He who will one day teach men to fly will have moved all boundary stones; the boundary stones themselves will fly up into the air before him, and he will rebaptize the earth - "the light one."
The ostrich runs faster than the fastest horse, but even he buries his head gravely in the grave earth; even so, the man who has not yet learned to fly. Earth and life seem grave to him; and thus the spirit of gravity wants it. But whoever would become light and a bird must love himself: thus I teach.
Not, to be sure, with the love of the wilting and wasting; for among those even self-love stinks. One must learn to love oneself - thus I teach - with a wholesome and healthy love, so that one can bear to be with oneself and need not roam...
And verily, this is no command for today and tomorrow, to learn to love oneself. Rather, it is of all arts the subtlest, the most cunning, the ultimate, and the most patient. For whatever is his own is well concealed from the owner; and of all treasures, it is our own that we dig up last...
And verily, much that is our own is also a grave burden! And much that is inside man is like an oyster: nauseating and slippery and hard to grasp, so that a noble shell with a noble embellishment must plead for it. But this art too one must learn: to have a shell and shiny sheen and shrewd blindness. Moreover, one is deceived about many things in man because many a shell is shabby and sad and altogether too much shell. Much hidden graciousness and strength is never guessed; the most exquisite delicacies find no tasters. Women know this - the most exquisite do: a little fatter, a little slimmer - oh, how much destiny lies in so little!...
Verily, I also do not like those who consider everything good and this world the best. Such men I call the omni-satisfied. Omni-satisfaction, which knows how to taste everything, that is not the best taste. I honor the recalcitrant choosy tongues and stomachs, which have learned to say "I" and "yes" and "no."
...and the most revolting human animal that I found I baptized "parasite": it did not want to love and yet it wanted to live on love...
Cursed I call those too who must always wait; they offend my taste: all the publicans and shopkeepers and kings and other land- and storekeepers. Verily, I too have learned to wait - thoroughly - but only to wait for myself. And above all I learned to stand and walk and run and jump and climb and dance.
By many ways, in many ways, I reached my truth: it was not on one ladder that I climbed to the height where my eye roams over my distance...
A trying and questioning was my every move; and verily, one must also learn to answer such questioning. That, however, is my taste - not good, not bad, but my taste of which I am no longer ashamed and which I have no wish to hide.
"This is my way; where is yours?" - thus I answered those who asked me "the way." For the way - that does not exist.
Thus spoke Zarathustra.