Friedrich Nietzsche, 1883
Zarathustra's Prologue
Nietzsche's Zarathustra descends from his mountain to tell people one thing. The core of the prologue:
I beseech you, my brothers: remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes. They are poisoners, whether they know it or not.
They are despisers of Life, dying off and self-poisoned, of whom the earth is weary — so let them fade away.
Once the offense against God was the greatest offense; but God died, and with him those offenders. To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful thing — to value the entrails of the unknowable more highly than the meaning of the earth.
Man is a rope, tied between beast and something greater — a rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.
I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars for going under and being sacrifices — but sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth may one day belong to something greater.