Friday, August 10, 2012

Reading Nietzsche — On the Higher Man


The higher its type, the more rarely a thing succeeds.  You higher men here, have you not all failed?

Be of good cheer, what does it matter?  How much is still possible!  Learn to laugh at yourselves as one must laugh!

Is it any wonder that you failed and only half succeeded, being half broken?  Is not something thronging and pushing in you—man’s future?  Man’s greatest distance and depth and what in him is lofty to the stars, his tremendous strength—are not all these frothing against each other in your pot?  Is it any wonder that many a pot breaks?  Learn to laugh at yourselves as one must laugh!  You higher men, how much is still possible!

And verily, how much has already succeeded!  How rich is the earth in little good perfect things, in what has turned out well!

Place little good perfect things around you, O higher men!  Their golden ripeness heals the heart.  What is perfect teaches hope.


From Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, translation by Walter Kaufmann

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