Q0425

Friedrich Nietzsche

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Three metamorphoses of the spirit I name for you: how the spirit becomes a camel, and the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.
Thinker Friedrich Nietzsche
School Proto-Existentialism
Source Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the Three Metamorphoses
Theme Spirit
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the Three Metamorphoses, within the tradition of Proto-Existentialism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of spirit, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Friedrich Nietzsche's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Friedrich Nietzsche. (n.d.). Three metamorphoses of the spirit I name for you: how the spirit becomes a camel, and the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0425

MLA: Friedrich Nietzsche. “Three metamorphoses of the spirit I name for….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0425.

Chicago: Friedrich Nietzsche. “Three metamorphoses of the spirit I name for….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0425.

Same thinker

More from Friedrich Nietzsche

  1. From the military school of life. — What does not kill me makes me stronger.
  2. Amor fati: let that be my love from now on!
  3. How one becomes what one is.
  4. Man is something that shall be overcome.
  5. This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more…

All quotations by Friedrich Nietzsche

Same theme

More on spirit

  1. To abandon the struggle for private happiness…to burn with passion for eternal things — this is emancipation.
  2. Despair is a sickness of the spirit.
  3. The function of philosophy is not to increase positive knowledge, but to raise the level of the spirit.
  4. Prayer consists of attention.

Browse the spirit theme