Towards himself man is the cruellest animal; and in all who call themselves ‘sinners’ and ‘bearers of the cross’ and ‘penitents’, do not overlook the voluptuousness in their plaints and accusations!

And I myself — do I thereby want to be man’s accuser? Ah, mine animals, this only have I learned hitherto, that for man his baddest is necessary for his best —

That all that is baddest is the best power, and the hardest stone for the highest creator; and that man must become better and badder —

Not to this torture-stake was I tied, that I know man is bad — but I cried, as no one hath yet cried:

‘Ah, that his baddest is so very small! Ah, that his best is so very small!’

The great disgust at man — it strangled me and had crept into my throat; and what the soothsayer had presaged: ‘All is alike, nothing is worth while, knowledge strangleth.’

A long twilight limped on before me, a fatally weary, fatally intoxicated sadness, which spake with yawning mouth.

‘Eternally he returneth, the man of whom thou art weary, the small man’ — so yawned my sadness, and dragged its foot and could not go to sleep.

A cavern became the human earth to me; its breast caved in, everything living became to me human dust and bones and mouldering past.

My sighing sat on all human graves, and could no longer arise; my sighing and questioning croaked and choked, and gnawed and nagged day and night:

‘Ah, man returneth eternally! The small man returneth eternally!’

Naked had I once seen both of them, the greatest man and the smallest man: all too like one another — all too human, even the greatest man!

All too small, even the greatest man — that was my disgust at man! And the eternal return also of the smallest man — that was my disgust at all existence!

Ah! Disgust! Disgust! Disgust! Thus spake Zarathustra, and sighed and shuddered; for he remembered his sickness. Then did his animals prevent him from speaking further.

Do not speak further, thou convalescent! So answered his animals. But go out where the world waiteth for thee like a garden.

Go out unto the roses, the bees and the flocks of doves! Especially, however, unto the singing-birds, to learn singing from them!

For singing is for the convalescent; the sound ones may talk. And when the sound also want songs, then want they other songs than the convalescent.

O ye wags and barrel-organs, do be silent, answered Zarathustra, and smiled at his animals. How well ye know what consolation I devised for myself in seven days!

That I have to sing once more — that consolation did I devise for myself, and this convalescence; would ye also make another lyre-lay thereof?

Do not talk further, answered his animals once more. Rather, thou convalescent, prepare for thyself first a lyre, a new lyre!