doctrine Life's secret: it must always overcome itself; the creator must also be the destroyer of his own values.
Respect and modesty in presence of sleep! That is the first thing! And to go out of the way of all who sleep badly and keep awake at night! Modest is even the thief in presence of sleep: he always stealeth softly…
Overcoming is reduced to ten daily tasks that tire one out; it is poppy to the soul.
Read in the book →Once hadst thou passions and calledst them evil. But now hast thou only thy virtues: they grew out of thy passions. Thou implantedst thy highest aim into the heart of those passions: then became they thy virtues and…
The wild dogs, poisons and devils are transformed into birds, balsam and angels, so the man masters himself instead of denying his drives.
Read in the book →Man is something that hath to be surpassed: and therefore shalt thou love thy virtues,—for thou wilt succumb by them.—
One's own virtues are loved because one perishes by them and is thereby surpassed.
Read in the book →Zarathustra’s eye had perceived that a certain youth avoided him. And as he walked alone one evening over the hills surrounding the town called “The Pied Cow,” behold, there found he the youth sitting leaning against a…
The image of a tree rising to the light while its roots strive down into the dark shows that height and depth, good and evil, grow together.
Read in the book →They call you heartless: but your heart is true, and I love the bashfulness of your good-will. Ye are ashamed of your flow, and others are ashamed of their ebb. Ye are ugly? Well then, my brethren, take the sublime…
Ugliness and wickedness are to be covered with sublimity as the soul grows great.
Read in the book →“Always shalt thou be the foremost and prominent above others: no one shall thy jealous soul love, except a friend”—that made the soul of a Greek thrill: thereby went he his way to greatness. “To speak truth, and be…
Each table is a ladder of self-mastery by which a people climbs toward its hope.
Read in the book →Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way to thyself! And past thyself and thy seven devils leadeth thy way! A heretic wilt thou be to thyself, and a wizard and a soothsayer, and a fool, and a doubter, and a reprobate, and…
The lonesome one must pass beyond his seven devils and burn in his own flame to become new.
Read in the book →Ready must thou be to burn thyself in thine own flame; how couldst thou become new if thou have not first become ashes!
Renewal requires destroying the old self first.
Read in the book →I have a question for thee alone, my brother: like a sounding-lead, cast I this question into thy soul, that I may know its depth. Thou art young, and desirest child and marriage. But I ask thee: Art thou a man ENTITLED…
Only the self-conqueror, master of his passions and virtues, has the right to desire a child.
Read in the book →Creating—that is the great salvation from suffering, and life’s alleviation.
The creator must be willing to die and be reborn many times, as Zarathustra has gone through a hundred souls and cradles.
Read in the book →Good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and low, and all names of values: weapons shall they be, and sounding signs, that life must again and again surpass itself!
Life must again and again surpass itself and so needs steps, climbers and variance of steps.
Read in the book →Spirit is life which itself cutteth into life: by its own torture doth it increase its own knowledge,—did ye know that before?
Spirit grows by torturing itself, cutting into its own life.
Read in the book →How did I ever bear it? How did I survive and surmount such wounds? How did my soul rise again out of those sepulchres? Yea, something invulnerable, unburiable is with me, something that would rend rocks asunder: it is…
Resurrection comes from the Will rising over the graves of his own past.
Read in the book →“Behold,” said she, “I am that WHICH MUST EVER SURPASS ITSELF.
Life herself names her secret: she must always overcome herself, and so turns against what she creates and loves.
Read in the book →Verily, I say unto you: good and evil which would be everlasting—it doth not exist! Of its own accord must it ever surpass itself anew. With your values and formulae of good and evil, ye exercise power, ye valuing ones:…
Every table of values gives way to a stronger power growing out of it, as a chick breaks the egg-shell.
Read in the book →Should he become weary of his sublimeness, this sublime one, then only will his beauty begin—and then only will I taste him and find him savoury. And only when he turneth away from himself will he o’erleap his own…
He must grow weary of his sublimeness, turn from himself and overleap his own shadow and deed.
Read in the book →To be sure, I love in him the shoulders of the ox: but now do I want to see also the eye of the angel. Also his hero-will hath he still to unlearn: an exalted one shall he be, and not only a sublime one:—the ether…
Even his repose and his knowledge must be surmounted and learn to smile without jealousy.
Read in the book →When power becometh gracious and descendeth into the visible—I call such condescension, beauty.
Goodness is to be the powerful one's last self-conquest.
Read in the book →Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings, who think themselves good because they have crippled paws! The virtue of the pillar shalt thou strive after: more beautiful doth it ever become, and more graceful—but…
The hero must be surpassed by the superhero who approaches the soul in dreams once the hero has left it.
Read in the book →He, however, who is of my nature doth not avoid such an hour: the hour that saith unto him: Now only dost thou go the way to thy greatness! Summit and abyss—these are now comprised together! Thou goest the way to thy…
He must mount above his own head and heart and look down even on his stars.
Read in the book →Upon thine own head, and beyond thine own heart! Now must the gentlest in thee become the hardest.
Overcoming requires hardness against one's own tenderness.
Read in the book →Ye daring ones around me! Ye venturers and adventurers, and whoever of you have embarked with cunning sails on unexplored seas! Ye enigma-enjoyers! Solve unto me the enigma that I then beheld, interpret unto me the…
The question of who must come, into whose throat all the heaviest will crawl, points to a man who must overcome himself.
Read in the book →No longer shepherd, no longer man—a transfigured being, a light-surrounded being, that LAUGHED! Never on earth laughed a man as HE laughed! O my brethren, I heard a laughter which was no human laughter,—and now gnaweth…
By biting off the serpent's head he ceases to be shepherd or man.
Read in the book →Ah, abysmal thought, which art MY thought! When shall I find strength to hear thee burrowing, and no longer tremble? To my very throat throbbeth my heart when I hear thee burrowing! Thy muteness even is like to strangle…
Calling it up would be a victory over himself, the seal of his perfection.
Read in the book →Meanwhile do I sail along on uncertain seas; chance flattereth me, smooth-tongued chance; forward and backward do I gaze—, still see I no end. As yet hath the hour of my final struggle not come to me—or doth it come to…
He distrusts happiness and pushes it away, wanting his severest test, not ease.
Read in the book →Verily, I learned waiting also, and thoroughly so,—but only waiting for MYSELF. And above all did I learn standing and walking and running and leaping and climbing and dancing. This however is my teaching: he who…
Lightness is won by patient stages of learning, including waiting for oneself.
Read in the book →Behold, here is a new table; but where are my brethren who will carry it with me to the valley and into hearts of flesh?— Thus demandeth my great love to the remotest ones: BE NOT CONSIDERATE OF THY NEIGHBOUR! Man is…
Man is to be surpassed in many ways, but only a buffoon thinks he can be overleapt.
Read in the book →O my brethren, he who is a firstling is ever sacrificed. Now, however, are we firstlings! We all bleed on secret sacrificial altars, we all burn and broil in honour of ancient idols. Our best is still young: this…
The old idol-priest dwells within each of us and feasts on our best.
Read in the book →O my brethren, there are tables which weariness framed, and tables which slothfulness framed, corrupt slothfulness: although they speak similarly, they want to be heard differently.— See this languishing one! Only a…
A weary hero lies a span from his goal, and must awaken on his own and repudiate weariness.
Read in the book →I form circles around me and holy boundaries; ever fewer ascend with me ever higher mountains: I build a mountain-range out of ever holier mountains.— But wherever ye would ascend with me, O my brethren, take care lest…
The loftiest soul, which runs furthest in itself, has the worst parasites.
Read in the book →And him whom ye do not teach to fly, teach I pray you—TO FALL FASTER!—
What is decaying should be pushed on, as a prelude to better players.
Read in the book →“Become what thou art!”
The maxim he once gave himself is the aim of his drawing-upward of men.
Read in the book →Because THOU once saidest, O Zarathustra: ‘Spirit is life which itself cutteth into life’;—that led and allured me to thy doctrine.
He cites Zarathustra's saying that spirit is life cutting into life, and pays for knowledge with his own blood.
Read in the book →“How poor indeed is man,” thought he in his heart, “how ugly, how wheezy, how full of hidden shame! They tell me that man loveth himself. Ah, how great must that self-love be! How much contempt is opposed to it! Even…
Great self-contempt is seen as a kind of elevation.
Read in the book →“Get up,” said Zarathustra, “thou little thief, thou sluggard! What! Still stretching thyself, yawning, sighing, falling into deep wells? Who art thou then, O my soul!” (and here he became frightened, for a sunbeam shot…
He scolds his soul as a little thief and sluggard and asks who it is, then asks heaven when it will drink his soul back.
Read in the book →Ye higher men, think ye that I am here to put right what ye have put wrong? Or that I wished henceforth to make snugger couches for you sufferers? Or show you restless, miswandering, misclimbing ones, new and easier…
Man grows to the height of the lightning only through harder and heavier suffering.
Read in the book →If ye would go up high, then use your own legs! Do not get yourselves CARRIED aloft; do not seat yourselves on other people’s backs and heads! Thou hast mounted, however, on horseback? Thou now ridest briskly up to thy…
Height must be won on one's own legs; borrowed ascent leaves the lame foot to stumble at the goal.
Read in the book →Brandes sets out Nietzsche's view that morality's value lies in prolonged constraint and obedience addressed to peoples, not individuals; that universal precepts like Kant's imperative fail because every act is unique; that we must create new tables of values; and that the exceptional man gives style to his character and becomes his own lawgiver, while the dissatisfied avenge themselves with virtuous precepts.
The individual bends his nature to his own law by restraint and habit.
Brandes quotes Nietzsche's maxim that the one thing needful is to give style to one's character.
Self-fashioning by discipline into one's own law.
Förster-Nietzsche quotes Nietzsche explaining that he chose Zarathustra because the Persian prophet created the error of morality, making good and evil the wheel of things, and so must be the first to perceive it; being the most truthful thinker, his name stands for the self-overcoming of morality through truthfulness.
'The overcoming of morality through itself' is what the name Zarathustra means.
Ludovici calls 'Self-Surpassing' the best exposition of the will to power in the book, and argues that Nietzsche was no iconoclast by choice: the saying that the creator in good and evil must first be a destroyer shows his esteem for law and self-discipline.
Reads self-surpassing as self-control rather than lawlessness.
Ludovici defends the maxim 'Become what thou art' by insisting that Nietzsche's teaching is esoteric, a law only for his own: applied to all it would be vicious, but humanity needs its highest individuals to attain full development, since only through its heroes is the race led upward.
Becoming what one is as the higher man's duty.
This is an experiment in interactive reading, and in using AI to help you grow. Thus Spake Zarathustra is notoriously difficult for a modern reader; yet taken as a set of mental exercises, it is guaranteed to transform your thinking by the time you reach the end. Along the way you will have help from the companion, who is always beside the book.
Do you accept the challenge?
Nietzsche elsewhere
Nietzsche says that Zarathustra stands alone, born of superabundant strength, his concept 'Dionysian' become the highest deed; in it man is constantly overcome, the Superman becomes the greatest reality, all contradictions are bound into a new unity in this most yea-saying spirit, and Zarathustra defines the highest of all living things as the soul with the longest ladder.
The highest soul flies from itself and overtakes itself in the widest circle.
Nietzsche says that for Zarathustra man is neither an object of love nor of pity but raw material, an ugly stone for the sculptor's chisel, quoting the passage where the creative will drives the hammer against the stone to free the Superman's image; a Dionysian task needs the hardness of the hammer and the joy even of destruction, 'all creators are hard'.
Creation requires hardness and joy in destruction.
Nietzsche says that he chose the Persian Zarathustra because he was the first to see the struggle of good and evil as the wheel of things and so created the error of morality; being the most truthful of thinkers, who upheld truthfulness as the highest virtue, he must also be the first to expose it, so that the name means morality's self-overcoming through truthfulness.
The moralist overcomes himself in his opposite.
Nietzsche says that the name Zarathustra means the self-overcoming of morality through truthfulness, the moralist overcoming himself in his opposite.
Definitive gloss on the choice of the book's protagonist.