Chapter 17 Part I Reading and Writing

As for all writing, I only love what the author wrote with his own painstaking efforts.Write with your soul: you will know that your soul is your spirit. It is not easy to understand other people's painstaking efforts: I hate all people who read for entertainment. Those who know their readers well will never write for them again.Another century of such readers--the spirit will rot. Letting everyone have the right to read will not only damage writing in the end, but even thinking will be damaged. Once the Spirit was God, then became man, now he has become the crowd. Whoever writes aphorisms with painstaking efforts, he does not want to be recited by people, but memorized by people.

From this peak to that peak is the shortest distance between two mountains; but you must have long legs to take this route.Maxims should be the peaks of mountains; and those who hear them should be great and mighty. The light and pure air, the ever-present danger, the joyous evil in the spirit: all these are in harmony with each other. I would like the devil to surround me because I am brave.Bravery banishes ghosts and makes many demons self-made,—courage needs to laugh. My feelings are no longer the same as yours: I laugh at the blackness and bulkiness of the cloud below me,—but it is your dark cloud that stirs up the storm.

When you wish to exalt, you look up.But I look down, because I am high up. Who among you can laugh and be on a high place at the same time? The person standing on the highest mountain laughs at all the true and false tragedies in life on the stage. Unscrupulous, contemptuous, tyrannical,--so wisdom teaches us: Wisdom is a woman who loves only a warrior. You tell me, "Life is hard to bear." Why, then, are you cowardly at night and arrogant at night? Life is hard to bear: don't be so weak, then!We are all male donkeys and female donkeys carrying loads. What have we in common with the rosebud that trembles under a dewdrop?

This is true: we love life not because we are used to life, but because we love it. There is always an element of madness in love.But there is always an element of reason in the same madness. In my life-lover's opinion, I feel that butterflies, soap bubbles, and everything that resembles them on earth know happiness best. When Zarathustra saw these frivolous, beautiful, restless little souls, he would weep and sing. I can only believe in a God who can dance. When I see my demon, I find him serene, fine, deep, and serious; this is the spirit of gravity:—by which all things fall. We kill not with anger, but with laughter.Come on, let us kill this serious spirit!

I learned to walk: then I made myself run.I learned to fly: in the future I don't have to be pushed and pulled to change places. Now I am light, I fly; I see that I am above myself.A god dances on me. Thus spake Zarathustra.