The Joyful Wisdom · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
334.
_One must Learn to Love._—This is our experience in music: we must first _learn_ in general _to hear_, to hear fully, and to distinguish a theme or a melody, we have to isolate and limit it as a life by itself; then we need to exercise effort and good-will in order _to endure_ it in spite of its strangeness, we need patience towards its aspect and expression, and indulgence towards what is odd in it:—in the end there comes a moment when we are _accustomed_ to it, when we expect it, when it dawns upon us that we should miss it if it were lacking; and then it goes on to exercise its spell and charm more and more, and does not cease until we have become its humble and enraptured lovers, who want it, and want it again, and ask for nothing better from the world.—It is thus with us, however, not only in music: it is precisely thus that we have _learned to love_ all things that we now love. We are always finally recompensed for our good-will, our patience, reasonableness and gentleness towards what is unfamiliar, by the unfamiliar slowly throwing off its veil and presenting itself to us as a new, ineffable beauty:—that is its _thanks_ for our hospitality. He also who loves himself must have learned it in this way: there is no other way. Love also has to be learned.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.