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If one would have a friend, then must one also be willing to wage war for him: and in order to wage war, one must be CAPABLE of being an enemy.
One ought still to honour the enemy in one’s friend. Canst thou go nigh unto thy friend, and not go over to him?
In one’s friend one shall have one’s best enemy. Thou shalt be closest unto him with thy heart when thou withstandest him.
Thou wouldst wear no raiment before thy friend? It is in honour of thy friend that thou showest thyself to him as thou art? But he wisheth thee to the devil on that account!
He who maketh no secret of himself shocketh: so much reason have ye to fear nakedness! Aye, if ye were Gods, ye could then be ashamed of clothing!
Thou canst not adorn thyself fine enough for thy friend; for thou shalt be unto him an arrow and a longing for the Superman.
Sawest thou ever thy friend asleep—to know how he looketh? What is usually the countenance of thy friend? It is thine own countenance, in a coarse and imperfect mirror.
Sawest thou ever thy friend asleep? Wert thou not dismayed at thy friend looking so? O my friend, man is something that hath to be surpassed.
In divining and keeping silence shall the friend be a master: not everything must thou wish to see. Thy dream shall disclose unto thee what thy friend doeth when awake.
Let thy pity be a divining: to know first if thy friend wanteth pity. Perhaps he loveth in thee the unmoved eye, and the look of eternity.
Let thy pity for thy friend be hid under a hard shell; thou shalt bite out a tooth upon it. Thus will it have delicacy and sweetness.
Art thou pure air and solitude and bread and medicine to thy friend? Many a one cannot loosen his own fetters, but is nevertheless his friend’s emancipator.
Art thou a slave? Then thou canst not be a friend. Art thou a tyrant? Then thou canst not have friends.
Far too long hath there been a slave and a tyrant concealed in woman. On that account woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knoweth only love.
In woman’s love there is injustice and blindness to all she doth not love. And even in woman’s conscious love, there is still always surprise and lightning and night, along with the light.
As yet woman is not capable of friendship: women are still cats, and birds. Or at the best, cows.
As yet woman is not capable of friendship. But tell me, ye men, who of you are capable of friendship?
Oh! your poverty, ye men, and your sordidness of soul! As much as ye give to your friend, will I give even to my foe, and will not have become poorer thereby.
There is comradeship: may there be friendship!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
Many lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples: thus he discovered the good and bad of many peoples. No greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than good and bad.
No people could live without first valuing; if a people will maintain itself, however, it must not value as its neighbour valueth.
Much that passed for good with one people was regarded with scorn and contempt by another: thus I found it. Much found I here called bad, which was there decked with purple honours.
Never did the one neighbour understand the other: ever did his soul marvel at his neighbour’s delusion and wickedness.
A table of excellencies hangeth over every people. Lo! it is the table of their triumphs; lo! it is the voice of their Will to Power.
It is laudable, what they think hard; what is indispensable and hard they call good; and what relieveth in the direst distress, the unique and hardest of all,—they extol as holy.
Whatever maketh them rule and conquer and shine, to the dismay and envy of their neighbours, they regard as the high and foremost thing, the test and the meaning of all else.
Verily, my brother, if thou knewest but a people’s need, its land, its sky, and its neighbour, then wouldst thou divine the law of its surmountings, and why it climbeth up that ladder to its hope.
“Always shalt thou be the foremost and prominent above others: no one shall thy jealous soul love, except a friend”—that made the soul of a Greek thrill: thereby went he his way to greatness.
“To speak truth, and be skilful with bow and arrow”—so seemed it alike pleasing and hard to the people from whom cometh my name—the name which is alike pleasing and hard to me.
“To honour father and mother, and from the root of the soul to do their will”—this table of surmounting hung another people over them, and became powerful and permanent thereby.
“To have fidelity, and for the sake of fidelity to risk honour and blood, even in evil and dangerous courses”—teaching itself so, another people mastered itself, and thus mastering itself, became pregnant and heavy with great hopes.
Verily, men have given unto themselves all their good and bad. Verily, they took it not, they found it not, it came not unto them as a voice from heaven.
Values did man only assign to things in order to maintain himself—he created only the significance of things, a human significance! Therefore, calleth he himself “man,” that is, the valuator.
Valuing is creating: hear it, ye creating ones! Valuation itself is the treasure and jewel of the valued things.
Through valuation only is there value; and without valuation the nut of existence would be hollow. Hear it, ye creating ones!
Change of values—that is, change of the creating ones. Always doth he destroy who hath to be a creator.
Creating ones were first of all peoples, and only in late times individuals; verily, the individual himself is still the latest creation.
Peoples once hung over them tables of the good. Love which would rule and love which would obey, created for themselves such tables.
Older is the pleasure in the herd than the pleasure in the ego: and as long as the good conscience is for the herd, the bad conscience only saith: ego.
Verily, the crafty ego, the loveless one, that seeketh its advantage in the advantage of many—it is not the origin of the herd, but its ruin.
Loving ones, was it always, and creating ones, that created good and bad. Fire of love gloweth in the names of all the virtues, and fire of wrath.
Many lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples: no greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than the creations of the loving ones—“good” and “bad” are they called.
