“So true is it, what I then said, that the Fraction of Life can be increased in value not so much by increasing your Numerator as by lessening your Denominator.  Nay, unless my Algebra deceive me, Unity itself divided by Zero will give Infinity.  Make thy claim of wages a zero, then; thou hast the world under thy feet.  Well did the Wisest of our time write:  ’It is only with Renunciation (Entsagen) that Life, properly speaking, can be said to begin.’

“I asked myself:  What is this that, ever since earliest years, thou hast been fretting and fuming, and lamenting and self-tormenting, on account of?  Say it in a word:  is it not because thou art not HAPPY?  Because the THOU (sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently honored, nourished, soft-bedded, and lovingly cared for?  Foolish soul!  What Act of Legislature was there that thou shouldst be Happy?  A little while ago thou hadst no right to be at all.  What if thou wert born and predestined not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy!  Art thou nothing other than a Vulture, then, that fliest through the Universe seeking after somewhat to eat; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not given thee?  Close thy Byron; open thy Goethe.”

“Es leuchtet mir ein, I see a glimpse of it!” cries he elsewhere:  “there is in man a HIGHER than Love of Happiness:  he can do without Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness!  Was it not to preach forth this same HIGHER that sages and martyrs, the Poet and the Priest, in all times, have spoken and suffered; bearing testimony, through life and through death, of the Godlike that is in Man, and how in the Godlike only has he Strength and Freedom?  Which God-inspiredd Doctrine art thou also honored to be taught; O Heavens! and broken with manifold merciful Afflictions, even till thou become contrite and learn it!  Oh, thank thy Destiny for these; thankfully bear what yet remain:  thou hadst need of them; the Self in thee needed to be annihilated.  By benignant fever-paroxysms is Life rooting out the deep-seated chronic Disease, and triumphs over Death.  On the roaring billows of Time, thou art not engulfed, but borne aloft into the azure of Eternity.  Love not Pleasure; love God.  This is the EVERLASTING YEA, wherein all contradiction is solved:  wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him.”

And again:  “Small is it that thou canst trample the Earth with its injuries under thy feet, as old Greek Zeno trained thee:  thou canst love the Earth while it injures thee, and even because it injures thee; for this a Greater than Zeno was needed, and he too was sent.  Knowest thou that ‘Worship of Sorrow’?  The Temple thereof, founded some eighteen centuries ago, now lies in ruins, overgrown with jungle, the habitation of doleful creatures:  nevertheless, venture forward; in a low crypt, arched out of falling fragments, thou findest the Altar still there, and its sacred Lamp perennially burning.”