This, however, is mine other manly prudence: I am more forbearing to the VAIN than to the proud.
Is not wounded vanity the mother of all tragedies? Where, however, pride is wounded, there groweth up something better than pride.
That life may be fair to behold, its game must be well played; for that purpose, however, it needeth good actors.
Good actors have I found all the vain ones: they play, and wish people to be fond of beholding them—all their spirit is in this wish.
They represent themselves, they invent themselves; in their neighbourhood I like to look upon life—it cureth of melancholy.
Therefore am I forbearing to the vain, because they are the physicians of my melancholy, and keep me attached to man as to a drama.
And further, who conceiveth the full depth of the modesty of the vain man! I am favourable to him, and sympathetic on account of his modesty.
From you would he learn his belief in himself; he feedeth upon your glances, he eateth praise out of your hands.
Your lies doth he even believe when you lie favourably about him: for in its depths sigheth his heart: “What am _I_?”
And if that be the true virtue which is unconscious of itself—well, the vain man is unconscious of his modesty!—
Nietzsche elsewhere
Nietzsche says that Zarathustra, as the first psychologist of the good, is the friend of the evil man, since where the herd animal is virtuous the exceptional man is branded evil; the good and just would call his Superman the devil, and the Superman is the man strong enough to see reality as it is and to be that reality himself.