existence itself as a punishment

People of diligence and goodwill, lend a hand in the one work of eradicating from the face of the earth the concept of punishment, which has overrun the whole world! There is no more noxious weed! Nor only has it been implanted into the consequences of our modes of behaviour – and how horrible and repulsive to reason this alone is: to interpret cause and effect as cause and punishment! – but they've gone further still and, with this infamous art of interpreting the concept of punishment, they have robbed of its innocence the whole, pure contingency of events. Indeed, they have driven this madness to such an ex­treme as to bid us experience existence itself as a punishment­ – it is as if, heretofore, the phantasms of jailers and hangmen had been conducting the education of the human race. 

Nietzsche, Dawn 13