Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche [top fiction books of all time .TXT] 📗

for them. But this art also must one learn: to have a shell, and a fine appearance, and sagacious blindness!

Again, it deceiveth about many things in man, that many a shell is poor and pitiable, and too much of a shell. Much concealed goodness and power is never dreamt of; the choicest dainties find no tasters!

Women know that, the choicest of them: a little fatter a little leaner⁠—oh, how much fate is in so little!

Man is difficult to discover, and unto himself most difficult of all; often lieth the spirit concerning the soul. So causeth the spirit of gravity.

He, however, hath discovered himself who saith: This is my good and evil: therewith hath he silenced the mole and the dwarf, who say: “Good for all, evil for all.”

Verily, neither do I like those who call everything good, and this world the best of all. Those do I call the all-satisfied.

All-satisfiedness, which knoweth how to taste everything⁠—that is not the best taste! I honour the refractory, fastidious tongues and stomachs, which have learned to say “I” and “Yea” and “Nay.”

To chew and digest everything, however⁠—that is the genuine swine-nature! Ever to say Ye‑a⁠—that hath only the ass learnt, and those like it!⁠—

Deep yellow and hot red⁠—so wanteth my taste⁠—it mixeth blood with all colours. He, however, who whitewasheth his house, betrayeth unto me a whitewashed soul.

With mummies, some fall in love; others with phantoms: both alike hostile to all flesh and blood⁠—oh, how repugnant are both to my taste! For I love blood.

And there will I not reside and abide where everyone spitteth and speweth: that is now my taste⁠—rather would I live amongst thieves and perjurers. Nobody carrieth gold in his mouth.

Still more repugnant unto me, however, are all lickspittles; and the most repugnant animal of man that I found, did I christen “parasite”: it would not love, and would yet live by love.

Unhappy do I call all those who have only one choice: either to become evil beasts, or evil beast-tamers. Amongst such would I not build my tabernacle.

Unhappy do I also call those who have ever to wait⁠—they are repugnant to my taste⁠—all the toll-gatherers and traders, and kings, and other landkeepers and shopkeepers.

Verily, I learned waiting also, and thoroughly so⁠—but only waiting for myself. And above all did I learn standing and walking and running and leaping and climbing and dancing.

This however is my teaching: he who wisheth one day to fly, must first learn standing and walking and running and climbing and dancing:⁠—one doth not fly into flying!

With rope-ladders learned I to reach many a window, with nimble legs did I climb high masts: to sit on high masts of perception seemed to me no small bliss;⁠—

—To flicker like small flames on high masts: a small light, certainly, but a great comfort to castaway sailors and shipwrecked ones!

By diverse ways and wendings did I arrive at my truth; not by one ladder did I mount to the height where mine eye roveth into my remoteness.

And unwillingly only did I ask my way⁠—that was always counter to my taste! Rather did I question and test the ways themselves.

A testing and a questioning hath been all my travelling:⁠—and verily, one must also learn to answer such questioning! That, however⁠—is my taste:

—Neither a good nor a bad taste, but my taste, of which I have no longer either shame or secrecy.

“This⁠—is now my way⁠—where is yours?” Thus did I answer those who asked me “the way.” For the way⁠—it doth not exist!

Thus spake Zarathustra.

LVI Old and New Tables I

Here do I sit and wait, old broken tables around me and also new half-written tables. When cometh mine hour?

—The hour of my descent, of my down-going: for once more will I go unto men.

For that hour do I now wait: for first must the signs come unto me that it is mine hour⁠—namely, the laughing lion with the flock of doves.

Meanwhile do I talk to myself as one who hath time. No one telleth me anything new, so I tell myself mine own story.

II

When I came unto men, then found I them resting on an old infatuation: all of them thought they had long known what was good and bad for men.

An old wearisome business seemed to them all discourse about virtue; and he who wished to sleep well spake of “good” and “bad” ere retiring to rest.

This somnolence did I disturb when I taught that no one yet knoweth what is good and bad:⁠—unless it be the creating one!

—It is he, however, who createth man’s goal, and giveth to the earth its meaning and its future: he only effecteth it that aught is good or bad.

And I bade them upset their old academic chairs, and wherever that old infatuation had sat; I bade them laugh at their great moralists, their saints, their poets, and their Saviours.

At their gloomy sages did I bid them laugh, and whoever had sat admonishing as a black scarecrow on the tree of life.

On their great grave-highway did I seat myself, and even beside the carrion and vultures⁠—and I laughed at all their bygone and its mellow decaying glory.

Verily, like penitential preachers and fools did I cry wrath and shame on all their greatness and smallness. Oh, that their best is so very small! Oh, that their worst is so very small! Thus did I laugh.

Thus did my wise longing, born in the mountains, cry and laugh in me; a wild wisdom, verily!⁠—my great pinion-rustling longing.

And oft did it carry me off and up and away and in the midst of laughter; then flew I quivering like an arrow with sun-intoxicated rapture:

—Out into distant futures, which no dream hath yet seen, into warmer souths than ever sculptor conceived⁠—where gods in their dancing are ashamed of all clothes:

(That I may speak in parables and halt and stammer like the poets: and verily I am ashamed that I have still to be a poet!)

Where all becoming