Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

"It is intoxicating joy for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and to forget himself."

"It was suffering and incapacity that created all afterworlds - this, and that brief madness of bliss which is experienced only by those who suffer deeply. Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds."

"Remain true to the earth, my brethren, with the power of your virtue! Let your bestowing love and your knowledge be devoted to be the meaning of the earth! . . . Let it not fly away from the earthly and beat against eternal walls with its wings. . . . Lead, like me, the flown-away virtue back to the earth—yes, back to body and life: that it may give to the earth its meaning, a human meaning!"

"My Ego taught me a new pride, I teach it to men: No longer to bury the head in the sand of heavenly things, but to carry it freely, an earthly head which creates meaning for the earth!"

"Here all great emotions decay: here only little, dry emotions may rattle!Do you not smell already the slaughter-houses and cook-shops of the spirit? Does this city not reek of the fumes of slaughtered spirit?Do you not see the souls hanging like dirty, limp rags? – And they also make newspapers from these rags!Have you not heard how the spirit has here become a play with words? It vomits our repulsive verbal swill! – And they also make newspapers from this verbal swill. They pursue one another and do not know where. They inflame one another, and do not know why. They rattle their tins, they jingle their gold. They are cold and seek warmth in distilled waters; they are inflamed and seek coolness in frozen spirits; they are all ill and diseased with public opinion. All lusts and vices are at home here; but there are virtuous people here, too, there are many adroit, useful virtues."

"I and me are always too deeply in conversation: how could I endure it,if there were not a friend?The friend of the hermit is always the third one: the third one is the float which prevents the conversation of the two from sinking into the depth."

"Alas, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the compassionate?And what in the world has caused more suffering than the follies of the compassionate?Woe to all lovers who cannot surmount pity!Thus spoke the Devil to me once: Even God has his Hell: it is his love for man. And I lately heard him say these words: God is dead; God has died of his pity for man."

"Sleep knocks on my eyes: they grow heavy. Sleep touches my mouth: it stays open. Truly, he comes to me on soft soles, the dearest of thieves, and steals my thoughts from me"

"The discerning one walketh amongst men as amongst animals."

"It is true: we love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving. There is always a certain madness in love. But also there is always a certain method in madness."

"As yet hath his knowledge not learned to smile, and to be without jealously ; as yet hath his gushing passion not become calm in beauty."

"as if a round apple presented itself to my hand, a ripe, golden apple with a soft, cool, velvety skin - thus the world presented itself to me - as if a tree nodded to me, a wide-branching, strong-willed tree, bent for reclining and as a footstool for the way-weary: thus the world stood upon my headland - as if tender hands brought me a casket - a casket open for the delight of modest, adoring eyes: thus the world presented himself before me today - not so enigmatic as to frighten away human love, not so explicit as to put to sleep human wisdom - a good, human thing was the world to me today, this world of which so many evil things are said!"

"This world, the eternally imperfect, the eternal and imperfect image of a contradiction – an intoxicating joy to its imperfect creator – that is what I once thought the world."

"My world has just become perfect, midnight is also noonday, pain is also joy, a curse is also a blessing, the night is also a sun – be gone, or you will learn: a wise man is also a fool."

"One should hold fast one's heart; for when one letteth it go, how quickly doth one's head run away!"

"I love the forest."

"But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthword, downword, into the dark, the deep - into evil."

"Who art thou then, O my soul!" (and here [Zarathustra] became frightened, for a sunbeam shot down from heaven upon his face."O heaven above me," said he sighing, and sat upright, "thou gazest at me? Thou hearkenest unto my strange soul?When wilt thou drink this drop of dew that fell down upon all earthly things—when wilt thou drink this strange soul——When, thou well of eternity! thou joyous, awful, noontide abyss! when wilt thou drink my soul back into thee?"

"Our way is upward, from the species across to the super-species. But the degenerate mind which says ‘All for me’ is a horror to us."

"Man is something that shall be overcome. Man is a rope,tied between beast and overman - a rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end."