All periods prate against one another in your spirits; and the dreams and pratings of all periods were even more real than your awakeness!

Unfruitful are ye: therefore do ye lack belief. But he who had to create, had always his presaging dreams and astral premonitions— and believed in believing!

Half-open doors are ye, at which grave-diggers wait. And this is your reality: ‘Everything deserveth to perish.’

Alas, how ye stand there before me, ye unfruitful ones; how lean your ribs! And many of you surely have had knowledge thereof.

Many a one hath said: ‘There hath surely a God filched something from me secretly whilst I slept? Verily, enough to make a girl for himself therefrom!

Amazing is the poverty of my ribs!’ Thus hath spoken many a present-day man.

Yea, ye are laughable unto me, ye present day men! And especially when ye marvel at yourselves!

And woe unto me if I could not laugh at your marvelling, and had to swallow all that is repugnant in your platters!

As it is, however, I will make lighter of you, since I have to carry what is heavy; and what matter if beetles and maybugs also alight on my load!

Verily, it shall not on that account become heavier to me! And not from you, ye present-day men, shall my great weariness arise.

Ah, whither shall I now ascend with my longing! From all mountains do I look out for fatherlands and motherlands.

But a home have I found nowhere; unsettled am I in all cities, and decamping at all gates.

Alien to me, and a mockery, are the present-day men to whom of late my heart impelled me; and exiled am I from fatherlands and motherlands.

Thus do I love only my children’s land, the undiscovered in the remotest sea; for it do I bid my sails search and search.

Unto my children will I make amends for being the child of my fathers; and unto all the future—for this present-day!

Thus spake Zarathustra.