Nietzsche: the most grateful animals in the world, these lizards of convalescents with their faces half-turned towards life once more
Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, Preface, 1886
-> 'Human, All Too Human' on Audible.com
-> Nietzsche Audiobooks (English)
PREFACE (1886)
What joy even in the weariness, in the old illness, in the relapses of the convalescent! How he likes to sit still and suffer, to practise patience, to lie in the sun ! Who is as familiar as he with the joy of winter, with the patch of sunshine upon the wall ! They are the most grateful animals in the world, and also the most unassuming, these lizards of convalescents with their faces half-turned towards life once more :—there are those amongst them who never let a day pass without hanging a little hymn of praise on its trailing fringe. And, speaking seriously, it is a radical cure for all pessimism (the well-known disease of old idealists and falsehood-mongers) to become ill after the manner of these free spirits, to remain ill a good while, and then grow well (I mean " better") for a still longer period.
