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Quotation from The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche
“What is best of all is for ever beyond your reach: not to be born, not to _be_, to be _nothing._ The second best for you, however, is soon to die”
The Birth of Tragedy, §3, trans. William A. Haussmann (1909)
Captured by King Midas, the satyr Silenus reveals the Greek folk wisdom that Nietzsche places beneath the Olympian gods.
Citation: "What is best of all is for ever beyond your reach: not to be born, not to _be_, to be _nothing._ The second best for you, however, is soon to die" — Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, §3, trans. William A. Haussmann (1909). (id the-birth-of-tragedy-q7)
Portrait: Nietzsche187a, Friedrich Hermann Hartmann, Public domain.
