The Joyful Wisdom · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
27.
_The Self-Renouncer._—What does the self-renouncer do? He strives after a higher world, he wants to fly longer and further and higher than all men of affirmation—he _throws away many things_ that would burden his flight, and several things among them that are not valueless, that are not unpleasant to him: he sacrifices them to his desire for elevation. Now this sacrificing, this casting away, is the very thing which becomes visible in him: on that account one calls him the self-renouncer, and as such he stands before us, enveloped in his cowl, and as the soul of a hair-shirt. With this effect, however, which he makes upon us he is well content: he wants to keep concealed from us his desire, his pride, his intention of flying _above_ us.—Yes! He is wiser than we thought, and so courteous towards us—this affirmer! For that is what he is, like us, even in his self-renunciation.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.