’ “The hour when you say, ‘What matters my justice? I do not see that I am flames and fuel. But the just are flames and fuel.’ “The hour when you say, ‘What matters my pity? Is not pity the cross on which he is nailed who loves man? But my pity is no crucifixion.’ “Have you yet spoken thus? Have you yet cried thus? Oh, that I might have heard you cry thus! “Not your sin but your thrift cries to heaven; your meanness even in your sin cries to heaven. “Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the frenzy with which you should be inoculated? “Behold, I teach you the overman: he is this lightning, he is th...