I am only too well aware of the conditions under which a man understands me, and then necessarily understands. He must be intellectually upright to the point of hardness, in order even to endure my seriousness and my passion. He must be used to living on mountain-tops, - and to feeling the wretched gabble of politics and national egotism beneath him. He must have become indifferent; he must never inquire whether truth is profitable or whether it may prove fatal... Possessing from strength a predilection for question for which no one has enough courage nowadays; the courage for the forbidden; his predestination must be the labyrinth. The experience of seven solitudes. New ears for new music. New eyes for the most remote things. A new conscience for truths which hitherto have remained dumb. And the will to economy on a large scale: to husband his strength and his enthusiasm... He must honour himself, he must love himself; he must be absolutely free with regard to himself...
Friedrich Nietzsche from "The Antichrist"
