I write this for you, the refractory and rebellious who are tired of all slavery.
I write this for you, who feel that you have reached maturity and no longer want to be treated as a child, not even by fate.
I write this for you, the proud and the evil; yes, for the wantonly wicked who despises the meek and the just. I write this also for you, the earnestly good who wants to love his enemy, but cannot.
The complaisant and contented, the adjusters and compromisers, the advocates and flatters of God, those who shun anxiety and stop their ears against too blatant a truth - they had better read something else; there are plenty of pleasant and entertaining books for amusement.
And the slaves of reason, who tread in a circle around their stake as far as the cord of their logic reaches, they too cannot be my readers.
Only he who has overcome the word, who has forsaken the idolatry of the "true word" - he can read me with profit and understanding.
Listen, then: I am an old man proclaiming the glory of a new era. I am lonely and forsaken, but nevertheless I have a share in the great human world and the life of the gods.
I sit here serenely in my sombre, cool, old house, with its musty odor of old wood and memories of past generations. I look out upon the harbor and I hear the continuous murmur of the sea-breeze in the tall elms on the dike, and the screams of the gulls speaking of the vast and briny life of the sea. And yet, in the solitude of this quiet, forgotten life, I feel that I am mightier than the mightiest, a match for fate. I rule life; it shall bow to my wishes. I wrestle with the gods, even to the Most High. Sometimes I tremble, when a careless glance, with some semblance of deeper import, from one of the persons about me makes me think that a spark of this seething life within me has been discovered. But no one sees it, happily, nor knows me!
Had I told you this, (is it not so, dear reader, though you be ever so wise?), and I came not in a fiery chariot with a halo of glory and in dazzling raiment, but in my citizen's clothes, then after all you would undoubtedly have shrugged your shoulders and taken me for a poor fool.
But now I am a rich sage, because I write and hold my peace.