To the sanctimonious, filing into your house of worship pews anticipating the show, eager to note down the happy-talk words of your pastor, shill for a discounted Jesus, conjuring up feelings of self-satisfaction about moral living that you can afford

—  are you not entertained!

To those who preach morals—

I do not wish
to promote any morality,

but to those who do I give this advice:
If you wish to deprive
the best things and states of all honor and worth,
then go on talking about them as you have been doing.

Place them at the head of your morality and
talk from morning to night
   of the happiness of virtue,
      the composure of the soul,
         of justice and immanent retribution.

the way you are going about it,
all these good things will eventually have popularity
and the clamor of the streets on their side;
but at the same time all the gold
that was on them
will have been worn off by so much handling,
and all the gold inside will have turned to lead.

Truly, you are
masters of alchemy in reverse:
the devaluation of what is most valuable.

Why don’t you make the experiment
of trying another prescription
to keep from attaining the opposite of your goal
as you have done hitherto?

Deny these good things,
withdraw the mob’s acclaim from them
as well as their easy currency;
make them once again
concealed secrets of solitary souls;
say that morality is something forbidden.

That way you might win over
for these things the kind of people who alone matter:
I mean those who are heroic.

But to that end there has to be a
quality that inspires fear
and not, as hitherto, nausea.

Hasn’t the time come to say of morality
what Master Eckhart said:

“I ask God to rid me of God.”

–excerpt The Gay Science, Book 4, Section 292 by Friedrich Nietzsche