When thou teachest: ‘All creators are hard, all great love is beyond their pity,’ O Zarathustra, how well versed dost thou seem to me in weather-signs!

Thou thyself, however—warn thyself also against thy pity! For many are on their way to thee, many suffering, doubting, despairing, drowning, freezing ones—

I warn thee also against myself. Thou hast read my best, my worst riddle, myself, and what I have done. I know the axe that felleth thee.

But he—had to die; he looked with eyes which beheld everything—he beheld men’s depths and dregs, all his hidden ignominy and ugliness.

His pity knew no modesty; he crept into my dirtiest corners. This most prying, over-intrusive, over-pitiful one had to die.

He ever beheld me: on such a witness I would have revenge—or not live myself.

The God who beheld everything, and also man: that God had to die! Man cannot endure it that such a witness should live.

Thus spake the ugliest man. Zarathustra however got up, and prepared to go on: for he felt frozen to the very bowels.

Thou nondescript, said he, thou warnedst me against thy path. As thanks for it I praise mine to thee. Behold, up thither is the cave of Zarathustra.

My cave is large and deep and hath many corners; there findeth he that is most hidden his hiding-place. And close beside it there are a hundred lurking-places and by-places for creeping, fluttering and hopping creatures.

Thou outcast, who hast cast thyself out, thou wilt not live amongst men and men’s pity? Well then, do like me! Thus wilt thou learn also from me; only the doer learneth.

And talk first and foremost to mine animals! The proudest animal and the wisest animal—they might well be the right counsellors for us both!

Thus spake Zarathustra and went his way, more thoughtfully and slowly even than before; for he asked himself many things, and hardly knew what to answer.

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 this man hath loved himself, as he hath despised himself—a great lover methinketh he is, and a great despiser.

No one have I yet found who more thoroughly despised himself: even that is elevation. Alas, was this perhaps the higher man whose cry I heard?

I love the great despisers. Man is something that hath to be surpassed.