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Honesty, granting that it is the virtue of which we cannot rid ourselves, we free spirits⁠—well, we will labour at it with all our perversity and love, and not tire of “perfecting” ourselves in our virtue, which alone remains: may its glance some day overspread like a gilded, blue, mocking twilight this aging civilization with its dull gloomy seriousness! And if, nevertheless, our honesty should one day grow weary, and sigh, and stretch its limbs, and find us too hard, and would fain have it pleasanter, easier, and gentler, like an agreeable vice, let us remain hard , we latest Stoics, and let us send to its help whatever devilry we have in us:⁠—our disgust at the clumsy and undefined, our “ nitimur in vetitum