selected excerpts

“What do you think, you higher men? Am I a prophet? A dreamer? A drunkard? An interpreter of dreams? A midnight bell? A drop of dew? A fragrance and breath of eternity?

Do you not hear it? Do you not smell it? My world has just become perfect. Midnight is also noon; pain too is joy; a curse too is a blessing; night too is a sun—go away, or you will learn that a wise man is also a fool.

Did you ever say Yes to a single joy? O my friends, then you said Yes to all woe as well.

All things are chained and entwined together; all things are in love. If ever you wanted one moment twice, if ever you said, ‘You please me, happiness, instant, moment!’ then you wanted everything to return.

You wanted everything anew, everything eternal, everything chained and entwined together, everything in love. O everlasting ones, that is how you loved the world: eternally and for all time. And even to woe you say: ‘Go—but return!’ For all joy wants eternity.”

[...]

“Now I go alone, my disciples. You too, go now alone. Thus I want it.

Go away from me and resist Zarathustra! And better still: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he has deceived you.

One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil. And why do you not pluck at my wreath?

You revere me; but what if your reverence should one day collapse? Beware lest a statue crush you.

You say that you believe in Zarathustra? But what does Zarathustra matter? You are my believers—but what do all believers matter?

You had not yet sought yourselves, and you found me. Thus do all believers; therefore all faith amounts to so little.

Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you… that I may celebrate the great noon with you.”

[...]

“I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poisoners are they, whether they know it or not.

Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go.

Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died, and these sinners died with him. To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful thing, and to esteem the entrails of the unknowable more highly than the meaning of the earth...

What is the greatest experience you can have? It is the hour of the great contempt—the hour when even your happiness becomes repulsive to you, and so too your reason and your virtue.”

### **Man is a Rope**

**“Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Overman—a rope over an abyss.**

**A dangerous crossing, a dangerous journey, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and stopping.**

**What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end; what can be loved in man is that he is a going-over and a going-under.**

**I love those who do not know how to live except by going under, for they are those who cross over.**

**I love the great despisers, because they are the great reverers and arrows of longing for the other shore.**

**I love him who lives in order to know, and who seeks knowledge so that the Overman may one day live. In this way he seeks his own descent.**

**I love him who works and invents, so that he may build a home for the Overman and prepare for him the earth, animals and plants: for in this way he seeks his own descent.”**

**[...]**

### **On the Priests**

**“Here are priests; and though they are my enemies, pass them silently and with sleeping swords. Even among them there are heroes.**

**Many of them have suffered too much; therefore they want to make others suffer. They are dangerous enemies: nothing is more vengeful than their humility. And whoever attacks them is easily stained.**

**Yet my blood is related to theirs, and I want my blood to be honoured even in theirs.**

**These priests make me sad. They do not suit my taste; but that matters little to me now that I am among men.**

**I suffer with them and have suffered with them. They seem to me prisoners and marked men. He whom they call their Saviour has placed them in chains—the chains of false values and deceptive words.**

**Ah, if only someone would save them from their Saviour!**

**False values and deceptive words are the worst monsters for mortals. Long does fate sleep and wait within them.”**

**[...]**

### **On the Higher Man**

**“Those who are most concerned today ask: ‘How can man be preserved?’ Zarathustra, however, asks, as the first and only one: ‘How can man be overcome?’**

**The Overman lies within my heart; he is my first and only concern—not man, not the neighbour, not the poorest, not the one who suffers most, not even the best.**

**O my brothers, what I can love in man is that he is a crossing and a going-under. And in you too there is much that makes me love and hope.**

**That you have despised, you higher men, makes me hope. For the great despisers are also the great reverers.**

**That you have despaired is worthy of respect. For you have not learned to surrender; you have not learned the petty wisdom of resignation.**

**Have courage, O my brothers! Have heart! Not courage before witnesses, but the courage of hermits and eagles, whom no god watches any longer.**

**He has heart who knows fear, but conquers fear; who sees the abyss, but sees it with pride.**

**He who sees the abyss with the eyes of an eagle, and seizes the abyss with the talons of an eagle—he has courage.”**