On the Flies of the Marketplace

Flee, my friend, into your solitude! I see you deafened by the noise of the great men and stung all over by the stings of the small.

Forest and rock know how to keep a dignified silence with you. Be like the tree again that you love, the broad-branched one: silent and listening it hangs over the sea.

Where solitude ends, there the marketplace begins; and where the marketplace begins, there begins too the noise of the great actors and the buzzing of the poisonous flies.

In the world the best things are still worth nothing without someone who first stages them: great men, the people call these showmen.

The people understand little of what is great, that is: of what creates. But they have a sense for all showmen and actors of great things.

Around the inventors of new values the world revolves:—invisibly it revolves. But around the actors revolve the people and fame: such is the way of the world.

The actor has spirit, but little conscience of the spirit. He always believes in whatever he uses to make others believe most strongly,—makes them believe in him!

Tomorrow he has a new faith and the day after tomorrow a newer one. He has quick senses, like the people, and a nose that shifts with the wind.

To overthrow—that, to him, means: to prove. To drive mad—that, to him, means: to convince. And blood counts with him as the best of all reasons.

A truth that slips only into fine ears he calls a lie and nothing. Truly, he believes only in gods who make a great noise in the world!

The marketplace is full of solemn buffoons—and the people boast of their great men! These are to them the masters of the hour.

But the hour presses them: so they press you. And from you too they want a Yes or a No. Woe, you want to set your chair between For and Against?

Do not be jealous of these unconditional and pressing men, you lover of truth! Never yet has truth hung on the arm of an unconditional man.

Because of these abrupt ones, go back into your security: only in the marketplace is one assailed with Yes? or No?

Slow is the experience of all deep wells: long they must wait until they know what fell into their depths.

Away from the marketplace and from fame all that is great takes place: away from the marketplace and from fame the inventors of new values have always dwelt.

Flee, my friend, into your solitude: I see you stung all over by poisonous flies. Flee to where a raw, strong air blows!

Flee into your solitude! You have lived too near the small and the pitiful. Flee from their invisible revenge! Toward you they are nothing but revenge.

Raise your arm against them no more! They are innumerable, and it is not your lot to be a flyswatter.

Innumerable are these small and pitiful ones; and many a proud building has been brought to its going under by raindrops and weeds.

You are not a stone, but already you have been hollowed by many drops. You will yet crack and burst from many drops.

I see you wearied by poisonous flies, I see you scratched bloody in a hundred places; and your pride will not even be angry.

They want blood from you in all innocence; their bloodless souls crave blood—and so they sting in all innocence.

But you, deep one, you suffer too deeply even from small wounds; and before you have even healed, the same poisonous worm has crawled over your hand.

You are too proud, to my mind, to kill these sweet-toothed creatures. But beware lest it become your fate to bear all their poisonous injustice!

They buzz around you with their praise as well: importunity is their praise. They want to be near your skin and your blood.

They flatter you as they would a god or a devil; they whimper before you as before a god or a devil. What of it! They are flatterers and whimperers and no more.

Often, too, they present themselves to you as lovable. But that has always been the prudence of cowards. Yes, cowards are prudent!

They think a great deal about you with their narrow souls,—you are always suspect to them! Whatever is thought about a great deal becomes suspect.

They punish you for all your virtues. They forgive you from the bottom of their hearts only—your blunders.

Because you are gentle and just-minded, you say: “They are innocent of their small existence.” But their narrow soul thinks: “All great existence is guilt.”

Even when you are gentle with them, they still feel despised by you; and they repay your good deeds with hidden ill deeds.

Your wordless pride always goes against their taste; they rejoice if for once you are modest enough to be vain.

What we recognize in a human being we also inflame in him. So beware of the small!

Before you they feel small, and their lowness smolders and glows against you in invisible revenge.

Did you not notice how often they fell silent when you stepped up to them, and how their strength went out of them like the smoke from a dying fire?

Yes, my friend, you are the bad conscience of your neighbors: for they are unworthy of you. So they hate you and would like to suck your blood.

Your neighbors will always be poisonous flies; what is great in you—that itself must make them more poisonous and ever more flylike.

Flee, my friend, into your solitude, and to where a raw, strong air blows. It is not your lot to be a flyswatter.—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.