On the Friend

“One is always one too many around me”—so thinks the hermit. “Always once one—in the long run that makes two!”

I and Me are always too eagerly in conversation: how could it be endured if there were no friend?

For the hermit the friend is always the third: the third is the cork that keeps the conversation of the two from sinking into the depths.

Ah, there are too many depths for all hermits. That is why they long so for a friend and for his height.

Our faith in others betrays where we would gladly have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer.

And often with love one only wants to leap over envy. And often one attacks and makes an enemy in order to hide that one is open to attack.

“At least be my enemy!”—so speaks true reverence, which does not dare to ask for friendship.

If one wants to have a friend, one must also be willing to wage war for him: and to wage war, one must be able to be an enemy.

In one’s friend one should still honor the enemy. Can you step close to your friend without stepping over to him?

In one’s friend one should have one’s best enemy. You should be closest to him with your heart when you resist him.

You want to wear no clothes before your friend? It is supposed to honor your friend that you give yourself to him as you are? But for that he wishes you to the devil!

Whoever makes no secret of himself gives offense: that is how much reason you have to fear nakedness! Yes, if you were gods, then you might be ashamed of your clothes!

You cannot adorn yourself beautifully enough for your friend: for you shall be to him an arrow and a longing for the Übermensch.

Have you ever seen your friend asleep,—so that you might learn what he looks like? What else is your friend’s face, after all? It is your own face, in a rough and imperfect mirror.

Have you ever seen your friend asleep? Were you not frightened that your friend looks like that? Oh, my friend, the human being is something that must be overcome.

The friend should be a master at guessing and keeping silent: you must not want to see everything. Your dream should betray to you what your friend does while awake.

Let your pity be a guessing: so that you first know whether your friend wants pity. Perhaps what he loves in you is the unbroken eye and the gaze of eternity.

Let your pity for your friend hide under a hard shell; you should break a tooth on it. Then it will have its delicacy and sweetness.

Are you pure air and solitude and bread and medicine to your friend? Many a one cannot loosen his own chains, and yet he is a redeemer to his friend.

Are you a slave? Then you cannot be a friend. Are you a tyrant? Then you cannot have friends.

All too long a slave and a tyrant were hidden in woman. Therefore woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knows only love.

In a woman’s love there is injustice and blindness toward everything she does not love. And even in a woman’s knowing love there is still always ambush and lightning and night beside the light.

Woman is not yet capable of friendship: women are still cats, and birds. Or, at best, cows.

Woman is not yet capable of friendship. But tell me, you men, which of you, then, is capable of friendship?

Oh, your poverty, you men, and your stinginess of soul! As much as you give your friend I will give even my enemy, and I will not have grown poorer by it.

There is comradeship: may there be friendship!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.