Thus Spake Zarathustra · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
7.
If ever I have spread out a tranquil heaven above me, and have flown into mine own heaven with mine own pinions: If I have swum playfully in profound luminous distances, and if my freedom’s avian wisdom hath come to me:— —Thus however speaketh avian wisdom:—“Lo, there is no above and no below! Throw thyself about,—outward, backward, thou light one! Sing! speak no more! —Are not all words made for the heavy? Do not all words lie to the light ones? Sing! speak no more!”— Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of rings—the ring of the return? Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, O Eternity! Ah, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the pitiful? And what in the world hath caused more suffering than the follies of the pitiful? Woe unto all loving ones who have not an elevation which is above their pity! Thus spake the devil unto me, once on a time: “Even God hath his hell: it is his love for man.” And lately did I hear him say these words: “God is dead: of his pity for man hath God died.”—ZARATHUSTRA, II., “The Pitiful.”
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.