Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, R. J. Hollingdale

tell me it hurts your good people. But what are your good people to me?
    Much about your good people moves me to disgust, and it is not their evil I mean. How I wish they possessed a madness through which they could perish, like this pale criminal.
    Truly, I wish their madness were called truth or loyalty or justice: but they possess their virtue in order to live long and in a miserable ease.
    I am a railing beside the stream: he who can grasp me, let him grasp me! I am not, however, your crutch.
    Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Of Reading and Writing
    O F all writings I love only that which is written with blood. Write with blood: and you will discover that blood is spirit.
    It is not an easy thing to understand unfamiliar blood: I hate the reading idler.
    He who knows the reader, does nothing further for the reader. Another century of readers – and spirit itself will stink.
    That everyone can learn to read will ruin in the long run not only writing, but thinking too.
    Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.
    He who writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read, he wants to be learned by heart.
    In the mountains the shortest route is from peak to peak, but for that you must have long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks, and those to whom they are spoken should be big and tall of stature.
    The air thin and pure, danger near, and the spirit full of a joyful wickedness: these things suit one another.
    I want hobgoblins around me, for I am courageous. Courage that scares away phantoms makes hobgoblins for itself – courage wants to laugh.
    I no longer feel as you do: this cloud which I see under me, this blackness and heaviness at which I laugh – precisely this is your thunder-cloud.
    You look up when you desire to be exalted. And I look down, because I am exalted.
    Who among you can at the same time laugh and be exalted?
    He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.
    Untroubled, scornful, outrageous – that is how wisdom wants us to be: she is a woman and never loves anyone but a warrior.
    You tell me: ‘Life is hard to bear.’ But if it were otherwise why should you have your pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening?
    Life is hard to bear: but do not pretend to be so tender! We are all of us pretty fine asses and assesses of burden!
    What have we in common with the rosebud, which trembles because a drop of dew is lying upon it?
    It is true: we love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.
    There is always a certain madness in love. But also there is always a certain method in madness.
    And to me too, who love life, it seems that butterflies and soap-bubbles, and whatever is like them among men, know most about happiness.
    To see these light, foolish, dainty, affecting little souls flutter about – that moves Zarathustra to tears and to song.
    I should believe only in a God who understood how to dance.
    And when I beheld my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: it was the Spirit of Gravity – through him all things are ruined.
    One does not kill by anger but by laughter. Come, let us kill the Spirit of Gravity!
    I have learned to walk: since then I have run. I have learned to fly: since then I do not have to be pushed in order to move.
    Now I am nimble, now I fly, now I see myself under myself, now a god dances within me.
    Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Of the Tree on the Mountainside
    Z ARATHUSTRA had noticed that a young man was avoiding him. And as he was walking alone one evening through the mountains surrounding the town called The Pied Cow, behold! he found this young man leaning against a tree and gazing wearily into the valley. Zarathustra grasped the tree beside which the young man was sitting and spoke thus:
    ‘If I wanted to shake this tree with my hands I should be unable to do it.
    ‘But the wind, which we cannot see, torments it and bends it where it wishes. It is