February 2012
29 posts
9 tags
“The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness.”
—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” §77.
4 tags
“That which we sometimes do not know or feel precisely while awake, the dream informs us of without any ambiguity.”
—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” §76 (excerpt).
6 tags
“What is love but understanding and rejoicing at the fact that another lives, feels and acts in a way different from and opposite to ours? If love is to bridge these antitheses through joy it may not deny or seek to abolish them. Even self-love presupposes an unblendable duality (or multiplicity) in one person.”
—Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” §75.
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,...
5 tags
“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).