“Only artists, and especially those of the theater, have given men eyes and ears to see and hear with some pleasure what each man is himself. Only they have taught us to esteem the hero that is concealed in everyday characters and to view ourselves as heroes. Without this art, we would be nothing but foreground and live entirely in the spell of that perspective which makes what is most vulgar and closest at hand appear as if it were reality itself. Similarly, the religion that made men see the sinfulness of every single individual taught man to see himself from a distance as something past and whole.”
—The Gay Science
—The Gay Science