He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

Behold how each of your virtues is covetous for the highest: it longs for your whole spirit to be its herald, it longs for your whole power in wrath, love and hatred.Jealous is each virtue of the other, and a terrible thing is jealousy. Even virtues may perish from jealousy.He who is encompassed by the flame of jealousy, at last, like the scorpion, turns the poisonous sting toward himself.Alas, my brother, did you never see a virtue backbite and stab itself?Man is a something that must be surpassed: and therefore you shall love your virtues - for you will perish from them.

Have you ever known, my brother, the word “contempt”? And the anguish of your justice in being just to those that despise you?You force many to think differently about you; that, they charge bitterly to your account. You came near to them and yet went past: for that they never forgive you.You go beyond them: but the higher you rise, the smaller do you appear to the eye of envy. But the flying one is hated most of all.

My brother, if you have good luck, you have one virtue and no more: thus you walk more easily over the bridge.It is a distinction to have many virtues, but a hard lot: and many having gone to the desert killed themselves, because they were tired of being the battle and battlefield of virtues.

Once having passions you called them evil. Now however you have nothing but your virtues: they grew out of your passions.You laid your highest goal upon these passions: then they became your virtues and delights.And though you were from the stock of the choleric, or of the voluptuous, or of the religiously frantic, or of the vindictive:At last all your passions grew virtues and all your devils angels.

And be on your guard against the good and the just! They would rather crucify those who create their own virtue — they hate the solitary ones.Be on your guard, also, against holy simplicity! All that is not simple is unholy to it; it likes to play with fire and burn — at the stake.And be on your guard, also, against the assaults of your love! Too readily does the recluse offer his hand to any one he meets.To many you may not give a hand, but only a paw; and I want your paw to have claws.But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you ambush yourself in caverns and forests.

“The worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself.”

Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. A Book for All and None Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen. Composed in four parts between 1883 and 1885 and published between 1883 and 1891. Translated by Thomas Common, T.N. Foulis, Edinbugh and London, 1909. Vollständige Neuausgabe. Herausgegeben von Karl-Maria Guth. Berlin 2015. Umschlaggestaltung von Thomas Schultz-Overhage unter Verwendung des Bildes: Wassilij Dimitriewitsch Polenow, Meditation auf dem Berg, 1900. Gesetzt aus Minion Pro, 11 pt.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

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