From ‘The Home-Coming’:
O Solitude! Solitude, my home!
…’O Zarathustra, I know all: and that you were lonelier among the crowd, you solitary, than you ever were with me!
‘Loneliness is one thing, solitude another: you have learned that – now! And that among men you will always be wild and strange:
‘wild and strange even when they love you: for above all they want to be indulged!
‘But here you are at your own hearth and home; here you can utter everything and pour out every reason, nothing is here ashamed of hidden, hardened feelings.
…’When you said: May my animals lead me! I found it more dangerous among men than among animals. That was loneliness!
…O Solitude! Solitude, my home! How blissfully and tenderly does your voice speak to me!
…Down there, however – all speech is in vain! There, the best wisdom is to forget and pass by: I have learned that – now!
He who wants to understand all things among men has to touch all things. But my hands are too clean for that.
I even dislike to breathe in their breath; alas, that I lived so long among their noise and bad breath!
O blissful stillness around me! O pure odours around me! Oh, how this stillness draws pure breath from a deep breast! Oh, how it listens, this blissful stillness!
But down there – everything speaks, everything is unheard. One may ring in one’s wisdom with bells – the shopkeeper in the market-place will out-ring it with pennies!
Everything among them speaks, no one knows any longer how to understand. Everything falls away into failure, nothing falls any longer into deep wells.
…Everything among them speaks, everything is talked down.
…With truths held back, with foolish hand and foolish-fond heart and rich in pity’s little lies – that is how I used to live among men.
I sat among them disguised, ready to misunderstand myself so that I might endure them, and glad to tell myself: ‘You fool, you do not know men!’
One forgets what one has learned about men when one lives among men: there is too much foreground in all men – what can far-seeing, far-seeking eyes do there!
And when they misunderstood me, I, like a fool, indulged them more than I did myself: for I was accustomed to being hard with myself and often even taking revenge on myself for this indulgence.
Stung by poisonous flies and hollowed out like a stone by many drops of wickedness: that is how I sat among them and still told myself: ‘Everything small is innocent of its smallness!’
Especially those who call themselves ‘the good’ did I discover to be the most poisonous flies: they sting in all innocence; how could they be – just towards me!
Pity teaches him to lie who lives among the good. Pity makes the air stifling for all free souls. For the stupidity of the good is unfathomable.
…One should live upon mountains.
With happy nostrils I breathe again mountain-freedom! At last my nose is delivered from the odour of all humankind!