But like infection is the petty thought: it creeps and hides, and wants to be nowhere--until the whole body is decayed and withered by the petty infection... Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Someone said: "I have been prejudiced against myself from my earliest childhood: hence I find some truth in all blame and some stupidity in all praise. I generally estimate praise too poorly and blame too highly.
The enjoyment that all morality has given us to now and that it continues to give us--and so, what has kept it going up to now--lies in everyone's right, without lengthy investigation, to praise and blame. And who could endure life without praising and blaming!
There did he sit shrivelled in his chimney corner, fretting on account of his weak legs, world weary, will weary, and one day he suffocated through his excessive pity.
For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with himself, whether it be by means of this or that poetry or art; only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is constantly ready for revenge, and we others will be his victims, if only by having to endure his ugly sight.
That the world is not the embodiment of an eternal rationality can be conclusively proved by the fact that the piece of the worldthat we know--I mean our human reason--is not so very rational. And if it is not eternally and completely wise and rational, then the rest of the world will not be either; here the conclusion a minori ad majus, a parte ad totum applies, and does so with decisive force.