It is no small art to know how to sleep: for that you must stay awake all day.
Ten times a day you must overcome yourself: that overcoming brings a pleasant weariness and is poppy for the soul.
Ten times a day you must make peace with yourself again: for overcoming is a grievance, and the unreconciled sleep badly.
Ten times a day you must find a truth, or else you will look for it at night as well, and your soul will stay hungry.
Ten times a day laugh and be merry, so that at night your stomach, that father of sorrow, does not trouble you.
Few know this truth: to sleep well, one must have all the virtues. Shall I bear false witness? Shall I commit adultery?
Shall I let myself covet my neighbor’s maidservant? None of that would go well with good sleep.
And even if you have all the virtues, do not forget one thing: know when to send your virtues to sleep.
So that they do not quarrel with one another, these dear little gossips, and over you of all people, you wretch!
Be at peace with God and with your neighbor: good sleep demands it. And be at peace with your neighbor’s devil too! Otherwise he will visit you at night.
Honor your superiors and obey them, even if they prefer to walk crooked! Good sleep demands it. Is it your fault that power walks on lame legs?
The best shepherd shall be the one who grazes his sheep on the fattest meadows: for that is how he wins good sleep.
I want neither great honors nor great riches: they inflame the spleen. But one sleeps well with a good name and a little treasure.
Better a small company than a bad one: but everyone must come and go at the right time. That makes for good sleep.
I am fond of the poor in spirit: they help one sleep. Blessed are they, especially if one always agrees that they are right.
So passes the day of the virtuous. But when night comes, I take care not to summon sleep; he does not like to be summoned, sleep, the lord of the virtues!
I only think over what I did and thought during the day. Patiently, like a cow, I chew it all over, asking myself: what were my ten overcomings?
And the ten reconciliations, and the ten truths, and the ten times I laughed and gladdened my heart?
And while I ponder and weigh all these forty thoughts, sleep suddenly overtakes me, the uninvited lord of the virtues.
He taps on my eyelids, and they grow heavy; he touches my mouth, and it stays open.
Truly, on soft feet he comes to me, the dearest of thieves, and steals my thoughts: and I stand there as dumb as this lectern.
To be honest, I understand little of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, but every now and then something gets through that I can follow. I think this guide deserves a repost.