February 2012
26 posts
6 tags
“It offends us beyond forgiving when we discover that where we were convinced we were loved we were in fact regarded only as a piece of household furniture or room decoration for the master of the house to exercise his vanity upon before his guests.”
—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” §74.
7 tags
“The circumstance that everything weak and in need of assistance speaks to our heart has produced in us the habit of characterizing everything that speaks to our heart with diminishing and enfeebling words, so as to make it seem weak and in need of assistance.”
—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” §67.
6 tags
“Justice is so often a cloak for weakness, but weak men are sometimes led by ambition to dissimulation and deliberately behave unjustly and harshly so as to leave behind them an impression of strength.”
—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” §64 (edited).
5 tags
“He who is publicly honest about himself ends by priding himself a little on this honesty, for he knows only too well why he is honest: the same reason another prefers appearance and dissimulation.”
—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” §56 (edited).
9 tags
“Anger empties out the soul and brings even its dregs to light. That is why we must know how to put our acquaintances into a rage, so as to learn all that is really being thought and undertaken against us.”
—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” §54 (edited).
6 tags
“The strongest knowledge is nonetheless the poorest in success, for it always has the strongest opponent: human vanity.”
—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” §50 (edited).
4 tags
“The thing most vulnerable and yet the most unconquerable is human vanity.”
—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” §46 (excerpt).
6 tags
“The only decisive argument that has at all times prevented men from drinking a poison is not that it would kill them but that it tasted nasty.”
—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” §41.
7 tags
“An art that exhibits and glorifies the exceptional cases of morality, in which good becomes bad and the unjust just, should be listened to only rarely.”
—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” §40 (excerpt).
3 tags
“When our head feels too weak to answer the objections of our opponent our heart answers by casting suspicion on the motives behind his objections.”
—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” §39.
5 tags
“He who denies he possesses vanity usually possesses it in so brutal a form he instinctively shuts his eyes to it so as to not be obliged to despise himself.”
—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” §38.
5 tags
“To know the strength of a man’s moral nature one has to know the best and the worst he is capable of in thought and deed, but to learn that is impossible.”
—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” §35.
5 tags
“When the mists of a metaphysical-mystical philosophy succeed in rendering all aesthetic phenomena opaque, if follows that they are also incapable of being evaluated against one another, because each of them has become inexplicable.”
—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” §28 (excerpt).
3 tags
“Belief in truth begins with doubt as to all truths hitherto believed.”
—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” §21 (edited).
6 tags
“All good things are powerful stimulants to life, even a good book written against life.”
—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” §16.
5 tags
“The utility of the unconditional search for the truth is continually being demonstrated in so many ways that we are obliged to accept the subtler and rarer harm the individual has to suffer as a consequence.”
—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” §13 (edited excerpt).
6 tags
“Those who boast mightily the scientific merits of their metaphysics should receive no answer.”
—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” §12 (edited excerpt).
8 tags
“Christians today like to set up Pilate, with his question ‘What is truth?,’ as an advocate of Christ, so as to cast suspicion on everything known or knowable and to erect the Cross against the dreadful background of the impossibility of knowing.”
—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” §8.
6 tags
“The fantasist denies reality to himself, the liar does so only to others.”
—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” §6.
6 tags
“He who finally sees how long and how greatly he has been made a fool of embraces in defiance even the ugliest reality.”
—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” §3 (excerpt).
5 tags
“If you have hitherto believed that life was one of the highest value and now see yourselves disappointed, do you at once have to reduce it to the lowest possible price?”
—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” §1.
5 tags
“To possess an opinion is the same thing as to become a fanatical adherent of it and henceforth to lay it to the heart as a conviction.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §635 (edited excerpt).
4 tags
“The methodical search for truth is itself a product of those ages in which convictions were at war with one another.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §634 (excerpt).
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“When we observe how some people know how to manage their experiences, we are in the end tempted to divide mankind into a minority of those who know how to make much of little, and a majority of those who know how to make little of much.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §627 (edited excerpt).
7 tags
“Some men are so accustomed to being alone that they do no compare themselves with others at all but spin out their life of monologue in a calm and cheerful mood. Should they compare themselves with others, they are inclined to a brooding underestimation of themselves, feeling to acquire a good and just opinion from others. We must allow such men their solitude and not pity them for it.”
—Human,...
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“Many live in awe of and abasement before their higher self and would like to deny it because it speaks imperiously.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §624 (edited excerpt).
January 2012
31 posts
4 tags
“He who really wants to get to know something new does well to entertain it with all possible love and to avert his eyes quickly from everything in it he finds inimical, repellent, or false.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §621 (edited excerpt).
6 tags
“When there is a choice in the matter, a great sacrifice will be preferred to a small one because we can indemnify ourselves through the self-admiration we feel in the case of the former.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §620 (edited).
4 tags
“It is a new step towards independence when first we venture to express views regarded as disgraceful in him who harbors them; even our friends and acquaintances then begin to worry.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §619 (excerpt).
4 tags
“To acquire a single deportment of feeling or a single attitude of mind towards all events and situations of life is what is called being philosophically minded.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §618 (edited excerpt).
10 tags
“To elude boredom man either works harder than is required to satisfy his other needs or he invents play, but he may become tired of play and longs for a third condition which stands in the same relation to play as floating does to dancing and dancing to walking. This third condition is a state of serene agitation; the vision of happiness for the artist and the philosopher.”
—Human, All Too...
5 tags
“Young people love what is strange and interesting, regardless of whether it is true or false.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §609 (excerpt).
4 tags
“People who catch fire quickly, quickly grow cold and are thus on the whole unreliable.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §604 (excerpt).
7 tags
“Love desires, fear shuns. That is why one cannot be loved and honored by one and the same person; at least no at the same time. For he who honors recognizes power; that is to say he fears it. But love recognizes no power; and because it does not honor, ambitious men are, secretly or openly, recalcitrant toward being loved.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §603 (edited).
6 tags
“We have to learn to love and be charitable from our youth up, but if education and chance offer us no opportunity to practice these sensations our soul will grow dry and even incapable of understanding them in others. Hatred likewise has to be learned and nourished if one wants to become a good hater.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §601 (edited).
4 tags
“He who denies himself much in things of importance will tend to permit himself petty indulgences.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §598 (excerpt).
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“No one talks more passionately about this rights than he who in the depths of his soul doubts whether he has any.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §597 (excerpt).
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“So long as man has not yet become an instrument of general human utility, let him be plagued by ambition. If that goal has been attained, then let him be visited by vanity; it will humanize him and make him more sociable, endurable and indulgent in small things.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §593 (edited excerpt).
4 tags
“True modesty is the recognition that we are not the work of ourselves.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §588 (edited excerpt).
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“Life consists of rare individual moments of the highest significance and countless intervals in which at best the phantoms of those moments hover about us.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §586 (excerpt).
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“Ruthlessness in thinking is often the sign of a discordant inner disposition that desires insensitizing.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §581.
4 tags
“He who thinks a great deal is not suited to be a party man. He thinks his way through the party and out the other side too soon.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §579.
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“A profession is the backbone of life.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §575.
3 tags
“The flame is not as bright to itself as it is to those it illuminates: so too the sage.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §570.
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“The golden fleece of self-satisfaction protects against blows but not against pinpricks.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §569.
4 tags
“One forgets one’s sins when one has confessed them to another, but the other does not.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §568 (edited).
8 tags
“People unable to make the world see them at their true worth seek to arouse violent enmity towards themselves.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §567 (excerpt).
4 tags
“Love and hatred are not blind but dazzled by the fire they themselves bear with them.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §566.
4 tags
“Many people wait their whole life long for an opportunity of being good in their fashion.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §558.
4 tags
“Industriousness and conscientiousness are often at odds with one another because the former wants to pluck the fruit from the tree while it is sour whereas the latter lets it hang too long until it falls and smashes itself to pieces.”
—Human, All Too Human: Vol. 1, §556 (edited).