Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, R. J. Hollingdale
Authors: Friedrich Nietzsche, R. J. Hollingdale
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unkindness.
Your silent pride always offends their taste; they rejoice if you are ever modest enough to be vain.
When we recognize a peculiarity in a man we also inflame that peculiarity. So guard yourself against the small men!
Before you, they feel themselves small, and their baseness glimmers and glows against you in hidden vengeance.
Have you not noticed how often they became silent when you approached them, and how their strength left them like smoke from a dying fire?
Yes, my friend, you are a bad conscience to your neighbours: for they are unworthy of you. Thus they hate you and would dearly like to suck your blood.
Your neighbours will always be poisonous flies: that about you which is great, that itself must make them more poisonous and ever more fly-like.
Flee, my friend, into your solitude and to where the raw, rough breeze blows! It is not your fate to be a fly-swat.
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Of Chastity
I LOVE the forest. It is bad to live in towns: too many of the lustful live there.
Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer than into the dreams of a lustful woman?
And just look at these men: their eye reveals it – they know of nothing better on earth than to lie with a woman.
There is filth at the bottom of their souls; and it is worse if this filth still has something of the spirit in it!
If only you had become perfect at least as animals! But to animals belongs innocence.
Do I exhort you to kill your senses? I exhort you to an innocence of the senses.
Do I exhort you to chastity? With some, chastity is a virtue, but with many it is almost a vice.
These people abstain, it is true: but the bitch Sensuality glares enviously out of all they do.
This restless beast follows them even into the heights of their virtue and the depths of their cold spirit.
And how nicely the bitch Sensuality knows how to beg for a piece of spirit, when a piece of flesh is denied her.
Do you love tragedies and all that is heartbreaking? But I mistrust your bitch Sensuality.
Your eyes are too cruel for me; you look upon sufferers lustfully. Has your lasciviousness not merely disguised itself and called itself pity?
And I offer you this parable: Not a few who sought to drive out their devil entered into the swine themselves.
Those to whom chastity is difficult should be dissuaded from it, lest it become the way to Hell – that is, to filth and lust of the soul.
Am I speaking of dirty things? That does not seem to me the worst I could do.
Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.
Truly, there are those who are chaste from the very heart: they are more gentle of heart and they laugh more often and more heartily than you.
They laugh at chastity too, and ask: ‘What is chastity?
‘Is chastity not folly? But this folly came to us and not we to it.
‘We offered this guest love and shelter: now it lives with us – let it stay as long as it wishes!’
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Of the Friend
‘O NE is always one too many around me’ – thus speaks the hermit. ‘Always once one – in the long run that makes two!’
I and Me are always too earnestly in conversation with one another: how could it be endured, if there were not a friend?
For the hermit the friend is always the third person: the third person is the cork that prevents the conversation of the other two from sinking to the depths.
Alas, for all hermits there are too many depths. That is why they long so much for a friend and for his heights.
Our faith in others betrays wherein we would dearly like to have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer.
And often with our love we only want to leap over envy. And often we attack and make an enemy in order to conceal that we are vulnerable to attack.
‘At least be my enemy!’ – thus speaks the true reverence, that does not venture to ask for friendship.
If you want a friend, you must also be willing to
Your silent pride always offends their taste; they rejoice if you are ever modest enough to be vain.
When we recognize a peculiarity in a man we also inflame that peculiarity. So guard yourself against the small men!
Before you, they feel themselves small, and their baseness glimmers and glows against you in hidden vengeance.
Have you not noticed how often they became silent when you approached them, and how their strength left them like smoke from a dying fire?
Yes, my friend, you are a bad conscience to your neighbours: for they are unworthy of you. Thus they hate you and would dearly like to suck your blood.
Your neighbours will always be poisonous flies: that about you which is great, that itself must make them more poisonous and ever more fly-like.
Flee, my friend, into your solitude and to where the raw, rough breeze blows! It is not your fate to be a fly-swat.
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Of Chastity
I LOVE the forest. It is bad to live in towns: too many of the lustful live there.
Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer than into the dreams of a lustful woman?
And just look at these men: their eye reveals it – they know of nothing better on earth than to lie with a woman.
There is filth at the bottom of their souls; and it is worse if this filth still has something of the spirit in it!
If only you had become perfect at least as animals! But to animals belongs innocence.
Do I exhort you to kill your senses? I exhort you to an innocence of the senses.
Do I exhort you to chastity? With some, chastity is a virtue, but with many it is almost a vice.
These people abstain, it is true: but the bitch Sensuality glares enviously out of all they do.
This restless beast follows them even into the heights of their virtue and the depths of their cold spirit.
And how nicely the bitch Sensuality knows how to beg for a piece of spirit, when a piece of flesh is denied her.
Do you love tragedies and all that is heartbreaking? But I mistrust your bitch Sensuality.
Your eyes are too cruel for me; you look upon sufferers lustfully. Has your lasciviousness not merely disguised itself and called itself pity?
And I offer you this parable: Not a few who sought to drive out their devil entered into the swine themselves.
Those to whom chastity is difficult should be dissuaded from it, lest it become the way to Hell – that is, to filth and lust of the soul.
Am I speaking of dirty things? That does not seem to me the worst I could do.
Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.
Truly, there are those who are chaste from the very heart: they are more gentle of heart and they laugh more often and more heartily than you.
They laugh at chastity too, and ask: ‘What is chastity?
‘Is chastity not folly? But this folly came to us and not we to it.
‘We offered this guest love and shelter: now it lives with us – let it stay as long as it wishes!’
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Of the Friend
‘O NE is always one too many around me’ – thus speaks the hermit. ‘Always once one – in the long run that makes two!’
I and Me are always too earnestly in conversation with one another: how could it be endured, if there were not a friend?
For the hermit the friend is always the third person: the third person is the cork that prevents the conversation of the other two from sinking to the depths.
Alas, for all hermits there are too many depths. That is why they long so much for a friend and for his heights.
Our faith in others betrays wherein we would dearly like to have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer.
And often with our love we only want to leap over envy. And often we attack and make an enemy in order to conceal that we are vulnerable to attack.
‘At least be my enemy!’ – thus speaks the true reverence, that does not venture to ask for friendship.
If you want a friend, you must also be willing to
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