Many honours I want not, nor great treasures: they excite the spleen. But it is bad sleeping without a good name and a little treasure.
A small company is more welcome to me than a bad one: but they must come and go at the right time. So doth it accord with good sleep.
Well, also, do the poor in spirit please me: they promote sleep. Blessed are they, especially if one always give in to them.
Thus passeth the day unto the virtuous. When night cometh, then take I good care not to summon sleep. It disliketh to be summoned—sleep, the lord of the virtues!
But I think of what I have done and thought during the day. Thus ruminating, patient as a cow, I ask myself: What were they ten overcomings?
And what were the ten reconciliations, and the ten truths, and the ten laughters with which my heart enjoyed itself?
Thus pondering, and cradled by forty thoughts, it over taketh me all at once—sleep, the unsummoned, the lord of the virtues.
Sleep tappeth on mine eye, and it turneth heavy. Sleep toucheth my mouth, and it remaineth open.
Verily, on soft soles doth it come to me, the dearest of thieves, and stealeth from me my thoughts: stupid do I then stand, like this academic chair.
But not much longer do I then stand: I already lie.—
When Zarathustra heard the wise man thus speak, he laughed in his heart: for thereby had a light dawned upon him and thus spake he to his heart:
A fool seemeth this wise man with his forty thoughts: but I believe he knoweth well how to sleep.
Happy even is he who liveth near this wise man! Such sleep is contagious—even through a thick wall it is contagious.
