The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
993.
It is a comfort to me to know that over the smoke and filth of human baseness there is a _higher and brighter_ mankind, which, judging from their number, must be a small race (for everything that is in any way distinguished is _ipso facto_ rare). A man does not belong to this race because he happens to be more gifted, more virtuous, more heroic, or more loving than the men below, but because he is _colder, brighter, more far-sighted, and more lonely;_ because he endures, prefers, and even insists upon, loneliness as the joy, the privilege, yea, even the condition of existence; because he lives amid clouds and lightnings as among his equals, and likewise among sunrays, dewdrops, snowflakes, and all that which must needs come from the heights, and which in its course moves ever from heaven to earth. The desire to look aloft is not our desire.--Heroes, martyrs, geniuses, and enthusiasts of all kinds, are not quiet, patient, subtle, cold, or slow enough for us. The absolute conviction that valuations above and below are different; that innumerable experiences are wanting to the latter: that when looking upwards from below misunderstandings are necessary.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.