earth! Eager did I ever find you for the earth, amorous still of your own earth-weariness!
Not in vain does your lip hang down:- a small worldly wish still sits on it! And in your eye- floats there not a little cloud of unforgotten earthly bliss?
There are on the earth many good inventions, some useful, some pleasant: for their sake is the earth to be loved.
And many such good inventions are there, that they are like woman's breasts: useful at the same time, and pleasant.
You world-weary ones, however! You earth-idlers! You, shall one beat with stripes! With stripes shall one again make you sprightly limbs.
For if you be not invalids, or decrepit creatures, of whom the earth is weary, then are you sly sloths, or dainty, sneaking pleasure-cats. And if you will not again run gaily, then shall you- pass away!
To the incurable shall one not seek to be a physician: thus teaches Zarathustra:- so shall you pass away!
But more courage is needed to make an end than to make a new verse: that do all physicians and poets know well.-
18.
O my brothers, there are law-tablets which weariness framed, and law-tablets which slothfulness framed, corrupt slothfulness: although they speak similarly, they want to be heard differently.-
See this languishing one! Only a span-breadth is he from his goal; but from weariness has he lain down obstinately in the dust, this brave one!
From weariness yawns he at the path, at the earth, at the
