Passion for power: the glowing scourge of the hardest of the heart-hard; the cruel torture reserved for the cruellest themselves; the gloomy flame of living pyres.
Passion for power: the wicked gadfly which is mounted on the vainest peoples; the scorner of all uncertain virtue; which rideth on every horse and on every pride.
Passion for power: the earthquake which breaketh and upbreaketh all that is rotten and hollow; the rolling, rumbling, punitive demolisher of whited sepulchres; the flashing interrogative-sign beside premature answers.
Passion for power: before whose glance man creepeth and croucheth and drudgeth, and becometh lower than the serpent and the swine:—until at last great contempt crieth out of him—,
Passion for power: the terrible teacher of great contempt, which preacheth to their face to cities and empires: “Away with thee!”—until a voice crieth out of themselves: “Away with ME!”
Passion for power: which, however, mounteth alluringly even to the pure and lonesome, and up to self-satisfied elevations, glowing like a love that painteth purple felicities alluringly on earthly heavens.
Passion for power: but who would call it PASSION, when the height longeth to stoop for power! Verily, nothing sick or diseased is there in such longing and descending!
That the lonesome height may not for ever remain lonesome and self-sufficing; that the mountains may come to the valleys and the winds of the heights to the plains:—
Oh, who could find the right prenomen and honouring name for such longing! “Bestowing virtue”—thus did Zarathustra once name the unnamable.
What the critics said
Ludovici argues that in weighing voluptuousness, lust of power and selfishness Nietzsche sought to give healthy men back innocence and a clean conscience in their desires, not to license the vulgar or the weak, and that his teaching is esoteric, meant to save higher men from compromising their genius with traditional values.