The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
1.
I have often asked myself whether I am not much more deeply indebted to the hardest years of my life than to any others. According to the voice of my innermost nature, everything necessary, seen from above and in the light of a _superior_ economy, is also useful in itself—not only should one bear it, one should _love_ it.… _Amor fati_: this is the very core of my being—And as to my prolonged illness, do I not owe much more to it than I owe to my health? To it I owe a _higher_ kind of health, a sort of health which grows stronger under everything that does not actually kill it!—_To it, I owe even my philosophy_.… Only great suffering is the ultimate emancipator of spirit, for it teaches one that _vast suspiciousness_ which makes an X out of every U, a genuine and proper X, _i.e._, the antepenultimate letter. Only great suffering; that great suffering, under which we seem to be over a fire of greenwood, the suffering that takes its time—forces us philosophers to descend into our nethermost depths, and to let go of all trustfulness, all good-nature, all whittling-down, all mildness, all mediocrity,—on which things we had formerly staked our humanity.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.