Thus Spake Zarathustra — Friedrich Nietzsche

Thus Spake Zarathustra

Friedrich Nietzsche · License: Public domain · Source

• He who would strip you of veils and wrappers, and paints and gestures, would just have enough left to scare the crows. ¶1534
• Verily, I myself am the scared crow that once saw you naked, and without paint; and I flew away when the skeleton ogled at me. ¶1535
• Rather would I be a day-labourer in the nether-world, and among the shades of the by-gone!--Fatter and fuller than ye, are forsooth the nether-worldlings! ¶1536
• This, yea this, is bitterness to my bowels, that I can neither endure you naked nor clothed, ye present-day men! ¶1537
• All that is unhomelike in the future, and whatever maketh strayed birds shiver, is verily more homelike and familiar than your "reality." ¶1538
• For thus speak ye: "Real are we wholly, and without faith and superstition": thus do ye plume yourselves--alas! even without plumes! ¶1539
• Indeed, how would ye be ABLE to believe, ye divers-coloured ones!--ye who are pictures of all that hath ever been believed! ¶1540
• Perambulating refutations are ye, of belief itself, and a dislocation of all thought. UNTRUSTWORTHY ONES: thus do _I_ call you, ye real ones! ¶1541
• All periods prate against one another in your spirits; and the dreams and pratings of all periods were even realer than your awakeness! ¶1542
• Unfruitful are ye: THEREFORE do ye lack belief. But he who had to create, had always his presaging dreams and astral premonitions--and believed in believing!-- ¶1543
• Half-open doors are ye, at which grave-diggers wait. And this is YOUR reality: "Everything deserveth to perish." ¶1544
• Alas, how ye stand there before me, ye unfruitful ones; how lean your ribs! And many of you surely have had knowledge thereof. ¶1545
• Many a one hath said: "There hath surely a God filched something from me secretly whilst I slept? Verily, enough to make a girl for himself therefrom! ¶1546
• "Amazing is the poverty of my ribs!" thus hath spoken many a present-day man. ¶1547
• Yea, ye are laughable unto me, ye present-day men! And especially when ye marvel at yourselves! ¶1548
• And woe unto me if I could not laugh at your marvelling, and had to swallow all that is repugnant in your platters! ¶1549
• As it is, however, I will make lighter of you, since I have to carry what is heavy; and what matter if beetles and May-bugs also alight on my load! ¶1550
• Verily, it shall not on that account become heavier to me! And not from you, ye present-day men, shall my great weariness arise.-- ¶1551
• Ah, whither shall I now ascend with my longing! From all mountains do I look out for fatherlands and motherlands. ¶1552
• But a home have I found nowhere: unsettled am I in all cities, and decamping at all gates. ¶1553
• Alien to me, and a mockery, are the present-day men, to whom of late my heart impelled me; and exiled am I from fatherlands and motherlands. ¶1554
• Thus do I love only my CHILDREN'S LAND, the undiscovered in the remotest sea: for it do I bid my sails search and search. ¶1555
• Unto my children will I make amends for being the child of my fathers: and unto all the future--for THIS present-day!-- ¶1556
• When yester-eve the moon arose, then did I fancy it about to bear a sun: so broad and teeming did it lie on the horizon. ¶1559
• But it was a liar with its pregnancy; and sooner will I believe in the man in the moon than in the woman. ¶1560
• To be sure, little of a man is he also, that timid night-reveller. Verily, with a bad conscience doth he stalk over the roofs. ¶1561
• For he is covetous and jealous, the monk in the moon; covetous of the earth, and all the joys of lovers. ¶1562
• Nay, I like him not, that tom-cat on the roofs! Hateful unto me are all that slink around half-closed windows! ¶1563
• Piously and silently doth he stalk along on the star-carpets:--but I like no light-treading human feet, on which not even a spur jingleth. ¶1564
• Every honest one's step speaketh; the cat however, stealeth along over the ground. Lo! cat-like doth the moon come along, and dishonestly.-- ¶1565
• This parable speak I unto you sentimental dissemblers, unto you, the "pure discerners!" You do _I_ call--covetous ones! ¶1566
• Also ye love the earth, and the earthly: I have divined you well!--but shame is in your love, and a bad conscience--ye are like the moon! ¶1567
• To despise the earthly hath your spirit been persuaded, but not your bowels: these, however, are the strongest in you! ¶1568
• And now is your spirit ashamed to be at the service of your bowels, and goeth by-ways and lying ways to escape its own shame. ¶1569
• "That would be the highest thing for me"--so saith your lying spirit unto itself--"to gaze upon life without desire, and not like the dog, with hanging-out tongue: ¶1570
• To be happy in gazing: with dead will, free from the grip and greed of selfishness--cold and ashy-grey all over, but with intoxicated moon-eyes! ¶1571
• That would be the dearest thing to me"--thus doth the seduced one seduce himself,--"to love the earth as the moon loveth it, and with the eye only to feel its beauty. ¶1572
• And this do I call IMMACULATE perception of all things: to want nothing else from them, but to be allowed to lie before them as a mirror with a hundred facets."-- ¶1573
• Oh, ye sentimental dissemblers, ye covetous ones! Ye lack innocence in your desire: and now do ye defame desiring on that account! ¶1574
• Verily, not as creators, as procreators, or as jubilators do ye love the earth! ¶1575

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