God is dead (Nietzsche)

Where has God gone? I will tell you— We have killed Him, you and I. We are all His murderers. But how did we do this? Who gave us the strength to drain the ocean dry? Who placed in our hands the sponge that wiped away the horizon? What have we done, unmooring the earth from its sun? Where does it drift now? Where do we go? Away from every sun? Do we not fall endlessly, backward, forward, side to side— Is there an up, a down? Or only a vast and endless void? Does the emptiness not breathe upon us, a cold wind, a whisper of nothing? Has it not grown darker, night upon night upon night? Must we not light lanterns at midday? Do you not hear them—the grave diggers burying God beneath the earth? Do you not smell it—the rot of the divine? Even gods decay. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed Him. How shall we console ourselves— the murderers above all murderers? The holiest, the mightiest bled out beneath our knives. Who will cleanse this blood from our hands? What waters can wash us clean? What rites, what sacred games must we now invent? Is not the weight of this deed too great for us? Must we not become gods ourselves, if only to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater act, and all who come after us are bound by it— drawn into a history higher than any before.