He who would understand everything in man must handle everything. But for that I have too clean hands.
I do not like even to inhale their breath; alas! that I have lived so long among their noise and bad breaths!
O blessed stillness around me! O pure odours around me! How from a deep breast this stillness fetches pure breath! How it hearkens, this blessed stillness!
But down there- there speaks everything, there is everything misheard. If one announce one's wisdom with bells, the shopmen in the market-place will out-jingle it with pennies!
Everything among them talks; no one knows any longer how to understand. Everything falls into the water; nothing falls any longer into deep wells.
Everything among them talks, nothing succeeds any longer and accomplishes itself. Everything cackles, but who will still sit quietly on the nest and hatch eggs?
Everything among them talks, everything is out-talked. And that which yesterday was still too hard for time itself and its tooth, hangs today, outchamped and outchewed, from the mouths of the men of today.
Everything among them talks, everything is betrayed. And what was once called the secret and secrecy of profound souls, belongs to-day to the street-trumpeters and other butterflies.
O human hubbub, you wonderful thing! you noise in dark streets! Now are you again behind me:- my greatest danger lies behind me!
In indulging and pitying lay ever my greatest danger; and all human hubbub wishes to be indulged and tolerated.
With suppressed truths, with fool's hand and befooled heart, and rich in petty lies of pity:- thus have I ever lived among men.
