Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 1146

Hungry, fierce, lonesome, God-forsaken: so doth the lion-will wish itself.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 2920

Except we be converted and become as kine, we shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. For we ought to learn from them one thing: ruminating.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 3297

All on a sudden however, Zarathustra’s ear was frightened: for the cave which had hitherto been full of noise and laughter, became all at once still as death;—his nose, however, smelt a sweet-scented vapour and incense-odour, as if from burning pine-cones.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 3581

This should be read in conjunction with “Child and Marriage”. In the fifth verse we shall recognise our old friend “Marriage on the ten-years system,” which George Meredith suggested some years ago. This, however, must not be taken too literally. I do not think Nietzsche’s profoundest views on marriage were ever intended to be given over to the public at all, at least not for the present. They appear in the biography by his sister, and although their wisdom is unquestionable, the nature of the reforms he suggests render it impossible for them to become popular just now.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 2572

I am verily weary of it, ever thy sheepish shepherd to be. Thou witch, if I have hitherto sung unto thee, now shalt THOU—cry unto me!

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 107

Even the wisest among you is only a disharmony and hybrid of plant and phantom. But do I bid you become phantoms or plants?

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 1593

I walk amongst men as the fragments of the future: that future which I contemplate.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 3369

Already have I died. It is all over. Spider, why spinnest thou around me? Wilt thou have blood? Ah! Ah! The dew falleth, the hour cometh—

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 1230

Ah, my friends; the evening is it which thus interrogateth in me. Forgive me my sadness!

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 2496

For singing is for the convalescent; the sound ones may talk. And when the sound also want songs, then want they other songs than the convalescent.”

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 580

Filth is at the bottom of their souls; and alas! if their filth hath still spirit in it!

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 1085

Verily, no abodes do we here keep ready for the impure! An ice-cave to their bodies would our happiness be, and to their spirits!

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 3474

In the ninth paragraph of the Prologue, for instance, it is quite obvious that “Herdsmen” in the verse “Herdsmen, I say, etc., etc.,” stands for all those to-day who are the advocates of gregariousness—of the ant-hill. And when our author says: “A robber shall Zarathustra be called by the herdsmen,” it is clear that these words may be taken almost literally from one whose ideal was the rearing of a higher aristocracy.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 709

“Talk also unto me of woman,” said she; “I am old enough to forget it presently.”

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 3401

—Longing for the further, the higher, the brighter. “I want heirs,” so saith everything that suffereth, “I want children, I do not want MYSELF,”—

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 806

But in man there is more of the child than in the youth, and less of melancholy: better understandeth he about life and death.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 3537

Nietzsche thought it was a bad sign of the times that even rulers have lost the courage of their positions, and that a man of Frederick the Great’s power and distinguished gifts should have been able to say: “Ich bin der erste Diener des Staates” (I am the first servant of the State.) To this utterance of the great sovereign, verse 24 undoubtedly refers. “Cowardice” and “Mediocrity,” are the names with which he labels modern notions of virtue and moderation.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 1441

They want to hear nothing of any one walking above their heads; and so they put wood and earth and rubbish betwixt me and their heads.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 1915

Modestly to embrace a small happiness—that do they call “submission”! and at the same time they peer modestly after a new small happiness.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 648

Ye flee unto your neighbour from yourselves, and would fain make a virtue thereof: but I fathom your “unselfishness.”

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 2944

“Thou hast divined me well,” answered the voluntary beggar, with lightened heart. “I love honey, I also grind corn; for I have sought out what tasteth sweetly and maketh pure breath:

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 2192

So that an elegant shell, with elegant adornment, must plead for them. But this art also must one learn: to HAVE a shell, and a fine appearance, and sagacious blindness!

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 821

Verily, an appropriator of all values must such bestowing love become; but healthy and holy, call I this selfishness.—

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 3471

Nietzsche as a sociologist aims at an aristocratic arrangement of society. He would have us rear an ideal race. Honest and truthful in intellectual matters, he could not even think that men are equal. “With these preachers of equality will I not be mixed up and confounded. For thus speaketh justice unto ME: ‘Men are not equal.’” He sees precisely in this inequality a purpose to be served, a condition to be exploited. “Every elevation of the type ‘man,’” he writes in “Beyond Good and Evil”, “has hitherto been the work of an aristocratic society—and so will it always be—a society believing in a long scale of gradations of rank and differences of worth among human beings.”

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 1503

At the most, I regard thee as the ventriloquist of the earth: and ever, when I have heard subversive and spouting devils speak, I have found them like thee: embittered, mendacious, and shallow.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 2440

Ah, whose eye hath not bedimmed in this intoxicated twilight! Ah, whose foot hath not faltered and forgotten in victory—how to stand!—

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 192

Gloomy is the night, gloomy are the ways of Zarathustra. Come, thou cold and stiff companion! I carry thee to the place where I shall bury thee with mine own hands.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 3216

—Open your eyes!—it hath a longing to come NAKED, whether male or female, I do not yet know: but it cometh, it constraineth me, alas! open your wits!

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 3657

When we approach Nietzsche’s philosophy we must be prepared to be independent thinkers; in fact, the greatest virtue of his works is perhaps the subtlety with which they impose the obligation upon one of thinking alone, of scoring off one’s own bat, and of shifting intellectually for oneself.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 2369

Know ye the delight which rolleth stones into precipitous depths?—Those men of to-day, see just how they roll into my depths!

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 2306

“Why should one live? All is vain! To live—that is to thrash straw; to live—that is to burn oneself and yet not get warm.”—

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 115

Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 594

Is chastity not folly? But the folly came unto us, and not we unto it.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 1568

And when the long twilight cometh and the mortal weariness, even then wilt thou not disappear from our firmament, thou advocate of life!

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 2135

Well! Here will I hold the scales over the weltering sea: and also a witness do I choose to look on—thee, the anchorite-tree, thee, the strong-odoured, broad-arched tree that I love!—

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 2613

If ever my rejoicing hath called out: “The shore hath vanished,—now hath fallen from me the last chain—

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 3170

The higher its type, always the seldomer doth a thing succeed. Ye higher men here, have ye not all—been failures?

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 2620

And if it be my Alpha and Omega that everything heavy shall become light, every body a dancer, and every spirit a bird: and verily, that is my Alpha and Omega!—

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 3483

In this discourse Zarathustra opens his exposition of the doctrine of relativity in morality, and declares all morality to be a mere means to power. Needless to say that verses 9, 10, 11, and 12 refer to the Greeks, the Persians, the Jews, and the Germans respectively. In the penultimate verse he makes known his discovery concerning the root of modern Nihilism and indifference,—i.e., that modern man has no goal, no aim, no ideals (see Note A).

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 150

Lo, I am a herald of the lightning, and a heavy drop out of the cloud: the lightning, however, is the SUPERMAN.—

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 1049

That ye might become weary of saying: “That an action is good is because it is unselfish.”

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 324

To the despisers of the body will I speak my word. I wish them neither to learn afresh, nor teach anew, but only to bid farewell to their own bodies,—and thus be dumb.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 804

Believe it, my brethren! He died too early; he himself would have disavowed his doctrine had he attained to my age! Noble enough was he to disavow!

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 3629

Such a process carried to its logical conclusions must ultimately end in His own destruction, and thus we find the pope declaring that God was one day suffocated by His all-too-great pity. What follows is clear enough. Zarathustra recognises another higher man in the ex-pope and sends him too as a guest to the cave.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 683

There are feelings which seek to slay the lonesome one; if they do not succeed, then must they themselves die! But art thou capable of it—to be a murderer?

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 2597

Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of rings—the ring of the return?

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 1862

For rather will I have noise and thunders and tempest-blasts, than this discreet, doubting cat-repose; and also amongst men do I hate most of all the soft-treaders, and half-and-half ones, and the doubting, hesitating, passing clouds.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 898

Ah, that I knew how to lure you back with shepherds’ flutes! Ah, that my lioness wisdom would learn to roar softly! And much have we already learned with one another!

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 1113

Were it otherwise, then would the tarantulas teach otherwise: and they themselves were formerly the best world-maligners and heretic-burners.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, passage 346

My brother, when thou hast a virtue, and it is thine own virtue, thou hast it in common with no one.