Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra

FIRST PART. ZARATHUSTRA'S PROLOGUE. ZARATHUSTRA'S DISCOURSES. 16. XVI. NEIGHBOUR-LOVE. (continued)

The furthest ones are they who pay for your love to the near ones; and when there are but five of you together, a sixth must always die.

I love not your festivals either: too many actors found I there, and even the spectators often behaved like actors.

Not the neighbour do I teach you, but the friend. Let the friend be the festival of the earth to you, and a foretaste of the Superman.

I teach you the friend and his overflowing heart. But one must know how to be a sponge, if one would be loved by overflowing hearts.

I teach you the friend in whom the world standeth complete, a capsule of the good,--the creating friend, who hath always a complete world to bestow.

And as the world unrolled itself for him, so rolleth it together again for him in rings, as the growth of good through evil, as the growth of purpose out of chance.

Let the future and the furthest be the motive of thy to-day; in thy friend shalt thou love the Superman as thy motive.

My brethren, I advise you not to neighbour-love--I advise you to furthest love!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.