The Birth of Tragedy · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
7.
"Lift up your hearts, my brethren, high, higher! And do not forget your legs! Lift up also your legs, ye good dancers--and better still if ye stand also on your heads! "This crown of the laughter, this rose-garland crown--I myself have put on this crown; I myself have consecrated my laughter. No one else have I found to-day strong enough for this. "Zarathustra the dancer, Zarathustra the light one, who beckoneth with his pinions, one ready for flight, beckoning unto all birds, ready and prepared, a blissfully light-spirited one:-- "Zarathustra the soothsayer, Zarathustra the sooth-laugher, no impatient one, no absolute one, one who loveth leaps and side-leaps: I myself have put on this crown! "This crown of the laughter, this rose-garland crown--to you my brethren do I cast this crown! Laughing have I consecrated: ye higher men, _learn,_ I pray you--to laugh!" _Thus spake Zarathustra_, lxxiii. 17, 18, and 20. SILS-MARIA, OBERENGADIN, _August_ 1886. And shall not I, by mightiest desire, In living shape that sole fair form acquire? SWANWICK, trans. of _Faust._
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.