The contemptive labor of rebirthThe contemptive labor of rebirth
“What is the greatest thing you can experience? It is the hour of the great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness grows loathsome to you, and your reason and your virtue also.
“The hour when you say: ‘What good is my happiness? It is poverty and dirt and a miserable ease. But my happiness should justify existence itself!’
“The hour when you say: ‘What good is my reason? Does it long for knowledge as the lion for its food? It is poverty and dirt and a miserable ease!’
“The hour when you say: ‘What good is my virtue? It has not yet driven me mad! How tired I am of my good and my evil! It is all poverty and dirt and a miserable ease!’
“The hour when you say: ‘What good is my justice? I do not see that I am fire and hot coals. But the just man is fire and hot coals!’” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (trans. Hollingdale)