Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Also sprach Zarathustra (1891) by Friedrich Nietzsche; The title of this work is usually translated into English as Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but sometimes Thus Spake Zarathustra.

• The fall of our footsteps ringeth too hollow through their streets. And just as at night, when they are in bed and hear a man abroad long before sunrise, so they ask themselves concerning us: Where goeth the thief? Go not to men, but stay in the forest! Go rather to the animals! Why not be like me- a bear amongst bears, a bird amongst birds?" "And what doeth the saint in the forest?" asked Zarathustra. The saint answered: "I make hymns and sing them; and in making hymns I laugh and weep and mumble: thus do I praise God. With singing, weeping, laughing, and mumbling do I praise the God who is my God."
  • Zarathustra's Prologue, part 2

• What is the greatest thing you can experience? It is the hour of your greatest contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becomes loathsome to you, and so also your reason and virtue. The hour when you say: 'What good is my happiness? It is poverty and filth and miserable self-complacency. But my happiness should justify existence itself!' The hour when you say: 'What good is my reason? Does it long for knowledge as the lion for his prey? It is poverty and filth and miserable self-complacency!' The hour when you say: 'What good is my virtue? It has not yet driven me mad! How weary I am of my good and my evil! It is all poverty and filth and miserable self-complacency!' The hour when you say: 'What good is my justice? I do not see that I am filled with fire and burning coals. But the just are filled with fire and burning coals!' The hour when you say: 'What good is my pity? Is not pity the cross on which he is nailed who loves man? But my pity is no crucifixion!"
  • Zarathustra's Prologue, part 3

• I love him whose soul is lavish, who wanteth no thanks and doth not give back: for he always bestoweth, and desireth not to keep for himself.
  • Zarathustra's Prologue, part 5

• One must have a chaos inside oneself to give birth to a dancing star.
  • Zarathustra's Prologue, part 5

• A light has dawned for me: I need companions, living ones, not dead companions and corpses which I carry with me wherever I wish. But I need living companions who follow me because they want to follow themselves— and who want to go where I want to go.
  A light has dawned for me: Zarathustra shall not speak to the people but to companions! Zarathustra shall not be herdsman and dog to the herd! To lure many away from the herd— that is why I have come. The people and the herd shall be angry with me: the herdsmen shall call Zarathustra a robber. I will not be herdsmen or gravedigger. I will not speak again to the people: I have spoken to a dead man for the last time.
  I will make company with creators, with harvesters, with rejoicers: I will show them the rainbow and the stairway to the Superman.
• 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.
  • Reading and Writing

• "Nothing is true, all is permitted": so said I to myself. Into the coldest water did I plunge with head and heart. Ah, how oft did I stand there naked on that account, like a red crab!
  Ah, where have gone all my goodness and all my shame and all my belief in the good! Ah, where is the lying innocence which I once possessed, the innocence of the good and of their noble lies!
  Too oft, verily, did I follow close to the heels of truth: then did it kick me on the face. Sometimes I meant to lie, and behold! then only did I hit— the truth. ~ Zarathustra's "Shadow" in Chapter 69 "The Shadow" as translated by Thomas Common.

• 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.

• By our best enemies we do not want to be spared, nor by those either whom we love from the very heart.

• Many die too late, and some die too early. Yet strange soundeth the precept: "Die at the right time!"

• Life is a well of delight; but where the rabble also drink, there all fountains are poisoned.