A Commonplace Book: Collections Compiled by Peter Capofreddi, Part I

A COMMONPLACE BOOK
COLLECTED QUOTATIONS
selected by
Peter Capofreddi
Part I
1
CONTENTS
Theognis of Megara (6th Century BC) ........................................................................................................................ 12
Gautama Buddha (c. 563-483 BC) .............................................................................................................................. 13
Kongzi [Confucius] (551-479 BC) ................................................................................................................................ 16
Heraclitus (535-475 BC) ............................................................................................................................................. 19
Sophocles (496-406 BC) ............................................................................................................................................. 21
Euripides (480-406 BC)............................................................................................................................................... 22
Democritus (460-370BC) ............................................................................................................................................ 22
Old Testament (c. 450 BC-200 BC) ............................................................................................................................. 23
Aristophanes (446-386 BC) ........................................................................................................................................ 30
Xenophon (430-354 BC) ............................................................................................................................................. 30
Plato (428-348 BC) ..................................................................................................................................................... 36
Diogenes of Sinope (404-323BC) ................................................................................................................................ 53
Aristotle (384-322 BC)................................................................................................................................................ 53
Theophrastus (371-287 BC)........................................................................................................................................ 58
Xun Zi (312BC-230BC) ................................................................................................................................................ 59
Epicurus (341-270 BC) ................................................................................................................................................ 60
Sextus The Pythagorean (c. 300 BC) ........................................................................................................................... 62
Publius Syrus (1st century BC) ................................................................................................................................... 63
Lucretius (99-55BC).................................................................................................................................................... 74
Gaius Valerius Catullus (84-54 BC) ............................................................................................................................. 76
Virgil (70-19 BC) ......................................................................................................................................................... 76
Horace (65 BC - 8 BC) ................................................................................................................................................. 76
Seneca (54 BC-39 AD) ................................................................................................................................................ 80
Ovid (43 BC-17 AD) .................................................................................................................................................... 87
Philo (20 BC-50 AD) ................................................................................................................................................... 88
Apollonius of Tyana (c. 15 -100 AD) ........................................................................................................................... 93
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Petronius (27-66 AD) ................................................................................................................................................. 95
Aulus Persius Flaccus (34 AD–62 AD) ......................................................................................................................... 96
Quintilian (35 AD–100 AD)......................................................................................................................................... 96
Dio Chrysostom (40-115 AD)...................................................................................................................................... 97
Plutarch (46 AD–120 AD) ........................................................................................................................................... 98
Epictetus (55-135 AD) .............................................................................................................................................. 102
Tacitus (56-117 AD) ................................................................................................................................................. 106
Pliny (61-113 AD) ..................................................................................................................................................... 106
Cicero (106-43 BC) ................................................................................................................................................... 107
Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD) ................................................................................................................................. 111
Juvenal, a.k.a. Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis (c. 60-140 AD) ........................................................................................... 115
New Testament (c. 50-150 AD) ................................................................................................................................ 117
New Testament Apocrypha ..................................................................................................................................... 132
Lucian (125-180 AD) ................................................................................................................................................ 134
Tertullian (c. 155-230) ............................................................................................................................................. 135
Sextus Empiricus (160-210 AD) ................................................................................................................................ 135
Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus (2nd century AD) ................................................................................................. 136
Origen (185-254)...................................................................................................................................................... 136
Plotinus (c. 204-270 AD) .......................................................................................................................................... 137
Iamblichus (245-325AD) .......................................................................................................................................... 137
Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 297-373) ..................................................................................................................... 138
Diogenes Laertius (c. 300 AD) .................................................................................................................................. 139
Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 335-395) ................................................................................................................................ 141
Ambrose (340-397) .................................................................................................................................................. 143
Augustine (354-430) ................................................................................................................................................ 143
Basil of Caesarea (329-379 AD) ................................................................................................................................ 151
Pirkei Avot (3rd Century AD) ................................................................................................................................... 153
3
Patanjali (4th-5th CEntury AD) ................................................................................................................................ 154
Stobaeus (5th Century AD) ...................................................................................................................................... 155
Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib (599-661) ............................................................................................................................. 156
Santideva (8th century AD)...................................................................................................................................... 157
Francis of Assisi (1181-1226).................................................................................................................................... 160
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) .................................................................................................................................. 161
Meister Eckhart, a.k.a. Eckhart von Hochheim (1260-1328) ..................................................................................... 162
Dante Aligheri (1265-1321) ...................................................................................................................................... 164
Petrarch, a.k.a. Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) ..................................................................................................... 164
Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471) ................................................................................................................................. 167
Petr Chelčický (1390-1460) ...................................................................................................................................... 167
Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) .................................................................................................................................. 168
Erasmus (1466-1536) ............................................................................................................................................... 168
Martin Luther (1483-1546) ...................................................................................................................................... 171
Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560) ........................................................................................................................... 174
Giovanni della Casa (1503-1556).............................................................................................................................. 175
John Calvin (1509-1564) .......................................................................................................................................... 176
Étienne de la Boétie (1530-1563) ............................................................................................................................. 176
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) ........................................................................................................................... 178
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) ....................................................................................................................................... 191
Samuel Daniel (1562-1619) ...................................................................................................................................... 202
Shakespeare (1564-1616) ........................................................................................................................................ 202
John Selden (1584-1654) ......................................................................................................................................... 217
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) ................................................................................................................................... 218
René Descartes (1596-1650) .................................................................................................................................... 219
Baltasar Gracián (1601-1658)................................................................................................................................... 224
Pierre Corneille (1606-1684) .................................................................................................................................... 233
4
John Milton (1608-1674) ......................................................................................................................................... 234
Samuel Butler (1612-1680) ...................................................................................................................................... 235
François de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) .............................................................................................................. 236
Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) ................................................................................................................................. 242
Molière a.k.a. Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (1622-1673) ................................................................................................. 242
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) ........................................................................................................................................ 244
John Bunyan (1628-1688) ........................................................................................................................................ 249
John Dryden (1631-1700)......................................................................................................................................... 249
Spinoza (1632-1677) ................................................................................................................................................ 252
John Locke (1632-1704) ........................................................................................................................................... 260
George Savile, Marquess of Halifax (1633-1695)...................................................................................................... 260
Jean de La Bruyère (1645-1696) ............................................................................................................................... 266
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) ...................................................................................................................................... 273
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) ..................................................................................................................................... 274
Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) ................................................................................................................................ 277
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) ................................................................................................................................... 278
Montesquieu (1689-1755) ....................................................................................................................................... 282
Lord Chesterfield, a.k.a. Philip Stanhope (1694-1773) ............................................................................................. 283
François Marie Arouet, aka Voltaire (1694-1778) .................................................................................................... 285
John Mason (1706-1763) ......................................................................................................................................... 288
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) ................................................................................................................................ 289
Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (1707-1746) ......................................................................................................................... 291
George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788) ............................................................................................... 293
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) ................................................................................................................................... 293
David Hume (1711-1776) ......................................................................................................................................... 296
Rousseau (1712-1778) ............................................................................................................................................. 299
Dennis Diderot (1713-1784) ..................................................................................................................................... 302
5
Vauvenargues (1715-1747) ...................................................................................................................................... 303
Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715-1771) ...................................................................................................................... 307
Johann Winckelmann (1717-1768) .......................................................................................................................... 308
Adam Smith (1723-1790) ......................................................................................................................................... 308
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) .................................................................................................................................... 313
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) .................................................................................................................... 318
Edumund Burke (1729-1797) ................................................................................................................................... 320
Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788)......................................................................................................................... 320
James Boswell (1740-1795) ..................................................................................................................................... 322
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) .................................................................................... 322
Nicolas Chamfort (1741-1794) ................................................................................................................................. 322
Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741-1801) ........................................................................................................................ 332
Georg Christof Lichtenberg (1742-1799) .................................................................................................................. 332
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)................................................................................................................................. 339
Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) ...................................................................................................................... 340
Goethe (1749-1832) ................................................................................................................................................. 340
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) ..................................................................................................................................... 357
William Blake (1757-1827) ....................................................................................................................................... 358
Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) .................................................................................................................................. 360
Jean Paul a.k.a. Johann Paul Richter (1763-1825) .................................................................................................... 363
Madame de Staël (1766-1817) ................................................................................................................................. 364
August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767-1845) ..................................................................................................................... 365
Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849) ................................................................................................................................. 366
Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768-1834) ................................................................................................. 366
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)......................................................................................................................... 371
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) ............................................................................................................ 372
Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) ............................................................................................................................... 379
6
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) ........................................................................................................................... 380
Novalis a.k.a. Georg Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (1772-1801) ...................................................................... 383
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829) ........................................................................................................... 385
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) ...................................................................................................................... 400
Charles Lamb (1775-1834) ....................................................................................................................................... 402
Walter S. Landor (1775-1864) .................................................................................................................................. 403
E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1822) ................................................................................................................................. 405
Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) ............................................................................................................................... 405
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) ..................................................................................................................................... 405
Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832) ............................................................................................................................ 406
William Ellery Channing (1780-1842) ....................................................................................................................... 408
Stendhal a. k. a. Henri Marie Beyle (1783-1842) ...................................................................................................... 413
Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) ............................................................................................................................. 415
Byron (1788-1824) ................................................................................................................................................... 415
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) .......................................................................................................................... 419
Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872) .................................................................................................................................. 450
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) ............................................................................................................................ 452
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) .................................................................................................................................... 454
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) ..................................................................................................................................... 462
Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) ................................................................................................................................. 464
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) .......................................................................................................................................... 468
Hermann Friedrich Kohlbrügge (1803-1875) ............................................................................................................ 471
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) ......................................................................................................................... 473
Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869) ....................................................................................................................................... 504
Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) ................................................................................................................................ 505
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)................................................................................................................................. 510
Aleksander Chodźko (1804-1891) ............................................................................................................................ 511
7
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) ........................................................................................................................... 511
Ernst von Feuchtersleben (1806-1849) .................................................................................................................... 523
Johan Kasper Schmidt, a.k.a. Max Stirner (1806-1856) ............................................................................................ 524
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) ................................................................................................................................... 532
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) ............................................................................................................. 540
Zygmunt Krasiński (1812-1859)................................................................................................................................ 541
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) ............................................................................................................................... 541
Arthur Helps (1813-1875) ........................................................................................................................................ 549
Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) ................................................................................................................................... 550
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) ........................................................................................................................... 551
Karl Marx (1818-1883) ............................................................................................................................................. 568
James Anthony Froude (1818-1894) ........................................................................................................................ 578
George Eliot, a.k.a. Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880) .................................................................................................... 579
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) ..................................................................................................................................... 585
John Ruskin (1819-1900).......................................................................................................................................... 585
Friedrich Engels (1820-1895).................................................................................................................................... 591
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)................................................................................................................................... 591
Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) ............................................................................................................................... 595
Ferdinand Kürnberger (1821-1879) .......................................................................................................................... 596
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) ................................................................................................................................. 596
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881)............................................................................................................................. 599
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) .................................................................................................................................. 599
Ernest Renan (1823-1892) ....................................................................................................................................... 607
Paul de Lagarde (1827-1891) ................................................................................................................................... 607
Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) ........................................................................................................................................ 608
George Meredith (1828-1909) ................................................................................................................................. 612
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) .......................................................................................................................................... 614
8
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886).................................................................................................................................... 676
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830-1916)............................................................................................................... 676
Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) ....................................................................................................................................... 684
Mark Twain, a.k.a. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910) ................................................................................... 685
Ramakrishna (1836-1886) ........................................................................................................................................ 685
William Dean Howlees (1837-1920) ......................................................................................................................... 685
William Winwood Reade (1838–1875)..................................................................................................................... 686
Walter Pater (1839-1894) ........................................................................................................................................ 686
Otto Pfleiderer (1839-1908) ..................................................................................................................................... 688
John Lancaster Spalding (1840-1916) ....................................................................................................................... 690
Wilfrid Blunt (1840-1922) ........................................................................................................................................ 704
William James (1842-1910) ...................................................................................................................................... 704
Paul Lafargue (1842-1911) ....................................................................................................................................... 707
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) ................................................................................................................................... 707
Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) ................................................................................................................................... 711
Georg Brandes (1842-1927) ..................................................................................................................................... 712
Henry James (1843-1916) ........................................................................................................................................ 717
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) ....................................................................................................................... 718
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) .............................................................................................................................. 718
Anatole France (1844-1924)..................................................................................................................................... 829
Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) ................................................................................................................................ 829
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) ....................................................................................................................... 831
Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930) ............................................................................................................................... 832
Edgar W. Howe (1853-1937) .................................................................................................................................... 833
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)......................................................................................................................................... 834
Josiah Royce (1855-1916) ........................................................................................................................................ 852
Ferdinand Tönnies (1855-1936) ............................................................................................................................... 853
9
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) ..................................................................................................................................... 856
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) .......................................................................................................................... 860
James Huneker (1857-1921) .................................................................................................................................... 865
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) ..................................................................................................................................... 866
Samuel McChord Crothers (1857-1927) ................................................................................................................... 866
Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) ................................................................................................................................. 866
John William Lloyd (1857-1940) ............................................................................................................................... 869
Émile Durkheim (1858-1917) ................................................................................................................................... 869
Georg Simmel (1858-1918) ...................................................................................................................................... 870
Francisco Ferrer (1859-1909) ................................................................................................................................... 871
L. P. Jacks (1860-1955) ............................................................................................................................................. 872
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918) ........................................................................................................................ 873
Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) ...................................................................................................................... 874
Constantin Brunner (1862–1937) ............................................................................................................................. 875
Edward W. Bok (1863-1930) .................................................................................................................................... 876
George Santayana (1863-1952)................................................................................................................................ 876
Max Weber (1864-1920) .......................................................................................................................................... 883
Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) ............................................................................................................................ 884
Irving Babbitt (1865-1933) ....................................................................................................................................... 889
W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) .......................................................................................................................................... 893
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) ............................................................................................................................ 894
H. G. Wells (1866-1946) ........................................................................................................................................... 898
Oscar Levy (1867-1946) ........................................................................................................................................... 900
Julien Benda (1867-1956) ........................................................................................................................................ 903
André Gide (1869-1951) .......................................................................................................................................... 906
Albert Schinz (1870-1943) ........................................................................................................................................ 911
Christian Morgenstern (1871-1914) ......................................................................................................................... 912
10
Marcel Proust (1871-1922) ...................................................................................................................................... 912
Paul Valéry (1871-1945) .......................................................................................................................................... 921
Heinrich Mann (1871-1950) ..................................................................................................................................... 924
Ludwig Klages (1872-1956) ...................................................................................................................................... 924
John Cowper Powys (1872-1963) ............................................................................................................................. 928
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) .................................................................................................................................. 928
Charles Péguy (1873-1914) ...................................................................................................................................... 937
Albert Jay Nock (1873-1945) .................................................................................................................................... 939
Karl Kraus (1874-1936) ............................................................................................................................................ 941
G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) ................................................................................................................................... 950
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) ....................................................................................................................... 956
Max Scheler (1874-1928) ......................................................................................................................................... 957
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) ............................................................................................................................... 966
Proverbs .................................................................................................................................................................. 971
Miscellaneous ......................................................................................................................................................... 974
11
THEOGNIS OF MEGARA (6TH CENTURY BC)
We struggle onward, ignorant and blind,
For a result unknown and undesign’d;
Avoiding seeming ills, misunderstood,
Embracing evil as a seeming good.
Theognis, Elegies, 58, D. Wender, trans.
Ransack mankind, my friend, and find all those

With honor—aidos—still in their eyes
And on their tongues, who never could be bought
For any price: one boat would hold the lot.
Theognis, Elegies, 83
The lucky man is honored …

But earnest striving wins no praise at all.
Of all things it is poverty that most subdues a noble man.

Adopt the disposition of the octopus, crafty in its convolutions, which takes on
The appearance of whatever rock it has dealings with.
Don’t wag the tail of life, if it goes well,

But leave in undisturbed. If it should go
Badly, rock it until it straightens up.
Theognis, Elegies, D. Wender, trans., 303
The bad did not spring evil from the womb:

Rather, in company with bad men
They learned low ways, vile words, and violence,
And swallowed everything their low friends said.
Too many tongues have gates which fly apart

Too easily, and care for many things
That don’t concern them.
No one yet has ever contrived a way

To make the senseless sensible and good men out of bad.
That man’s a fool who keeps a constant watch

Over my thoughts, and quite neglects his own.
Theognis, Elegies, Dorothea Wender, trans., 439
Don’t fix your mind on things that can’t be done;

Don’t long for that which never will be yours.
12
Spend time on excellence, and love the right,
And don’t let shameful profit master you.
Wine makes the wise man level with the fool.

Ploutos, no wonder mortals worship you:

You are so tolerant of their sins!
There is no slavery in my soul.

Unless the gods deceive my mind,

That man is forging fetters for himself.
It’s painful for a wise man to speak out

In company with fools; and yet to be
At all times silent, that’s impossible.
O wretched poverty, …
I have learned many things from you, against my will.
Many rich men are stupid, while the men

Who want fine things are worn by poverty.
Thus, neither group can act, the one held back
By lack of gold, the other lack of sense.
The deckhands are in control, and the base have the upper hand over the noble.
Let us devote our hearts to merriment and feasting

While the enjoyment of delights still brings pleasure.
For quick as thought does radiant youth pass by.
The love of boys has given delight ever since Ganymede…

So do not be amazed, Simonides, that I as well have been
Shown to be conquered by love for a handsome boy.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA (C. 563-483 BC)

You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger.
Buddha
Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind. Anger will disappear
just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten.
Buddha
13
Here is an untaught ordinary person, who has no regard for the noble ones and is unskilled and undisciplined.
... He conceives himself as earth, he conceives himself in earth, he conceives himself apart from earth, he
conceives earth to be ‘mine,’ he delights in earth. Why is that? Because he has not fully understood it, I say.
... He conceives himself in beings, he conceives himself apart from beings, he conceives beings to be ‘mine,’
he delights in beings. Why is that? Because he has not fully understood it, I say. ... He conceives himself in
gods, he conceives himself apart from gods, he conceives gods to be ‘mine,’ he delights in gods. Why is that?
Because he has not fully understood it, I say.
Buddha, Mulapariyaya Sutta, Sutta 1
Majjhima Nikaya (Middle Length Discourses)

Any kind of material form whatever, whether past, future, or present, internal or external, gross or subtle,
inferior or superior, far or near, all material form should be seen as it actually is with proper wisdom thus:
“This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.”
Buddha, Majjhima Nikaya, B. Nanamoli and B. Bodhi, trans. (1995), Sutta 62, verse 3, p. 527
Rahula, whatever internally, belonging to oneself, is solid, solidified, and clung-to, that is, head-hairs, body-
hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone-marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs,
large intestines, small intestines, contents of the stomach, feces, or whatever else internally, belonging to
oneself, is solid, solidified, and clung-to: this is called the internal earth element. Now both the internal earth
element and the external earth element are simply earth element. And that should be seen as it actually is
with proper wisdom thus: “This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.” When one sees it thus as it
actually is with proper wisdom, one becomes disenchanted with the earth element and makes the mind
dispassionate towards the earth element.
Rahula, develop meditation that is like the earth. .... Just as people throw clean things and dirty things,
excrement, urine, spittle, pus, and blood on the earth, and the earth is not horrified, humiliated, and disgusted
because of that, so too, Rahula, develop meditation that is like the earth.
Rahula, develop meditation that is like water. ... Just as people wash clean things and dirty things, excrement,
urine, spittle, pus, and blood in water, and the water is not horrified, humiliated, and disgusted because of
that, so too, Rahula, develop meditation that is like water.
Rahula, develop meditation that is like fire. ... Just as people burn clean things and dirty things, excrement,
urine, spittle, pus, and blood in fire, and the fire is not horrified, humiliated, and disgusted because of that, so
too, Rahula, develop meditation that is like fire.
Digha Nikaya [Long Discourses]

Abandoning harsh speech, he refrains from it. He speaks whatever is blameless, pleasing to the ear,
agreeable, reaching the heart, urbane, pleasing and attractive to the multitude.
Buddha, Digha Nikaya, M. Walshe, trans. (1987), Sutta 1, verse 1.9, p. 69
Abandoning idle chatter, he speaks at the right time, what is correct and to the point, of Dhamma and
discipline.
14
Abandoning false speech, the ascetic Gotama dwells refraining from false speech, a truth-speaker, one to be
relied on, trustworthy, dependable, not a deceiver of the world. abandoning malicious speech, he does not
repeat there what he has heard here to the detriment of these, or repeat here what he has heard there to the
detriment of those. Thus he is a reconciler of those at variance and an encourager of those at one, rejoicing in
peace, loving it, delighting in it, one who speaks up for peace. Abandoning harsh speech, he refrains from it.
He speaks whatever is blameless, pleasing to the ear, agreeable, reaching the heart, urbane, pleasing and
attractive to the multitude. Abandoning idle chatter, he speaks at the right time, what is correct and to the
point, of Dhamma and discipline. He is a speaker whose words are to be treasured, seasonable, reasoned,
well-defined and connected with the goal.
Buddha, Digha Nikaya, M. Walshe, trans. (1987), Sutta 1, verse 1.9, pp. 68-69
The ascetic Gotama … avoids watching dancing, singing, music and shows. He abstains from using garlands,
perfumes, cosmetics, ornaments and adornments. … He refrains from running errands, from buying and
selling.
Whereas some ascetics and Brahmins remain addicted to such unedifying conversation as about kings,
robbers, ministers, armies, dangers, wars, food, drink, clothes, beds, garlands, perfumes, relatives, carriages,
villages, towns and cities, countries, women, heroes, street- and well-gossip, talk of the departed, desultory
chat, speculations about land and sea, talk about being and non-being, the ascetic Gotama refrains from such
conversation.
Buddha, Digha Nikaya, M. Walshe, trans. (1987), Sutta 1, verse 1.17, pp. 70-71
‘Suppose there were a man, a slave, a labourer, getting up before you and going to bed after you, willingly
doing whatever has to be done, will-mannered, pleasant-spoken, working in your presence. And he might
think: “It is strange, it is wonderful, the destiny and fruits of meritorious deeds! This King Ajatasattu
Vedehiputta of Magadha is a man, and I too am a man. The King is addicted to and indulges in the fivefold
sense-pleasures, just like a god, whereas I am a slave working in his presence. I ought to do something
meritorious. Suppose I were to shave off my hair and beard, don yellow robes, and go forth from the
household life into homelessness!” And before long he does so. And he, having gone forth might dwell,
restrained in body, speech and thought, satisfied with the minimum of food and clothing, content, in solitude.
And then if people were to announce to you: “Sire, you remember that slave who worked in your presence,
and who shaved off his hair and beard and went forth into homelessness? He is living restrained in body,
speech and thought, in solitude”—would you then say: “That man must come back and be a slave and work
for me as before”?’
‘No indeed, Lord. For we should pay homage to him, we should rise and invite him and press him to
receive from us robes, food, lodging, medicines for sickness and requisites, and make arrangements for his
proper protection.’
Buddha, Digha Nikaya, M. Walshe, trans. (1987), Sutta 2 (Samaññaphala Sutta), verse 35, p. 97
As long, Sire, as a monk does not perceive the disappearance of the five hindrances in himself, he feels as if
in debt, in sickness, in bonds, in slavery, on a desert journey. But when he perceives the disappearance of the
five hindrances in himself, it is as if he were freed from debt, from sickness, from bonds, from slavery, from
the perils of the desert.
It is just as if a man were to draw out a reed from its sheath. He might think: “This is the reed, this is the
sheath, reed and sheath are different. Now the reed has been pulled from the sheath.” … In the same way a
monk with mind concentrated directs his mind to the production of a mind-made body. He draws that body
out of this body.
15
If he goes forth from the household life into homelessness, then he will become an Arahant, a fully-
enlightened Buddha, one who draws back the veil from the world.
Buddha, Digha Nikaya, M. Walshe, trans. (1987), Sutta 3 (Ambattha Sutta), verse 1.5, p. 112
Wisdom is purified by morality, and morality is purified by wisdom: where one is, the other is, the moral
man has wisdom and the wise man has morality, and the combination of morality of wisdom is called the
highest thing in the world.
Buddha, Digha Nikaya, M. Walshe, trans. (1987), Sutta 4 (Sonadanda Sutta), verse 22, p. 131
“Well, Lord, is the soul the same as the body, is the soul one thing and the body another?”
“I have not declared that the soul is one thing and the body another.”
“Well, Lord, does the Tathagata exist after death?” …
“I have not declared that the Tathagata exists after death.” …
“But, Lord, why has the Lord not declared these things?”
“Potthapada, that is not conducive to the purpose, not conducive to Dhamma, not the way to embark on the
holy life; it does not lead to disenchantment, to dispassion, to cessation, to calm, to higher knowledge, to
enlightenment, to Nibbana. That is why I have not declared it.”
Buddha, Digha Nikaya, M. Walshe, trans. (1987), Sutta 9 (Potthapada Sutta), verse 28, p. 164
KONGZI [CONFUCIUS] (551-479 BC)

Chi Káng asked whether Chung-yu were fit for power.
The Master said: “Yu has character; what would governing be to him?”
“And Tzú, is he fit for power?”
“Tzú is intelligent; what would governing be to him?
“And Chíu, is he fit for power?”
“Chíu has ability; what would governing be to him?”
Confucius, The Sayings of Confucius
The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.
Confucius, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 185
The superior man is dignified, but not proud; the inferior man is proud, but not dignified.
The superior man loves his soul; the inferior man loves his property.
Wer unsere Träume stiehlt, gibt uns den Tod

Konfuzius
Ein Mann, der die Wahrheit spricht, braucht ein schnelles Pferd.
Konfuzius
Wer fragt, ist ein Narr für eine Minute. Wer nicht fragt, ist ein Narr sein Leben lang.
Konfuzius
The superior man is not a machine which is fit for one thing only.
Confucius
16
Analects
http://www.bartleby.com/44/1/
A scholar who loves comfort is not worthy of the name.

Confucius, Analects, 14.3
When right prevails, be fearless of speech and fearless in deed. When wrong prevails, be fearless in deed but
soft of speech.
Is he not a man of complete virtue, who feels no discomposure though men may take no note of him?
Confucius, Analects
Be not ashamed of mistakes and thus make them crimes.

Confucius
[The superior man] acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his actions.
Confucius, Analects
When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do
not know it—this is knowledge.
Confucius, Analects
When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them.

Confucius, Analects
What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

Confucius, Analects
The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent
consideration.
Confucius, Analects
Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

Confucius, Analects
Is virtue a thing remote? I wish to be virtuous, and lo! Virtue is at hand.

Confucius, Analects
If a man takes no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand.
Confucius, Analects
I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in
seeking it there.
Confucius, Analects
He with whom neither slander that gradually soaks into the mind, nor statements that startle like a wound in
the flesh, are successful may be called intelligent indeed.
Confucius, Analects
He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.
Confucius, Analects
They must often change who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.

Confucius, Analects
17
To be able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five things are
gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness and kindness.
Confucius
Study the past if you would define the future.

Confucius
Respect yourself and others will respect you.

Confucius
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in getting up every time we do.
Confucius
Guide the people by law, subdue them by punishment; they may shun crime, but will be void of shame.
Guide them by example, subdue them by courtesy; they will learn shame, and come to be good.
Who keeps the old akindle and adds new knowledge is fitted to be a teacher .
The gentleman … puts words into deed first, and sorts what he says to the deed.
To know what we know, and know what we do not know, that is understanding.
If thy words are seldom wrong, thy deeds leave little to rue, pay will follow.
‘An always dutiful son, who is a friend to his brothers, showeth the way to rule.’ This also is to rule.
What need to be in power?
To see the right and not do it is want of courage.

Gentlemen trust in justice; the vulgar trust in favour.

Be not concerned at want of place; be concerned that thou stand thyself. Sorrow not at being unknown, but
seek to be worthy of note.
A gentleman considers what is right; the vulgar consider what will pay.
Good is no hermit. It has ever neighbours.

Nature outweighing art begets roughness; art outweighing nature begets pedantry. Art and nature well blent
make a gentleman.
To men above the common we may speak of things above the common. To men below the common we must
not speak of things above the common.
18
To rank the effort above the prize may be called love.
Without thought for far off things, there will be troubles near at hand.
The hatred of the many calls for search: the favour of the many calls for search.
HERACLITUS (535-475 BC)

Fragments
http://books.google.com/books?id=BtF89OydL80C
We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not.
Heraclitus
Men are at variance with the one thing with which they are in the most unbroken communion, the reason that
administers the whole universe.
Heraclitus fragment 93
[Nietzsche’s paraphrase: “The law under which most of them ceaselessly have commerce they reject for themselves.” (The Pre-Platonic
Philosophers, Ch. 10)]
Ten thousand [of the masses] do not turn the scale against a single man of worth.
Heraclitus, cited in Eric Hoffer, Between the Devil and the Dragon (New York: 1982), p. 107
The many are mean; only the few are noble.

Heraclitus, cited in Eric Hoffer, Between the Devil and the Dragon (New York: 1982), p. 108
Some men are as ignorant of what they do when awake as they are forgetful of what they do when asleep.
Heraclitus, fragment 2 (G.W.T. Patrick, trans.)
Those who hear and do not understand are like the deaf. Of them the proverb says: “Present, they are
absent.”
Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to men having rude souls.
The majority of people have no understanding of the things with which they daily meet, nor, when instructed,
do they have any right knowledge of them, although to themselves they seem to have.
Gold-seekers dig over much earth and find little gold.

Much learning does not teach one to have understanding, else it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras,
and again Xenophanes and Hecataeus.
Let us not draw conclusions rashly about the greatest things.

Philosophers must be learned in very many things.

19
The harmony of the world is a harmony of oppositions
Good and evil are the same.

There is only one supreme Wisdom. It wills and wills not to be called by the name of Zeus.
The way upward and downward are one and the same.
Time is a child playing at draughts, a child’s kingdom.

[cf. “What is time? A child at play, now arranging his pebbles, now scattering them.”—Lucianus, Vit. auct. 14]
It is weariness upon the same things to labor and by them to be controlled.

In change is rest.
Although the Law of Reason is common, the majority of people live as though they had an understanding of
their own.
They are at variance with that with which they are in most continual association.
We ought not to act and speak as though we were asleep.

To those who are awake, there is one world in common, but of those who are asleep, each is withdrawn to a
private world of his own.
Presumption must be quenched even more than a fire.

For men to have whatever they wish, would not be well. Sickness makes health pleasant and good;
hunger, satiety; weariness, rest.
It is hard to contend against passion, for whatever it craves it buys with its life.
Self-control is the highest virtue, and wisdom is to speak truth and consciously to act according to nature.
Τίς γὰρ αὐτῶν νόος ἢ φρήν; δήμων ἀοιδοῖσι ἕπονται καὶ διδασκάλῳ χρέωνται ὁμίλῳ, οὐκ εἰδότες ὅτι
πολλοὶ κακοὶ ὀλίγοι δὲ ἀγαθοί. αἱρεῦνται γὰρ ἓν ἀντία πάντων οἱ ἄριστοι, κλέος ἀέναον θνητῶν,
οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ κεκόρηνται ὅκωσπερ κτήνεα.
For what sense or understanding have they? They follow minstrels and take the multitude for a teacher,
not knowing that many are bad and few good. For the best men choose one thing above all—immortal
glory among mortals; but the masses stuff themselves like cattle.
20
They follow the bards and employ the crowd as their teacher, not knowing that many are bad and few good.
For the very best choose one thing before all others, immortal glory among mortals, while the masses eat
their fill like cattle.
Heraclitus, A. Fairbanks, trans., 100
What sort of intelligence do they have? They believe popular folktales and follow the crowd as their
teachers, ignoring the adage that the many are bad, the good are few.
Heraclitus, fragment 111, cited in Nietzsche, The Pre-Platonic Philosophers, Ch. 10 “Heraclitus”
The Ephesians deserve, man for man, to be hung, and the youth to leave the city, inasmuch as they have
banished Hermodorus, the worthiest man among them, saying: “Let no one of us excel, and if there be any
such, let him go elsewhere and among other people.”
Dogs, also, bark at what they do not know.

SOPHOCLES (496-406 BC)

In the blessings of plenty
What enjoyment is there
If blest wealth owe its increase
To base-brooding care?
Sophocles, cited in Plutarch, “How to study poetry,” 21C
But whoever gives birth to useless children, what would you say of him except that he has bred sorrows for
himself.
Sophocles, Antigone, 1:645 or 1:545
Hush! Check those words. Do not cure ill with ill and make your pain still heavier than it is.
Sophocles, Ajax, l.362
Every man can see things far off but is blind to what is near.
Sophocles, Fragments, l:737
Whoever has a keen eye for profits, is blind in relation to his craft.
Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, l:388
Whoever grows angry amid troubles applies a drug worse than the disease and is a physician unskilled about
misfortunes.
There lives a man who arranges the things of today as pleasantly as possible but creeps blindly towards
tomorrow.
Money is the worst currency that ever grew among mankind. This sacks cities, this drives men from their
homes, this teaches and corrupts the worthiest minds to turn base deeds.
Sophocles, Antigone, l:295
Much wisdom often goes with brevity of speech.

Sophocles, Fragments, l:89 (Aletes)
To err is common to all mankind, but having erred he is no longer reckless nor unblest who, having fallen
into evil, seeks a cure, nor remains unmoved.
Sophocles, Antigone, 1.1023
21
EURIPIDES (480-406 BC)
The company of just and righteous men is better than wealth and a rich estate.
Euripides, Ægeus, Fragment 7
I begin by taking. I shall find scholars later to demonstrate my perfect right.

Euripides, Suppliants
Among mortals second thoughts are the wisest.

Euripides, Hippolytus
When of two speakers one is growing wroth,

Wiser is he that yields in argument.
Euripides, Fragment 654, cited in Pseudo-Plutarch, “The Education of Children,” 10B
I have no gift to reason with a crowd;

I’m wiser with my friends and fewer folk.
And this is just; since those the wise hold cheap
Are better tuned to speak before a crowd.
Euripides, Hippolytus, 986
Waste not fresh tears over old griefs.

Euripides
Whoso neglects learning in his youth,

Loses the past and is dead for the future.
Euripides, Phrixus
In case of dissension, never dare to judge till you’ve heard the other side.
Euripides, Heraclidae, circa 428 B.C.
Slight not what’s near, while aiming at what’s far.

Euripides, Rhesus
Neither good nor bad may be found apart, but are mingled together for the sake of greater beauty.
Euripides (Plutarch, De Iside, 45, p. 369)
The wisest men follow their own direction.

Euripides
If one must needs do wrong, far best it were

To do it for a kingdom’s sake
Euripides, Phoenissae, 524
My tongue has sworn, but my mind is unsworn.

Euripides, Medea
DEMOCRITUS (460-370BC)
Men should strive to think much and know little.
Democritus
The whole universe is the home of a noble soul.

Democritus, cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans., May 7
22
Fragments
http://books.google.com/books?id=mIKEsi7GssMC
Democritus himself, so they say, said that he would rather discover a single explanation than acquire the
kingdom of the Persians.
Democritus, Fragment 2, Eusebius, Preparatorio Evangelica XIV.27.4, The Atomists, C. Taylor, trans. (1999)
By convention sweet and by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention color,
but in reality atoms and void.
Democritus, Fragment 16, Sextus, Against Mathematicians VII.135, The Atomists, C. Taylor, trans. (1999)
[The self-controlled person is] accustomed to derive his joys from himself.
Democritus, Fragment 32, Plutarch, On Progress In Virtue, 10.81a, The Atomists, C. Taylor, trans. (1999)
If the body brought a suit against the soul for all the sufferings and ills it had endured throughout its whole
life, and one had to judge the case oneself, one would readily condemn the soul for having ruined certain
features of the body through carelessness and made it soft through drink and brought it to rack and ruin
through love of pleasure, just as if a tool or a utensil were in a bad state one would blame the person who
used it carelessly.
Democritus, Fragment 34, Plutarch, Do Desire and Distress Belong to the Body or the Soul? 2, The Atomists, C. Taylor, trans. (1999)
Education is an adornment in good fortune and a refuge in misfortune.

Democritus, Fragment 45, Stobaeus, Ethical sayings, II.31.58, The Atomists, C. Taylor, trans. (1999)
OLD TESTAMENT (c. 450 BC-200 BC)

http://books.google.com/books?id=ygQVAAAAYAAJ
http://www.biblegateway.com/
http://www.bartleby.com/108/
Genesis
The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of
man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all
living creatures, as I have done.
Genesis 8:21, NIV
Exodus
The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.
Exodus 20:21 NIV
Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.

Exodus 23:2 KJV
Keep thee far from a false matter.

Exodus 23:7 KJV
Thou shalt take no gift: for the gift blindeth the wise, and perverteth the words of the righteous.
Exodus 23:8
Six years thou shalt sow thy land, and shalt gather in the fruits thereof: But the seventh year thou shalt let it
rest and lie still; that the poor of thy people may eat: and what they leave the beasts of the field shall eat. In
like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard, and with thy oliveyard.
Exodus 23:10
23
Six days thou shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest.
Exodus 23:12
Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them.
Exodus 23:24
Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor with their gods. They shall not dwell in thy land, lest they make
thee sin against me: for if thou serve their gods, it will surely be a snare unto thee.
Exodus 23:32
Leviticus
You shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy.
Leviticus 19:2
Be ye holy as I am holy.
Leviticus 19:2
An den Kindern deines Volkes sollst du dich nicht rächen und ihnen nichts nachtragen. Du sollst deinen
Nächsten lieben wie dich selbst.
Levitikus 19:18
Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself.
Leviticus 19:18
The stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as
thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Leviticus 19:34
And if a man take a wife and her mother, it [is] wickedness: they shall be burnt with fire, both he and they;
that there be no wickedness among you.
Leviticus 20:14
Numbers
Deuteronomy
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
Deuteronomy 6:5 NIV
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep
these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them
when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on
your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on
your gates.
Deuteronomy 6:5-9 NRSV
Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God.

Deuteronomy 18:13
There shall not be an imperfect man among the sons of Israel.

Deuteronomy 23:17, Septuagint, as cited by Augustine in A Treatise Concerning Man’s Perfection in Righteousness, § 20
24
Joshua
Judges
Ruth
1 Samuel
His sons walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre, and took bribes, and perverted judgment.
1 Samuel 8:3 KJB
2 Samuel
1 Kings
Elijah then came near to all the people, and said, “How long will you go limping with two different
opinions?”
1 Kings 18:21 NRSV
2 Kings
1 Chronicles
Es ist nicht die Wohnung eines Menschen, sondern Gottes, des Herrn.
1 Chronik 29:1
Gelobt seist du, Herr, Gott Israels, unseres Vaters, von Ewigkeit zu Ewigkeit! Dein, HERR, ist die Majestät
und Gewalt, Herrlichkeit, Sieg und Hoheit. Denn alles, was im Himmel und auf Erden ist, das ist dein. Dein,
Herr, ist das Reich, und du bist erhöht zum Haupt über alles. Reichtum und Ehre kommt von dir, du
herrschest über alles. In deiner Hand steht Kraft und Macht, in deiner Hand steht es, jedermann groß und
stark zu machen. Nun, unser Gott, wir danken dir und rühmen deinen herrlichen Namen.
1 Chronik 29:11-13
Unser Leben auf Erden ist wie ein Schatten und bleibet nicht.
1 Chronik 29:15
Ich weiß, mein Gott, daß du das Herz prüfst, und Aufrichtigkeit ist dir angenehm.
1 Chronik 29:17
Thine, O Lord is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is
in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all.
Both riches and honour come of thee, and thou reignest over all; and in thine hand is power and might; and in
thine hand it is to make great, and to give strength unto all. Now therefore, our God, we thank thee, and
praise thy glorious name.
1 Chronicles 29:11-13 KJV
25
2 Chronicles
Ezra
Nehemiah
Esther
Job
For behold short years pass away, and I am walking in a path by which I shall not return.
Job 16:23
Und nachdem diese meine Haut zerschlagen ist, werde ich ohne mein Fleisch Gott sehen.
Hiob 19:26
And after my skin, even this body , is destroyed, Then without my flesh shall I see God.
Job 19:26 ASV
The mirth of the wicked is brief.

Job 20:5 (NIV)
In the dark, men break into houses, but by day they shut themselves in; they want nothing to do with the
light.
Job 24:16 (NIV)
Psalms
Commune with your own heart.
Psalms 4:4
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.

Psalms 19:7
I have said, “Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.” But ye shall die like men, and fall
like one of the princes. Arise, O God, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations.
Psalms 82:6-8
Proverbs
So are the ways of every one that is greedy of gain; which taketh away the life of the owners thereof.
Proverbs 1:19 (KJ)
When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul …
Proverbs 2:10 (KJ)
Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine
heart.
Proverbs 3:3
Be not wise in thine own eyes.

Proverbs 3:7 KJV
26
Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise
of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious
than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.
Proverbs 3:13-15
Envy thou not the oppressor, and choose none of his ways.
Proverbs 3:31
Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not; neither decline from the words of my mouth. Forsake her not,
and she shall preserve thee: love her, and she shall keep thee. Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get
wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.
Proverbs 4:5-7
With all thy getting get understanding.

Proverbs 4:7
Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge.

Proverbs 12:1 NRSV
Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than a house full of feasting with strife.
Proverbs 17:1 (ASV)
A reproof entereth more into a wise man than an hundred stripes into a fool.
Proverbs 17:10 (KJV)
Wisdom is before him that hath understanding; but the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth.
A discerning man keeps wisdom in view, but a fool’s eyes wander to the ends of the earth.
Proverbs 17:24 (NIV)
He that hath knowledge spareth his words.

Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of
understanding.
Set bounds to thy prudence.

Proverbs 23:4 (Douay-Rheims)
Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope for a fool than for him.
Proverbs 26:12
Ecclesiastes
You who know nothing of how the soul marries the body, you therefore know nothing of God’s works.
Ecclesiastes 11.5
What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?
Ecclesiastes 1:3
27
I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. That
which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered. I communed with
mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have
been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. And I gave my
heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in
much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
Ecclesiastes 1:14
Whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy; for my heart
rejoiced in all my labour: and this was my portion of all my labour. Then I looked on all the works that my
hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of
spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 2:10
Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me; and why was I then more
wise? Then I said in my heart, that this also is vanity.
Ecclesiastes 2:15
There is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is in the days to
come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise man? as the fool.
Ecclesiastes 2:16
I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun: because I should leave it unto the man that shall be
after me. And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? yet shall he have rule over all my
labour wherein I have laboured, and wherein I have shewed myself wise under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 2:18-19
There is a man whose labour is in wisdom, and in knowledge, and in equity; yet to a man that hath not
laboured therein shall he leave it for his portion.
Ecclesiastes 2:21
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time
to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time
to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to
dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to
refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to
rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time
of war, and a time of peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
I saw under the sun the place of judgment, that wickedness was there; and the place of righteousness, that
iniquity was there.
Ecclesiastes 3:16
I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they
might see that they themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one
thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no
preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust
again.
Ecclesiastes 3:18-20
A man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all
turn to dust again.
Ecclesiastes 3:19
28
There is no man that hath power over the spirit.
Ecclesiastes 8:8
I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be
merry.
Ecclesiastes 8:15
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet
bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance
happeneth to them all.
Ecclesiastes 9:11
There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, as an error which proceedeth from the ruler: Folly is set in
great dignity, and the rich sit in low place. I have seen servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants
upon the earth.
Ecclesiastes 10:5
The labour of the foolish wearieth every one of them.

Ecclesiastes 10:15
Song of Songs
Isaiah
I am doomed, for I am a sinful man. I have filthy lips, and I live among a people with filthy lips.
Isaiah 6:5 (NLT)
Then I heard the Lord asking, “Whom should I send as a messenger to this people? Who will go for us?”
I said, “Here I am. Send me.”
And he said, “Yes, go, and say to this people, ‘Listen carefully, but do not understand. Watch closely, but
learn nothing.’ Harden the hearts of these people. Plug their ears and shut their eyes. That way, they will not
see with their eyes, nor hear with their ears, nor understand with their hearts and turn to me for healing.”
Isaiah 6:8-10 (NLT)
The Lord said: … These people draw near with their mouths and honor me with the lips while their hearts are
far from me, and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote.
Isaiah 29:13 (NRSV)
Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth
not?
Isaiah 55:2 (KJV)
As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts
than your thoughts.
Isaiah (God speaking) 55:9 (KJV)
Jeremiah
Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from
the Lord.
Jeremiah 17:5 NIV
29
Lamentations
Ezekiel
My people come to you, as they usually do, and sit before you to hear your words, but they do not put them
into practice. Their mouths speak of love, but their hearts are greedy for unjust gain.
Ezekiel 33:31 NIV
Daniel
Hosea
Joel
Amos
Obadiah
Jonah
Micah
Nahum
Habakkuk
Zephaniah
Haggai
Zechariah
Malachi
ARISTOPHANES (446-386 BC)

The truth is, they want you, you see, to be poor. If you don’t know the reason, I’ll tell you. It’s to train you to
know who your tamer is. Then, whenever he gives you a whistle and sets you against an opponent of his, you
jump out and tear them to pieces.
Aristophanes, “The Wasps”
XENOPHON (430-354 BC)

To want nothing I consider divine, and the less a man wants the nearer does he approach divinity.
Xenophon, quoting Socrates
30
Oeconomicus
“It was our opinion that a man’s household is whatever he possesses.”
“Yes, by Zeus,” said Kritoboulos, “at least if what he possesses is good; for whatever is bad, by Zeus, I do
not call a possession.”
“You, then, appear to call possessions whatever is beneficial to each.”
“Very much so,” he said, “and whatever is harmful I hold to be loss rather than wealth.”
“If, therefore, someone buys a horse he doesn’t know how to use and hurts himself in a fall, the horse isn’t
wealth for him?”
“No, at least if wealth is good.”
“Then not even the earth is wealth for the human being who works it in such a way as to suffer loss in
working it.”
“No, the earth isn’t wealth either, if it brings hardship instead of nourishment.” ...
“You, then, as it appears, believe that whatever benefit is wealth, while whatever harms is not.”
“Just so.”
“Then the same things are wealth for the one knowing how to use each of them and not wealth for the one
not knowing how; just as flutes are wealth for the one knowing how to play the flute in a manner worth
mentioning, while for the one not knowing how they are nothing more than useless stones, as long as he
doesn’t sell them. And thus it looks to us as though the flutes are wealth for those not knowing how to use
them only when they sell them, and not when they don't sell them but keep them in their possession.”
“Neither of us can disagree with this argument, Socrates, since it was said that whatever is beneficial is
wealth. So unsold flutes are not wealth, for they aren't useful, but sold ones are wealth.”
To this Socrates said: “At least, if he knows how to sell. For should he sell them and in turn receive
something he didn't know how to use, they wouldn't be wealth even when sold, at least according to your
argument.”
“You appear to be saying, Socrates, that not even money is wealth if one doesn’t know how to use it.”
Xenophon, Oeconomicus, 7-12
Memorabilia
http://artflx.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi/citequery3.pl?dbname=PerseusGreekTexts&query=Xen.%20Mem.&getid=1
As those who do not train the body cannot perform the functions proper to the body, so those who do not
train the soul cannot perform the functions of the soul.
Xenophon, Memorabilia, 1.2.19
Just as poetry is forgotten unless it is often repeated, so instruction, when no longer heeded, fades from the
mind.
To forget good counsel is to forget the experiences that prompted the soul to desire prudence: and when
those are forgotten, it is not surprising that prudence itself is forgotten.
Many who are careful with their money no sooner fall in love than they begin to waste it: and when they
have spent it all, they no longer shrink from making more by methods which they formerly avoided because
they thought them disgraceful.
In the same body along with the soul are planted the pleasures which call to her: “Abandon prudence, and
make haste to gratify us and the body.”
31
As athletes who gain an easy victory in the games are apt to neglect their training, so the honour in
which he was held, the cheap triumph he won with the people, led him to neglect himself.
Xenophon, describing Alcibiades, Memorabilia, 1.2.25
“Tell me, Pericles,” he said, “can you teach me what a law is?” …
“There is no great difficulty about what you desire. You wish to know what a law is. Laws are all the
rules approved and enacted by the majority in assembly, whereby they declare what ought and what ought
not to be done.” …
“But if, as happens under an oligarchy, not the majority, but a minority meet and enact rules of conduct,
what are these?”
“Whatsoever the sovereign power in the State, after deliberation, enacts and directs to be done is known
as a law.”
“If, then, a despot, being the sovereign power, enacts what the citizens are to do, are his orders also a
law?”
“Yes, whatever a despot as ruler enacts is also known as a law.”
“But force, the negation of law, what is that, Pericles? Is it not the action of the stronger when he
constrains the weaker to do whatever he chooses, not by persuasion, but by force?”
“That is my opinion.”
“Then whatever a despot by enactment constrains the citizens to do without persuasion, is the negation of
law?”
“I think so: and I withdraw my answer that whatever a despot enacts without persuasion is a law.”
“And when the minority passes enactments, not by persuading the majority, but through using its power,
are we to call that force or not?”
“Everything, I think, that men constrain others to do ‘without persuasion,’ whether by enactment or not, is
not law, but force.”
“It follows then, that whatever the assembled majority, through using its power over the owners of
property, enacts without persuasion is not law, but force?”
“Alcibiades,” said Pericles, “at your age, I may tell you, we, too, were very clever at this sort of thing.
For the puzzles we thought about and exercised our wits on were just such as you seem to think about now.”
“Ah, Pericles,” cried Alcibiades, “if only I had known you intimately when you were at your cleverest in
these things!”
Xenophon, Socrates in Memorabilia, 1.2.41
If you clap fetters on a man for his ignorance, you deserve to be kept in gaol yourself by those whose
knowledge is greater than your own.
Xenophon, describing Socrates’ teaching in Memorabilia, 1.2.50
If we were at war and wanted to choose a leader most capable of helping us to save ourselves and conquer
the enemy, should we choose one whom we knew to be the slave of the belly, or of wine, or lust, or sleep?
Should not every man hold self-control to be the foundation of all virtue, and first lay this foundation firmly
in his soul? For who without this can learn any good or practise it worthily? Or what man that is the slave of
his pleasures is not in an evil plight body and soul alike? From my heart I declare that every free man should
pray not to have such a man among his slaves; and every man who is a slave to such pleasures should entreat
the gods to give him good masters: thus, and only thus, may he find salvation.
Antiphon came to Socrates with the intention of drawing his companions away from him, and spoke thus
in their presence.
“Socrates, I supposed that philosophy must add to one’s store of happiness. But the fruits you have reaped
from philosophy are apparently very different. For example, you are living a life that would drive even a
slave to desert his master. Your meat and drink are of the poorest: the cloak you wear is not only a poor
32
thing, but is never changed summer or winter; and you never wear shoes or tunic. Besides you refuse to take
money, the mere getting of which is a joy, while its possession makes one more independent and happier.
Now the professors of other subjects try to make their pupils copy their teachers: if you too intend to make
your companions do that, you must consider yourself a professor of unhappiness.”
To this Socrates replied:
“Antiphon, you seem to have a notion that my life is so miserable, that I feel sure you would choose death
in preference to a life like mine. Come then, let us consider together what hardship you have noticed in my
life. Is it that those who take money are bound to carry out the work for which they get a fee, while I,
because I refuse to take it, am not obliged to talk with anyone against my will? Or do you think my food poor
because it is less wholesome than yours or less nourishing? or because my viands are harder to get than
yours, being scarcer and more expensive? or because your diet is more enjoyable than mine? Do you not
know that the greater the enjoyment of eating the less the need of sauce; the greater the enjoyment of
drinking, the less the desire for drinks that are not available? As for cloaks, they are changed, as you know,
on account of cold or heat. And shoes are worn as a protection to the feet against pain and inconvenience in
walking. Now did you ever know me to stay indoors more than others on account of the cold, or to fight with
any man for the shade because of the heat, or to be prevented from walking anywhere by sore feet? Do you
not know that by training, a puny weakling comes to be better at any form of exercise he practises, and gets
more staying power, than the muscular prodigy who neglects to train? Seeing then that I am always training
my body to answer any and every call on its powers, do you not think that I can stand every strain better than
you can without training? For avoiding slavery to the belly or to sleep and incontinence, is there, think you,
any more effective specific than the possession of other and greater pleasures, which are delightful not only
to enjoy, but also because they arouse hopes of lasting benefit? And again, you surely know that while he
who supposes that nothing goes well with him is unhappy, he who believes that he is successful in farming or
a shipping concern or any other business he is engaged in is happy in the thought of his prosperity. Do you
think then that out of all this thinking there comes anything so pleasant as the thought: ‘I am growing in
goodness and I am making better friends?’ And that, I may say, is my constant thought.
“Further, if help is wanted by friends or city, which of the two has more leisure to supply their needs, he
who lives as I am living or he whose life you call happy? Which will find soldiering the easier task, he who
cannot exist without expensive food or he who is content with what he can get? Which when besieged will
surrender first, he who wants what is very hard to come by or he who can make shift with whatever is at
hand?
“You seem, Antiphon, to imagine that happiness consists in luxury and extravagance. But my belief is
that to have no wants is divine; to have as few as possible comes next to the divine; and as that which is
divine is supreme, so that which approaches nearest to its nature is nearest to the supreme.”
Xenophon, Antiphon and Socrates in Memorabilia, 1.6.1
33
In another conversation with Socrates Antiphon said:
“Socrates, I for my part believe you to be a just, but by no means a wise man. And I think you realise it
yourself. Anyhow, you decline to take money for your society. Yet if you believed your cloak or house or
anything you possess to be worth money, you would not part with it for nothing or even for less than its
value. Clearly, then, if you set any value on your society, you would insist on getting the proper price for that
too. It may well be that you are a just man because you do not cheat people through avarice; but wise you
cannot be, since your knowledge is not worth anything.”
To this Socrates replied:
“Antiphon, it is common opinion among us in regard to beauty and wisdom that there is an honourable
and a shameful way of bestowing them. For to offer one’s beauty for money to all comers is called
prostitution; but we think it virtuous to become friendly with a lover who is known to be a man of honour.
So is it with wisdom. Those who offer it to all comers for money are known as sophists, prostitutors of
wisdom, but we think that he who makes a friend of one whom he knows to be gifted by nature, and teaches
him all the good he can, fulfils the duty of a citizen and a gentleman. That is my own view, Antiphon. Others
have a fancy for a good horse or dog or bird: my fancy, stronger even than theirs, is for good friends. And I
teach them all the good I can, and recommend them to others from whom I think they will get some moral
benefit. And the treasures that the wise men of old have left us in their writings I open and explore with my
friends. If we come on any good thing, we extract it, and we set much store on being useful to one another.”
Xenophon, Antiphon and Socrates in Memorabilia, 1.6.11
When we see a woman bartering beauty for gold, we look upon such a one as no other than a common
prostitute; but she who rewards the passion of some worthy youth with it, gains at the same time our
approbation and esteem. It is the very same with philosophy: he who sets it forth for public sale, to be
disposed of to the highest bidder, is a sophist, a public prostitute.
Xenophon, Antiphon and Socrates in Memorabilia, 1.6.11, T. Stanley, trans., p. 535
On yet another occasion Antiphon asked him: “How can you suppose that you make politicians of others,
when you yourself avoid politics even if you understand them?”
“How now, Antiphon?” he retorted, “should I play a more important part in politics by engaging in
them alone or by taking pains to turn out as many competent politicians as possible?”
[Some animals,] you know, are so greedy, that in spite of extreme timidity in some cases, they are drawn
irresistibly to the bait to get food, and are caught; and others are snared by drink.”
“Yes, certainly.”
“Others again—quails and partridges, for instance—are so amorous, that when they hear the cry of the
female, they are carried away by desire and anticipation, throw caution to the winds and blunder into the
nets. Is it not so?”
He agreed again.
“Now, don’t you think it disgraceful that a man should be in the same plight as the silliest of wild
creatures? Thus an adulterer enters the women’s quarters, knowing that by committing adultery he is in
danger of incurring the penalties threatened by the law, and that he may be trapped, caught and ill-treated.
When such misery and disgrace hang over the adulterer’s head, and there are many remedies to relieve him
of his carnal desire without risk, is it not sheer lunacy to plunge headlong into danger?”
“Yes, I think it is.”
“And considering that the great majority of essential occupations, warfare, agriculture and very many
others, are carried on in the open air, don’t you think it gross negligence that so many men are untrained to
withstand cold and heat?”
He agreed again.
“Don’t you think then, that one who is going to rule must adapt himself to bear them lightly?”
“Certainly.”
“If then we classify those who control themselves in all these matters as ‘fit to rule,’ shall we not classify
34
those who cannot behave so as men with no claim to be rulers?”
Xenophon, Socrates and Aristippus in Memorabilia, 2.1.4
“I do not for a moment put myself in the category of those who want to be rulers. For considering how
hard a matter it is to provide for one’s own needs, I think it absurd not to be content to do that, but to
shoulder the burden of supplying the wants of the community as well. That anyone should sacrifice a large
part of his own wishes and make himself accountable as head of the state for the least failure to carry out all
the wishes of the community is surely the height of folly. For states claim to treat their rulers just as I claim
to treat my servants. I expect my men to provide me with necessaries in abundance, but not to touch any of
them; and states hold it to be the business of the ruler to supply them with all manner of good things, and to
abstain from all of them himself. And so, should anyone want to bring plenty of trouble on himself and
others, I would educate him as you propose and number him with ‘those fitted to be rulers’: but myself I
classify with those who wish for a life of the greatest ease and pleasure that can be had.”
Here Socrates asked: “Shall we then consider whether the rulers or the ruled live the pleasanter life?”
“Certainly,” replied Aristippus.
“To take first the nations known to us. In Asia the rulers are the Persians; the Syrians, Lydians and
Phrygians are the ruled. In Europe the Scythians rule, and the Maeotians are ruled. In Africa the
Carthaginians rule, and the Libyans are ruled. Which of the two classes, think you, enjoys the pleasanter life?
Or take the Greeks, of whom you yourself are one; do you think that the controlling or the controlled
communities enjoy the pleasanter life?”
“Nay,” replied Aristippus, “for my part I am no candidate for slavery; but there is, as I hold, a middle
path in which I am fain to walk. That way leads neither through rule nor slavery, but through liberty, which is
the royal road to happiness.”
“Ah,” said Socrates, “if only that path can avoid the world as well as rule and slavery, there may be
something in what you say. But, since you are in the world, if you intend neither to rule nor to be ruled, and
do not choose to truckle to the rulers—I think you must see that the stronger have a way of making the
weaker rue their lot both in public and in private life, and treating them like slaves. You cannot be unaware
that where some have sown and planted, others cut their corn and fell their trees, and in all manner of ways
harass the weaker if they refuse to bow down, until they are persuaded to accept slavery as an escape from
war with the stronger. So, too, in private life do not brave and mighty men enslave and plunder the cowardly
and feeble folk?”
“Yes, but my plan for avoiding such treatment is this. I do not shut myself up in the four corners of a
community, but am a stranger in every land.”
Xenophon, Aristippus and Socrates in Memorabilia, 2.1.8
If we wanted a good friend, how should we start on the quest? Should we seek first for one who is no slave to
eating and drinking, lust, sleep, idleness? For the thrall of these masters cannot do his duty by himself or his
friend.
“What of the man who is such a keen man of business that he has no leisure for anything but the selfish
pursuit of gain?”
“We must avoid him too, I think.”
Xenophon, Socrates and Critobulus in Memorabilia, 2.5.3
It is a disgrace to grow old through sheer carelessness before seeing what manner of man you may
become by developing your bodily strength and beauty to their highest limit. But you cannot see that,
if you are careless; for it will not come of its own accord.
A man was angry because his greeting was not returned. “Ridiculous!” Socrates exclaimed; “you would not
have been angry if you had met a man in worse health; and yet you are annoyed because you have come
across someone with ruder manners!”
35
Though pleasure is the one and only goal to which incontinence is thought to lead men, she herself cannot
bring them to it, whereas nothing produces pleasure so surely as self-control.
The delights of learning something good and excellent, and of studying some of the means whereby a man
knows how to regulate his body well and manage his household successfully, to be useful to his friends and
city and to defeat his enemies—knowledge that yields not only very great benefits but very great pleasures—
these are the delights of the self-controlled; but the incontinent have no part in them. For who, should we say,
has less concern with these than he who has no power of cultivating them because all his serious purposes are
centered in the pleasures that lie nearest?
Whatever it befits a gentleman to know he taught most zealously, so far as his own knowledge extended;
if he was not entirely familiar with a subject, he took them to those who knew. He also taught them how far a
well-educated man should make himself familiar with any given subject.
For instance, he said that the study of geometry should be pursued until the student was competent to
measure a parcel of land accurately. ... He was against carrying the study of geometry so far as to include the
more complicated figures, on the ground that he could not see the use of them. ...He said that they were
enough to occupy a lifetime, to the complete exclusion of many other useful studies.
Similarly he recommended them to make themselves familiar with astronomy, but only so far as to be
able to find the time of night, month and year. ... He strongly deprecated studying astronomy so far as to
include the knowledge of bodies revolving in different courses, and of planets and comets, and wearing
oneself out with the calculation of their distance from the earth, their periods of revolution and the causes of
these. Of such researches, again he said that he could not see what useful purpose they served. He had indeed
attended lectures on these subjects too; but these again, he said, were enough to occupy a lifetime to the
complete exclusion of many useful studies.
In general, with regard to the phenomena of the heavens, he deprecated curiosity to learn how the deity
contrives them: he held that their secrets could not be discovered by man, and believed that any attempt to
search out what the gods had not chosen to reveal must be displeasing to them. He said that he who meddles
with these matters runs the risk of losing his sanity as completely as Anaxagoras, who took an insane pride in
his explanation of the divine machinery. ...
He also recommended the study of arithmetic. But in this case as in the others he recommended avoidance
of vain application; and invariably, whether theories or ascertained facts formed the subject of his
conversation, he limited it to what was useful.
Xenophon, describing Socrates in Memorabilia, 4.7.1
They live best, I think, who strive best to become as good as possible: and the pleasantest life is theirs who
are conscious that they are growing in goodness.
PLATO (428-348 BC)

As to the human necessities of which the many talk in this connection, nothing can be more ridiculous than
such an application.
Plato, Laws, as cited in Bertrand Russell, “The study of mathematics”
Will just men use their justice to make others unjust? Or, in short, will good men use their goodness to make
others bad? It cannot be so, for it not the function of heat to cool things, but of its opposite.
Plato
Knowledge, when separated from justice and virtue, is seen to be cunning and not wisdom.
Plato, A speech of Aspasia, recounted by Socrates, Menexenus 246e, Plato: The Collected Dialogues (1961), p. 196
36
The unexamined life is not worth living.
Plato, Socrates, Apology, Sec. 38
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
Plato, Phaedo, 91
The greatest penalty of evildoing is to grow into the likeness of bad men.
Laws 728 or Theatetus?
He shall be as a god to me, who can rightly divide and define.

Plato
If you see a man distressed because he is about to die, is not this a sufficient proof that he was after all not a
lover of wisdom, but rather what might be called a lover of the body, and perhaps also a lover of riches and
honors?
Plato, Socrates in Phaedo
Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness—and both of
discontent.
Plato
Let parents, then, bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.
Plato, Laws, cited in Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (Chicago: 1948), p. 170
For herein is the evil of ignorance; that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless pleased with himself.
Plato, cited in Walter A. Davis, Inwardness and Existence, p. 107
Socrates makes me admit to myself that, even though I myself am deficient in so many regards, I continue to
take no care of myself, but occupy myself with the business of the Athenians.
Alcibiades in Plato, Symposium, 216a
Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history.

Plato
As empty vessels make the loudest sound, so they that have least within are the greatest babblers.
Plato
Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil.

Plato
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the
light.
Plato
Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.
Plato
The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
Plato
Take care of yourself.

Plato, Alcibiades, 120d4, Apology, 36c
It is a greater good to be released oneself from the greatest evil than to release another
Plato 458a-b
37
Theatetus
The greatest penalty of evildoing—namely, to grow into the likeness of bad men.
Plato, Theatetus or Laws?
Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

Plato, Theatetus, 155
Seventh Letter
In praise of philosophy, I was obliged to say that through it alone can we recognize what is right for states as
well as individuals.
Plato, Seventh Letter
He who advises a sick man, whose manner of life is prejudicial to health, is clearly bound first of all to
change his patient’s manner of life, and if the patient is willing to obey him, he may go on to give him other
advice. But if he is not willing, I shall consider one who declines to advise such a patient to be a man and a
physician, and one who gives in to him to be unmanly and unprofessional. In the same way with regard to a
State, whether it be under a single ruler or more than one, if, while the government is being carried on
methodically and in a right course, it asks advice about any details of policy, it is the part of a wise man to
advise such people. But when men are travelling altogether outside the path of right government and
flatly refuse to move in the right path, and start by giving notice to their adviser that he must leave the
government alone and make no change in it under penalty of death—if such men should order their
counselors to pander to their wishes and desires and to advise them in what way their object may most
readily and easily be once for all accomplished, I should consider as unmanly one who accepts the duty
of giving such forms of advice, and one who refuses it to be a true man.
If a man does not consult me at all, or evidently does not intend to follow my advice, I do not take the
initiative in advising such a man, and will not use compulsion to him, even if he be my own son. ... The
wise man should go through life with the same attitude of mind towards his country. If she should
appear to him to be following a policy which is not a good one, he should say so, provided that his words are
not likely either to fall on deaf ears or to lead to the loss of his own life.
Apology
Are you not ashamed that you give your attention to acquiring as much money as possible, and similarly with
reputation and honor, and give no attention or thought to truth and understanding and the perfection of your
soul?
Plato, Apology, 29e
I set to do you—each one of you, individually and in private—what I hold to be the greatest possible
service. I tried to persuade each one of you to concern himself less with what he has than with what he
is, so as to render himself as excellent and rational as possible.
Plato, Apology, 36c6, as cited in Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life (1995), p. 90
I tried to persuade each one of you not to think more of practical advantages than of his mental and moral
well being
Plato, Apology, 36c
38
Gorgias
It is obvious from what Polus has said that he is much better versed in what is called rhetoric than in
dialogue (διαλέγεσθαι).
Plato, Socrates in Gorgias, W. Woodhead, trans., 448d
Now if you are the same kind of man as I am, I should be glad to question you; if not, I will let you alone.
And what kind of man am I? One of those who would gladly be refuted if anything I say is not true, and
would gladly refute another who says what is not true, but would be no less happy to be refuted myself than
to refute, for I consider that a greater benefit, inasmuch as it is a greater boon to be delivered from the worst
of evils oneself than to deliver another. And I believe there is no worse evil for a man than a false opinion
about the subject of our present discussion.
Plato, Socrates in Gorgias, 458a
I would be better for me … that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being
one, should be out of harmony with myself.
Plato, Socrates in Gorgias, 482c
Protagoras
Do you realize the sort of danger to which you are going to expose your soul? If it were a case of putting
your body into the hands of someone and risking the treatment’s turning out beneficial or the reverse, you
would ponder deeply whether to entrust it to him or not, and would spend many days over the question,
calling in the counsel of your friends and relations. But when it comes to something which you value more
highly than your body, namely your soul—something on whose beneficial or harmful treatment your whole
welfare depends—you have not consulted either your father or your brother or any of us who are your friends
on the question of whether or not to entrust your soul to the stranger.
Plato, Protagoras 313a, W. K. C. Guthrie, trans. (Collected Dialogs, p. 312)
Is not a Sophist, Hippocrates, one who deals wholesale or retail in the food of the soul? To me that appears to
be his nature. … Knowledge is the food of the soul; and we must take care, my friend, that the Sophist does
not deceive us when he praises what he sells, like the dealers wholesale or retail who sell the food of the
body; for they praise indiscriminately all their goods, without knowing what are really beneficial or hurtful.
Neither do their customers know … unless he who buys of them happens to be a physician of the soul.
Plato, Protagoras 313c, Benjamin Jowett, trans.
Now to run away, and to be caught in running away, is the very height of folly, and also greatly increases the
exasperation of mankind; for they regard him who runs away as a rogue, in addition to any other objections
which they have to him; and therefore I take an entirely opposite course, and acknowledge myself to be a
Sophist and instructor of mankind; such an open acknowledgement appears to me to be a better sort of
caution than concealment.
Plato, Protagoras in Protagoras 317b, Benjamin Jowett, trans.
When we are met together in the assembly, and the matter in hand relates to building, the builders are
summoned as advisers; when the question is one of ship-building, then the ship-wrights; and the like of other
arts which they think capable of being taught and learned. And if some person offers to give them advice
who is not supposed by them to have any skill in the art, even though he be good-looking, and rich, and
noble, they will not listen to him, but laugh and hoot at him, until either he is clamored down and retires of
himself; or if he persist, he is dragged away or put out by the constables at the command of the Prytanes.
This is their way of behaving about professors of the arts. But when the question is an affair of state, then
everybody is free to have a say—carpenter, tinker, cobbler, sailor, passenger; rich and poor, high and low—
any one who likes gets up, and no one reproaches him, as in the former case, with not having learned, and
having no teacher, and yet giving advice.
Plato, Socrates in Protagoras 319c, Benjamin Jowett, trans.
39
Hermes asked Zeus how he should impart justice and reverence among men:—Should he distribute them
as the arts are distributed; that is to say, to a favored few only, one skilled individual having enough of
medicine or of any other art for many unskilled ones? ‘Shall this be the manner in which I am to distribute
justice and reverence among men, or shall I give them to all?’ ‘To all,’ said Zeus; ‘I should like them all to
have a share; for cities cannot exist, if a few only share in the virtues, as in the arts. And further, make a law
by my order, that he who has no part in reverence and justice shall be put to death, for he is a plague of the
state.’
And this is the reason, Socrates, why the Athenians and mankind in general, when the question relates to
carpentering or any other mechanical art, allow but a few to share in their deliberations; and when any one
else interferes, then, as you say, they object, if he be not of the favored few; which, as I reply, is very natural.
But when they meet to deliberate about political virtue, which proceeds only by way of justice and wisdom,
they are patient enough of any man who speaks of them, as is also natural, because they think that every
man ought to share in this sort of virtue, and that states could not exist if this were otherwise.
Plato, Protagoras in Protagoras 322d, Benjamin Jowett, trans.
If a man says that he is a good flute-player, or skilful in any other art in which he has no skill, people either
laugh at him or are angry with him, and his relations think that he is mad and go and admonish him; but
when honesty is in question, or some other political virtue, even if they know that he is dishonest, yet, if the
man comes publicly forward and tells the truth about his dishonesty, then, what in the other case was held by
them to be good sense, they now deem to be madness. They say that all men ought to profess honesty
whether they are honest or not, and that a man is out of his mind who says anything else.
Plato, Protagoras in Protagoras 323a, Benjamin Jowett, trans.
No one would instruct, no one would rebuke, or be angry with those whose calamities they suppose to be due
to nature or chance; they do not try to punish or to prevent them from being what they are; they do but pity
them. Who is so foolish as to chastise or instruct the ugly, or the diminutive, or the feeble? And for this
reason. Because he knows that good and evil of this kind is the work of nature and of chance; whereas if a
man is wanting in those good qualities which are attained by study and exercise and teaching, and has only
the contrary evil qualities, other men are angry with him, and punish and reprove him—of these evil qualities
one is impiety, another injustice, and they may be described generally as the very opposite of political virtue.
In such cases any man will be angry with another, and reprimand him,—clearly because he thinks that by
study and learning, the virtue in which the other is deficient may be acquired.
Plato, Protagoras in Protagoras 323d, Benjamin Jowett, trans.
If you will think, Socrates, of the nature of punishment, you will see at once that in the opinion of mankind
virtue may be acquired; no one punishes the evil-doer under the notion, or for the reason, that he has done
wrong,—only the unreasonable fury of a beast acts in that manner. But he who desires to inflict rational
punishment does not retaliate for a past wrong which cannot be undone; he has regard to the future, and is
desirous that the man who is punished, and he who sees him punished, may be deterred from doing wrong
again. He punishes for the sake of prevention, thereby clearly implying that virtue is capable of being taught.
Plato, Protagoras in Protagoras 324b, Benjamin Jowett, trans.
Is there or is there not some one thing in which all citizens must share, if a state is to exist at all?
Plato, Protagoras 324e, W. K. C. Guthrie, trans. (Collected Dialogs, p. 321)
40
Is there or is there not some one quality of which all the citizens must be partakers, if there is to be a city at
all? In the answer to this question is contained the only solution of your difficulty; there is no other. For if
there be any such quality, and this quality or unity is not the art of the carpenter, or the smith, or the potter,
but justice and temperance and holiness and, in a word, manly virtue—if this is the quality of which all men
must be partakers, and which is the very condition of their learning or doing anything else, and if he who is
wanting in this, whether he be a child only or a grown-up man or woman, must be taught and punished, until
by punishment he becomes better, and he who rebels against instruction and punishment is either exiled or
condemned to death under the idea that he is incurable—if what I am saying be true, good men have their
sons taught other things and not this, do consider how extraordinary their conduct would appear to be. For
we have shown that they think virtue capable of being taught and cultivated both in private and public; and,
notwithstanding, they have their sons taught lesser matters, ignorance of which does not involve the
punishment of death: but greater things, of which the ignorance may cause death and exile to those who have
no training or knowledge of them—aye, and confiscation as well as death, and, in a word, may be the ruin of
families—those things, I say, they are supposed not to teach them,—not to take the utmost care that they
should learn. How improbable is this, Socrates!
Plato, Protagoras in Protagoras 324e, Benjamin Jowett, trans.
But why then do the sons of good fathers often turn out ill? There is nothing very wonderful in this; for, as I
have been saying, the existence of a state implies that virtue is not any man’s private possession. If so—and
nothing can be truer—then I will further ask you to imagine, as an illustration, some other pursuit or branch
of knowledge which may be assumed equally to be the condition of the existence of a state. Suppose that
there could be no state unless we were all flute-players, as far as each had the capacity, and everybody was
freely teaching everybody the art, both in private and public, and reproving the bad player as freely and
openly as every man now teaches justice and the laws, not concealing them as he would conceal the other
arts, but imparting them—for all of us have a mutual interest in the justice and virtue of one another, and this
is the reason why every one is so ready to teach justice and the laws;—suppose, I say, that there were the
same readiness and liberality among us in teaching one another flute-playing, do you imagine, Socrates, that
the sons of good flute-players would be more likely to be good than the sons of bad ones? I think not. Would
not their sons grow up to be distinguished or undistinguished according to their own natural capacities as
flute-players
Plato, Protagoras in Protagoras 327a, Benjamin Jowett, trans.
The talk about the poets seems to me like a commonplace entertainment to which a vulgar company have
recourse; who, because they are not able to converse or amuse one another, while they are drinking, with the
sound of their own voices and conversation, by reason of their stupidity, raise the price of flute-girls in the
market, hiring for a great sum the voice of a flute instead of their own breath, to be the medium of
intercourse among them: but where the company are real gentlemen and men of education, you will see no
flute-girls, nor dancing-girls, nor harp-girls; and they have no nonsense or games, but are contented with one
another’s conversation, of which their own voices are the medium, and which they carry on by turns and in
an orderly manner, even though they are very liberal in their potations. And a company like this of ours, and
men such as we profess to be, do not require the help of another’s voice, or of the poets whom you cannot
interrogate about the meaning of what they are saying; people who cite them declaring, some that the poet
has one meaning, and others that he has another, and the point which is in dispute can never be decided. This
sort of entertainment they decline, and prefer to talk with one another, and put one another to the proof in
conversation. And these are the models which I desire that you and I should imitate. Leaving the poets, and
keeping to ourselves, let us try the mettle of one another and make proof of the truth in conversation.
Plato, Protagoras in Protagoras 347c, Benjamin Jowett, trans.
41
Conversation about poetry reminds me too much of the wine parties of second-rate and commonplace
people. Such men, being too uneducated to entertain themselves as they drink by using their own voices and
conversational resources, put up the price of female musicians, paying well for the hire of an extraneous
voice—that of the pipe—and find their entertainment in its warblings. But where the drinkers are men of
worth and culture, you will find no girls piping or dancing or harping. They are quite capable of enjoying
their own company without such frivolous nonsense, using their own voices in sober discussion and each
taking his turn to speak or listen—even if the drinking is really heavy. In the same way gatherings like our
own, if they consist of men such as most of us claim to be, call for no extraneous voices—not even of poets.
… The best people avoid such discussions, and entertain each other from their own resources, testing one
another’s mettle in what they have to say themselves. These are the people, in my opinion, whom you and I
should follow, setting the poets aside and conducting the conversation on the basis of our own ideas. It is
truth, and our own minds, that we should be testing.
Plato, Protagoras 347c, W. K. C. Guthrie, trans. (Collected Dialogs, p. 340)
Phaedrus
They will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome, having the
reputation of knowledge without the reality.
Plato, Phaedrus, cited in Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (Chicago: 1948), p. 96
This folly of mine [the immortality of the soul] will not last long—for that would indeed be an evil—
but in a short time will vanish.
Plato, Phaedrus, 91a, cited in Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, p. 79
You must forgive me, dear friend; I’m a lover of learning, and trees and open country won’t teach me
anything, whereas men in the town do.
Plato, Phaedrus, 230d, cited in Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, p. 181
It is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things
without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing,
and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.
Plato, Socrates recounting Thamus’ response to Thuth, the mythical inventor of writing, Phaedrus, 275a, Collected Dialogues (Princeton: 1961)
Oh dear Pan and all the other Gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside.
Plato, Socrates’ prayer in Phaedrus, 279
Symposium
I only wish that wisdom were the kind of thing that flowed … from the vessel that was full to the one that
was empty.
Plato, Symposium, 175d
Neither family, nor privilege, nor wealth, nor anything but Love can light that beacon which a man must
steer by when he sets out to live the better life.
Plato, Phaedrus in Symposium, 178c, M. Joyce, trans, Collected Dialogues of Plato (1961), p. 533
The vicious lover is the follower of earthly Love who desires the body rather than the soul; his heart is set on
what is mutable and must therefore be inconstant. And as soon as the body he loves begins to pass the first
flower of its beauty, he "spreads his wings and flies away," giving the lie to all his pretty speeches and
dishonoring his vows, whereas the lover whose heart is touched by moral beauties is constant all his life, for
he has become one with what will never fade.
Plato, Pausanius in Symposium, 183e, M. Joyce, trans, Collected Dialogues of Plato (1961), p. 537
42
But, my dearest Agathon, it is truth which you cannot contradict; you can without any difficulty contradict
Socrates.
Plato, Symposium
The Republic
http://books.google.com/books?id=SDpHAAAAIAAJ
The wisdom of a city founded on natural principles depends entirely on its smallest group and element—the
leading and ruling element—and the knowledge that element possesses. The class which can be expected to
share in this branch of knowledge, which of all branches of knowledge is the only one we can call wisdom, is
by its nature, apparently, the smallest class.
Plato, The Republic, 428e
Is someone's life going to be worth living when the natural constitution of the very thing by which he lives is
upset and ruined?
Plato, The Republic, 445b
Now that we've got to the point of being able to see as clearly as possible that this is how things are, this isn't
the moment to take a rest.
Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity—I mean the true simplicity of
a rightly and nobly ordered mind and character, not that other simplicity which is only a euphemism for
folly.
Plato, The Republic, Book 3
Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into
the inward places of the soul; on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him
who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful.
Plato, The Republic, Book 3
Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of
discontent.
Plato, The Republic, 422a
δημοκρατία, καὶ εἴη, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἡδεῖα πολιτεία καὶ ἄναρχος καὶ ποικίλη, ἰσότητά τινα ὁμοίως ἴσοις τε
καὶ ἀνίσοις διανέμουσα.
Democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of
equality to equals and unequaled alike …
Plato, The Republic, 558c
The entire soul follows without rebellion the part which loves wisdom.
Perhaps there is a pattern set up in the heavens for one who desires to see it and seeing it, to found one in
himself. But whether it exists anywhere or ever exists is no matter; for this is the only commonwealth in
whose politics he can ever take part.
There is an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry.

While bodily labors performed under constraint do not harm the body, nothing that is learned under
compulsion stays with the mind.
43
The inexperienced in wisdom and virtue, ever occupied with feasting and such, are carried downward, and
there, as is fitting, they wander their whole life long, neither ever looking upward to the truth above them nor
rising toward it, nor tasting pure and lasting pleasures. Like cattle, always looking downward with their
heads bent toward the ground and the banquet tables, they feed, fatten, and fornicate. In order to increase
their possessions they kick and butt with horns and hoofs of steel and kill each other, insatiable as they are.
Plato, Republic IX: 586a-b
Mankind censure injustice, fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from
committing it.
Plato, The Republic, 344c, B. Jowett, trans (1908)
Swollen and inflamed city

They must be the houses of soldiers, and not of shop-keepers.

Plato, The Republic, 415e, B. Jowett, trans (1908)
To keep watch-dogs, who, from want of discipline or hunger, or some evil habit or other, would turn upon
the sheep and worry them, and behave not like dogs but wolves, would be a foul and monstrous thing in a
shepherd. And therefore every care must be taken that our auxiliaries, being stronger than our citizens, may
not grow to be too much for them and become savage tyrants instead of friends and allies. ... Not only their
education, but their habitations, and all that belongs to them, should be such as will neither impair their virtue
as guardians, nor tempt them to prey upon the other citizens.
Plato, The Republic, 416a, B. Jowett, trans (1908)
None [of the guardians] should have any property of his own beyond what is absolutely necessary. ... They
will live together like soldiers in a camp. We will tell them that they have gold and silver of a divine sort in
their souls as a permanent gift from the gods, and have no need of human gold in addition. And we will add
that it is impious for them to defile this divine possession by possessing an admixture of mortal gold, because
many impious deeds have been done for the sake of the currency of the masses, whereas their sort is pure.
Plato, The Republic, 416d, C. Reeve, trans. (2004)
If they [the guardians] acquire private land, houses, and money themselves, they will be household managers
and farmers instead of guardians—hostile masters of the other citizens, instead of their allies. They will
spend their whole lives hating and being hated, plotting and being plotted against, much more afraid of
internal than of external enemies.
Plato, The Republic, 417a, C. Reeve, trans. (2004)
The wisdom of a city ... depends entirely on its smallest group and element—the leading and ruling
element—and the knowledge that element possesses. The class which can be expected to share in this branch
of knowledge, which of all branches of knowledge is the only one we can call wisdom, is by its nature,
apparently, the smallest class.
Plato, The Republic, 428e, T. Griffith, trans. (2000)
Knowledge is comprehensive—the true sailor has knowledge of all related fields.

Plato The Republic, 488e
Do you too believe, as do the many, that certain young men are corrupted by sophists, and that there are
certain sophists who in a private capacity corrupt to an extent worth mentioning? Isn’t it rather the very men
who say this who are the biggest sophists, who educate most perfectly and who turn out young and old, men
and women, just the way they want them to be?
44
Each of these private teachers who work for pay ... inculcates nothing else than these opinions of the
multitude which they opine when they are assembled and calls this knowledge wisdom.
Each of these private teachers who work for pay, whom the politicians call sophists and regard as their rivals,
inculcates nothing else than these opinions of the multitude which they opine when they are assembled and
calls this knowledge wisdom. It is as if a man were acquiring the knowledge of the humors and desires
of a great strong beast which he had in his keeping, how it is to be approached and touched, and when
and by what things it is made most savage or gentle, yes, and the several sounds it is wont to utter on
the occasion of each, and again what sounds uttered by another make it tame or fierce, and after
mastering this knowledge by living with the creature and by lapse of time should call it wisdom, and
should construct thereof a system and art and turn to the teaching of it, knowing nothing in reality
about which of these opinions and desires is honorable or base, good or evil, just or unjust, but should
apply all these terms to the judgments of the great beast, calling the things that pleased it good, and
the things that vexed it bad, having no other account to render of them, but should call what is
necessary just and honorable, never having observed how great is the real difference between the
necessary and the good, and being incapable of explaining it to another. ... Do you suppose that there is
any difference between such a one and the man who thinks that it is wisdom to have learned to know the
moods and the pleasures of the motley multitude in their assembly, whether about painting or music or, for
that matter, politics? For if a man associates with these and offers and exhibits to them his poetry or any
other product of his craft or any political. service, and grants the mob authority over himself more than is
unavoidable, the proverbial necessity of Diomede will compel him to give the public what it likes, but that
what it likes is really good and honorable, have you ever heard an attempted proof of this that is not simply
ridiculous?
Then there is a very small remnant, Adeimantus, I said, of worthy disciples of philosophy: perchance some
noble nature, brought up under good influences, and in the absence of temptation, who is detained by exile in
her service, which he refuses to quit; or some lofty soul born in a mean city, the politics of which he
contemns or neglects; and perhaps there may be a few who, having a gift for philosophy, leave other arts,
which they justly despise, and come to her; and peradventure there are some who are restrained by our friend
Theages' bridle (for Theages, you know, had everything to divert him from philosophy; but his ill-health kept
him from politics). My own case of the internal sign is indeed hardly worth mentioning, as very rarely, if
ever, has such a monitor been vouchsafed to any one else. Those who belong to this small class have tasted
how sweet and blessed a possession philosophy is, and have also seen and been satisfied of the madness of
the multitude, and known that there is no one who ever acts honestly in the administration of States, nor any
helper who will save any one who maintains the cause of the just. Such a savior would be like a man who has
fallen among wild beasts—unable to join in the wickedness of his fellows, neither would he be able alone to
resist all their fierce natures, and therefore he would be of no use to the State or to his friends, and would
have to throw away his life before he had done any good to himself or others. And he reflects upon all this,
and holds his peace, and does his own business. He is like one who retires under the shelter of a wall in
the storm of dust and sleet which the driving wind hurries along; and when he sees the rest of mankind full
of wickedness, he is content if only he can live his own life and be pure from evil or unrighteousness, and
depart in peace and good will, with bright hopes.
Plato, The Republic, 496d
45
None of the governments, as they now exist, is worthy of the philosophic nature, and hence we see that
nature warped and corrupted; just as a foreign seed, when sown in an alien soil, generally loses its native
quality, and tends to be subdued and pass into the plant of the country, even so this philosophic nature, so far
from preserving its distinctive power, now suffers a decline and takes on a different character. But on the
other hand, in case philosophy shall find a constitution whose excellence is the counterpart of her own
perfection, then will it be shown that she is indeed divine, while all other things, whether the natures of men
or their occupations, are but human.
Plato, The Republic, 497b, Benjamin Jowett translation
ἢ δοκοῦσί τί σοι τυφλῶν διαφέρειν ὁδὸν ὀρθῶς πορευομένων οἱ ἄνευ νοῦ ἀληθές τι δοξάζοντες;
Isn't anyone who holds a true opinion without understanding like a blind man on the right road?
506c translated by Desmond Lee (Penguin: 1955), p. 230
Anyone who holds a true opinion without understanding is like a blind man on the right road.
Students in the Republic must bring together unrelated subjects and take a comprehensive view of their
relationship to one another and with the nature of reality.
Plato, The Republic, 537b-c
[The democratic youth] lives along day by day, gratifying the desire that occurs to him[:] if he admires any
soldiers, he turns in that direction; and if it’s moneymakers, in that one, and there is neither order nor
necessity in his life, but calling it sweet, free and blessed, he follows it throughout.
Plato, The Republic, 561c, Allan Bloom, trans.
If the entire soul, then, follows without rebellion the part which loves wisdom, the result is that in
general each part can carry out its own function—can be just, in other words—and in particular each is
able to enjoy pleasures which are its own, the best, and, as far as possible, the truest. ... When one of the
other parts takes control, there are two results: it fails to discover its own proper pleasure, and it compels the
other parts to pursue a pleasure which is not their own, and not true.
Plato, The Republic, T. Griffith, trans. (2000), 587a
ἀλλ᾽, ἦν δ᾽ ἐγώ, ἐν οὐρανῷ ἴσως παράδειγμα ἀνάκειται τῷ βουλομένῳ ὁρᾶν καὶ ὁρῶντι ἑαυτὸν
κατοικίζειν. διαφέρει δὲ οὐδὲν εἴτε που ἔστιν εἴτε ἔσται: τὰ γὰρ ταύτης μόνης ἂν πράξειεν, ἄλλης δὲ
οὐδεμιᾶς.
Perhaps there is a pattern set up in the heavens for one who desires to see it and seeing it, to found one
in himself. But whether it exists anywhere or ever exists is no matter; for this is the only
commonwealth in whose politics he can ever take part.
Plato, The Republic, 592b, as quoted in Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (1974), p. 401
That is where the whole danger lies for a man. It is why the greatest care must be directed towards having
each and every one of us disregard all other branches of study and be a follower and student of this branch of
ours, in the hope that he can find and discover someone who will give him the ability and knowledge to
distinguish the good life from the bad, and choose always and everywhere out of all those possible the life
which is better.
Plato, The Republic, T. Griffith, trans. (2000), p. 341
That is where the whole danger lies for a man. It is why the greatest care must be directed towards having
each and every one of us disregard all other branches of study and be a follower and student of this branch of
ours, in the hope that he can find and discover someone who will give him the ability and knowledge to
distinguish the good life from the bad, and choose always and everywhere out of all those possible the life
which is better.
Plato, The Republic, T. Griffith, trans., p. 341
46
Virtue has no master over her.
Plato, The Republic, Book 10, 617e
He didn't blame himself for his misfortunes. He blamed fate, the gods, anything but himself.
He had had his share of virtue, but it had been a matter of habit rather than philosophy.
Plato, The Republic, T. Griffith, trans. (2000), 619d
Meno
MENO: How will you look for something when you don't in the least know what it is? How on earth are you
going to set up something you don't know as the object of your search? ...
SOCRATES: We ought not then to be led astray by the contentious argument you quoted. It would make us
lazy, and is music in the ears of weaklings. The other doctrine produces energetic seekers after knowledge.
Plato, Meno, 80d-81e, W. Guthrie, trans., Collected Dialogs (1961), pp. 363-364
I shouldn't like to take my oath on the whole story [of metempsychosis], but one thing I am ready to fight for
as long I can, in word and in act—that is, that we shall be better, braver, and more active men if we believe it
right to look for what we don't know than if we believe there is no point in looking because what we don't
know we can never discover.
Plato, Socrates in Meno, 86b, W. Guthrie, trans., Collected Dialogs (1961), p. 371
Alcibiades I
Your pride has been too much for the pride of your admirers; they were numerous and high-spirited, but they
have all run away, overpowered by your superior force of character; not one of them remains. And I want
you to understand the reason why you have been too much for them. You think that you have no need of
them or of any other man, for you have great possessions and lack nothing, beginning with the body, and
ending with the soul.
Plato, Socrates in Alcibiades I
If, as you say, you desire to know, I suppose that you will be willing to hear, and I may consider myself to be
speaking to an auditor who will remain, and will not run away?
You had better be careful, for I may very likely be as unwilling to end as I have hitherto been to begin.
My love, Alcibiades, which I hardly like to confess, would long ago have passed away, as I flatter myself, if I
saw you loving your good things, or thinking that you ought to pass life in the enjoyment of them.
As you hope to prove your own great value to the state, and having proved it, to attain at once to absolute
power, so do I indulge a hope that I shall be the supreme power over you, if I am able to prove my own great
value to you.
Plato, Alcibiades I
You want to know whether I can make a long speech, such as you are in the habit of hearing; but that is not
my way.
Plato, Alcibiades I
47
ALCIBIADES: May I not have acquired the knowledge of just and unjust in some other way?
SOCRATES: Yes; if you have discovered them.
ALCIBIADES: But do you not think that I could discover them?
SOCRATES: I am sure that you might, if you enquired about them.
ALCIBIADES: And do you not think that I would enquire?
SOCRATES: Yes; if you thought that you did not know them.
Plato, Alcibiades I
ALCIBIADES: I suppose that I was mistaken in saying that I knew them through my own discovery of them;
whereas, in truth, I learned them in the same way that other people learn.
SOCRATES: So you said before, and I must again ask, of whom? Do tell me.
ALCIBIADES: Of the many.
SOCRATES: Do you take refuge in them? I cannot say much for your teachers.
Plato, Alcibiades I
ALCIBIADES: Why, for example, I learned to speak Greek of them, and I cannot say who was my teacher,
or to whom I am to attribute my knowledge of Greek, if not to those good-for-nothing teachers, as you call
them.
SOCRATES: Why, yes, my friend; and the many are good enough teachers of Greek, and some of their
instructions in that line may be justly praised.
ALCIBIADES: Why is that?
SOCRATES: Why, because they have the qualities which good teachers ought to have.
ALCIBIADES: What qualities?
SOCRATES: Why, you know that knowledge is the first qualification of any teacher?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And if they know, they must agree together and not differ?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And would you say that they knew the things about which they differ?
ALCIBIADES: No.
Plato, Alcibiades I
SOCRATES: And you would have a proof that they were bad teachers of these matters, if you saw them at
variance?
ALCIBIADES: I should.
SOCRATES: Well, but are the many agreed with themselves, or with one another, about the justice or
injustice of men and things?
ALCIBIADES: Assuredly not, Socrates.
SOCRATES: There is no subject about which they are more at variance?
ALCIBIADES: None.
Plato, Alcibiades I
SOCRATES: But can they be said to understand that about which they are quarrelling to the death?
ALCIBIADES: Clearly not.
SOCRATES: And yet those whom you thus allow to be ignorant are the teachers to whom you are appealing.
Plato, Alcibiades I
48
SOCRATES: Now let us put the case generally: whenever there is a question and answer, who is the
speaker,—the questioner or the answerer?
ALCIBIADES: I should say, Socrates, that the answerer was the speaker.
SOCRATES: And have I not been the questioner all through?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And you the answerer?
ALCIBIADES: Just so.
SOCRATES: Which of us, then, was the speaker?
ALCIBIADES: The inference is, Socrates, that I was the speaker.
SOCRATES: Did not some one say that Alcibiades, the fair son of Cleinias, not understanding about just and
unjust, but thinking that he did understand, was going to the assembly to advise the Athenians about what he
did not know? Was not that said?
ALCIBIADES: Very true.
SOCRATES: Then, Alcibiades, the result may be expressed in the language of Euripides. I think that you
have heard all this 'from yourself, and not from me'; nor did I say this, which you erroneously attribute to me,
but you yourself, and what you said was very true. For indeed, my dear fellow, the design which you
meditate of teaching what you do not know, and have not taken any pains to learn, is downright insanity.
Plato, Alcibiades I
SOCRATES: Well, but granting that the just and the expedient are ever so much opposed, you surely do not
imagine that you know what is expedient for mankind, or why a thing is expedient?
ALCIBIADES: Why not, Socrates?—But I am not going to be asked again from whom I learned, or when I
made the discovery.
SOCRATES: What a way you have! When you make a mistake which might be refuted by a previous
argument, you insist on having a new and different refutation; the old argument is a worn-our garment which
you will no longer put on, but some one must produce another which is clean and new. Now I shall disregard
this move of yours, and shall ask over again,—Where did you learn and how do you know the nature of the
expedient, and who is your teacher?
Plato, Alcibiades I
I perceive that you are dainty, and dislike the taste of a stale argument.
Plato, Alcibiades I
SOCRATES: And the only difference between one who argues as we are doing, and the orator who is
addressing an assembly, is that the one seeks to persuade a number, and the other an individual, of the same
things.
ALCIBIADES: I suppose so.
SOCRATES: Well, then, since the same person who can persuade a multitude can persuade individuals, try
conclusions upon me, and prove to me that the just is not always expedient.
Plato, Alcibiades I
SOCRATES: Answer my questions—that is all.

ALCIBIADES: Nay, I should like you to be the speaker.
SOCRATES: What, do you not wish to be persuaded?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly I do.
SOCRATES: And can you be persuaded better than out of your own mouth?
ALCIBIADES: I think not.
SOCRATES: Then you shall answer.
Plato, Alcibiades I
SOCRATES: And all this I prove out of your own mouth, for I ask and you answer?
ALCIBIADES: I must acknowledge it to be true.
Plato, Alcibiades I
49
ALCIBIADES: I solemnly declare, Socrates, that I do not know what I am saying. Verily, I am in a strange
state, for when you put questions to me I am of different minds in successive instants.
SOCRATES: And are you not aware of the nature of this perplexity, my friend?
ALCIBIADES: Indeed I am not.
SOCRATES: Do you suppose that if some one were to ask you whether you have two eyes or three, or two
hands or four, or anything of that sort, you would then be of different minds in successive instants?
ALCIBIADES: I begin to distrust myself, but still I do not suppose that I should.
SOCRATES: You would feel no doubt; and for this reason—because you would know?
ALCIBIADES: I suppose so.
SOCRATES: And the reason why you involuntarily contradict yourself is clearly that you are ignorant?
ALCIBIADES: Very likely.
SOCRATES: And if you are perplexed in answering about just and unjust, honorable and dishonorable, good
and evil, expedient and inexpedient, the reason is that you are ignorant of them, and therefore in perplexity.
Is not that clear?
ALCIBIADES: I agree.
SOCRATES: But is this always the case, and is a man necessarily perplexed about that of which he has no
knowledge?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly he is.
SOCRATES: And do you know how to ascend into heaven?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: And in this case, too, is your judgment perplexed?
ALCIBIADES: No.
SOCRATES: Do you see the reason why, or shall I tell you?
ALCIBIADES: Tell me.
SOCRATES: The reason is, that you not only do not know, my friend, but you do not think that you know.
Plato, Alcibiades I
50
SOCRATES: But when people think that they do not know, they entrust their business to others?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And so there is a class of ignorant persons who do not make mistakes in life, because they trust
others about things of which they are ignorant?
ALCIBIADES: True.
SOCRATES: Who, then, are the persons who make mistakes? They cannot, of course, be those who know?
SOCRATES: But if neither those who know, nor those who know that they do not know, make mistakes,
there remain those only who do not know and think that they know.
ALCIBIADES: Yes, only those.
SOCRATES: Then this is ignorance of the disgraceful sort which is mischievous?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And most mischievous and most disgraceful when having to do with the greatest matters?
ALCIBIADES: By far.
SOCRATES: And can there be any matters greater than the just, the honorable, the good, and the expedient?
ALCIBIADES: There cannot be.
SOCRATES: And these, as you were saying, are what perplex you?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: But if you are perplexed, then, as the previous argument has shown, you are not only ignorant
of the greatest matters, but being ignorant you fancy that you know them?
ALCIBIADES: I fear that you are right.
SOCRATES: And now see what has happened to you, Alcibiades! I hardly like to speak of your evil case,
but as we are alone I will: My good friend, you are wedded to ignorance of the most disgraceful kind, and of
this you are convicted, not by me, but out of your own mouth and by your own argument; wherefore also you
rush into politics before you are educated. Neither is your case to be deemed singular. For I might say the
same of almost all our statesmen.
Plato, Alcibiades I
ALCIBIADES: With your aid, Socrates, I will. And indeed, when I hear you speak, the truth of what you are
saying strikes home to me, and I agree with you, for our statesmen, all but a few, do appear to be quite
uneducated.
SOCRATES: What is the inference?
ALCIBIADES: Why, that if they were educated they would be trained athletes, and he who means to rival
them ought to have knowledge and experience when he attacks them; but now, as they have become
politicians without any special training, why should I have the trouble of learning and practicing? For I know
well that by the light of nature I shall get the better of them.
SOCRATES: My dear friend, what a sentiment! And how unworthy of your noble form and your high estate!
ALCIBIADES: What do you mean, Socrates; why do you say so?
SOCRATES: I am grieved when I think of our mutual love.
ALCIBIADES: At what?
SOCRATES: At your fancying that the contest on which you are entering is with people here.
ALCIBIADES: Why, what others are there?
SOCRATES: Is that a question which a magnanimous soul should ask?
ALCIBIADES: Do you mean to say that the contest is not with these?
SOCRATES: And suppose that you were going to steer a ship into action, would you only aim at being the
best pilot on board? Would you not, while acknowledging that you must possess this degree of excellence,
rather look to your antagonists, and not, as you are now doing, to your fellow combatants? You ought to be
so far above these latter, that they will not even dare to be your rivals; and, being regarded by you as
inferiors, will do battle for you against the enemy; this is the kind of superiority which you must establish
over them, if you mean to accomplish any noble action really worthy of yourself and of the state.
Plato, Alcibiades I
51
I think that you ought rather to turn your attention to Midias the quail-breeder and others like him, who
manage our politics; in whom, as the women would remark, you may still see the slaves' cut of hair, cropping
out in their minds as well as on their pates; and they come with their barbarous lingo to flatter us and not to
rule us.
ALCIBIADES: I mean by the good those who are able to rule in the city.
SOCRATES: Not, surely, over horses?
SOCRATES: But over men?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: When they are sick?
ALCIBIADES: No.
SOCRATES: Or on a voyage?
ALCIBIADES: No.
SOCRATES: Or reaping the harvest?
ALCIBIADES: No.
SOCRATES: When they are doing something or nothing?
ALCIBIADES: When they are doing something, I should say.
SOCRATES: I wish that you would explain to me what this something is.
Plato, Alcibiades I
ALCIBIADES: But, indeed, Socrates, I do not know what I am saying; and I have long been, unconsciously
to myself, in a most disgraceful state.
SOCRATES: Nevertheless, cheer up; at fifty, if you had discovered your deficiency, you would have been
too old, and the time for taking care of yourself would have passed away, but yours is just the age at which
the discovery should be made.
Plato, Alcibiades I
SOCRATES: And by gymnastic we take care of the body, and by the art of weaving and the other arts we
take care of the things of the body?
ALCIBIADES: Clearly.
SOCRATES: Then the art which takes care of each thing is different from that which takes care of the
belongings of each thing?
ALCIBIADES: True.
SOCRATES: Then in taking care of what belongs to you, you do not take care of yourself?
SOCRATES: For the art which takes care of our belongings appears not to be the same as that which takes
care of ourselves?
ALCIBIADES: Clearly not.
Plato, Alcibiades I
52
SOCRATES: And now let me ask you what is the art with which we take care of ourselves?
ALCIBIADES: I cannot say.
SOCRATES: At any rate, thus much has been admitted, that the art is not one which makes any of our
possessions, but which makes ourselves better?
ALCIBIADES: True.
SOCRATES: But should we ever have known what art makes a shoe better, if we did not know a shoe?
ALCIBIADES: Impossible.
SOCRATES: Nor should we know what art makes a ring better, if we did not know a ring?
ALCIBIADES: That is true.
SOCRATES: And can we ever know what art makes a man better, if we do not know what we are ourselves?
ALCIBIADES: Impossible.
SOCRATES: And is self-knowledge such an easy thing, and was he to be lightly esteemed who inscribed the
text on the temple at Delphi? Or is self-knowledge a difficult thing, which few are able to attain?
ALCIBIADES: At times I fancy, Socrates, that anybody can know himself; at other times the task appears to
be very difficult.
SOCRATES: But whether easy or difficult, Alcibiades, still there is no other way; knowing what we are, we
shall know how to take care of ourselves, and if we are ignorant we shall not know.
ALCIBIADES: That is true.
Plato, Alcibiades I
DIOGENES OF SINOPE (404-323BC)

Arbeit ist ein Mittel zum Zweck unsers Daseins; aber sie ist nicht der Zweck selbst.
Diogenes von Sinope
When Alexander the Great addressed him with greetings, and asked if he wanted anything, Diogenes replied
"Yes, stand a little out of my sunshine."
Plutarch, Alexander, 14 cf. Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 38, Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, v. 32
He was seized and dragged off to King Philip, and being asked who he was, replied, "A spy upon your
insatiable greed."
Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 43. cf. Plutarch, Moralia, 70CD
Once he saw the officials of a temple leading away some one who had stolen a bowl belonging to the
treasurers, and said, "The great thieves are leading away the little thief."
Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 45
When the slave auctioneer asked in what he was proficient, he replied, "In ruling men."
Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 74
ARISTOTLE (384-322 BC)

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.
Aristotle, cited by Seneca, On Tranquility of the Mind
He who arrives as a certain knowledge through proof must necessarily ... know and believe the
principles to a higher degree than what is deduced from them.
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 72a37, as cited in Ernesto Grassi, Rhetoric as Philosophy (1980), p. 26
Wit is educated insolence.

Aristotle
The high minded man cares more for truth than for what people think.
Aristotle
53
Man is by nature a political animal.
Aristotle, Politics
All men by nature desire knowledge.

Aristotle, Metaphysics
Liars when they speak the truth are not believed.

Aristotle, from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers
I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the
law.
Aristotle, from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers
To give a satisfactory decision as to the truth it is necessary to be rather an arbitrator than a party to the
dispute.
Aristotle
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

Aristotle
Law is mind without reason.

Aristotle
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle
Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is
suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit.
Aristotle
Education is the best provision for the journey to old age.

Aristotle
There are various different modes of life, and some do not lay any claim to well-being of the kind under
consideration, but are pursued merely for the sake of things necessary—for instance the lives devoted to the
vulgar and mechanic arts and those dealing with business (by vulgar arts I mean those pursued only for
reputation, by mechanic the sedentary and wage-earning pursuits, and by arts of business those concerned
with market purchase and retail selling); but on the other hand, the things related to the happy conduct of life
being three, the things already mentioned as the greatest possible goods for men—goodness, wisdom and
pleasure, we see that there are also three ways of life in which those to whom fortune gives opportunity
invariably choose to live, the life of politics, the life of philosophy, and the life of enjoyment.
Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, 1215a
Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.
Aristotle
Metaphysics
All men by nature desire to know; the proof of this is the pleasure caused by sensations, for even apart from
the usefulness, we enjoy them for themselves, and visual sensations more than the others.
Aristotle, Metaphysics 980b22, Complete Works, vol. 2, p. 1552
54
All men suppose what is called Wisdom to deal with the first causes and the principles of things; so that, as
has been said before, the man of experience is thought to be wiser than the possessors of any sense-
perception whatever, the artist wiser than the men of experience, the masterworker than the mechanic, and
the theoretical kinds of knowledge to be more of the nature of Wisdom than the productive.
Aristotle, Metaphysics 982a1, Complete Works, vol. 2, p. 1553
He who can learn things that are difficult, and not easy for man to know, is wise (sense-perception is
common to all, and therefore easy and no mark of Wisdom).
Aristotle, Metaphysics, book 1, Part 2, 982a10, Complete Works (1984), vol. 2, p. 1554
That which is desirable on its own account and for the sake of knowing it is more of the nature of Wisdom
than that which is desirable on account of its results.
The wise man must not be ordered but must order, and he must not obey another, but the less wise must obey
him.
Such and so many are the notions, then, which we have about Wisdom and the wise. Now of these
characteristics that of knowing all things must belong to him who has in the highest degree universal
knowledge; for he knows in a sense all the instances that fall under the universal. And these things, the most
universal, are on the whole the hardest for men to know; for they are farthest from the senses.
The wise man must not be ordered but must order, and he must not obey another, but the less wise
must obey him.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 982a17
Politics
Practical life is not necessarily directed toward other people, as some think; and it is not the case that
practical thoughts are only those which result from action for the sake of what ensues. On the
contrary, much more practical are those mental activities and reflections which have their goal in
themselves and take place for their own sake.
Aristotle, Politics, VII, 3, 8, 1325b16-20, cited in Pierre Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy, Michael Chase trans., p. 81
Some things which are commanded differ from others; not in the business, but in the end proposed thereby:
for which reason many works, even of a servile nature, are not disgraceful for young freemen to perform; for
many things which are ordered to be done are not honourable or dishonourable so much in their own nature
as in the end which is proposed, and the reason for which they are undertaken.
Aristotle, Politics
Some things which are commanded differ from others; not in the business, but in the end proposed thereby:
for which reason many works, even of a servile nature, are not disgraceful for young freemen to perform; for
many things which are ordered to be done are not honorable or dishonorable so much in their own nature as
in the end which is proposed, and the reason for which they are undertaken.
Aristotle, Politics, 1333a
The soul of man may be divided into two parts; that which has reason in itself, and that which hath not, but is
capable of obeying its dictates.
55
Life is divided into labor and rest, war and peace; and of what we do the objects are partly necessary and
useful, partly noble: and we should give the same preference to these that we do to the different parts of the
soul and its actions, as war to procure peace; labor, rest; and the useful, the noble.
Men ... ought to be fitted not for labor and war, but rather for rest and peace; and also to do not what
is necessary and useful, but rather what is fair and noble.
Neither must we suppose that any one of the citizens belongs to himself, for they all belong to the state.
Aristotle, Politics 1337a
Any occupation, art, or science, which makes the body or soul or mind of the freeman less fit for the practice
or exercise of virtue, is vulgar; wherefore we call those arts vulgar which tend to deform the body, and
likewise all paid employments, for they absorb and degrade the mind.
Aristotle, Politics 1337b5
All paid jobs … absorb and degrade the mind.

Aristotle, Politics 1337b5
Nicomachean Ethics
http://books.google.com/books?id=Mb7WAAAAMAAJ
http://books.google.com/books?id=lGb1WvV4AxcC
http://books.google.com/books?id=9SIUAAAAYAAJ
http://nothingistic.org/library/aristotle/nicomachean/index.html
It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the
subject admits.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 1, Chapter 3
The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are
seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.
While both are dear, piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.
56
Just as for a flute-player, a sculptor, or an artist, and, in general, for all things that have a function or activity,
the good and the 'well' is thought to reside in the function, so would it seem to be for man, if he has a
function. Have the carpenter, then, and the tanner certain functions or activities, and has man none? Is he
born without a function? Or as eye, hand, foot, and in general each of the parts evidently has a function, may
one lay it down that man similarly has a function apart from all these? What then can this be? Life seems to
be common even to plants, but we are seeking what is peculiar to man. Let us exclude, therefore, the life of
nutrition and growth. Next there would be a life of perception, but it also seems to be common even to the
horse, the ox, and every animal. There remains, then, an active life of the element that has a rational
principle; of this, one part has such a principle in the sense of being obedient to one, the other in the sense of
possessing one and exercising thought. And, as 'life of the rational element' also has two meanings, we must
state that life in the sense of activity is what we mean; for this seems to be the more proper sense of the term.
Now if the function of man is an activity of soul which follows or implies a rational principle, and if we say
'so-and-so' and 'a good so-and-so' have a function which is the same in kind, e.g. a lyre, and a good lyre-
player, and so without qualification in all cases, eminence in respect of goodness being added to the name of
the function (for the function of a lyre-player is to play the lyre, and that of a good lyre-player is to do so
well): if this is the case, and we state the function of man to be a certain kind of life, and this to be an activity
or actions of the soul implying a rational principle, and the function of a good man to be the good and noble
performance of these, and if any action is well performed when it is performed in accordance with the
appropriate excellence: if this is the case, human good turns out to be activity of soul in accordance with
virtue, and if there are more than one virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete.
We must also remember what has been said before, and not look for precision in all things alike, but in each
class of things such precision as accords with the subject-matter, and so much as is appropriate to the inquiry.
For a carpenter and a geometer investigate the right angle in different ways; the former does so in so far as
the right angle is useful for his work, while the latter inquires what it is or what sort of thing it is; for he is a
spectator of the truth.
Not only is a horse pleasant to the lover of horses, and a spectacle to the lover of sights, but also in the same
way just acts are pleasant to the lover of justice and in general virtuous acts to the lover of virtue. Now for
most men their pleasures are in conflict with one another because these are not by nature pleasant, but the
lovers of what is noble find pleasant the things that are by nature pleasant; and virtuous actions are such, so
that these are pleasant for such men as well as in their own nature. Their life, therefore, has no further need
of pleasure as a sort of adventitious charm, but has its pleasure in itself.
The man who does not rejoice in noble actions is not even good; since no one would call a man just
who did not enjoy acting justly, nor any man liberal who did not enjoy liberal actions; and similarly in all
other cases. If this is so, virtuous actions must be in themselves pleasant. But they are also good and noble,
and have each of these attributes in the highest degree, since the good man judges well about these attributes;
his judgment is such as we have described. Happiness then is the best, noblest, and most pleasant thing in the
world
Virtue, if regarded in its essence or theoretical conception, is a mean state, but, if regarded from the
point of view of the highest good, or of excellence, it is an extreme.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, J. Welldon, trans. (1987), Book 2, Chapter 6
57
Virtue ... is a mean state between two vices, one in excess, the other in defect; and it is so, moreover, because
of the vices one division falls short of, and the other exceeds what is right, both in passions and actions,
whilst virtue discovers the mean and chooses it. Therefore, with reference to its essence, and the definition
which states its substance, virtue is a mean state; but with reference to the standard of ‘the best’ and ‘the
excellent’ it is an extreme.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, R. Browne, trans. (1853), Book 2, Chapter 6
Virtue is displayed … in performing noble acts rather than in avoiding base ones.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, IV, 1, 7
To be able without hindrance to exercise his preeminent quality, whatever its nature, is real happiness.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, X.7, cited in Schopenhauer, Parerga und Paralipomena, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 341-342
It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
The good man ought to be a lover of self.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1169a
A person is thought to be great-souled if he claims much and deserves much.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, IV
Honor rendered by common people and on trivial grounds he will utterly despise
The great-souled man is justified in despising other people.

He is outspoken and frank, except when speaking with ironical self-deprecation, as he does to the common
people.
He will be incapable of living at the will of another, unless a friend, since to do so is slavish.
Such then being the great-souled man, the corresponding character on the side of deficiency is the small-
souled man, and that of excess the vain main.
He that claims much but does not deserve much is vain.

Reason is the true self of every man, since it is the supreme and better part of it.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, X:7
THEOPHRASTUS (371-287 BC)

Whereas not even the wise claim to be without fault or in need of advice, he, thinking he is more sensible
than they, cannot avoid ill-fortune. He talks nonsense, because he imagines his basic intelligence has
bestowed on him the talents of those who possess specialized knowledge.
Theophrastus, fragment cited by Ariston of Keos, Loeb Classical Library #255, p. 167
58
XUN ZI (312BC-230BC)
An Exhortation to Learning
Learning proceeds until death and only then does it stop. ... Its purpose cannot be given up for even a
moment. To pursue it is to be human, to give it up to be a beast.
Xun Zi, “An Exhortation to Learning,” E. Hutton, trans., Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy (2001), p. 258
The learning of the gentleman enters through his ears, fastens to his heart, spreads through his four limbs,
and manifests itself in his actions. ... The learning of the petty person enters through his ears and passes out
his mouth. From mouth to ears is only four inches—how could it be enough to improve a whole body much
larger than that?
The gentleman knows that whatever is imperfect and unrefined does not deserve praise. ... He makes his eyes
not want to see what is not right, makes his ears not want to hear that is not right, makes his mouth not want
to speak what is not right, and makes his heart not want to deliberate over what is not right. ... For this
reason, power and profit cannot sway him, the masses cannot shift him, and nothing in the world can shake
him.
Cultivating Oneself
One whose intentions and thoughts are cultivated will disregard wealth and nobility. One whose greatest
concern is for the Way and righteousness will take lightly kings and dukes. It is simply that when one
examines oneself on the inside, external goods carry little weight. A saying goes, "The gentleman makes
things his servants. The petty man is servant to things."
Xun Zi, “Cultivating Oneself,” E. Hutton, trans., Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy (2001), p. 263
If an action ... involves little profit but much righteousness, do it.

Xun Zi, “Cultivating Oneself,” E. Hutton, trans., Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy (2001), p. 263
Human nature is evil

Human nature is evil; its goodness derives from conscious activity. Now it is human nature to be born with a
fondness for profit. Indulging this leads to contention and strife, and the sense of modesty and yielding with
which one was born disappears. One is born with feelings of envy and hate, and, by indulging these, one is
led into banditry and theft, so that the sense of loyalty and good faith with which he was born disappears.
One is born with the desires of the ears and eyes and with a fondness for beautiful sights and sounds, and, by
indulging these, one is led to licentiousness and chaos, so that the sense of ritual, rightness, refinement, and
principle with which one was born is lost. Hence, following human nature and indulging human emotions
will inevitably lead to contention and strife, causing one to rebel against one’s proper duty, reduce principle
to chaos, and revert to violence. Therefore one must be transformed by the example of a teacher and guided
by the way of ritual and rightness before one will attain modesty and yielding, accord with refinement and
ritual, and return to order.
Xun Zi, “Human Nature is Evil,” Sources of Chinese Tradition (1999), vol. 1, pp. 179-180
A person who is transformed by the instructions of a teacher, devotes himself to study, and abides by ritual
and rightness may become a noble person, while one who follows his nature and emotions, is content to give
free play to his passions, and abandons ritual and rightness is a lesser person.
Xun Zi, “Human Nature is Evil,” Sources of Chinese Tradition (1999), vol. 1, p. 180
59
A questioner asks: If human nature is evil, then where do ritual and rightness come from? I reply: ritual and
rightness are always created by the conscious activity of the sages.
A person who is shallow aspires to depth; one who is ugly aspires to beauty; one who is narrow aspires to
breadth; one who is poor aspires to wealth; one who is humble aspires to esteem. Whatever one lacks in
oneself he must seek outside.
The straightening board was created because of warped wood, and the plumb line came into being because of
things that are not straight. Rulers are established and ritual and rightness are illuminated because the nature
is evil.
EPICURUS (341-270 BC)

Death is nothing to us; for that which has been dissolved into its elements experiences no sensation, and that
which has no sensation is nothing to us.
Epicurus
Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.

Epicurus, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 207
If you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor; if according to people’s opinions, you will
never be rich.
Epicurus, cited in Zygmunt Bauman, The Art of Life (Cambridge: 2008), p. 33
No pleasure is a bad thing in itself, but the things which produce certain pleasures entail disturbances many
times greater than the pleasures themselves.
Epicurus, “Principal Doctrines,” 8
The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals
extends to infinity.
Epicurus
When tolerable security against our fellow-men is attained, then (on a basis of power sufficient to afford
support and of material prosperity) arises in most genuine form the security of a quiet private life withdrawn
from the multitude.
He who understands the limits of life knows how easy it is to procure enough to remove the pain of
want and make the whole life complete and perfect. Hence he has no longer any need of things which
are not to be won save by labor and conflict.
If you hastily affirm as true all that awaits confirmation as well as that which does not, you will not
escape error.
Of our desires some are natural and necessary; others are natural, but not necessary; others, again, are neither
natural nor necessary, but are due to illusory opinion.
Injustice is not in itself an evil, but only in its consequence, viz. the terror which is excited by apprehension
that those appointed to punish such offences will discover the injustice.
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Will the wise man do things that the laws forbid, knowing that he will not be found out? A simple answer is
not easy to find.
Epicurus, Fragment 2
Beauty and virtue and the like are to be honored, if they give pleasure; but if they do not give pleasure, we
must bid them farewell.
If you wish to make Pythocles rich, do not give him more money, but diminish his desire.
I spit upon luxurious pleasures not for their own sake, but because of the inconveniences that follow them
The man who follows nature and not vain opinions is independent in all things. For in reference to what is
enough for nature every possession is riches, but in reference to unlimited desires even the greatest
wealth is not riches but poverty.
Nothing satisfies the man who is not satisfied with a little.

Self-sufficiency is the greatest of all riches.

By means of occupations worthy of a beast abundance of riches is heaped up, but a miserable life results.
He who least needs tomorrow will most gladly go to meet tomorrow.

The psyche is a corporeal thing

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus, “Concerning mind” (Everyman 1995 p. 22)
It is impossible to conceive anything that is incorporeal as self-existent except empty space.

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus, “No incorporeal entity can exist” (Everyman 1995 p. 22)
It is better to be unfortunate while acting reasonably than to prosper acting foolishly.

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus, “The Happy Mortal” (Everyman 1995 p. 46)
For most men rest is stagnation and activity madness.

Epicurus, “Vatican Sayings,” XI
I would prefer to speak openly and like an oracle to give answers serviceable to all mankind, even
though no one should understand me, rather than to conform to popular opinions and so win the
praise freely scattered by the mob.
Epicurus, “Vatican Sayings,” XXIX
We must not pretend to study philosophy, but study it in reality: for it is not the appearance of health that we
need, but real health.
Epicurus, “Vatican Sayings,” LIV
Any man who does not think that what he has is more than ample, is an unhappy man, even if he is master of
the whole world.
Epicurus, cited in Seneca, Letters, 9 (Robin Campbell trans.)
61
To live under constraint is a misfortune, but there is no constraint to live under constraint.
Epicurus, cited in Seneca, Letters, 12 (Robin Campbell trans.)
Joyful poverty is an honorable thing.

Epicurus, cited in Seneca, Letters, 2.5
You must be the slave of philosophy if you would enjoy true freedom.
The fool’s life … is directed totally at the future.

For many, the acquisition of riches has not made an end of troubles, but an alteration.
They live badly who are always beginning to live.

I have never wished to please the crowd: for what I know, they do not approve; what they approve, I do not
know.
SEXTUS THE PYTHAGOREAN (c. 300 BC)

[Pythagoras (570BC-495BC)]
e.g. in The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library: An Anthology of Ancient Writings (1987)
The sage and the contemner of wealth most resemble God.

Sextus the Pythagorean, Selected Sentences, #2
You have in yourself some thing similar to God, and therefore use yourself as the temple of God, on account
of that which in you resembles God.
The greatest honor which can be paid to God is to know and imitate him.
Consider lost all the time in which you do not think of divinity.
A good intellect is the choir of divinity.

Be not anxious to please the multitude

Accustom your soul after (it has conceived all that is great of ) divinity, to conceive something great of itself.
Nothing is so peculiar to wisdom as truth.

To live, indeed, is not in our power; but to live rightly is.

There is danger, and no negligible one, to speak of God even the things that are true.
62
You should not dare to speak of God to the multitude.
He who is worthy of God is also a god among men.

He best honors God who makes his intellect as like God as possible.
It is not death; but a bad life, which destroys the soul.

PUBLIUS SYRUS (1ST CENTURY BC)

Admonish thy friends in secret, praise them openly.
Publius Syrus
An angry man is again angry with himself when he returns to reason.

Publius Syrus
It is no profit to have learned well, if you neglect to do well.

Publius Syrus
Every day should be passed as if it were to be our last.

Publius Syrus
The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus

http://books.google.com/books?id=_QQSAAAAIAAJ
Even when we get what we wish, it is not ours.

Publius Syrus, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus (1856), # 15
A wise man rules his passions, a fool obeys them.

Human reason grows rich by self-conquest.

Tension weakens the bow; the want of it, the mind.

When Gold argues the cause, eloquence is impotent.

To receive a favor is to pawn your freedom.

The more skillfully the language of goodness is assumed, the greater the depravity.
In the presence of a good man, anger is speedily cooled.

It is well to moor your bark with two anchors.

63
Consult your conscience, rather than popular opinion.
Consider what you ought to say, and not what you think.
Wisdom had rather be buffeted than not be listened to.

Folly had rather be unheard than be buffeted.

Reproach in misfortune is an unseasonable cruelty.

He who can get more than belongs to him is apt to accommodate his desires to his opportunity.
Every man is a master in his own calling

Patience is a remedy for every sorrow.

The greatest of comforts is to be free from blame.

One day treats us like a hireling nurse, another, like a mother.

Pleasant is the remembrance of the ills that are past.

Avoid cupidity, and you conquer a kingdom.

A kindness should be received in the spirit that prompted it.

Speed itself is slow when cupidity waits.

The party to which the rabble belong is ever the worst.

Even calamity becomes virtue's opportunity.

The good to which we have become accustomed, is often an evil.

He who takes counsel of good faith, is just even to an enemy.

It is sometimes expedient to forget who we are.

64
We may with advantage at times forget what we know.
Pecuniary gain first suggested to men to make Fortune a goddess.

Many consult their reputation; but few their conscience.

The master is a slave when he fears those whom he rules.

Prosperity is the nurse of ill temper.

Bear without murmuring what cannot be changed.

Fortune has no lawful control over men's morals.

An over-taxed patience gives way to fierce anger.

A noble steed is not annoyed by the barking of dogs.

It is a useless defense which cannot find a fair trial.

The most formidable enemy lies hid in one's own heart.

There are some remedies worse than the disease.

Repentance for our past deeds is a severe mental punishment.

Powerful indeed is the empire of habit.

The severest affliction is the one which has never been tried.
Do not take part in the council, unless you are called.

Man's life is a loan, not a gift

Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself.

The sinner who repented after the offense, was a little imprudent.
65
Avarice is kind to no one, and most cruel toward itself.
To be not too sanguine of our conclusions, is one half of wisdom.

To forget the wrongs you receive, is to remedy them.

To do good you should know what good is.

There is more venom than truth in the words of envy.

The rancor of envy is concealed, but is none the less hostile.

To withstand the assaults of envy, you must be either a hero or a saint.

Shun an angry man for a moment — your enemy forever.

Anger thinks crime justifiable.

Every word of an angry man conveys a reproach.

When the angry man grows cool, he is angry with himself.

Anger is apt to forget the existence of law.

The Law keeps her eye on the angry man, when he does not see the Law.
He who chases two hares will catch neither.

He who lives in solitude may make his own laws.

A noble spirit finds a cure for injustice in forgetting it.

Mighty rivers may easily be leaped at their source.

Hard to bear is the poverty which follows misuse of riches.

It is bad management when we suffer fortune to be our guide.

66
They live ill who expect to live always.
He who is bent on doing evil, can never want occasion.

It is a bad plan that admits of no modification.

He should be called bad, who is good only for selfish ends.

He will become wicked himself, who feasts with the wicked.

Fear, and not kindness, restrains the vicious.

The master who fears his slave, is the greater slave.

To depend on another's nod for a livelihood, is a sad destiny.

Methinks you are unhappy, if you never have been so.

Delay is always vexatious, but it is wisdom's opportunity.

Understand your friend's character, but do not hate it.

The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself.

Every thing which has birth, must pay tribute to death.

We should bear our destiny, not weep over it.

Avarice never lacks a reason for refusing a favor.

No one should be judge in his own cause.

Be the first to laugh at your own blunder, and no one will laugh at you.
Depravity is its own greatest punishment.

Fortune takes nothing away but her own gifts.

67
There is no more shameful sight, than an old man commencing life.
The truth is lost when there is too much contention about it.
It is only the ignorant who despise education.

It is vain to be the pupil of a sage if you have no brains yourself.

He can best avoid a snare who knows how to set one.

Do not despise the lowest steps in the ascent to greatness.

He is not likely to perish in the ruins who trembles at a crack in the wall.
To control a man against his will, is not to correct him, but injure him.
That is not yours which fortune made yours.

You will find it difficult to be sole guardian over that which multitudes covet.
He bids fair to grow wise, who has discovered that he is not so.
Don't consider how many you can please, but whom.

It is not safe to indulge in a play of wits with kings.

To yield to our friends is not to be overcome, but to conquer.

There is no pleasure which continued enjoyment cannot render disgusting.

He is never happy whose thoughts always run with his fears.

The kind attentions of the wife, speedily gender disgust for the concubine.
He is a despicable sage whose wisdom does not profit himself.

A cheerful obedience is universal, when the worthy bear rule.

68
Every day should be passed as if it were to be our last.
Be at war with men's vices, at peace with themselves.

Craft, and not sorrow, is seen in a hypocrite's tears.

We find something of the favor sought in a graceful refusal.

Patience and fortitude create their own happiness.

You do well to consider your friend's error your own.

Be your money's master, not its slave.

To take refuge with an inferior, is to betray one's self.

Hearken rather to your conscience than to opinion.

Freedom alone is the source of noble action.

When you have good materials, employ good workmen.

He who is eager to condemn, takes delight in condemning.

A hasty verdict betrays a desire to find a crime committed.

Wit itself is folly in a sage.

He will yield to fear, who has no regard for honor.

God looks at the clean hands, not the full ones.

In being modest there is a slight touch of servility.

He who violates another's honor loses his own.

How happy the life unembarrassed by the cares of business!

69
How unhappy is he who cannot forgive himself!
How often must he ask for pardon who has refused it when asked!
How timid is he who stands in terror of poverty!

Consider the useful agreeable, even though if were not.

He who hesitates to take the right course, deliberates to no purpose.

It is no vice to keep a vice out of sight.

He who can play the fool at pleasure can be wise if he will.

He who has the power to harm is dreaded when he does not intend harm.
He gets through too late who goes too fast.

He who praises himself will speedily find a censor.

He who fears his friend teaches his friend to fear him.

Virtue's deeds are glory's deeds.

It takes a long time to bring excellence to maturity.

They pass peaceful lives who ignore mine and thine.

The wise man guards against future evils as if they were present.
What we admire, we never cease commending to ourselves.

It matters not with what purpose you do it, if the act itself be bad.
He can have what he wishes who wishes just enough.

When the soul rules over itself its empire is lasting.

70
He is condemned every day who stands in daily fear of condemnation.
When you are in love you are not wise, and when you are wise you are not in love.
When you forgive an enemy you gain many friends.

It is robbery to receive a favor which you cannot return.

Youth should be governed by reason, not by force.

Good health and good sense are two of life's greatest blessings.
He who imposes his own talk on the circle, does not converse; he plays the master.
It is not a hard lot to be obliged to return to the state whence we came.

I should not be pleased to be king, if I must therefore be pleased to be cruel.

You can obey a request much better than a command.

The eyes and ears of the mob are often false witnesses.
Vain is that wisdom which does not profit the possessor.

You are eloquent enough if truth speaks through you.

Better be ignorant of a matter than half know it.

The angry think their power greater than it is.

Speak well of your friend in public, admonish him in secret.

Kindness of heart is always happy.

Always shun whatever may make you angry.

He punishes himself who repents of his deeds.

71
The greatest of empires, is the empire over one's self.
Guilt's assistant is guilt's participant.

In critical junctures, temerity is wont to take the place of prudence.

Glory is apt to follow when industry has prepared the road.

There is hope of improvement so long as a man is alive to shame.

It is folly to censure him whom all the world adores.

It is folly to punish your neighbour by fire when you live next door.
Benevolence tries persuasion first, and then severer measures.

Avarice is as destitute of what it has, as what it has not.

Suspicion begets suspicion.

He is much to be dreaded who stands in dread of poverty.

Timidity styles itself caution; stinginess frugality.

The poor man is ruined as soon as he begins to ape the rich.

When the elder do wrong, the younger learn the lesson.

The wounds of the soul should be cured before those of the body.
Either be silent, or say something better than silence.

Why do we not hear the truth? Because we don't speak it.

It is better to trust virtue than fortune.

Would you be known by every body? Then you know nobody.

72
He is not considered a dupe who understood that he was deceived.
The little vices of the great must needs be accounted very great.
It is an advantage not to possess that which you must hold against your will.
Anger would inflict punishment on another; meanwhile, it tortures itself.

The happy man is not he who seems thus to others, but who seems thus to himself.
Error and repentance are the attendants on hasty decisions.

How terrible is that anguish which can find no voice

It is a bitter dose to be taught obedience after you have learned to rule.

He who subdues his temper vanquishes his greatest enemy.

He abounds in virtues who loves those of others.

Reason avails nothing when passion has the mastery.

Death ever uncertain gets the start of such as are always beginning to live.
Money is a servant if you know how to use it; if not, it is a master.

When we speak evil of others, we generally condemn ourselves.

The later in life evil courses are begun, the more disgraceful they are.
The same man can rarely say a great deal, and say it to the purpose.
Not the criminals, but their crimes, it is well to extirpate.

In our hatred of guilt, it is folly to ruin innocence.

Let your life be pleasing to the multitude, and it can not be so to yourself.
73
If you gain new friends, don't forget the old ones.
Avarice is as destitute of what it has, as poverty of what it has not.

LUCRETIUS (99-55BC)
De Rerum Natura
Now, for the rest, lend ears unstopped, and the intellect’s keen edge;
Severed from cares, attend to a true philosophical system;
Lest it should hap that my gifts which I zealously set forth before you,
Scorned, you abandon untouched before they can be comprehended.
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, W. H. Brown, trans., Book 1, § 2
When in full view on the earth man’s life lay rotting and loathsome,
Crushed ’neath the ponderous load of Religion’s cruel burdensome shackles,
Who out of heaven displayed her forehead of withering aspect,
Lowering over the heads of mortals with hideous menace,
Upraising mortal eyes ’twas a Greek who first, daring, defied her;
’Gainst man’s relentless foe ’twas Man first framed to do battle.
Him could nor tales of the gods nor heaven’s fierce thunderbolts’ crashes
Curb; nay rather they inflamed his spirit’s keen courage to covet.
His it should first be to shiver the close-bolted portals of Nature.
Therefore his soul’s live energy triumphed, and far and wide compassed
World’s walls’ blazing lights, and the boundless Universe traversed
Thought-winged; from realms of space he comes back victorious and tells us
What we may, what we must not perceive; what law universal
Limits the ken of each, what deep-set boundary landmark:
Then how in turn underfoot Religion is hurled down and trampled,
Then how that victory lifts mankind to high level of heaven.
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One apprehension assails me here, that haply you reckon
Godless the pathway you tread which leads to the Science of Nature
As to the highroad of sin. But rather how much more often
Has that same vaunted Religion brought forth deeds sinful and godless.
Thus the chosen Greek chiefs, the first of their heroes, at Aulis,
Trivia’s altar befouled with the blood of Iphianassa.
For when the equal-trimmed ribbons, her virgin tresses encircling,
Unfurled from each fair cheek so bravely, so gallantly fluttered;
Soon as she saw her sorrowing sire in front of the altar
Standing, with serving-men near, their gleaming knives vainly concealing,
And, at the sight of her plight, her countrymen bitter tears shedding;
Dumb with fear, her knees giving way, to earth she fell sinking.
Nor in her woe could it be of avail to the hapless maiden
That it was she first gave to the king the title of father.
For, by men’s hands upborne, she was, quivering, led to the altar;
Not, forsooth, to the end that, sacred rites duly completed,
With ringing clarion song of marriage she might be escorted;
But, pure maid foully slain in wedlock’s appropriate season,
That she a victim might fall ’neath the slaughter stroke of her father,
So that a happy and lucky dispatch to the fleet might be granted!
Such are the darksome deeds brought to pass by Religion’s fell promptings!
Now this terror and darkness of mind must surely be scattered,

Not by rays of the sun, nor by gleaming arrows of daylight,
But by the outward display and unseen workings of Nature.
Since both in earth and sky they see that many things happen
Whereof they cannot by any known law determine the causes;
So their occurrence they ascribe to supernatural power.
If out of nothing things sprang into life, then every species

From all alike could be born, and none would need any seed-germ.
First, mature men might rise from the sea, and scale-bearing fishes
Out of the earth; or again, fledged birds burst full-grown from heaven.
But do not think that the gods condescend to consider such matters,
Or that they mark the careers of individual atoms
So as to study the laws of Nature whereunto they conform.
When I pass on, for example, to speak of the soul, how ’tis mortal,
Know that I speak of the mind as well, inasmuch as together
Both one single entity form, one composite substance.
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, W. H. Brown, trans., Book 3 § 15
75
Know that the soul, too, is scattered abroad, and dies much more quickly,
And is the sooner resolved back into its primary atoms,
Once it has quitted the limbs of a man and abandoned his body.
For when the body, which forms its receptacle, cannot contain it,
Being from any cause crushed, or by issue of life-blood enfeebled,
How can you think that the soul can by fluid air be encompassed?
How can the air, than our body more rare, be able to hold it?
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, W. H. Brown, trans., Book 3 § 15
GAIUS VALERIUS CATULLUS (84-54 BC)

Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus...
soles occidere et redire possunt:
nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
Gaius Valerius Catullus, Carmina, III, 1-4
Let us live and love, my Lesbia...
and value at a penny all the talk of crabbed old men.
Suns may set and rise again:
for us, when our brief light has set,
there’s the sleep of perpetual night.
Gaius Valerius Catullus, Carmina, III, 1-4
VIRGIL (70-19 BC)

Libertas, quae sera, tamen respexit inertem,
Candidior postquam tondenti barba cadebat
Respexit tamen, etlongo post tempore venit.
Virgil, Bucolica
Liberty, which, though late, yet cast an eye upon me in my inactive time of life, after my beard began
to fall off with a greyish hue when I shaved: yet on me she cast her eye, and after a long period of
slavery came at last.
Virgil, Bucolica
HORACE (65 BC - 8 BC)

Certum voto pete finem.
Horace
Set a definite limit to your desire.
Horace, cited in Latin Quotations (New York: 2005), p. 15
Pulchrum est paucorum hominum.

Horace
Beauty is for the few.
Horace, Satires, I, 9, 44, cited in Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “The Improvers of Mankind”, § 5
Sit mihi quod nunc est, etiam minus, et mihi vivam

Quod superest aevi, si quid superesse volunt di.
Horace
Let me keep what I have now—or less even—so that I may live the rest of my life for myself (if the gods
grant me any more life to live).
Horace, Epistles, I, 18, cited in Montaigne, Essays, p. 1183
76
To flee vice is the beginning of virtue, and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom.
Horace, Epistles, Book I, epistle 1, line 41
Sapere aude.
Dare to be wise.
Horace, Epistles, Book I, epistle ii, line 40
Let him, who once has seen how far what he has given up excels what he has sought, go back in time and
seek again the things he has left.
Horace, Epistle 1.7
Why do you hasten to remove things that hurt your eyes, but if any thing gnaws your mind, defer the
time of curing it from year to year?
Horace, Epistle II
Money is a handmaiden if thou knowest how to use it—a mistress if thou knowest not.
Horace
Faults are soon copied.

Horace
He who postpones the hour of living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before
he crosses.
Horace
He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.
Horace
He wins every hand who mingles profit with pleasure.

Horace
The covetous man is ever in want.

Horace
Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.

Seize the day, put no trust in the morrow!
Horace
Think to yourself that every day is your last; the hour to which you do not look forward will come as a
welcome surprise.
Horace
Satires (ca. 35 BC)

http://archive.org/stream/satiresepistlesa00horauoft/satiresepistlesa00horauoft_djvu.txt
How comes it, Maecenas, that no man living is content with the lot which either his choice has given him, or
chance has thrown in his way, but each has praise for those who follow other paths?
Horace, Satires, Book I, Satire 1, H. Fairclough, trans. (1926), p. 5
Quamquam ridentem dicere verum quid vetat ? ut pueris olim dant crustula blandi doctores, elementa velint
ut discere prima.
Horace, Satirae, I, i, 24
What is to prevent one from telling truth as he laughs, even as teachers sometimes give cookies to
children to coax them into learning their A B C?
77
Suppose your threshing-floor has threshed out a hundred thousand bushels of grain; your stomach will not on
that account hold more than mine: 'tis as if in the slave-gang you by chance should carry the heavy bread-bag
on your shoulder, yet you would receive no more than the slave who carries nothing.
Horace, Satire I, H. Fairclough, trans. (1926), p. 9
What odds does it make to the man who lives within Nature's bounds, whether he ploughs a hundred
acres or a thousand?
A good many people, misled by blind desire, say, "You cannot have enough: for you get your rating from
what you have." What can you do to a man who talks thus? Bid him be miserable, since that is his whim. He
is like a rich miser in Athens who, they say, used thus to scorn the people's talk: "The people hiss me, but at
home I clap my hands for myself, once I gaze on the moneys in my chest."
To lie awake half-dead with fear, to be in terror night and day of wicked thieves, of fire, of slaves, who may
rob you and run away — is this so pleasant? In such blessings I could wish ever to be poorest of the poor.
Can you wonder, when you put money above all else, that nobody pays you the love you do not earn?
Horace, Satire I, H. Fairclough, trans. (1926), p. 11
Set bounds to the quest of wealth, and as you increase your means let your fear of poverty lessen, and when
you have won your heart's desire, begin to bring your toil to an end.
No man because of his greed is self-contented, but rather does each praise those who follow other paths,
pines away because his neighbour's goat shows a more distended udder, and, instead of matching himself
with the greater crowd of poorer men, strives to surpass first one and then another. In such a race there is
ever a richer in your way.
You would hardly believe how poor a friend he is to himself.

Horace, Satires, Book I, Satire 2, H. Fairclough, trans. (1926), pp. 19-21
Would it not be more profitable to ask what limit nature assigns to desires, what satisfaction she will give
herself, what privation will cause her pain?
Horace, Satires, Book I, Satire ii, H. Fairclough, trans. (1926), p. 27
When thirst parches your jaws, do you ask for cups of gold?
Horace, Satires, Book I, Satire 2, H. Fairclough, trans. (1926), pp. 27-29
The pleasures I love are those easy to attain.

Satires (ca. 35 BC) Rudd trans.

What harm can there be in presenting the truth with a laugh, as teachers sometimes give their children
biscuits to coax them into learning their ABC?
Horace, Satires, Book I, Satire 1, N. Rudd, trans. (2005), v. 24
78
That fellow turning the heavy soil with his rough plough,
the crooked barman, the soldier, and the sailors who dash so bravely
across the seven seas maintain that their only object
in enduring hardship is to make their pile, so when they are old
they can then retire with an easy mind. In the same way the tiny ant
with immense industry (for he is their model)
hauls whatever he can with his mouth and adds it to the heap
he is building, thus making conscious and careful provision for the future.
Then, as the year wheels round into dismal Aquarius, the ant
never sets foot out of doors but, very sensibly, lives
on what he has amassed. But you—neither scorching heat nor the cold
of winter can divert you from your money-grubbing; fire, tempest, sword—
nothing can stop you; no one else must be richer than you.
Horace, Satires, Book I, Satire 1, N. Rudd, trans. (2005), v. 28-40
People are enticed by a desire which continually cheats them.

‘Nothing is enough,’ they say, ‘for you’re only worth what you have.’
Let’s put a limit to the scramble for money. ... Having got what you wanted, you ought to begin to bring that
struggle to an end.
Must everyone, because of greed,

be at odds with himself and envy those in other occupations;
waste away because his neighbor’s goat has more milk in her udder;
and instead of comparing himself with the thousands who are worse off,
struggle to outdo first him and then him? However fast
he runs there is always somebody richer just in front.
Horace Satires, Book I, Satire 1, N. Rudd, trans. (2005), v. 108
Ars Poetica (ca. 18 BC)

Brevis esse laboro,
obscurus fio.
Horace, Ars Poetica, 25
Struggling to be brief I become obscure.
Horace, Ars Poetica, Line 25
Grais ingenium, Grais dedit ore rotundo

Musa loqui, præter laudem nullius avaris.
The Muse gave the Greeks their native character, and allowed them to speak in noble tones, they who desired
nothing but praise.
Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci,

lectorem delectando pariterque monendo.
He wins every hand who mingles profit with pleasure, by delighting and instructing the reader at the same
time.
Horace, Ars Poetica, Line 343
79
SENECA (54 BC-39 AD)
Aliena vitia in oculis habemus, a tergo nostra sunt.
The vices of others we have before our eyes, our own are behind our backs.
Seneca, cited in Latin Quotations (New York: 2005), p. 7
Alium silere quod valeas, primus sile.

To make another person hold his tongue, be first silent.
Brevissima ad divitias per contemptus divitiarum via est.

The shortest way to wealth lies in the contempt of wealth.
Omnis stultitia laborat fastidio sui.

Stupidity suffers from its own weariness.
Seneca, cited in Schopenhauer, Parerga und Paralipomena, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 331
Res severa est verum gaudium.

True joy is a serious thing.
Seneca
Potentissimus est qui se bahet in potestate.

Most powerful is he who has himself in his power.
Seneca, Epist. moral., XC, 34
Rursus prosperum ac felix scelus virtus vocatur; sontibus parent boni, ius est in armis, opprimit leges timor.
Prosperous and successful crime goes by the name of virtue; good men obey the bad, might is right and fear
oppresses law.
Seneca, Hercules Furens (The Madness of Hercules), lines 251-253 (Amphitryon)
Cogi qui potest nescit mori.

Who can be forced has not learned how to die.
Seneca, Hercules Furens (The Madness of Hercules), line 426 (Megara)
Illi mors gravis incubat

Qui notus nimis omnibus
Ignotus moritur sibi
On him does death lie heavily, who, but too well known to all, dies to himself unknown.
Seneca, Thyestes, lines 401-403 (Chorus)
Cui prodest scelus, is fecit.

Who profits by a sin has done the sin.
Seneca, Medea, lines 500-501 (Medea)
We become alternately merchants and merchandise, and we ask, not what a thing truly is, but what it costs.
Seneca, Letter 115
I shall never be ashamed of quoting a bad author if the line is good.

Seneca
Nothing is so contemptible as the sentiments of the mob.

Seneca
Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.

Seneca, Hercules Furens, Book I, 1, line 84
80
It [life] will cause to commotion to remind you of its swiftness, but glide on quietly. ... What will be the
outcome? You have been preoccupied while life hastens on. Meanwhile, death will arrive, and you have no
choice in making yourself available for that.
Seneca, “On the Shortness of Life”
You must drink quickly as from a rapid stream that will not always flow.
Seneca, “On the Shortness of Life”
A measure of the difficulty of achieving the happy life is that the greater a man’s energy in striving for it, the
further he goes away from it if he had taken a wrong turn on the road.
Seneca, “On the happy life,” Dialogues and Essays, J. Davie, tans., (Oxford: 2007), p. 85
There is nothing that brings greater trouble on us than the fact that we conform to rumor, thinking that what
has won widespread approval is best, and that, as we have so many to follow as good, we live by the
principle, not of reason, but of imitation.
Seneca, Dialogues and Essays, J. Davie, tans., (Oxford: 2007), p. 44, cited in Zygmunt Bauman, The Art of Life (Cambridge: 2008), p. 33
Natural desires are limited; those which spring from false opinions have nowhere to stop, for falsity has no
point of termination.
The larger the size of the crowd we mingle with, the greater the danger.
Ut quisque contemtissimus et ludibrio est, ita solutissimae libguae est.

The more ridiculous a man is, the readier he is with his tongue.
Seneca
Let him that has done the good office conceal it; let him that has received it disclose it.
Seneca, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 56
We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end to them.
Retirement without the love of letters is a living burial.

To one who knows, it is superfluous to give advice; to one who does not know, it is insufficient.
Seneca
Be silent as to services you have rendered, but speak of favors you have received.
Seneca
Dangerous is wrath concealed. Hatred proclaimed doth lose its chance of wreaking vengeance.
Seneca
Desultory reading is delightful, but to be beneficial, our reading must be carefully directed.
Seneca
He who spares the wicked injures the good.

Seneca
I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.

Seneca
If a man does not know to what port he is steering, no wind is favorable to him.
Seneca
81
It is a great thing to know the season for speech and the season for silence.
Seneca
It is easier to exclude harmful passions than to rule them, and to deny them admittance than to control them
after they have been admitted.
Seneca
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
Seneca
It is rash to condemn where you are ignorant.

Seneca
As was his language so was his life.

Seneca
Be not too hasty either with praise or blame; speak always as though you were giving evidence
Seneca
Many things have fallen only to rise higher.

Seneca
No one can wear a mask for very long.

Seneca
One should count each day a separate life.

Seneca
Imago Animi Sermo Est

Speech is the mirror of the mind.
Seneca
The greatest remedy for anger is delay.

Seneca
The mind is slow to unlearn what it learnt early.

Seneca
To be always fortunate, and to pass through life with a soul that has never known sorrow, is to be ignorant of
one half of nature.
Seneca
Toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other.

Seneca
We most often go astray on a well trodden and much frequented road.

Seneca
We should conduct ourselves not as if we ought to live for the body, but as if we could not live without it.
Seneca
We should every night call ourselves to an account: What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions
opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired?
Seneca
Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool.

Seneca
82
Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.
Seneca
It is quality rather than quantity that matters.

Seneca
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
Seneca (cited in Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 313)
It is better to be despised for simplicity than to be tormented by continual hypocrisy.

Seneca, On Tranquility of the Mind
Ut omnium rerum, sic litterarum quoque intemperantia laboramus.

In learning as in everything else, we suffer from lack of temperance.
Seneca, Epist. moral., CVI, 12
Ars prima regni est posse invidiam pati.

Seneca, Hercules Furens
'Tis the first art of kings, the power to suffer hate.
Seneca, The Madness of Hercules, F. Miller, trans., line 353
A good mind possesses a kingdom.

Seneca, Thyestes, 380
We are all chained to fortune: the chain of one is made of gold, and wide, while that of another is short and
rusty. But what difference does it make? The same prison surrounds all of us, and even those who have
bound others are bound themselves; unless perchance you think that a chain on the left side is lighter. Honors
bind one man, wealth another; nobility oppresses some, humility others; some are held in subjection by an
external power, while others obey the tyrant within; banishments keep some in one place, the priesthood
others. All life is slavery. Therefore each one must accustom himself to his own condition and complain
about it as little as possible, and lay hold of whatever good is to be found near him. Nothing is so bitter that a
calm mind cannot find comfort in it. Small tablets, because of the writer's skill, have often served for many
purposes, and a clever arrangement has often made a very narrow piece of land habitable. Apply reason to
difficulties; harsh circumstances can be softened, narrow limits can be widened, and burdensome things can
be made to press less severely on those who bear them cleverly.
Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind
Your good fortune is not to need good fortune.

Seneca, “On Providence,” Essays
Moral Essays
It is not honorable, as in acts of kindness to requite benefits with benefits, so to requite injuries with injuries.
In the one case it is shameful to be outdone, in the other not to be outdone.
Seneca, Moral Essays, “On Anger,” II, XXXII, 2
Nemo autem regere potest nisi qui et regi.

Seneca, De Ira
No one is able to rule unless he is also able to be ruled.
Seneca, On Anger, Book 2, line 15
83
Letters
[Seneca] would have denounced the opinion to which most philosophers, tacitly or otherwise, have
come round in the last half-century, that it is no part of the business of philosophy to turn people into
better persons, as tantamount to desertion or lèse-majesté.
Robin Campbell, introduction to Seneca, Letters
[Seneca’s] tremendous faith in philosophy … was grounded on a belief that her end was the practical
one of curing souls, of bringing peace and order to the feverish minds of men pursuing the wrong aims
in life.
Robin Campbell, introduction to Seneca, Letters
The primary indication, to my thinking, of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and
linger in his own company.
Seneca, “On discursiveness in reading,” Moral Letters, R. Gummere, trans. (1917)
Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you
discursive and unsteady. You must linger among a limited number of master-thinkers, and digest their works,
if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind. Everywhere means nowhere.
When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.
And the same thing must hold true of men who seek intimate acquaintance with no single author, but visit
them all in a hasty and hurried manner. Food does no good and is not assimilated into the body if it leaves the
stomach as soon as it is eaten; nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent change of medicine; no wound will
heal when one salve is tried after another; a plant which is often moved can never grow strong.
Since you cannot read all the books which you may possess, it is enough to possess only as many books as
you can read. “But,” you reply, “I wish to dip first into one book and then into another.” I tell you that it is
the sign of an overnice appetite to toy with many dishes; for when they are manifold and varied, they cloy
but do not nourish.
It is clear to you, I am sure, Lucilius, that no man can live a happy life, or even a supportable life, without the
study of wisdom; you know also that a happy life is reached when our wisdom is brought to completion, but
that life is at least endurable even when our wisdom is only begun. This idea, however, clear though it is,
must be strengthened and implanted more deeply by daily reflection; it is more important for you to keep the
resolutions you have already made than to go on and make noble ones. You must persevere, must develop
new strength by continuous study, until that which is only a good inclination becomes a good settled purpose.
Hence you no longer need to come to me with much talk and protestations; I know that you have made great
progress. I understand the feelings which prompt your words; they are not feigned or specious words.
Nevertheless I shall tell you what I think, — that at present I have hopes for you, but not yet perfect trust.
And I wish that you would adopt the same attitude towards yourself; there is no reason why you should put
confidence in yourself too quickly and readily. Examine yourself; scrutinize and observe yourself in diverse
ways; but mark, before all else, whether it is in philosophy or merely in life itself that you have made
progress. Philosophy is no trick to catch the public; it is not devised for show. It is a matter, not of words, but
of facts. It is not pursued in order that the day may yield some amusement before it is spent, or that our
leisure may be relieved of a tedium that irks us. It moulds and constructs the soul; it orders our life, guides
our conduct, shows us what we should do and what we should leave undone; it sits at the helm and directs
our course as we waver amid uncertainties. Without it, no one can live fearlessly or in peace of mind.
Countless things that happen every hour call for advice; and such advice is to be sought in philosophy.
Seneca, Moral Letters, R. Gummere, trans. (1917)
84
Whatever is well said by anyone is mine.
Nature’s wants are slight; the demands of opinion are boundless. Suppose that the property of many
millionaires is heaped up in your possession. Assume that fortune carries you far beyond the limits of a
private income, decks you with gold, clothes you in purple, and brings you to such a degree of luxury and
wealth that you can bury the earth under your marble floors; that you may not only possess, but tread upon,
riches. Add statues, paintings, and whatever any art has devised for the luxury; you will only learn from such
things to crave still greater.
Natural desires are limited; but those which spring from false opinion can have no stopping-point. The false
has no limits. When you are travelling on a road, there must be an end; but when astray, your wanderings are
limitless. Recall your steps, therefore, from idle things, and when you would know whether that which you
seek is based upon a natural or upon a misleading desire, consider whether it can stop at any definite point. If
you find, after having travelled far, that there is a more distant goal always in view, you may be sure that this
condition is contrary to nature.
Non qui parum habet, sed qui plus cupit, pauper est.
It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.
Seneca, Letter 2, line 6
Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live
nobly, but within no man’s power to live long.
Seneca , Letter 22, line 17
Cruelties are practised in accordance with acts of senate and popular assembly, and the public is bidden to do
that which is forbidden to the individual. Deeds that would be punished by loss of life when committed in
secret, are praised by us because uniformed generals have carried them out.
Seneca, letter 95, line 30
Non vitae sed scholae discimus.

Not for life, but for school do we learn.
Seneca, letter 106, line 12
Nothing is as certain as that the vices of leisure are gotten rid of by being busy.
Seneca, Letters
Ignoranti quem portum petat nullus suus ventus est.

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable.
Seneca, Letters
People who spend their whole life traveling abroad end up having plenty of places where they can find
hospitality but no real friendships. The same must needs be the case with people who never set about
acquiring an intimate acquaintanceship with any one great writer, but skip from one to another, paying flying
visits to them all.
Seneca, Letters, 2 (Robin Campbell trans.)
It is not the man who has too little that is poor, but the one that hankers after more. What difference
does if make how much there is laid away in a man’s safe or in his barns, how many head of stock he grazes
or how much capital he puts out at interest, if he is always after what is another’s and only counts what he
has yet to get, never what he has already.
85
After friendship is formed you must trust, but before that you must judge.
Some men’s fear of being deceived has taught people to deceive them.
Nulli potest secura vita contingere qui de producenda nimis cogitat.

No man can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it.
Letter 4, “On the terrors of death,” line 4
Refrain from following the example of those who seek attention, and not their own improvement, by doing
certain things which are calculated to give rise to comment on their appearance or way of living.
Seneca, Letters, 5
The very name of philosophy, however modest the manner in which it is pursued, is unpopular enough as it
is: imagine what the reaction would be if we started dissociating ourselves from the conventions of society.
Inwardly everything should be different but our outward face should conform to the crowd.
Let our aim be a way of life not diametrically opposed to, but better than that of the mob.
Let our aim be a way of life not diametrically opposed to, but better than that of the mob. Otherwise we shall
repel and alienate the very people whose reform we desire; we shall make them, moreover, reluctant to
imitate us in anything for fear they may have to imitate us in everything.
Anyone entering our homes should admire us rather than our furnishings.
It is a great man that can treat his earthenware as if it was silver, and a man who treats his silverware as if it
was earthenware is no less great.
[It would seem that] you must inevitably either hate or imitate the world. But the right thing is to shun both
courses: you should neither become like the bad because they are many, nor be an enemy of the many
because they are unlike you.
…scorn the pleasure that comes from the majority’s approval. The many speak highly of you, but have you
really any grounds for satisfaction with yourself if you are the kind of person the many understand? Your
merits should not be outward facing.
Whenever circumstance brings some welcome thing your way, stop in suspicion and alarm: wild animals and
fish alike are taken in by this or that inviting prospect. Do you look on them as presents given you by
fortune? They are snares. Anyone among you who wishes to lead a secure life will do his very best to steer
well wide of these baited bounties, which comprise yet another instance of the errors we miserable creatures
fall into: we think these things are ours when in fact it is we who are caught.
Seneca, Letters, 8 (Robin Campbell trans., emphasis added)
If you wish to be loved, love

Hecato, cited in Seneca, Letters, 9 (Robin Campbell trans.)
86
The ending inevitably matches the beginning: the person who starts being friends with you because it
pays him will similarly cease to be friends with you because it pays him.
[The wise man lacks nothing by needs a great number of things.] The fool, on the other hand, needs nothing
(for he does not know how to use anything) but lacks everything.
Chrysippus, cited in Seneca, Letters, 9 (Robin Campbell trans.)
What difference does it make, after all, what your position in life is if you dislike it yourself?
Only the wise man is content with what is his. All foolishness suffers the burden of dissatisfaction with itself.
Happy the man who improves other people not merely when he is in their presence but even when he is in
their thoughts.
We should cherish old age and enjoy it. It is full of pleasure if you know how to use it. … Every pleasure
defers to its last its greatest delights.
Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live
nobly, but within no man's power to live long.
Seneca, Letters, 22, line 17
There is about wisdom a nobility and magnificence in the fact that she doesn’t just fall to a person’s lot, that
each man owes her to his own efforts, that one doesn’t go to anyone other than oneself to find her.
OVID (43 BC-17 AD)

Ill habits gather by unseen degrees —
As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book XV, as translated by John Dryden, The Worship of Aesculapius (1700), line
155-156.
Adhuc tua messis in herba est.

Your crop is still in grass.
Ovid, cited in Latin Quotations (New York: 2005), p. 5
Qui finem quaeris amoris

Cedit amor rebus; res age, tutus eris.
Love yields to business. If you seek a way out of love, be busy; you'll be safe then.
Ovid, Remedia Amoris, 143
Poetry comes fine-spun from a mind at peace.

Ovid, Tristia
Cura quid expediat prius est quam quid sit honestum

It is annoying to be honest to no purpose.
Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto, II, iii, 14
If you want to be loved, be lovable.

Ovid, Ars Amatoria, 2.107
87
Expedit esse deos, et, ut expedit, esse putemus.
It is convenient that there be gods, and, as it is convenient, let us believe that there are.
Ovid, Ars Amatoria, 1.637
Don't let her think you too importunate. Do not betray the hope of too swift a victory; let Love steal in
disguised as Friendship. I've often seen a woman thus disarmed, and friendship ripen into love.
Ovid, Ars Amatoria 1.720
Fas est et ab hoste doceri.

Right it is to be taught even by the enemy.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, 4.428
Video meliora, proboque, deteriora sequor.

I see better things, and approve, but I follow worse.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, 7.20
Tempus edax rerum

Time, the devourer of all things
Ovid, Metamorphoses, XV, 234
PHILO (20 BC-50 AD)

English, volume 1: http://books.google.com/books?id=kppBAQAAMAAJ
You have given yourself up to each of [the senses] to be made use of… and you have become… the property
of [the senses]… having lost your own power over yourself.
Philo, On the Migration of Abraham
Behold me daring, not only to read the sacred messages of Moses, but also in my love of knowledge to peer
into each of them and unfold and reveal what is not known to the multitude.
Philo, On The Special Laws, 3.6
He [Moses] … entered into the darkness where God was [cf. Exodus 20:21], that is into the unseen, invisible,
incorporeal and archetypal essence of existing things.
Philo, Moses, 1.158
There is also no small number of other things in human life which are confessed to be very difficult to
endure, such as poverty, and want of reputation, and mutilation, and various kinds of diseases, by which
weak spirited men are broken down, not being able to raise themselves at all through their want of courage;
but those men who are full of high thoughts and noble spirits, rise up to struggle against these things, and
contend against them with fortitude and exceeding vigor, ridiculing and greatly despising their threats and
attacks against their poverty; arraying wealth, not that wealth which is blind, but that which sees acutely,
whose images and treasures the soul is naturally proud to treasure up.
Philo, “On Courage,” On the Virtues
88
We ought to rebuke in no measured language those who celebrate nobility of birth as the greatest of all
blessings, and the cause also of great blessings, if in the first place they think those men nobly born who are
sprung from persons who were rich and glorious in the days of old, when those very ancestors themselves,
from whom they boast to be descended, were not made happy by their unlimited abundance; since, in truth,
that which is really good does not naturally or necessarily lodge in any external thing, nor in any of the things
which belong to the body, and indeed I may even say not in every part of the soul, but only in the dominant
and most important portion of it. For when God determined to establish this in us out of his own exceeding
mercy and love for the human race, he would not find any temple upon earth more beautiful or more suited
for its abode than reason: for the mind makes, as it were, an image of the good and consecrates it within
itself, and if any persons disbelieve in it of those who have either never tasted wisdom at all, or else have
done so only with the edges of their lips (for silver and gold, and honors, and offices, and vigor and beauty of
body, resemble those men who are appointed to situations of authority and power, in order to serve virtue as
if she were their queen), never having obtained a sight of the most brilliant of all lights. Since, then, nobility
of mind, perfectly purified by complete purifications, is the proper inheritance, we ought to call those men
alone noble who are temperate and just, even though they may be of the class of domestic slaves, or may
have been bought with money. But to those persons who, being sprung from virtuous parents, do themselves
turn out wicked, the region of nobleness is wholly inaccessible; for every bad man is destitute of a house, and
destitute of a city, having been driven from his proper country, namely, virtue; which is the real, genuine
country of all wise men: and ignobleness does of necessity attach itself to such a man, even though he be
descended from grandfathers and great grandfathers whose lives were wholly irreproachable, since he studies
to alienate himself from them and detaches himself from and removes to the greatest possible distance from
real nobility in all his words and actions. But moreover, besides that wicked men cannot possibly be noble, I
also see that they are all of them irreconcilable enemies to nobility, inasmuch as they have destroyed the
reputation which accrued to them from their ancestors, and have dimmed and extinguished all the brilliancy
which did exist in their race.
Philo, “On Nobility,” On the Virtues
On the Special Laws

translated by F. Colson (1939)
Moses … denied to the members of the sacred commonwealth unrestricted liberty to use and partake of the
other kinds of food. All the animals of land, sea or air whose flesh is the finest and fattest, thus titillating and
exciting the malignant foe pleasure, he sternly forbade them to eat, knowing that they set a trap for the most
slavish of the senses, the taste, and produce gluttony, an evil very dangerous both to soul and body.
Philo, On The Special Laws, Part IV, p. 69
The holy Moses … discarded passion in general and detesting it, as most vile in itself and in its effects,
denounced especially desire as a battery of destruction to the soul, which must be done away with or brought
into obedience to the governance of reason, and then all things will be permeated through and through with
peace and good order, those perfect forms of the good which bring the full perfection of happy living.
Philo, On The Special Laws, Part IV, p. 75-77
Moses … takes one form of desire, that one whose field of activity is the belly, and admonishes and
disciplines it as the first step, holding that the other forms will cease to run riot as before and will be
restrained by having learnt that their senior and as it were the leader of their company is obedient to the laws
of temperance.
89
The road that leads to pleasure is downhill and very easy, with the result that one does not walk but is
dragged along; the other which leads to self-control is uphill, toilsome no doubt but profitable exceedingly.
The one carries us away, forced lower and lower as it drives us down its steep incline, till it flings us off on
to the level ground at its foot; the other leads heavenwards the immortal who have not fainted on the way and
have had the strength to endure the roughness of the hard ascent.
The natural gravitation of the body pulls down with it those of little mind, strangling and overwhelming them
with the multitude of the fleshly elements. Blessed are they to whom it is given to resist with superior
strength the weight that would pull them down, taught by the guiding lines of right instruction to leap upward
from earth and earth-bound things into the ether and the revolving heavens.
There is no sweeter delight than that the soul should be charged through and through with justice, exercising
itself in her eternal principles and doctrines and leaving no vacant place into which injustice can make its
way.
If one adds anything small or great to the queen of virtues, piety, or on the other hand takes something from
it, in either case he will change and transform its nature. Addition will beget superstition and subtraction will
beget impiety.
Philo, On The Special Laws, Part IV, pp.99- 101
On the Virtues
But some making no account of the wealth of nature pursue the wealth of vain opinions. They choose to lean
on one who lacks rather than one who has the gift of sight, and with this defective guidance to their steps
must of necessity fall.
Philo, On The Virtues, p. 167
We must mention the higher, nobler wealth, which does not belong to all, but to truly noble and divinely
gifted men. This wealth is bestowed by wisdom through the doctrines and principles of ethic, logic and
physic, and from these spring the virtues, which rid the soul of its proneness to extravagance, and engender
the love of contentment and frugality, which will assimilate it to God. For God has no wants, He needs
nothing, being in Himself all-sufficient to Himself, while the fool has many wants, ever thirsting for what is
not there, longing to gratify his greedy and insatiable desire, which he fans into a blaze like a fire and brings
both great and small within its reach. But the man of worth has few wants, standing midway between
mortality and immortality.
Philo, On The Virtues, pp. 167-169
The health of the soul is to have its faculties, reason, high spirit and desire happily tempered, with the reason
in command and reining in the other two, like restive horses. The special name of this health is temperance,
that is σωφροσύνη or “thought-preserving,” for it creates a preservation of one of our powers, namely that of
wise-thinking.
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If they are unwilling to give, they should at least lend with all readiness and alacrity, not with the prospect of
receiving anything back except the principal. … In place of the interest which they determine not to accept
they receive a further bonus of the fairest and most precious things that human life has to give, mercy
neighborliness, charity, magnanimity, a good report and good fame. And what acquisition can rival these?
Nay, even the great king will appear as the poorest of men if compared with a single virtue. For his wealth is
soulless, buried deep in store-houses and recesses of the earth, but the wealth of virtue lies in the sovereign
part of the soul, and the purest part of existence.
Can we then hold the poverty-in-wealth of the money-grubbing usurers to be of any account? They may
seem to be kings with purses full of gold, but they never even in their dreams have had a glimpse of the
wealth that has eyes to see.
Philo, On The Virtues, pp. 213-214
Every Good Man is Free

Pythagoras teaches among other excellent doctrines this also, “walk not on the highways.” This does not
mean that we should climb steep hills—the school was not prescribing foot-weariness—but it indicates by
this figure that in our words and deeds we should not follow popular and beaten tracks.
Philo, Every Good Man is Free, 2
They in their desire for health commit themselves to physicians, but these people show no willingness to cast
off the soul-sickness of their untrained grossness by resorting to wise men.
Wisdom … never closes her school of thought but always opens her doors to those who thirst for the sweet
water of discourse, and pouring on them an unstinted stream of undiluted doctrine, persuades them to be
drunken with the drunkenness which is soberness itself.
Bodies have men as their masters, souls their vices and passions.
God and no mortal is my Sovereign.

He who has God alone for his leader, he alone is free.

If one looks with a penetrating eye into the facts, he will clearly perceive that no two things are so closely
akin as independence of action and freedom, because the bad man has a multitude of encumbrances, such as
love of money or reputation and pleasure, while the good man has none at all. He stands defiant and
triumphant.
The good man … has learnt to set at naught the injunctions laid upon him by those most lawless rulers of the
soul, inspired as he is by his ardent yearning for the freedom whose peculiar heritage it is that it obeys no
orders and works no will but its own.
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Homer often calls kings “shepherds of the people,” but nature more accurately applies the title to the good,
since kings are more often in the position of the sheep than of the shepherd. They are led by strong drink and
good looks and by baked meats and savory dishes and the dainties produced by cooks and confectioners, to
say nothing of their craving for silver and gold and grander ambitions.
But you say, “by obedience to another he loses his liberty.” How then is it that children suffer the orders of
their father and mother, and pupils the injunctions of their instructors?
The legislator of the Jews in a bolder spirit went to a further extreme and in the practice of his “naked”
philosophy, as they call it, ventured to speak of him who was possessed by love of the divine.
Those in whom anger or desire or any other passion, or again any insidious vice holds sway, are entirely
enslaved, while all whose life is regulated by law are free. And right reason is an infallible law engraved not
by this mortal or that and, therefore, perishable as he, nor on parchment slabs, and, therefore, soulless as
they, but by immortal nature on the immortal mind, never to perish.
One may well wonder at the short-sightedness of those who ignore the characteristics which so clearly
distinguish different things and declare that the laws of Solon and Lycurgus are all-sufficient to secure the
greatest of republics, Athens and Sparta, because their sovereign authority is loyally accepted by those who
enjoy that citizenship, yet deny that right reason, which is the fountain head of all other law, can impart
freedom to the wise, who obey all that it prescribes or forbids.
We have a very clear evidence of freedom in the equality recognized by all the good in addressing each
other.
Nothing will a man rue more than refusal to listen to the wise.
The majority, who through the blindness of their reason do not discern the damages which the soul has
sustained, only feel the pain of external injuries, because the faculty of judgment, which alone can enable
them to apprehend the damage to the mind, is taken from them.
Nor is it a matter for wonder that the good do not appear herded in great thongs. First because specimens of
great goodness are rare, secondly, because they avoid the great crowd of the more thoughtless and keep
themselves at leisure for the contemplation of what nature has to show.
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What need is there of long journeying on the land or voyaging on the seas to seek and search for virtue,
whose roots have been set by their Maker ever so near us, as the wise legislator of the Jews also says, “in thy
mouth, in thy heart and in thy hand,” thereby indicating in a figure, words, thoughts and actions? All these,
indeed, need the cultivator’s skill. Those who prefer idleness to labor, not only prevent the growths but also
wither and destroy the roots. But those who consider inaction mischievous and are willing to labor, do as the
husbandman does with fine young shoots. By constant care they rear the virtues into stems rising up to
heaven, saplings ever blooming and immortal, bearing and never ceasing to bear the fruits of happiness, or as
some hold, not so much bearing as being in themselves that happiness. These Moses often calls by the
compound name of wholefruits. In the case of growths which spring from the earth, neither are the trees the
fruit nor the fruit the trees, but in the soul’s plantation the saplings of wisdom, of justice, of temperance, have
their whole being transformed completely into fruits.
Philo, Every Good Man is Free, 68-71
And yet these things for which we should strive eagerly, things so closely akin to ourselves, so truly our own,
we treat with great slackness and constant indifference and thus destroy the germs of excellence, while those
things in which deficiency were a merit de desire with an insatiable yearning.
Nature … has born and reared all men alike, and created them genuine brothers, not in mere name, but in
very reality, though this kinship has been put to confusion by the triumph of malignant covetousness, which
has wrought estrangement instead of affinity and enmity instead of friendship.
Noble souls, whose brightness the greed of fortune cannot dim, have a kingly something, which urges them
to contend on equal footing with persons of the most massive dignity and pits freedom of speech against
arrogance.
This too is a truth well known to everyone who has taken even a slight hold of culture, that freedom is an
honorable thing, and slavery a disgraceful thing, and that honorable things are associated with good men and
disgraceful things with bad men. Hence, it clearly follows that no person of true worth is a slave, though
threatened by a host of claimants who produce contracts to prove their ownership.
As parents in private life teach wisdom to their children, so do [poets] in public life to their cities.
Diogenes the cynic, seeing one of the so-called freedmen pluming himself, while many heartily
congratulated him, marveled at the absence of reason and discernment. “A man might as well,” he said,
“proclaim that one of his servants became a grammarian, a geometrician, or musician, when he has no idea
whatever of the art.” For as the proclamation cannot make them men of knowledge, so neither can it make
them free.
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA (c. 15 -100 AD)

Plato said that virtue has no master [Republic 617e]. If a person does not honor this principle and rejoice in
it, but is purchasable for money, he creates many masters for himself.
Apollonius of Tyana, to Euphrates, Epp. Apoll. 15
The natural philosopher Heracleitus said that man is naturally irrational. If this is true, as it is true, then
everyone who enjoys futile glory should hide his face.
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You must shun barbarians and not govern them since, barbarians as they are, it is not right that they should
receive a benefit.
Apollonius of Tyana, to Domitian, Epp. Apoll. 21
Pythagoras said that medicine is the most godlike of arts. But if the most godlike, it should tend to the soul as
well as the body, or else a living thing must be unhealthy, being diseased in its higher part.
Apollonius of Tyana, to Crito, Epp. Apoll. 23
You request my presence at the Olympic Games, and for that reason you have sent envoys. For myself, I
would come for the spectacle of physical struggle, except that I would be abandoning the greater struggle for
virtue.
Apollonius of Tyana, Epp. Apoll. 24
Make yourself known as a philosopher, that is a free man.

In my judgment excellence and wealth are direct opposites.

If someone gives money to Apollonius, and the giver is someone considered respectable, he will take the
money if he needs it. But he will not accept a fee for philosophy even if he does need it.
Greet your son Aristocleides from me. I pray he may not turn out like you, since you, too, were once an
irreproachable young man.
Apollonius of Tyana, letter to Gordias, Epp. Apoll. 46
If someone associates with a true Pythagorean, what will he will get from him, and in what quantity? I would
say: statesmanship, geometry, astronomy, arithmetic, harmonics, music, medicine, complete and god-given
prophecy, and also the higher rewards—greatness of mind, of soul, and of manner, steadiness, piety,
knowledge of the gods and not just supposition, familiarity with blessed spirits and not just faith,
friendship with both gods and spirits, self-sufficiency, persistence, frugality, reduction of essential needs,
ease of perception, of movement, and of breath, good color, health, cheerfulness, and immortality.
Apollonius of Tyana, letter to Euphrates, Epp. Apoll. 52
Light is the presence of fire, for otherwise it could not exist. Well then, fire is simply an effect, and whatever
feels the effect certainly burns. Light however merely offers its radiance to the eyes, not by compulsion but
by persuasion. It follows that discourse is either like fire, an effect, or like light, a radiance. The second is
preferable, and unless what I am about to say is beyond praying for, may I possess it.
The best governor is he who begins by governing himself.

Apollonius of Tyana, Epp. Apoll. 58.4
Many a mountain lies deep-shaded, and resounding sea between my philosophy and yours.
The emperor Vespasian greets the philosopher Apollonius. If everyone were willing to be a philosopher of
your kind, Apollonius, it would be well both for philosophy and for poverty, since philosophy would be
incorruptible and poverty voluntary.
Apollonius of Tyana, Epp. Apoll. 77f
The soul that does not consider the question of the body’s self-sufficiency cannot make itself self-sufficient.
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To speak falsely is the mark of a slave, but the truth is noble.
Madness is irascibility in full bloom.

The passion of anger, if not tamed and cured, becomes a physical disease.
One who gets excessively angry over small wrongs prevents the offender from distinguishing his major faults
from his minor ones.
Most people are defenders of their own faults and prosecutors of other people’s.
PETRONIUS (27-66 AD)

You are mad with much learning.
Petronius
Abiit ad plures.
He has gone over to the majority.
Petronius, Satyricon, § 42 (The majority is the dead)
Satyricon
Et ideo ego adulescentulos existimo in scholis stultissimos fieri, quia nihil ex his, quae in usu habemus, aut
audiunt aut vident, sed piratas cum catenis in litore stantes, sed tyrannos edicta scribentes quibus imperent
filiis ut patrum suorum capita praecidant, sed responsa in pestilentiam data, ut virgines tres aut plures
immolentur, sed mellitos verborum globulos, et omnia dicta factaque quasi papavere et sesamo sparsa.
This is the reason, in my opinion, why young men grow up such blockheads in the schools, because they
neither see nor hear one single thing connected with the usual circumstances of everyday life.
Petronius, Satyricon, 1.1
Primi omnium eloquentiam perdidistis. Levibus enim atque inanibus sonis ludibria quaedam excitando,
effecistis ut corpus orationis enervaretur et caderet.
You rhetoricians are chiefly to blame for the ruin of Oratory, for with your silly, idle phrases, meant only to
tickle the ears of an audience, you have enervated and deboshed the very substance of true eloquence.
Nondum umbraticus doctor ingenia deleverat

No cloistered professor had as yet darkened men’s intellects.
Grandis et, ut ita dicam, pudica oratio non est maculosa nec turgida, sed naturali pulchritudine exsurgit.
A noble, and so to say chaste, style is not overloaded with ornament, not turgid; its own natural beauty gives
it elevation.
Nuper ventosa istaec et enormis loquacitas Athenas ex Asia commigravit animosque iuvenum ad magna
surgentes veluti pestilenti quodam sidere adflavit, semelque corrupta regula eloquentia stetit et obmutuit.
This windy, extravagant deluge of words invaded Athens from Asia, and like a malignant star, blasting the
minds of young men aiming at lofty ideals, instantly broke up all rules of art and struck eloquence dumb.
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Nihil nimirum in his exercitationibus doctores peccant qui necesse habent cum insanientibus furere. Nam nisi
dixerint quae adulescentuli probent, ut ait Cicero, ‘soli in scolis relinquentur’. Sicut ficti adulatores cum
cenas divitum captant, nihil prius meditantur quam id quod putant gratissimum auditoribus fore—nec enim
aliter impetrabunt quod petunt, nisi quasdam insidias auribus fecerint—sic eloquentiae magister, nisi
tanquam piscator eam imposuerit hamis escam, quam scierit appetituros esse pisciculos, sine spe praedae
morabitur in scopulo.
In the choice of these exercises it is not the masters that are to blame. They are forced to be just as mad as all
the rest; for if they refuse to teach what pleases their scholars, they will be left, as Cicero says, to lecture to
empty benches. Just as false-hearted sycophants, scheming for a seat at a rich man’s table, make it their chief
business to discover what will be most agreeable hearing to their host, for indeed their only way to gain their
end is by cajolement and flattery; so a professor of Rhetoric, unless like a fisherman he arm his hook with the
bait he knows the fish will take, may stand long enough on his rock without a chance of success.
Eheu nos miseros, quam totus homuncio nil est!

Sic erimus cuncti, postquam nos auferet Orcus.
Ergo vivamus, dum licet esse bene.
Alas! how less than naught are we;
Fragile life’s thread, and brief our day!
What this is now, we all shall be;
Drink and make merry while you may.
AULUS PERSIUS FLACCUS (34 AD–62 AD)

Satires
http://books.google.com/books?id=Tn4tZqXFF80C
If critics a false scale should elevate, and authors in unequal balance weigh, follow not thou the humor of the
day; think for thyself, and seek no other fame.
Aulus Persius Flaccus, Satire I, C. B. Wollaston, trans. (1841)
What’s the point of study if that frothy yeast, that fig tree which has once struck root inside never bursts out
of the heart?
Aulus Persius Flaccus, Satire I, N. Rudd, trans. (2005)
Justice and right blended in the spirit, the mind pure in its inner depths and a breast imbued with noble honor.
Let me bring these to the temples, and with a handful of grits I shall make acceptable sacrifice.
Aulus Persius Flaccus, Satire I, S. Braund, trans. (2004)
QUINTILIAN (35 AD–100 AD)

As Cicero already proves, [content and form] were, just as they were unified by nature, so also
connected in practice, whereby the same men were esteemed as wise and eloquent.
Quintilian, Institutio Oraorio, § 1.13
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The orator will assuredly have much to say on such topics as justice, fortitude, abstinence, self-control and
piety. But the good man, who has come to the knowledge of these things not by mere hearsay, as though they
were just words and names for his tongue to employ, but has grasped the meaning of virtue and acquired a
true feeling for it, will never be perplexed when he has to think out a problem, but will speak out truly what
he knows. Since, however, general questions are always more important than special (for the particular is
contained in the universal, while the universal in never to be regarded as something superimposed on the
particular), everyone will readily admit that the studies of which we are speaking are pre-eminently
concerned with general questions.
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, Book 12, Chapter 2, § 17-18, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, p. 168
The authors who have discoursed on the nature of virtue must be read through and through, that the life of
the orator may be wedded to the knowledge of things human and divine. But how much greater and fairer
would such subjects appear if those who taught them were also those who could give them most
elegant expression! O that the day may dawn when the perfect orator of our heart’s desire shall claim
for his own possession that science that has lost the affection of mankind through the arrogance of some
of its claims and the vices of some that have brought disgrace upon its virtues, and shall restore it to its
place in the domain of eloquence, as though he had been victorious in a trial for the restoration of stolen
goods!
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, Book 12, Chapter 2, § 8-9, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, p. 168
Cito scribendo non fit, ut bene scirateur; bene scribendo fit, ut cito.
Qunitilian
Write quickly and you will never write well; write well, and you will soon write quickly.
Quintilian, cited in Latin Quotations (New York: 2005), p. 16
DIO CHRYSOSTOM (40-115 AD)

All articles of great expense, of vexatious and operose provision, he [Diogenes] disallowed, and
demonstrated their pernicious effects upon the user; yet forbade none of those bodily conveniences, which
may be procured without difficulty and molestation, whether to alleviate cold or hunger or other craving
appetites, but manifested by his own practice a preference to healthy situations before sickly, and to such as
were more tolerable than others through all the vicissitudes of seasons. Nor was he less attentive to a
plentiful supply of wholesome food, and a moderate portion of apparel : but kept himself aloof from public
business, from lawsuits, from animosities, from wars and political conspiracies. The life of the Gods was the
principal model of his practice: for Homer characterizes them as living at their ease with reference to the
laborious and troublesome condition of mankind.
Dio Chrysostom, “Diogenes, or, On Arbitrary Government,” Select Essays of Dio Chrysostom, G. Wakefiled, trans. (1800)
You are devoted to interests from which it is impossible to gain intelligence or prudence or a proper
disposition of reverence toward the gods, but only stupid contention, unbridled ambition, vain grief,
senseless joy, and raillery and extravagance.
Dio Chrysostom, Discourse 32, J. Cohoon and H. Crosby, trans. (1940), p. 177
… low badinage that smacks of the market-place …

If in the guise of philosophers they [declaim speeches] with a view to their own profit and reputation, and not
to improve you, that indeed is shocking. For it is as if a physician when visiting patients should disregard
their treatment and their restoration to health, and should bring them flowers and courtesans and perfume.
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This, then, is the theory of the philosophers, a theory which sets up a noble and benevolent fellowship of
gods and men which gives a share in law and citizenship, not to all living beings whatsoever, but only to
such as have a share in reason and intellect, introducing a far better and more righteous code than that of
Sparta, in accordance with which the Helots have no prospect of ever becoming Spartans, and consequently
are constantly plotting against Sparta.
PLUTARCH (46 AD–120 AD)

Good art seems ancient to its contemporaries, and modern to their descendants.
Plutarch
Moralia
Volume 1: http://books.google.com/books?id=dGhJAAAAYAAJ
Volume 3: http://books.google.com/books?id=DucOAAAAYAAJ
Volume 5: http://books.google.com/books?id=uiEAAAAAYAAJ
The first question is, Whether at table it is allowable to philosophize? For I remember at a supper at
Athens this doubt was started, whether at a merry meeting it was fit to use philosophical discourse, and how
far it might be used? And Aristo presently cried out: What then, for heaven’s sake, are there any that banish
philosophy from company and wine? And I replied: Yes, sir, there are, and such as with a grave scoff tell us
that philosophy, like the matron of the house, should never be heard at a merry entertainment; and commend
the custom of the Persians, who never let their wives appear, but drink, dance, and wanton with their whores.
This they propose for us to imitate; they permit us to have mimics and music at our feasts, but forbid
philosophy; she, forsooth, being very unfit to be wanton with us, and we in a bad condition to be serious.
Isocrates the rhetorician, when at a drinking bout some begged him to make a speech, only returned: With
those things in which I have skill the time doth not suit; and in those things with which the time suits I have
no skill.
And Crato cried out: By Bacchus, he was right in forswearing talk, if he designed to make such long-
winded discourses as would have spoiled all mirth and conversation; but I do not think there is the same
reason to forbid philosophy as to take away rhetoric from our feasts. For philosophy is quite of another
nature; it is an art of living, and therefore must be admitted into every part of our conversation, into all our
gay humors and our pleasures, to regulate and adjust them, to proportion the time, and keep them from
excess. ... If Bacchus is really λύσιος (a looser of every thing), and chiefly takes off all restraints and bridles
from the tongue, and gives the voice the greatest freedom, I think it is foolish and absurd to deprive that time
in which we are usually most talkative of the most useful and profitable discourse; and in our schools to
dispute of the offices of company, in what consists the excellence of a guest, how mirth, feasting, and wine
are to be used, and yet deny philosophy a place in these feasts, as if not able to confirm by practice what by
precepts it instructs.
And when you affirmed that none ought to oppose what Crato said, but determine what sorts of
philosophical topics were to be admitted as fit companions at a feast, and so avoid that just and pleasant taunt
put upon the wrangling disputers of the age, “Come now to supper, that we may contend”; and when you
seemed concerned and urged us to speak to that head, I first replied: Sir, we must consider what company we
have; for if the greater part of the guests are learned men,—as for instance, at Agatho’s entertainment, men
like Socrates, Phaedrus, Pausanias, Euryximachus ; or at Callias’s board, Charmides, Antisthenes,
Hermogenes, and the like,—we will permit them to philosophize, and to mix Bacchus with the Muses as well
as with the Nymphs; for the latter make him wholesome and gentle to the body, and the other pleasant and
agreeable to the soul. And if there are some few illiterate persons present, they, as mute consonants with
vowels, in the midst of the other learned, will participate in a voice not altogether inarticulate and
insignificant. But if the greater part consists of such who can better endure the noise of any bird, fiddle-
string, or piece of wood than the voice of a philosopher, Pisistratus hath shown us what to do; for being at
difference with his sons, when he heard his enemies rejoiced at it, in a full assembly he declared that he had
endeavored to persuade his sons to submit to him, but since he found them obstinate, he was resolved to yield
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and submit to their humors. So a philosopher, midst those companions that slight his excellent discourse, will
lay aside his gravity, follow them, and comply with their humor as far as decency will permit; knowing very
well that men cannot exercise their rhetoric unless they speak, but may their philosophy even whilst
they are silent or jest merrily, nay, whilst they are piqued upon or repartee. For it is not only (as Plato
says) the highest degree of injustice not to be just and yet seem so; but it is the top of wisdom to
philosophize, yet not appear to do it; and in mirth to do the same with those that are serious, and yet seem
in earnest. For as in Euripides, the Bacchae, though unprovided of iron weapons and unarmed, wounded their
invaders with their boughs, thus the very jests and merry talk of true philosophers move and correct in some
sort those that are not altogether insensible.
Plutarch, “Question 1: Whether midst our cups it is fit to talk learnedly and philosophize?” Symposiacs, Book I, Moralia, W. Goodwin, ed. (1874),
vol. 3, pp. 198-200
When a man asked him what fee he should require for teaching his child, Aristippus replied, “A thousand
drachmas”; but when the other exclaimed, “Great Heavens! What an excessive demand! I can but a slave for
a thousand,” Aristippus retorted, “The you will have two slaves, your son and the one you buy.”
Pseudo-Plutarch, “The education of children,” Moralia (London: 1922), 4F
For the mind alone grows young with increase of years, and time, which takes away all things else, adds
wisdom to old age.
Pseudo-Plutarch, “The education of children,” Moralia (London: 1922), 5E
Those who practice speaking in a way to catch the favor of vulgar herd also turn out in general to be
incontinent in their lives and fond of pleasure. And this surely is to be expected; for if, in providing pleasure
for others, they disregard what is honorable, they would be slow to place that which is upright and sound
above the gratification of their own pleasures and luxurious tastes, and slow to pursue the temperate course
instead of the agreeable.
Pseudo-Plutarch, “The education of children,” Moralia (London: 1922), 6B
To allow those who are still young to speak extempore stands responsible for the worst sort of rambling talk.
Pseudo-Plutarch, “The education of children,” Moralia (London: 1922), 7A
As the body ought to be not merely healthy but also sturdy, so also speech should be not merely free from
fault but vigorous too.
A man should not be bold, on the one hand, or, on the other, pusillanimous and cowering, since the one
resolves itself into impudence, and the other into servility.
It was a clever saying of Bion, the philosopher, that, just as the suitors, not being able to approach Penelope,
consorted with her maid-servants, so also do those who are not able to attain to philosophy wear themselves
to a shadow over the other kinds of education which have no value.
Pseudo-Plutarch, “The education of children,” Moralia (London: 1922), 7D
As regards the care of the body men have discovered two sciences, the medical and the gymnastic, of which
the one implants health, the other sturdiness, in the body; but for illnesses and affectations of the mind
philosophy alone is the remedy.
Pseudo-Plutarch, “The education of children,” Moralia (London: 1922), 7D
To rule pleasure by reason marks the wise man.

There are three forms of life, of which the first is the practical life, the second the contemplative life, and the
third the life of enjoyment.
Pseudo-Plutarch, “The education of children,” Moralia (London: 1922), 8A
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Children ought to be led to honorable practices by means of encouragement and reasoning, and most surely
not by blows or ill-treatment.
Just as plants are nourished by moderate applications of water, but are drowned by many in succession, in the
same fashion the mind is made to grow by properly adapted tasks, but is submerged by those which are
excessive.
Rest gives relish to labor.

Pseudo-Plutarch, “The education of children,” Moralia (London: 1922), 9C
It is a fine thing to understand, not only how to gain the victory, but also how to submit to defeat, in cases
where victory is injurious.
Timely silence is a wise thing, and better than any speech.

The word unspoken can easily be uttered later, but the spoken word cannot possibly be recalled.

“Abstain from beans”; means that a man should keep out of politics, for beans were used in earlier time for
voting upon the removal of magistrates from office.
“Do not eat your heart”; as much as to say, “Do not injure your soul by wasting it with worries.”
“Do not put food into a slop-pail”; signifies that it is not fitting to put clever speech into a base mind.
Gorgias called tragedy a deception wherein he who deceives is more honest than he who does not
deceive, and he who is deceived is wiser than he who is not deceived.
Plutarch, “How to study poetry,” Moralia (London: 1922), 15D
So let us not root up or destroy the Muses’ vine of poetry, but where the mythical and dramatic part grows all
riotous and luxuriant through pleasure unalloyed, which gives it boldness and obstinacy in seeking acclaim,
let us take it in hand and prune it and pinch it back. But where with its grace it approaches a true kind of
culture, and the sweet allurement of its language is not fruitless or vacuous, there let us introduce philosophy
and blend it with poetry. … Poetry, by taking up its themes from philosophy and blending them with fable,
renders the task of learning light and agreeable for the young. Wherefore poetry should not be avoided by
those who are intending to pursue philosophy, but they should use poetry as an introductory exercise in
philosophy, by training themselves habitually to seek the profitable in what gives pleasure. … For the truth
… does not deviate from its course, even though the end be unpleasant; whereas fiction, being a verbal
fabrication, very readily follows a roundabout route, and turns aside from the painful to what is most
pleasant.
Plutarch, “How to study poetry,” Moralia (London: 1922), 15F
Those who do not adjust their tenets to fit the facts but rather try to force the facts into an unnatural
agreements with their own assumptions, have filled philosophy with a great number of difficulties.
Plutarch, “Progress in virtue,” Moralia (London: 1922), 75F
100
It is mark of a wondrous foresight for a man whose hold on his temper is uncertain, who is naturally rough
and quick-tempered, not to be blind to his own weakness, but to exercise caution, and to be on his guard
against possible grounds for anger, and to forestall them by reason long beforehand, so that he may not even
inadvertently become involved in such emotions. … But the uneducated, on the contrary, gather fuel to
kindle their passions, casting themselves headlong into those wherein they are weakest and least sure of
themselves.
Plutarch, “How to study poetry,” Moralia (London: 1922), 31B
Why do we assert that virtue is unteachable, and thus make it non-existent?

Plutarch, “Can virtue be taught”, Moralia, W. Helmbold, trans. (1939), vol. 6, pp. 5-7
Diogenes, when he saw a child eating sweet-meats, gave the boy’s tutor a cuff, rightly judging the fault
to be, not that of him who had not learned, but of him who had not taught.
Plutarch, “Can virtue be taught”, Moralia, W. Helmbold, trans. (1939), vol. 6, p. 7
Can men enter without censure the fellowship of a household, a city, a marriage, a way of life, a magistracy,
if they have not learned how they should get along with fellow-beings?
The Spartan, when he was asked what he effected by his teaching, said, “I make honourable things pleasant
to children.”
He who says that the physician’s art concerns itself with rashes and hang-nails, but not with pleurisy or
fever or inflammation of the brain, in what does he differ from one who says that schools and lectures and
precepts are for instruction in trifling and childish duties, but that for the great and supreme duties there is
only brute knocking about and accident? For just as he is ridiculous, who declares that one must be taught
before pulling at the oar, but may steer the boat even without having learned; so one who grants that the other
arts are acquired by learning, but deprives virtue of this. ... Such a man as this gives Reason, like an eye, as it
were, to the subservient and ancillary arts, while denying it to virtue. ...
Ridiculous, therefore, is the man who declares that the art of using the bow, or of fighting in heavy
armour, or of manipulating the sling, or of riding a horse may be taught, but that the art of commanding and
leading an army comes as it chances and to whom it chances without previous instruction
A good plan, as it seems to me, Fundanus,7 is that which painters follow: they scrutinize their productions
from time to time before they finish them. They do this because, by withdrawing their gaze and by inspecting
their work often, they are able to form a fresh judgment, and one which is more likely to seize upon any
slight discrepancy, such as the familiarity of uninterrupted contemplation will conceal. 453Since, therefore, it
is impossible for a man to contemplate himself from time to time by getting apart from himself and
interrupting his consciousness of himself by breaking its continuity (and this is what, more than anything
else, makes every man a poorer judge of himself than of others), the next best course would be for him to
inspect his friends from time to time and likewise to offer himself to them.
Plutarch, “On the control of anger”, Moralia, W. Helmbold, trans. (1939), vol. 6, p. 93
I see that that violent and fiery tendency of yours toward anger has become so gentle and submissive to
reason. ... Yet this mildness has brought about no inactivity or feebleness in you, but, like the earth when it
has been subdued by cultivation, it has received a smoothness and depth conducive to fruitful action in place
of that impetuousness of yours and quickness of temper. For that reason it is evident that the spirited part of
your soul is not withering away through any abatement of vigor caused by age, nor yet spontaneously, but
that it is receiving the skilful treatment of some excellent precepts.
101
A ship deserted by her crew in the midst of a storm far out at sea will more easily be able to take on a pilot
from the outside, than will a man who is being tossed upon the billows of passion and anger admit the
reasoning of another.
When I had opposed anger two or three times, it came about that I experienced what the Thebans did, who,
when they had for the first time16 repulsed the Spartans, who had the reputation of being invincible, were
never thereafter defeated by them in any battle; for I acquired the proud consciousness that it is possible for
reason to conquer.
The best course [in the face of anger] is for us to compose ourselves, or else to run away and conceal
ourselves, and anchor ourselves in a calm harbor, as though we perceived a fit of epilepsy coming on,31 so
that we may not fall, or rather may not fall upon others.
EPICTETUS (55-135 AD)

The true Cynic … is sent as a messenger from God to men concerning things good and evil, to show them
that they have gone astray and are seeking the true nature of good and evil where it is not to be found, and
take no thought where it really is: he must realize, in the words of Diogenes when brought before Philip after
the battle of Chaeronea, that he is sent ‘to reconnoitre’ [Gk. kataskopeo “to spy out”]. For indeed the Cynic
has to discover what things are friendly to men and what are hostile: and when he has accurately made his
observations he must return and report the truth.
Epictetus, Discourses III, xxii. 19-26
The true Cynic … must then be able, if chance so offer, to come forward on the tragic stage, and with a loud
voice utter the words of Socrates: ‘Oh race of men, whither are ye hurrying? What are you doing, miserable
creatures? You wander up and down like blind folk: you have left the true path and go away on a vain errand,
you seek peace and happiness elsewhere, where it is not to be found.
Epictetus, Discourses III, xxii. 19-26
Remember that you are an actor in a drama of such sort as the author chooses—if short, then in a short one; if
long, then in a long one. If it be his pleasure that you should enact a poor man, see that you act it well; or a
cripple, or a ruler, or a private citizen. For this is your business—to act well the given part; but to choose it
belongs to another.
Epictetus, cited in Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity, p. 245
First then you must make you governing principle pure, and hold fast this rule of life, “Henceforth my mind
is the material I have to work on, as the carpenter has his timber and the shoemaker his leather.”
Epictetus, Discourses, 3.22
Men are not disturbed by things, but by the views which they take of things.
Epictetus, quoted in Backgrounds of Early Christianity, p. 345
It is impossible for anyone to start understanding what he thinks he already knows.

Epictetus
It is not my place in society that makes me well off, but my judgments, and these I can carry with me …
These alone are my own and cannot be taken away.
Epictetus, cited in Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety, p. 111
102
The Art of Living
Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: some things are within our
control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to
distinguish between what you can and can’t control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become
possible.
Within our control are our own opinions, aspirations, desires, and the things that repel us. These areas are
quite rightly our concern, because they are directly subject to our influence. We always have a choice about
the contents and character of our inner lives.
Outside our control, however, are such things as what kind of body we have, whether we’re born into
wealth or strike it rich, how we are regarded by others, and our status in society. We must remember that
those things are externals and are therefore not our concern. Trying to control or to change what we can’t
only results in torment.
Remember the things within our power are naturally at our disposal, free from any restraint or hindrance;
but those things outside our power are weak, dependent, or determined by whims and actions of others.
Remember, too, that if you think you have free rein over things that are naturally beyond your control or if
you attempt to adopt the affairs of others as your own, your pursuits will be thwarted and you will become a
frustrated, anxious, and fault-finding person.
Epictetus, The Art of Living
Think of your life as if it were a banquet where you would behave graciously. When dishes are passed to
you, extend your hand and help yourself to a moderate portion. If a dish should pass you by, enjoy what is
already on your plate. Or if the dish hasn’t been passed to you yet, patiently wait for your turn. … There is no
need to yearn, envy and grab. You will get your rightful portion when it is your time.
Epictetus, The Art of Living, S. Lebell, trans. (2007), p. 22
Golden Sayings
file://H:/eBooks/TheGoldenSayingsOfEpictetus.pdf
Ask me if you choose if a Cynic shall engage in the administration of the State. O fool, seek you a
nobler administration that that in which he is engaged? Ask you if a man shall come forward in the
Athenian assembly and talk about revenue and supplies, when his business is to converse with all men,
Athenians, Corinthians, and Romans alike, not about supplies, not about revenue, nor yet peace and
war, but about Happiness and Misery, Prosperity and Adversity, Slavery and Freedom? Ask you
whether a man shall engage in the administration of the State who has engaged in such an
Administration as this? Ask me too if he shall govern; and again I will answer, Fool, what greater
government shall he hold than he holds already?
Epictetus, Golden Sayings, 117
[The Cynic] needs also to have a certain habit of body. If he appears consumptive, thin and pale, his
testimony has no longer the same authority. He must not only prove to the unlearned by showing them what
his Soul is that it is possible to be a good man apart from all that they admire; but he must also show them,
by his body, that a plain and simple manner of life under the open sky does no harm to the body either. “See,
I am proof of this! and my body also.” As Diogenes used to do, who went about fresh of look and by the very
appearance of his body drew men’s eyes. But if a Cynic is an object of pity, he seems a mere beggar; all turn
away, all are offended at him. Nor should he be slovenly of look, so as not to scare men from him in this way
either; on the contrary, his very roughness should be clean and attractive.
103
A Philosopher’s school is a Surgery: pain, not pleasure, you should have felt therein. For on entering none of
you is whole. One has a shoulder out of joint, another an abscess: a third suffers from an issue, a fourth from
pains in the head. And am I then to sit down and treat you to pretty sentiments and empty flourishes, so that
you may applaud me and depart, with neither shoulder, nor head, nor issue, nor abscess a whit the better for
your visit? Is it then for this that young men are to quit their homes, and leave parents, friends, kinsmen and
substance to mouth out Bravo to your empty phrases!
Although the words of philosophers may run counter to the opinions of the world, yet have they reason on
their side.
Epictetus, Golden Sayings, 142, paraphrasing Cleanthes
Enchiridion
Begin therefore with little things. Is a little oil spilt, a little wine stolen? Say to yourself, “This is the price
paid for peace, for tranquility, and nothing is to be had for nothing.” When you call your servant, it is
possible that he may not come; or, if he does, that he may not do what you wish. But he is by no means of
such importance that it should be in his power to cause you any disturbance.
Epictetus, Enchiridion, 12
A man’s master is he who is able to confer or remove whatever that man seeks or shuns. Whoever then
would be free, let him wish for nothing, let him decline nothing, which depends on others; else he must
necessarily be a slave.
If you have an earnest desire towards philosophy, prepare yourself from the very first to have the multitude
laugh and sneer, and say, “He is returned to us a philosopher all at once;” and “Whence this supercilious
look?” Now, for your part, do not have a supercilious look indeed; but keep steadily to those things which
appear best to you, as one appointed by God to this particular station. For remember that, if you are
persistent, those very persons who at first ridiculed will afterwards admire you. But if you are conquered by
them, you will incur a double ridicule.
You are unjust, then, and insatiable, if you are unwilling to pay the price for which these things are sold, and
would have them for nothing. For how much is lettuce sold? Fifty cents, for instance. If another, then, paying
fifty cents, takes the lettuce, and you, not paying it, go without them, don’t imagine that he has gained any
advantage over you. For as he has the lettuce, so you have the fifty cents which you did not give. So, in the
present case, you have not been invited to such a person’s entertainment, because you have not paid him the
price for which a supper is sold. It is sold for praise; it is sold for attendance. Give him then the value, if it is
for your advantage. But if you would, at the same time, not pay the one and yet receive the other, you are
insatiable, and a blockhead. Have you nothing, then, instead of the supper? Yes, indeed, you have: the not
praising him, whom you don’t like to praise; the not bearing with his behavior at coming in.
If a person gave your body to any stranger he met on his way, you would certainly be angry. And do you feel
no shame in handing over your own mind to be confused and mystified by anyone who happens to verbally
attack you?
If anyone tells you that such a person speaks ill of you, don’t make excuses about what is said of you, but
answer: “He does not know my other faults, else he would not have mentioned only these.”
104
If you are struck by the appearance of any promised pleasure, guard yourself against being hurried away by
it; but let the affair wait your leisure, and procure yourself some delay. Then bring to your mind both points
of time: that in which you will enjoy the pleasure, and that in which you will repent and reproach yourself
after you have enjoyed it; and set before you, in opposition to these, how you will be glad and applaud
yourself if you abstain. And even though it should appear to you a seasonable gratification, take heed that its
enticing, and agreeable and attractive force may not subdue you; but set in opposition to this how much
better it is to be conscious of having gained so great a victory.
Does anyone drink a great quantity of wine? Don’t say that he does ill, but that he drinks a great quantity.
For, unless you perfectly understand the principle from which anyone acts, how should you know if he
acts ill? Thus you will not run the hazard of assenting to any appearances but such as you fully comprehend.
Never call yourself a philosopher, nor talk a great deal among the unlearned about theorems, but act
conformably to them. Thus, at an entertainment, don’t talk how persons ought to eat, but eat as you ought.
For remember that in this manner Socrates also universally avoided all ostentation. And when persons came
to him and desired to be recommended by him to philosophers, he took and recommended them, so well did
he bear being overlooked. So that if ever any talk should happen among the unlearned concerning
philosophic theorems, be you, for the most part, silent. For there is great danger in immediately throwing out
what you have not digested. And, if anyone tells you that you know nothing, and you are not nettled at it,
then you may be sure that you have begun your business. For sheep don’t throw up the grass to show the
shepherds how much they have eaten; but, inwardly digesting their food, they outwardly produce wool and
milk. Thus, therefore, do you likewise not show theorems to the unlearned, but the actions produced by them
after they have been digested.
When I find an interpreter, what remains is to make use of his instructions. This alone is the valuable thing.
But, if I admire nothing but merely the interpretation, what do I become more than a grammarian instead of a
philosopher? Except, indeed, that instead of Homer I interpret Chrysippus. When anyone, therefore, desires
me to read [interpret] Chrysippus to him, I rather blush when I cannot show my actions agreeable and
consonant to his discourse.
How long, then, will you put off thinking yourself worthy of the highest improvements and follow the
distinctions of reason? You are no longer a boy, but a grown man. If, therefore, you will be negligent and
slothful, and always add procrastination to procrastination, purpose to purpose, and fix day after day in which
you will attend to yourself, you will insensibly continue without proficiency, and, living and dying, persevere
in being one of the vulgar. This instant, then, think yourself worthy of living as a man grown up, and a
proficient. Let whatever appears to be the best be to you an inviolable law.
The first and most necessary topic in philosophy is that of the use of moral theorems, such as, “We
ought not to lie;” the second is that of demonstrations, such as, “What is the origin of our obligation
not to lie;” the third gives strength and articulation to the other two, such as, “What is the origin of
this is a demonstration.” For what is demonstration? What is consequence? What contradiction?
What truth? What falsehood? The third topic, then, is necessary on the account of the second, and the
second on the account of the first. But the most necessary, and that whereon we ought to rest, is the
first. But we act just on the contrary. For we spend all our time on the third topic, and employ all our
diligence about that, and entirely neglect the first. Therefore, at the same time that we lie, we are
immediately prepared to show how it is demonstrated that lying is not right.
105
TACITUS (56-117 AD)
omnia serviliter pro dominatione
servant to all in order to master
Tacitus, describing Emperor Otho, Histories, 1.36
PLINY (61-113 AD)

Each man is a good education to himself, provided he has the capacity to spy on himself from close up.
Pliny
Letters
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2811/pg2811.html
Virtue, by herself, is generally the object of envy, but particularly so when glory and distinction attend her;
and the world is never so little disposed to detract from the rectitude of your conduct as when it passes
unobserved and unapplauded.
Pliny, Letter 5
I frequently ask myself whether I composed this harangue, such as it is, merely from a personal
consideration, or with a view to the public as well; and I am sensible that what may be exceedingly useful
and proper in the prosecution of any affair may lose all its grace and fitness the moment the business is
completed: for instance, in the case before us, what could be more to my purpose than to explain at large the
motives of my intended bounty? For, first, it engaged my mind in good and ennobling thoughts; next, it
enabled me, by frequent dwelling upon them, to receive a perfect impression of their loveliness, while it
guarded at the same time against that repentance which is sure to follow on an impulsive act of generosity.
There arose also a further advantage from this method, as it fixed in me a certain habitual contempt of
money. For, while mankind seem to be universally governed by an innate passion to accumulate wealth, the
cultivation of a more generous affection in my own breast taught me to emancipate myself from the slavery
of so predominant a principle: and I thought that my honest intentions would be the more meritorious as they
should appear to proceed, not from sudden impulse, but from the dictates of cool and deliberate reflection.
Pliny, Letter 5
I am very sensible how much nobler it is to place the reward of virtue in the silent approbation of one’s own
breast than in the applause of the world. Glory ought to be the consequence, not the motive, of our
actions; and although it happen not to attend the worthy deed, yet it is by no means the less fair for having
missed the applause it deserved.
Pliny, Letter 5
The world is apt to suspect that those who celebrate their own beneficent acts performed them for no other
motive than to have the pleasure of extolling them. Thus, the splendor of an action which would have been
deemed illustrious if related by another is totally extinguished when it becomes the subject of one’s own
applause. Such is the disposition of mankind, if they cannot blast the action, they will censure its display; and
whether you do what does not deserve particular notice, or set forth yourself what does, either way you incur
reproach.
Pliny, Letter 5
For as none but those who are skilled in painting, statuary, or the plastic art, can form a right judgment of any
performance in those respective modes of representation, so a man must, himself, have made great advances
in philosophy before he is capable of forming a just opinion of a philosopher.
Pliny, Letter 6
106
[The wise man] attacks vices, not persons, and, without severity, reclaims the wanderer from the paths of
virtue.
Pliny, Letter 6
I found myself dining the other day with an individual with whom I am by no means intimate, and who, in
his own opinion, does things in good style and economically as well, but according to mine, with meanness
and extravagance combined. Some very elegant dishes were served up to himself and a few more of us,
whilst those placed before the rest of the company consisted simply of cheap dishes and scraps. … if a man is
wise enough to moderate his appetite, he will not find it such a very expensive thing to share with all his
visitors what he takes himself. … You will find temperance a far better way of saving than treating other
people rudely can be. … nothing is more to be avoided than this modern alliance of luxury with meanness;
odious enough when existing separate and distinct, but still more hateful where you meet with them together.
Pliny, Letter 19
CICERO (106-43 BC)

Whereas the persons engaged in handling and pursuing and teaching the subjects that we are now
investigating were designated by a single title (the whole study and practice of the liberal sciences being
entitles philosophy), Socrates robbed them of this general designation, and in his discussions separated the
science of wise thinking from that of elegant speaking. … This is the source from which has sprung the
undoubtedly absurd and unprofitable and reprehensible severance between the tongue and the brain, leading
to our having one set of professors to teach us to think and another to teach us to speak.
Cicero, De Oratore, as cited in Jeff Mason, Philosophical Rhetoric (1989), p. 8
Before all other things, man is distinguished by his pursuit and investigation of Truth. And hence, when free
from needful business and cares, we delight to see, to hear, and to communicate, and consider a knowledge
of many admirable and abstruse things necessary to the good conduct and happiness of our lives: whence it is
clear that whatsoever is True, simple, and direct, the same is most congenial to our nature as men. Closely
allied with this earnest longing to see and know the truth, is a kind of dignified and princely sentiment which
forbids a mind, naturally well constituted, to submit its faculties to any but those who announce it in precept
or in doctrine, or to yield obedience to any orders but such as are at once just, lawful, and founded on utility.
From this source spring greatness of mind and contempt of worldly advantages and troubles.
Cicero, De Officiis, Book 1, § 13
Quod crebro videt non miratur, etiamsi cur fiat nescit; quod ante non viderit, id si evenerit, ostentum esse
censet.
A common happening does not astonish, even though the cause is unknown; an event such as one has
never seen before passes for a prodigy.
Cicero, De Divinatione ii. 22
Whoever gives his labor for money sells himself and puts himself in the rank of slaves.
Cicero, “De Officiis,” 1, 42
Every careful method consists of two parts: one of inventing and one of judging. The Stoics have developed
with great diligence the ways of judging, and that by means of the science they call dialectic; the art of
inventing, which is called topic, ... they have completely neglected.
Cicero, Topica, § 2.6, cited in Ernesto Grassi, Rhetoric as Philosophy (1980), p. 43
The wise are instructed by reason; ordinary minds by experience; the stupid, by necessity; and brutes by
instinct.
Cicero
To be content with what one has is the greatest and truest of riches.
Cicero
107
Law stands mute in the midst of arms.
Cicero, Pro Milone
Where is there dignity unless there is honesty?

Cicero
A room without books is like a body without a soul.

Cicero (Attributed)
When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men’s minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and
retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.
Cicero
To be content with what one has is the greatest and truest of riches.
Cicero
The wise are instructed by reason; ordinary minds by experience; the stupid, by necessity; and brutes by
instinct.
Cicero
The first duty of a man is the seeking after and the investigation of truth.
Cicero
The evil implanted in man by nature spreads so imperceptibly, when the habit of wrong-doing is unchecked,
that he himself can set no limit to his shamelessness.
Cicero
The absolute good is not a matter of opinion but of nature.

Cicero
To be ignorant of the past is to remain a child.

Cicero
Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors
of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.
Cicero
I will go further, and assert that nature without culture can often do more to deserve praise than culture
without nature.
Cicero
In so far as the mind is stronger than the body, so are the ills contracted by the mind more severe than those
contracted by the body.
Cicero
Everyone has the obligation to ponder well his own specific traits of character. He must also regulate them
adequately and not wonder whether someone else’s traits might suit him better. The more definitely his own
a man’s character is, the better it fits him.
Cicero
A mind without instruction can no more bear fruit than can a field, however fertile, without cultivation.
Cicero
108
Those who seek to learn my personal opinion on the various questions show an unreasonable degree of
curiosity. In discussion it is not so much weight of authority as force of argument that should be demanded.
Indeed, the authority of those who profess to teach is often a positive hindrance to those who desire to learn;
they cease to employ their own judgement, and take what they perceive to be the verdict of their chosen
master as settling the question.
Cicero, De Natura Deorum, H. Rackham, trans. (1961), p. 13
Paradoxes
We are more conversant in that philosophy which has produced a copiousness of expression, and in which
those things are propounded which do not widely differ from the popular opinion. But Cato, in my opinion a
complete Stoic, both holds those notions which certainly do not approve themselves to the common people;
and belongs to that sect which aims at no embellishments, and does not spin out an argument. He therefore
succeeds in what he has purposed, by certain pithy and, as it were, stimulating questions.
Cicero, Paradoxes, Introduction
De Officiis - On Duties (44 B.C.)

http://books.google.com/books?id=e_gpAAAAYAAJ
http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=542&chapter=83344&layout=html&Itemid=27
It is essential to every inquiry about duty that we keep before our eyes how far superior man is by nature to
cattle and other beasts: they have no thought except for sensual pleasure and this they are impelled by every
instinct to seek; but man's mind is nurtured by study and meditation.
Cicero, On Duties, 1.105
One's physical comforts and wants, therefore, should be ordered according to the demands of health and
strength, not according to the calls of pleasure. And if we will only bear in mind the superiority and dignity
of our nature, we shall realize how wrong it is to abandon ourselves to excess and to live in luxury and
voluptuousness, and how right it is to live in thrift, self-denial, simplicity, and sobriety.
Cicero, On Duties, 1.106
Bodily pleasure is unworthy of man’s superior endowments, and ought to be despised and spurned; and if
there be any one who sets some value on sensual gratification, he should carefully keep it within due limits.
Thus food and the care of the body should be ordered with reference to health and strength, not to sensual
pleasure. Indeed, if we will only bear in mind what excellence and dignity belong to human nature, we shall
understand how base it is to give one’s self up to luxury, and to live voluptuously and wantonly, and how
honorable it is to live frugally, chastely, circumspectly, soberly.
Cicero, On Duties http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/542
Who would dare to call himself a philosopher, if he took no cognizance of duty?

Cicero, De Officiis
109
Every one ought to hold fast, not his faults, but his peculiarities, so as to retain more easily the becomingness
which is the subject of our inquiry. We ought, indeed, to act in such a way as shall be in no respect repugnant
to our common human nature; yet, holding this sacred, let us follow our individual nature, so that, if there are
other pursuits in themselves more important and excellent, we yet may measure our own pursuits by the
standard of our own nature. For it is of no avail to resist nature, or to pursue anything which we cannot reach.
It is the more apparent of what quality is the becomingness under discussion, when we consider that nothing
is becoming that is done, as the phrase is, without Minerva’s sanction, that is, with the opposition and
repugnancy of nature. In truth, if anything is becoming, nothing surely is more so than uniform consistency
in the whole course of life and in each separate action, which you cannot preserve if, imitating the nature of
others, you abandon your own. For as we ought to use our native tongue, and not, like some who are
perpetually foisting in Greek words, incur well-deserved ridicule, so we ought not to introduce any
discordance into our conduct and our general way of living. … It will be each man’s duty to weigh well what
are his own peculiar traits of character, and to keep them in serviceable condition, and not to desire to try
how far another man’s peculiarities may be becoming to him; for that is most becoming to each man which is
most peculiarly his own. Let each of us, then, know his own capacities and proclivities, and show himself a
discriminating judge of his own excellences and defects. … Let us therefore bestow our diligence chiefly on
those concerns for which we are the best fitted. But if at any time necessity shall have forced us to undertake
things outside of our specialty, we must employ all possible care, thought, and diligence, that we may be able
to dispose of them, if not becomingly, yet with the least degree of unbecomingness.
Cicero, On Duties
He who so interprets the supreme good as to disjoin it from virtue, and measures it by his own convenience,
and not by the standard of right,—he, I say, if he be consistent with himself, and be not sometimes overcome
by natural goodness, can cultivate neither friendship, nor justice, nor generosity.
Cicero, De Officiis
Summum ius, summa iniuria

Cicero, De Officiis
Law applied to its extreme is the greatest injustice
Cicero, De Officiis, Book I, section 10, 33
While there are two ways of contending, one by discussion, the other by force, the former belonging properly
to man, the latter to beasts, recourse must be had to the latter if there be no opportunity for employing the
former.
Cicero, De Officiis
He is never less at leisure than when at leisure.

Cicero, De Officiis, Book III, section 1
Tusculan Disputations
Apud alios loqui didicerunt, non ipsi secum.
Cicero
They have learned how to talk with others, not with themselves.
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, as adapted by Montaigne in “On Pedantry”
The result is that such writers read their own books themselves along with their own circle, and none of them
reaches any wider public than that which wishes to have the same privilege of scribbling extended to itself.
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 1, 3, 6, J. King, trans.
To commit one’s reflections to writing, without being able to arrange or express them clearly or attract the
reader by some sort of charm, indicates a man who makes an unpardonable misuse of leisure and his pen.
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 1, 3, 6, J. King, trans.
110
On Old Age
Those who look for happiness from within can never think anything bad which Nature makes inevitable. In
that category before anything else comes old age, to which all wish to attain, and at which all grumble when
attained. Such is Folly’s inconsistency and unreasonableness!
Cicero, On Old Age
But, it is said, memory dwindles. No doubt, unless you keep it in practice... Nor, in point of fact, have I ever
heard of any old man forgetting where he had hidden his money. They remember everything that interests
them.
Cicero, On Old Age
We must stand up against old age and make up for its drawbacks by taking pains. We must fight it as we
should an illness. We must look after our health, use moderate exercise, take just enough food and drink to
recruit, but not to overload, our strength.
Cicero, On Old Age
For what Caecilius means by “old dotards of the comic stage” are the credulous, the forgetful, and the
slipshod. These are faults that do not attach to old age as such, but to a sluggish, spiritless, and sleepy old
age. Young men are more frequently wanton and dissolute than old men; but yet, as it is not all young men
that are so, but the bad set among them, even so senile folly—usually called imbecility—applies to old men
of unsound character, not to all.
Cicero, On Old Age
For as I admire a young man who has something of the old man in him, so do I an old one who has
something of a young man.
Cicero, On Old Age
MARCUS AURELIUS (121-180 AD)

It is not death that a man should fear, but never beginning to live.
Marcus Aurelius
How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
Marcus Aurelius
Every man values himself more than all the rest of men, but he always values others’ opinions of
himself more than his own.
Marcus Aurelius
Your duty is to stand straight—not be held straight.

Marcus Aurelius, cited in Zygmunt Bauman, The Art of Life (Cambridge: 2008), p. 35
What then can escort us on our way? One thing, one thing only: philosophy.
Zygmunt Bauman, The Art of Life (Cambridge: 2008), p. 35
Meditations
Not to busy myself about trifling things
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 1.6
111
I learned not to be led astray to sophistic emulation, nor to writing on speculative matters, nor to delivering
little hortatory orations, nor to showing myself off as a man who practices much discipline, or does
benevolent acts in order to make a display; and to abstain from rhetoric, and poetry, and fine writing; ... and
with respect to those who have offended me by words, or done me wrong, to be easily disposed to be
pacified and reconciled, as soon as they have shown a readiness to be reconciled; and to read carefully, and
not to be satisfied with a superficial understanding of a book; nor hastily to give my assent to those who talk
overmuch
To look to nothing else, not even for a moment, except to reason.

Living conformably to nature; ... gravity without affectation, ... to tolerate ignorant persons, and those who
form opinions without consideration; he had the power of readily accommodating himself to all ...
knowledge without ostentation.
Not in a reproachful way to chide those who uttered any barbarous or solecistic or strange-sounding
expression; but dexterously to introduce the very expression which ought to have been used, and in the way
of answer or giving confirmation, or joining in an inquiry about the thing itself, not about the word
And the things which conduce in any way to the commodity of life, and of which fortune gives an abundant
supply, he used without arrogance and without excusing himself; so that when he had them, he enjoyed them
without affectation, and when he had them not, he did not want them.
He honored those who were true philosophers, and he did not reproach those who pretended to be
philosophers, nor yet was he easily led by them
He was able both to abstain from, and to enjoy, those things which many are too weak to abstain from, and
cannot enjoy without excess. But to be strong enough both to bear the one and to be sober in the other is the
mark of a man who has a perfect and invincible soul
I thank the Gods ... that I did not make more proficiency in rhetoric, poetry, and the other studies, in which I
should perhaps have been completely engaged, if I had seen that I was making progress in them
I thank the Gods ... that, when I had an inclination to philosophy, I did not fall into the hands of any sophist,
and that I did not waste my time on writers [of histories], or in the resolution of syllogisms, or occupy myself
about the investigation of appearances in the heavens
112
Begin the morning by saying to thyself, “I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful,
envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But
I, who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him
who does wrong, that it is akin to me; not only of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in the same
intelligence and the same portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix
on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him. For we are made for co-operation,
like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another, then,
is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away.”
[Later (5.17) Aurelius tell us “To seek what is impossible is madness. It is impossible that the bad should act other than in accordance with its nature.”
So we must tolerate the arrogant and deceitful whether they are bad by nature or merely ignorant. What, then, is the point of assuring ourselves of the
questionable assertion that they are merely ignorant?]
No longer be pulled by the strings like a puppet to unsocial movements, no longer be either dissatisfied with
thy present lot, or shrink from the future.
A limit of time is fixed for thee, which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind, it will
go and thou wilt go
Do every act of your life as if it were the last .

How few the things are, the which if a man lays hold of, he is able to live a life which flows in quiet, and is
like the existence of the gods.
Those who do not observe the movements of their own minds must of necessity be unhappy.
This thou must always bear in mind, what is the nature of the whole, and what is my nature, and how this is
related to that, and what kind of a part it is of what kind of a whole, and that there is no one who hinders thee
from always doing and saying the things which are according to the nature of which thou art a part.
Be cheerful also, and seek not external help nor the tranquility which others give. A man then must stand
erect, not be kept erect by others.
As physicians have always their instruments and knives ready for cases which suddenly require their skill, so
do thou have principles ready for the understanding of things
Let no act be done without a purpose, nor otherwise than according to the perfect principles of art.
Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to
desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy
power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom
from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that
by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility; and I affirm that tranquility is nothing else than
the good ordering of the mind.
113
Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint, “I have been harmed.” Take away the
complaint, “I have been harmed,” and the harm is taken away.
How much trouble he avoids who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only to
what he does himself, that it may be just and pure; or, as Agathon says, look not round at the depraved
morals of others, but run straight along the line without deviating from it.
Do what is necessary, and whatever the reason of the animal which is naturally social requires, and as it
requires. For this brings not only the tranquility which comes from doing well, but also that which comes
from doing few things. For the greatest part of what we say and do being unnecessary, if a man takes this
away, he will have more leisure and less uneasiness. Accordingly, on every occasion a man should ask
himself, Is this one of the unnecessary things? Now a man should take away not only unnecessary acts, but
also unnecessary thoughts, for thus superfluous acts will not follow after.
Like a vine which has produced grapes, and seeks for nothing more after it has once produced its proper fruit
... so a man when he has done a good act does not call out for others to come and see, but he goes on to
another act, as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes
Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind
To seek what is impossible is madness. It is impossible that the bad should act other than in accordance with
its nature.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.17 (modified)
Reverence that which is best in thyself .

How cruel it is not to allow men to strive after the things which appear to them to be suitable to their nature
and profitable! And yet in a manner thou dost not allow them to do this, when thou art vexed because they do
wrong. For they are certainly moved towards things because they suppose them to be suitable to their nature
and profitable to them. But it is not so. Teach them then, and show them without being angry.
When thou wishest to delight thyself, think of the virtues of those who live with thee; for instance, the
activity of one, and the modesty of another, and the liberality of a third, and some other good quality of a
fourth.
Thou art not dissatisfied. I suppose, because thou weighest only so many litrae and not three hundred. Be not
dissatisfied then that thou must live only so many years and not more; for as thou art satisfied with the
amount of substance which has been assigned to thee, so be content with the time.
It is in our power to have no opinion about a thing

Think not so much of what thou hast not as of what thou hast: but of the things which thou hast select the
best, and then reflect how eagerly they would have been sought, if thou hadst them not. At the same time,
however, take care that thou dost not through being so pleased with them accustom thyself to overvalue
them, so as to be disturbed if ever thou shouldst not have them.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.27 [Consider as it applies to knowledge, too]
114
When thou wilt comfort and cheer thyself, call to mind the several gifts and virtues of them, whom thou dost
daily converse with; as for example, the industry of the one; the modesty of another; the liberality of a third;
of another some other thing. For nothing can so much rejoice thee, as the resemblances and parallels of
several virtues, visible and eminent in the dispositions of those who live with thee; especially when, all at
once, as near as may be, they represent themselves unto thee. And therefore thou must have them always in a
readiness.
Exert thy skill upon thy present thoughts, that nothing shall steal into them without being well examined.
What the mind shows in the face by maintaining in it the expression of intelligence and propriety, that ought
to be required also in the whole body. But all these things should be observed without affectation.
The art of life is more like the wrestler’s art than the dancer’s, in respect of this, that it should stand ready
and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected.
Whatever the rational and political [social] faculty finds to be neither intelligent nor social, it properly judges
to be inferior to itself.
JUVENAL, a.k.a. DECIMUS IUNIUS IUVENALIS (c. 60-140 AD)

Probitas laudatur et alget.
Honesty is praised and starves.
Juvenal, Sat. I, line 74
Since noble arts in Rome have no support,

And ragged virtue not a friend at court,
No profit rises from the ungrateful stage,
My poverty encreasing with my age;
'Tis time to give my just disdain a vent,
And, cursing, leave so base a government.
Juvenal, Sat III, J. Dryden, trans.
Knaves, who in full assemblies have the knack

Of turning truth to lies, and white to black,
Can hire large houses, and oppress the poor
By farmed excise; can cleanse the common-shore,
And rent the fishery; can bear the dead,
And teach their eyes dissembled tears to shed;
All this for gain; for gain they sell their very head.
What's Rome to me, what business have I there?

I who can neither lie, nor falsely swear?
Nor praise my patron's undeserving rhymes,
Nor yet comply with him, nor with his times?
Juvenal, Sat III, J. Dryden, trans., line 75
115
For want of these town-virtues, thus alone
I go, conducted on my way by none;
Like a dead member from the body rent,
Maimed, and unuseful to the government.
Who now is loved, but he who loves the times,
Conscious of close intrigues, and dipt in crimes,
Labouring with secrets which his bosom burn,
Yet never must to public light return?
They get reward alone, who can betray;
For keeping honest counsels none will pay.
Great men with jealous eyes the friend behold,

Whose secrecy they purchase with their gold.
The question is not put how far extends

His piety, but what he yearly spends;
Quick, to the business; how he lives and eats;
How largely gives; how splendidly he treats;
How many thousand acres feed his sheep;
What are his rents; what servants does he keep?
The account is soon cast up; the judges rate
Our credit in the court by our estate.
The poor were wise, who, by the rich oppressed,

Withdrew, and sought a secret place of rest.
Once they did well, to free themselves from scorn;
But had done better, never to return.
Rarely they rise by virtue's aid, who lie
Plunged in the depth of helpless poverty.
The “Secret place of rest” is Mons Sacer, where the plebeians hid after seceding from the Roman Empire in 495 BC
But here attired beyond our purse we go,

For useless ornament and flaunting show;
We take on trust, in purple robes to shine,
And poor, are yet ambitious to be fine.
Vitam impendere vero.

Dedicate one’s life to truth.
Juvenal, Sat. IV. 91, cited in Schopenhauer, Parerga und Paralipomena, p. v
Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se,

quam quod ridiculos homines facit.
Poverty has no harder pang than that it makes men ridiculous
Juvenal, Sat. III 152
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

But who shall guard the guardians?
Juvenal, Sat. VI, line 347
116
Nobilitas sola est atque unica virtus.
Nobility is the one and only virtue.
Juvenal, Sat. VIII, line 20
Summum crede nefas animam praeferre pudori

et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.
Count it the greatest sin to prefer life to honor, and for the sake of living to lose what makes life worth
living.
Juvenal, Sat. VIII, line 83
Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator.

The traveler with empty pockets will sing in the thief's face.
Juvenal, Sat. X, line 22
quis custodiet ipsos custodes

Who will watch the watchers?
Juvenal, Sat. VI, lines 347-48
Maxima debetur puero reverentia.

The greatest reverence is due the young.
Juvenal, Sat. XIV, line 47
NEW TESTAMENT (c. 50-150 AD)

http://books.google.com/books?id=ygQVAAAAYAAJ
http://www.biblegateway.com/
http://bible.cc
Matthew
Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put
it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine
before men, that they may see your good works
Matthew 5:14-16
Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye
resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man
will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel
thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
Matthew 5:38-41 KJV
Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.
Matthew 5:44
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Matthew 5:48
Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them.
Matthew 6:1
When thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do.
Matthew 6:2
117
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves
break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth
corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your
heart be also.
Matthew 6:19-21
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to
the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
Matthew 6:24
Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for
your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls
of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth
them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?
And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do
they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall
he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat?
or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles
seek) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom
of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the
morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
Matthew 6:25-34 (KJV)
The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged.
Matthew 7:2 (NLT)
Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what
measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye,
but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out
the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam
out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye
Matthew 7:1-5 (KJV)
Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own
eye?
Matthew 7:3 (NIV)
Πάντα οὖν ὅσα ἐὰν θέλητε ἵνα ποιῶσιν ὑμῖν οῖ ἄνθρωποι οὕτως καὶ ὑμεῖς ποιεῖτε αὐτοῖς οὗτος
γάρ ἐστιν ὁ νόμος καὶ οἱ προφῆται.
Matthew 7:12
Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law
and the prophets.
Matthew 7:12 (NLT)
All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.
Matthew 7:12 (KJV)
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves.
Matthew 7:15 (ASV)
118
Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his
disciples. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your Master with publicans
and sinners? But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but
they that are sick.
Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul, but rather fear him which is able to
destroy both body and soul.
Matthew 10:28 (KJV)
I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter
in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul.
Matthew 10:35 (KJV)
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more
than me is not worthy of me.
Matthew 10:37 (KJV)
He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.
Matthew 10:39 (KJV)
I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and
prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.
Matthew 11:25 (KJV)
Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me.

Matthew 11:29 (KJV)
Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree corrupt, and its fruit corrupt.
Matthew 12:33
How can ye, being evil, speak good things?

Matthew 12:34
Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree
is known by his fruit. O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the
abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth
good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.
A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil
treasure bringeth forth evil things.
Matthew 12:35 (KJV)
Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Matthew 16:6
119
And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have
eternal life? And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God:
but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou
shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false
witness, Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. The young
man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet? Jesus said unto
him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have
treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.
Matthew 19:16-26 KJV
If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor.
Matthew 19:21
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin,
and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have
done, and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the
platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within
the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed
appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also
outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
Matthew 23:23 (KJV)
Mark
Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous,
but sinners, to repentance.
Mark 2:17 (KJV)
The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.
Mark 2:27 (KJV)
There went out a sower to sow: And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls
of the air came and devoured it up. And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and
immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth: But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and
because it had no root, it withered away. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it,
and it yielded no fruit. And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and
brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some an hundred ...
Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables? The sower soweth the word. And these
are they by the way side, where the word is sown; but when they have heard, Satan cometh immediately, and
taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts. And these are they likewise which are sown on stony
ground; who, when they have heard the word, immediately receive it with gladness; And have no root in
themselves, and so endure but for a time: afterward, when affliction or persecution ariseth for the word's
sake, immediately they are offended. And these are they which are sown among thorns; such as hear the
word, And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in,
choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful. And these are they which are sown on good ground; such as hear
the word, and receive it, and bring forth fruit, some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some an hundred.
Mark 4: 3 (KJV)
120
And when he was alone, they that were about him with the twelve asked of him the parable. And he said unto
them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all
these things are done in parables: That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and
not understand.
Mark 4:10-11 (KJV)
There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of
him, those are they that defile the man.
Mark 7:15
Luke
And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord.
Luke 1:46
He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.
Luke 1:53
Consider whether the light in you is not darkness.

Luke 11:35 NRSV
Give for alms those things that are within; and see, everything will be clean for you.
Luke 11:41 NRSV
Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves
touch not the burdens with one of your fingers.
Luke 11:45
Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves,
and them that were entering in ye hindered.
Luke 11:52
Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed
much, of him they will ask the more.
Luke 12:48
Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division.
Luke 12:51
When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case
someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you
may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the
lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes,
he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the
table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be
exalted.”
Luke 14:8-11 NRSV
Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons.
Luke 15:7
He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also
in much. If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust
the true riches?
Luke 16:10-11
121
No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to
the one, and despise the other.
Luke 16:13
What is exalted among men is an abomination in the eyes of God.

Luke 16:15
If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee
seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.
Luke 17:3
And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and
said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for,
behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
Luke 17:20
The kingdom of God is within you.

Luke 17:21
And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised
others: Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee
stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust,
adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the
publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast,
saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the
other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be
exalted.
Luke 18:9-14, KJV
To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this
parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee
stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers,
adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and
said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt
themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Luke 18:9-14, NIV
He that is not with me is against me.

Luke 11:23 (KJV)
But woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and
the love of God: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
Luke 11:42 (KJV)
Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and
them that were entering in ye hindered.
Luke 11:52 (KJV)
The scribes and the Pharisees began to urge him vehemently, and to provoke him to speak of many things:
Laying wait for him, and seeking to catch something out of his mouth, that they might accuse him.
Luke 11:53 (KJV)
122
John
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:1
For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
John 1:17 KJV
I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord
John 1:23 KJV
That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.
John 3:6 KJV
This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because
their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds
should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that
they are wrought in God.
John 3:19-21 KJV
Men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth
the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
John 3:19-20
You worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know.

John 4:22
A prophet is not honored in his home town.

John 4:44
I seek to do not my own will, but the will of him who sent me.
John 4:30
The scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the
midst, They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law
commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? This they said, tempting him, that they
might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he
heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is
without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down, and wrote on the
ground. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning
at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus
had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine
accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I
condemn thee: go, and sin no more.
John 8:3
I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.
John 10:10
I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. But he that is an hireling, and not the
shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the
wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for
the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.
John 10:11-14
123
Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, “Many good works have I shewed
you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?” The Jews answered him, saying, “For a
good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.”
Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, Ye are gods?’”
John 10:31-34, reference is to Psalm 82:6
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should
love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one
another.
John 13:34-35 NRSV
When he had thus spoken, one of the officers which stood by struck Jesus with the palm of his hand, saying,
Answerest thou the high priest so? Jesus answered him, If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil: but if
well, why smitest thou me?
John 18:22
If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil: but if well, why smitest thou me?
John 18:23
Pilate entered into the judgment hall again, and called Jesus, and said unto him, Art thou the King of the
Jews? ... Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world.
John 18:33
To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. ...
Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews.
John 18:37
Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar.
Then delivered he him therefore unto them to be crucified.
John 19:15
Acts of the Apostles

Grant to your servants to speak your work with all boldness.
Acts 4:29
The multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of
the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.
Acts 4:32
We must obey God rather than men.

Acts 5:29
Let these men alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: But if it be of God, ye
cannot overthrow it.
Acts 5:38
It is not right that we should neglect the word of God in order to wait on tables.
Acts 6:2
124
For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small
gain unto the craftsmen; Whom he called together with the workmen of like occupation, and said, Sirs, ye
know that by this craft we have our wealth. Moreover ye see and hear, that not alone at Ephesus, but almost
throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no gods,
which are made with hands: So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at nought; but also that the
temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all
Asia and the world worshippeth. And when they heard these sayings, they were full of wrath, and cried out,
saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians.
Acts 19:24 KJV
Demetrius, a silversmith who made silver replicas of the temple of Artemis, was bringing no little business to
the craftsmen. These he gathered together, and the workers occupied with such things, and said, “Men, you
know that from this business we get our prosperity, and you see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in
almost all of Asia this man Paul has persuaded and turned away a large crowd by saying that the gods made
by hands are not gods. So not only is there a danger this line of business of ours will come into disrepute, but
also the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be regarded as nothing—and she is about to be brought
down even from her grandeur, she whom the whole of Asia and the entire world worship!”
Acts 19:24 (Lexham)
Demetrius, a silversmith who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought no little business to the artisans. These
he gathered together, with the workers of the same trade, and said, "Men, you know that we get our wealth
from this business. You also see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost the whole of Asia this Paul
has persuaded and drawn away a considerable number of people by saying that gods made with hands are not
gods.
Acts 19:24 (New Revised Standard Version)
Romans
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.
Romans 1:22
… worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.

Romans 1:25
When Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for
themselves, even though they do not have the law.
Romans 2:14 NIV
A man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.

Romans 3:28 KJV
So we are made right with God through faith and not by obeying the law.
Romans 3:28 NLT
I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my
mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
Romans 7:22-23 NRSV
Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according
to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
Romans 8:5 NRSV
125
τὸ γὰρ φρόνημα τῆς σαρκὸς θάνατος, τὸ δὲ φρόνημα τοῦ πνεύματος ζωὴ καὶ εἰρήνη.
Nam prudentia carnis mors prudentia autem Spiritus vita et pax.
The mind of the flesh is death; but the mind of the spirit is life and peace.
Romans 8:6 ERV
Nolite conformari huic a seculo.

Be not conformed to this world.
Romans 12:2
Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove
what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
Romans 12:2
Bless them which persecute you.

Romans 12:14
Seid niemand nichts schuldig, als daß ihr euch untereinander liebt; denn wer den andern liebt, der hat das
Gesetz erfüllt. Denn was da gesagt ist: "Du sollst nicht ehebrechen; du sollst nicht töten; du sollst nicht
stehlen; du sollst nicht falsch Zeugnis geben; dich soll nichts gelüsten", und so ein anderes Gebot mehr ist,
das wird in diesen Worten zusammengefaßt: "Du sollst deinen Nächsten lieben wie dich selbst." Denn Liebe
tut dem Nächsten nichts Böses. So ist nun die Liebe des Gesetzes Erfüllung.
Römer 13:8 Luther
Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For
this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear
false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly
comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Romans 13:8 KJV
πλήρωμα οὖν νόμου ἡ ἀγάπη.

Love is the fulfillment of the law.
Romans 13:10 (NIV)
Love fulfills Moses' Teachings.

Romans 13:10 (God’s Word Translation)
Make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.
Romans 13:14 KJV
1 Corinthians
We do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age.
1 Corinthians 2:6
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.
1 Corinthians 2:10
It is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but the doers of the law who will be
justified. When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, … they show
that what the law requires is written on their hearts.
1 Corinthians 2:13-15
I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.
1 Corinthians 3:2
126
They that have wives be as though they had none; and they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that
rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; and they that use this
world, as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away. But I would have you without
carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord:
But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife.
1 Corinthians 7:29-33 KJV
Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.

1 Corinthians 8:1 (NIV)
The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know.
For though I preach the gospel, I have nothing to glory of: for necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is unto me,
if I preach not the gospel! For if I do this thing willingly, I have a reward: but if against my will, a
dispensation of the gospel is committed unto me. What is my reward then? Verily that, when I preach the
gospel, I may make the gospel of Christ without charge, that I abuse not my power in the gospel.
1 Corinthians 9:16-18 KJV
If I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do
not preach the gospel! For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I am
entrusted with a commission. What then is my reward? Just this: that in my preaching I may make the gospel
free of charge, not making full use of my right in the gospel.
For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, that I might win the more. To
the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews; to those under the law I became as one under the
law—though not being myself under the law—that I might win those under the law. To those outside
the law I became as one outside the law—not being without law toward God but under the law of Christ—
that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become
all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may
share in its blessings.
For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more.
And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the
law, that I might gain them that are under the law; To them that are without law, as without law, (being not
without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak
became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save
some.
And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible
crown; but we an incorruptible.
1 Corinthians 9:25
If an unbeliever invites you to his house and you wish to go, eat whatever is set before you, raising no
question on the grounds of conscience.
1 Corinthians 10:27
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass,
or a tinkling cymbal.
1 Corinthians 13:1
127
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
Love ... rejoiceth in the truth.

1 Corinthians 13:6
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging
cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith
that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my
body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does
not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of
wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always
hopes, always perseveres.
1 Corinthians 13:1-7 (NIV)
When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I
spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish
things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I
know even as also I am known.
1 Corinthians 13:10-12 (KJV)
Now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain.

1 Corinthians 15:14 (KJV)
I die daily.
1 Corinthians 15:31
2 Corinthians
We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen
are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:18 KJV
Behold, now is he acceptable time, behold now is the day of salvation.

2 Corinthians 6:2
… having nothing, and yet possessing all things

2 Corinthians 6:10
Though he [Jesus] was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.
2 Corinthians 8:9 KJV
Did I commit a sin in abasing myself so that you might be exalted, because I preached God's gospel without
cost to you?
2 Corinthians 11:7
Galatians
I died to the law so that I might live for God.
Galatians 2:19 NIV
It is by the Law that I have died to the Law, in order that I may live to God.
Galatians 2:19 (Weymouth)
128
I live, yet no longer I, but Christ lives in me.
Galatians 2:20
The law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith
has come, we are no longer under a guardian.
Galatians 3:24-25 ESV
I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave,[a] though he is the owner of
everything, 2 but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. 3 In the same way we
also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.
Galatians 4:1-3 ESV
For freedom Christ has set us free.

Galatians 5:1 ESV
Whosoever of you are justified by the law; you are fallen from grace.
Galatians 5:4
You were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but
through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as
yourself.”
For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
Galatians 5:14
Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the
Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other.
What the flesh desires is opposed to the spirit, and what the spirit desires is opposed to the flesh.
Galatians 5:17 NRSV
If ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.

Galatians 5:18
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
Galatians 5:24 ESV
Let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor.
Galatians 6:4 ESV
God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified
unto me, and I unto the world.
Galatians 6:14
Ephesians
All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and
we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.
Ephesians 2:3
129
That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by
the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive.
Ephesians 4:14
Henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind.
Ephesians 4:17
Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.

Ephesians 4:26
Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all
malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake
hath forgiven you.
Ephesians 4:31-32
Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men.

Ephesians 6:7
We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the
darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Ephesians 6:12 KJV
Philippians
According to my earnest expectation and hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness,
as always, so now also, Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life, or by death.
Philippians 1:20 (Webster’s) boldness = parrhesia
Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

Philippians 2:12 (KJV)
Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend
that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but
this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are
before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as
many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this
unto you.
Philippians 3:12-15
Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing.
Philippians 3:16
They are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose
glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.
Philippians 3:18-19
Colossians
Teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus:
Whereunto I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily.
Colossians 1:28-29
Jesus Christ … disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them.
Colossians 2:15
130
1 Thessalonians
2 Thessalonians
1 Timothy
2 Timothy
God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.
2 Timothy 1:7
Labour as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.

2 Timothy 2:3 (Douay-Rheims)
No man, being a soldier to God, entangleth himself with secular businesses.

2 Timothy 2:4 (Douay-Rheims)
Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
2 Timothy 3:7
Titus
Philemon
Hebrews
Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you
yourselves were suffering.
Hebrews 13:3
James
Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their
affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.
James 1:27 ASV
1 Peter
Do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. Instead, as he who called you is holy,
be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
1 Peter 1:14-16 NRSV
Rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.
1 Peter 2:1 (NIV)
Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation
1 Peter 2:2 NRSV
As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby.
1 Peter 2:2 KJV
131
Let your beauty be not just the outward adorning of braiding the hair, and of wearing jewels of gold, or of
putting on fine clothing; but in the hidden person of the heart, in the incorruptible adornment of a gentle and
quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God very precious.
1 Peter 3:3-4 (World English Bible)
2 Peter
For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the
beginning. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have
known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them. But it is happened unto them according
to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing
in the mire.
2 Peter 2:20
1 John
I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord.”
1 John 1:23 KJV
Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.
1 John 2:15
Sin is lawlessness.
1 John 3:4
For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world—our
faith.
1 John 5:4 NASB
2 John
3 John
Jude
Revelation
I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art
lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
Revelation 3:15-16
NEW TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA

Gospel of Thomas
The person old in days will not hesitate to ask a little child of seven days concerning the place of life.
Thomas 4
I have cast fire upon the world—and behold, I guard it until it is ablaze.
Thomas 10
132
Thou art like a philosopher of the heart..
Thomas 13, Matthew’s words to Yeshua
I am not your teacher. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I
have tended.
Thomas 13
The Disciples say to Yeshua: Tell us how our end shall be. Yeshua says: Have you then discovered the
origin, so that you inquire about the end? For at the place where the origin is, there shall be the end. Blest is
he who shall stand at the origin.
Thomas 18
When you make the two one, and you make the inside as the outside and the outside as the inside and the
above as the below, and if you establish the male with the female as a single unity so that the man will not
act masculine and the woman not act feminine, ... —then shall you enter the Sovereignty.
Thomas 22
Within a person of light there is light, and he illumines the entire world. When he does not shine, there is
darkness.
Thomas 24
Unless ye fast from the world, ye shall not find the Sovereignty; unless ye keep the entire week as
Sabbath, ye shall not behold the Father.
Thomas 27
I found them all drunk, I found no one among them athirst in his heart. And my soul was grieved for the sons
of men, for they are blind in their minds and do not see that empty they have come into the world and that
empty they are destined to come forth from the world.
Thomas 28
His disciples say to him, ... when will the New World come? He says to them: That which you look for
has already come, but you do not recognize it.
Thomas 51
Behold the Living-One while you are alive, lest you die and seek to perceive him and be unable to see.
Thomas 59
He who knows the All but fails to know himself lacks everything.
Thomas 67
When you bring forth that which is within yourselves, this that you have shall save you. If you do not have
that within yourselves, this which you do not have within you will kill you.
Thomas 70
Your rulers and your dignitaries are those who are clad in plush garments, and they shall not be able to
recognize the truth.
Thomas 78
Whoever has recognized the world has found the body; yet whoever has found the body, of him the world is
not worthy.
Thomas 80
Why do you wash the outside of the chalice? Do you not comprehend that He who creates the inside, is also
He who creates the outside?
Thomas 89
133
The Sovereignty of the Father is like a woman who is carrying a jar full of grain. While she was walking on a
distant road, the handle of the jar broke, the grain streamed out behind her onto the road. She did not observe
it, she had noticed no accident. When she arrived in her house, she set the jar down—she found it empty.
Thomas 97
Whoever has found the world and become enriched, let him renounce the world.
Thomas 110
Woe to the flesh which depends upon the soul, woe to the soul which depends upon the flesh!
Thomas 112
The Gospel of Philip

http://gnosis.org/naghamm/gop.html
This person is no longer a Christian but a Christ.

Some have entered the Kingdom of Heaven laughing.

LUCIAN (125-180 AD)

Hermotimus
“You will not accept anything I say.”
“On the contrary, my good sir, it is you who will not say anything I can accept”
Lucian, Hermotimus, 21
134
Lycinus. One of them might proceed to question me like this: ‘Suppose, Lycinus, that an Ethiopian who had
never been abroad in his life, nor seen other men like us, were to state categorically in an Ethiopian assembly
that there did not exist on earth any white or yellow men—nothing but blacks—, would his statement be
accepted? or would some Ethiopian elder remark, How do you know, my confident friend? you have never
been in foreign parts, nor had any experience of other nations.’ Shall I tell him the old man’s question was
justified? what do you advise, my counsel?
Hermotimus. Say that, certainly; I consider the old man’s rebuke quite reasonable. …
Lycinus. The next step will be the application; my questioner will say, ‘Now Lycinus, let us suppose an
analogue, in a person acquainted only with the Stoic doctrine, like your friend Hermotimus; he has never
travelled in Plato’s country, or to Epicurus, or any other land; now, if he were to state that there was no such
beauty or truth in those many countries as there is in the Porch and its teaching, would you not be justified in
considering it bold of him to give you his opinion about them all, whereas he knew only one, having never
set foot outside the bounds of Ethiopia?’ What reply do you advise to that?
Hermotimus. The perfectly true one, of course, that it is indeed the Stoic doctrine that we study fully, being
minded to sink or swim with that, but still we do know what the others say also; our teacher rehearses the
articles of their beliefs to us incidentally, and demolishes them with his comments.
Lycinus. Do you suppose the Platonists, Pythagoreans, Epicureans, and other schools, will let that pass? or
will they laugh out loud and say, ‘What remarkable methods your friend has, Lycinus! he accepts our
adversaries’ character of us, and gathers our doctrines from the description of people who do not know, or
deliberately misrepresent them. If he were to see an athlete getting his muscles in trim by kicking high, or
hitting out at empty space as though he were getting a real blow home, would he (in the capacity of umpire)
at once proclaim him victor, because he could not help winning? No; he would reflect that these displays are
easy and safe, when there is no defence to be reckoned with, and that the real decision must wait till he has
beaten and mastered his opponent.’
Lucian, Hermotimus, 31-33
Lycinus. Perhaps the best and safest plan of all is to set to work oneself, go through every system, and
carefully examine the various doctrines.
Hermotimus. That is what seems to be indicated. I am afraid, though, there is an obstacle in what you said
just now: it is not easy, when you have committed yourself with a spread of canvas to the wind, to get home
again. How can a man try all the roads, when, as you said, he will be unable to escape from the first of them?
Lycinus. My notion is to copy Theseus, get dame Ariadne to give us a skein, and go into one labyrinth after
another, with the certainty of getting out by winding it up.
Hermotimus. Who is to be our Ariadne? Where shall we find the skein? …
Lycinus. I borrow it from one of the wise men: ‘Be sober and doubt all things,’ says he. If we do not believe
everything we are told, but behave like jurymen who suspend judgment till they have heard the other side,
we may have no difficulty in getting out of the labyrinths.
Lucian, Hermotimus
TERTULLIAN (C. 155-230)

Nec religionis est cogere religionem.
It is certainly no part of religion to compel religion.
Tertullian, Ad Scapulam, 2.2
SEXTUS EMPIRICUS (160-210 AD)

Those who claim for themselves to judge the truth are bound to possess a criterion of truth. This criterion,
then, either is without a judge's approval or has been approved. But if it is without approval, whence comes it
that it is trustworthy? For no matter of dispute is to be trusted without judging. And, if it has been approved,
that which approves it, in turn, either has been approved or has not been approved, and so on ad infinitum.
Sextus Empiricus. Against the Logicians, trans. R. Bury (London: 1935), p. 179
135
EPISTLE OF MATHETES TO DIOGNETUS (2ND CENTURY AD)
Come, then, after you have freed yourself from all prejudices possessing your mind, and laid aside what you
have been accustomed to, as something apt to deceive you, and being made, as if from the beginning, a new
man, inasmuch as, according to your own confession, you are to be the hearer of a new doctrine.
Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus, Chapter 2
Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they
observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life
which is marked out by any singularity. ... Following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food,
and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of
life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. ... They are in the flesh, but they do not live
after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws,
and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all.
Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus, Chapter 5, 2nd century AD, A Source Book for Ancient Church History, p. 30
What the soul is in the body, that are Christians in the world. The soul is dispersed through all the members
of the body, and Christians are scattered through all the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, yet
is not of the body; and Christians dwell in the world, yet are not of the world.
Neither can life exist without knowledge, nor is knowledge secure without life. Wherefore both were planted
close together.
ORIGEN (185-254)
It is not irrational to form associations contrary to the existing laws, if it is done for the sake of the truth.
Origen
On First Principles
The reason why all those we have mentioned hold false opinions and make impious or ignorant assertions
about God appears to be nothing else but this, that scripture is not understood in its spiritual sense, but is
interpreted according to the bare letter.
Origen, “How divine scripture should be interpreted,” On First Principles, book 4, chapter 2, § 2, Readings in World Christian History (2013), p. 69
As for the apostolic epistles, what person who is skilled in literary interpretation would think them to be plain
and easily understood, when even in them there are thousands of passages that provide, as it through a
window, a narrow opening leading to multitudes of the deepest thoughts?
Origen, “How divine scripture should be interpreted,” On First Principles, book 4, chapter 2, § 2, Readings in World Christian History (2013), p. 69
One must therefore portray the meaning of the sacred writings in a threefold way upon one's own soul, so
that the simple person may be edified by what we may call the flesh of the scripture, this name being given to
the obvious interpretation; while the one who has made some progress may be edified by its soul, as it were;
and the one who is perfect and like those mentioned by the apostle: "We speak wisdom among the perfect;
yet a wisdom not of this world, nor of the rulers of this world, which are coming to nought; but we speak
God's wisdom in a mystery, even the wisdom that has been hidden, which God foreordained before the world
unto our glory" (1 Cor. 2:6-7)—this one may be edified by the spiritual law, which has "a shadow of the
good things to come" (cf. Rom. 7:14). For just as the human being consists of body, soul and spirit, so in the
same way does the scripture, which has been prepared by God to be given for humanity's salvation.
Origen, “How divine scripture should be interpreted,” On First Principles, book 4, chapter 2,, Readings in World Christian History (2013), p. 70
136
When, therefore, as will be clear to those who read, the passage as a connected whole is literally impossible,
whereas the outstanding part of it is not impossible but even true, the reader must endeavor to grasp the
entire meaning, connecting by an intellectual process the account of what is literally impossible with the
parts that are not impossible but historically true, these being interpreted allegorically in common with the
part which, so far as the letter goes, did not happen at all. For our contention with regard to the whole of
divine scripture is that it all has a spiritual meaning, but not all a bodily meaning; for the bodily meaning is
often proved to be an impossibility.
Origen, “How divine scripture should be interpreted,” On First Principles, book 4, chapter 2,, Readings in World Christian History (2013), p. 75
PLOTINUS (C. 204-270 AD)

We must enter deep into ourselves, and, leaving behind the objects of corporeal sight, no longer look back
after any of the accustomed spectacles of sense. For, it is necessary that whoever beholds this beauty, should
withdraw his view from the fairest corporeal forms; and, convinced that these are nothing more than images,
vestiges and shadows of beauty, should eagerly soar to the fair original from which they are derived.
Plotinus, An Essay on the Beautiful
IAMBLICHUS (245-325AD)
Pythagoras urged upon the young men … to observe how absurd it would be to rate the reasoning power as
the chief of their faculties, and indeed consult about all other things by its means, and yet bestow no time or
labor on its exercise. Attention to the body might be compared to unworthy friends, and is liable to rapid
failure; while erudition lasts till death, and for some procures post-mortem renown, and may be likened to
good, reliable friends. Pythagoras continued to draw illustrations from history and philosophy, demonstrating
that erudition enables a naturally excellent disposition to share in the achievements of the leaders of the race.
Iamblichus, “Life of Pythagoras”
Seekers of true glory should strive really to become what they wished to seem.
Iamblichus, describing Pythagoras’ view, “Life of Pythagoras”
Pythagoras is said to have been the first to call himself a philosopher, a word which heretofore had not
been an appellation, but a description. He likened the entrance of men into the present life to the
progression of a crowd to some public spectacle. There assemble men of all descriptions and views.
One hastens to sell his wares for money and gain; another exhibits his bodily strength for renown; but
the most liberal assemble to observe the landscape, the beautiful works of art, the specimens of valor,
and the customary literary productions. So also in the present life men of manifold pursuits are
assembled. Some are incensed by the desire of riches and luxury; others by the love of power and
dominion, or by insane ambition for glory. But the purest and most genuine character is that of the
man who devotes himself to the contemplation of the most beautiful things; and he may properly be
called a philosopher.
His intimates were ordered … to abstain from wine, to be sparing in the their food, to sleep little, and to
cultivate an unstudied contempt of, and hostility to fame, wealth, and the like.
Iamblichus, describing Pythagoras’ teaching, “Life of Pythagoras”
… not to communicate the treasures of wisdom to those who have not purified their souls
Lysis, describing Pythagoras’ teaching, cited in Iamblichus, “Life of Pythagoras”
137
It is unlawful to give away things obtained with labors so great, and with assiduity so diligent to the first
person you meet. ... We should consider how long a time was needed to efface the stains that had insinuated
themselves in our breasts, before we became worthy to receive the doctrines of Pythagoras.
They infuse theorems and divine doctrines into hearts whose manners are confused and agitated, just as if
pure, clear water should be poured into a deep well full of mud.
The Pythagoreans saw that they would inevitably be taken captive, so they decided that their only safety lay
in flight, which they did not consider inadmissible to virtue. For they knew that according to right reason,
fortitude is the art of avoiding as well as enduring. So they would have escaped, and their pursuit would have
been given up by Eurymenes’s soldiers, who were heavily armed, had their flight not led them up against a
field sown with beans, which were already flowering. Unwilling to violate their principle not to touch beans,
they stood still, and driven to desperation turned, and attacked their pursuers. … All the Pythagoreans were
slain by the spearmen, as none of them would suffer himself to be taken captive, preferring death, according
to the Pythagorean teachings.
The Pythagoreans … asserted we should adopt as an end the beautiful, and fair, and do our duty. Only
secondarily should we consider the useful and advantageous.
That precept which, of all others, was of the greatest efficacy in the achievement of fortitude is that one
which helps defend and liberate from the life-long bonds that retain the intellect in captivity, and without
which no one can perceive or learn anything rational or genuine, whatever be the sense in activity. They said:
“Tis mind that sees all things, and hears them all; All else is deaf and blind.”
Iamblichus, describing the view of the Pythagoreans, “Life of Pythagoras”
The Pythagoreans thought those who teach for the sake of reward show themselves worse than
sculptors, or artists who perform the work sitting. For these, when someone orders wood to make a
statue of Hermes, search for wood suited to receive the proper form; while those pretend that they can
readily produce the works of virtue from every nature.
Iamblichus, describing the Pythagoreans, “Life of Pythagoras”
ATHANASIUS OF ALEXANDRIA (C. 297-373)

Life of Anthony
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2811.htm
If he [Anthony] heard of a good man anywhere, like the prudent bee, he went forth and sought him, nor
turned back to his own palace until he had seen him; and he returned, having got from the good man as it
were supplies for his journey in the way of virtue.
Athanasius of Alexandria, Life of Anthony § 3
He had given such heed to what was read that none of the things that were written fell from him to the
ground, but he remembered all, and afterwards his memory served him for books.
138
Anthony … subjected himself in sincerity to the good men whom he visited, and learned thoroughly where
each surpassed him in zeal and discipline. He observed the graciousness of one; the unceasing prayer of
another; he took knowledge of another's freedom from anger and another's loving-kindness; he gave heed to
one as he watched, to another as he studied; one he admired for his endurance, another for his fasting and
sleeping on the ground; the meekness of one and the long-suffering of another he watched with care, while
he took note of the piety towards Christ and the mutual love which animated all. Thus filled, he returned to
his own place of discipline, and henceforth would strive to unite the qualities of each, and was eager to show
in himself the virtues of all.
Anthony, however, according to his custom, returned alone to his own cell, increased his discipline, and
sighed daily as he thought of the mansions in Heaven, having his desire fixed on them, and pondering over
the shortness of man's life. And he used to eat and sleep, and go about all other bodily necessities with shame
when he thought of the spiritual faculties of the soul. So often, when about to eat with any other hermits,
recollecting the spiritual food, he begged to be excused, and departed far off from them, deeming it a matter
for shame if he should be seen eating by others.
Anthony ... used to say that it behooved a man to give all his time to his soul rather than his body, yet to
grant a short space to the body through its necessities; but all the more earnestly to give up the whole
remainder to the soul and seek its profit, that it might not be dragged down by the pleasures of the body, but,
on the contrary, the body might be in subjection to the soul.
Others such as these met him in the outer mountain and thought to mock him because he had not learned
letters. And Anthony said to them, “What do you say? Which is first, mind or letters? And which is the cause
of which— mind of letters or letters of mind.” And when they answered mind is first and the inventor of
letters, Anthony said, “Whoever, therefore, has a sound mind has not need of letters.”
DIOGENES LAERTIUS (c. 300 AD)

When Thales was asked what was difficult, he said, “To know one’s self.” And what was easy, “To advise
another.”
Diogenes Laertius, Thales, 9
The market is a place set apart where men may deceive each other.
Diogenes Laertius, Anacharsis, 5
“That man does not own his estate, but his estate owns him.”
Diogenes Laertius, Bion, Bion 3
On one occasion Aristotle was asked how much educated men were superior to those uneducated: “As
much,” said he, “as the living are to the dead.”
Diogenes Laertius, Aristotle, 9
139
Diogenes
He [Diogenes of Sinope] would say that men strive in digging and kicking to outdo one another, but no one
strives to become a good man and true. And he would wonder that the grammarians should investigate the
ills of Odysseus, while they were ignorant of their own. Or that the musicians should tune the strings of the
lyre, while leaving the dispositions of their own souls discordant; that the mathematicians should gaze at the
sun and the moon, but overlook matters close at hand; that the orators should make a fuss about justice in
their speeches, but never practice it; or that the avaricious should cry out against money, while inordinately
fond of it. He used also to condemn those who praised honest men for being superior to money, while
themselves envying the very rich.
Diogenes Laertius, Diogenes, 6.27
When a man reproached him [Diogenes of Sinope] for going into unclean places, he said, “The sun too
penetrates into privies, but is not polluted by them.”
Diogenes Laertius, Diogenes, 6
Life of Socrates
Socrates prized leisure as the fairest of all possessions.
Diogenes Laertius II.5.31, cited in Schopenhauer, Parerga und Paralipomena, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 341
“Those who want fewest things are nearest to the gods.”

Diogenes Laertius, Socrates, Socrates, 11
Socrates ... said that there was one only good, namely, knowledge; and one only evil, namely, ignorance.
Diogenes Laertius, Socrates, 14
Very often, while arguing and discussing points that arose, [Socrates] was treated with great violence and
beaten, and pulled about, and laughed at and ridiculed by the multitude. But he bore all this with great
equanimity. So that once, when he had been kicked and buffeted about, and had borne it all patiently, and
some one expressed his surprise, he said, “Suppose an ass had kicked me would you have had me bring an
action against him?”
Diogenes Laertius, “Life of Socrates,” 6
Often, when [Socrates] beheld the multitude of things which were being sold, he would say to himself, “How
many things are there which I do not want.”
For silver plate and purple useful are

For actors on the stage, but not for men.
140
GREGORY OF NYSSA (CA. 335-395)
On Virginity
English: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2907.htm
Just as, in the case of the sunlight, on one who has never from the day of his birth seen it, all efforts at
translating it into words are quite thrown away; you cannot make the splendour of the ray shine through his
ears; in like manner, to see the beauty of the true and intellectual light, each man has need of eyes of his own;
and he who by a gift of Divine inspiration can see it retains his ecstasy unexpressed in the depths of his
consciousness; while he who sees it not cannot be made to know even the greatness of his loss. How should
he? This good escapes his perception, and it cannot be represented to him; it is unspeakable, and cannot be
delineated. We have not learned the peculiar language expressive of this beauty. ... What words could be
invented to show the greatness of this loss to him who suffers it? Well does the great David seem to me to
express the impossibility of doing this. He has been lifted by the power of the Spirit out of himself, and sees
in a blessed state of ecstasy the boundless and incomprehensible Beauty; he sees it as fully as a mortal can
see who has quitted his fleshly envelopments and entered, by the mere power of thought, upon the
contemplation of the spiritual and intellectual world, and in his longing to speak a word worthy of the
spectacle he bursts forth with that cry, which all re-echo, "Every man a liar!" I take that to mean that any man
who entrusts to language the task of presenting the ineffable Light is really and truly a liar; not because of
any hatred on his part of the truth, but because of the feebleness of his instrument for expressing the thing
thought of.
Gregory of Nyssa, On Virginity, Chapter 10
Now those who take a superficial and unreflecting view of things observe the outward appearance of
anything they meet, e.g. of a man, and then trouble themselves no more about him. The view they have taken
of the bulk of his body is enough to make them think that they know all about him. But the penetrating and
scientific mind will not trust to the eyes alone the task of taking the measure of reality; it will not stop at
appearances, nor count that which is not seen among unrealities. It inquires into the qualities of the man's
soul.
The man of half-grown intelligence, when he observes an object which is bathed in the glow of a seeming
beauty, thinks that that object is in its essence beautiful, no matter what it is that so prepossesses him with the
pleasure of the eye. He will not go deeper into the subject. But the other, whose mind's eye is clear, and who
can inspect such appearances, will neglect those elements which are the material only upon which the Form
of Beauty works; to him they will be but the ladder by which he climbs to the prospect of that Intellectual
Beauty, in accordance with their share in which all other beauties get their existence and their name.
141
For the majority, I take it, who live all their lives with such obtuse faculties of thinking, it is a difficult thing
to perform this feat of mental analysis and of discriminating the material vehicle from the immanent beauty,
... Owing to this men give up all search after the true Beauty. Some slide into mere sensuality. Others incline
in their desires to dead metallic coin. Others limit their imagination of the beautiful to worldly honours,
fame, and power. There is another class which is enthusiastic about art and science. The most debased make
their gluttony the test of what is good. But he who turns from all grosser thoughts and all passionate longings
after what is seeming, and explores the nature of the beauty which is simple, immaterial, formless, would
never make a mistake like that when he has to choose between all the objects of desire; he would never be so
misled by these attractions as not to see the transient character of their pleasures and not to win his way to an
utter contempt for every one of them. This, then, is the path to lead us to the discovery of the Beautiful. All
other objects that attract men's love, be they never so fashionable, be they prized never so much and
embraced never so eagerly, must be left below us, as too low, too fleeting, to employ the powers of loving
which we possess; not indeed that those powers are to be locked up within us unused and motionless; but
only that they must first be cleansed from all lower longings; then we must lift them to that height to which
sense can never reach.
The climbing soul, leaving all that she has grasped already as too narrow for her needs ...
Our Lord says, to those who can hear what Wisdom speaks beneath a mystery, that “the Kingdom of God is
within you” (Luke 17:21). That word points out the fact that the Divine good is not something apart from our
nature, and is not removed far away from those who have the will to seek it; it is in fact within each of us,
ignored indeed, and unnoticed while it is stifled beneath the cares and pleasures of life, but found again
whenever we can turn our power of conscious thinking towards it.
The habit which many have got into must be as far as possible corrected; those, I mean, who while they fight
strenuously against the baser pleasures, yet still go on hunting for pleasure in the shape of worldly honour
and positions which will gratify their love of power. They act like some domestic who longed for liberty, but
instead of exerting himself to get away from slavery proceeded only to change his masters, and thought
liberty consisted in that change. But all alike are slaves, even though they should not all go on being ruled by
the same masters, as long as a dominion of any sort, with power to enforce it, is set over them.
Is it not want of reason in any one to suppose that when he has striven successfully to escape the dominion of
one particular passion, he will find virtue in its opposite?
The master of a private dwelling will not allow any untidiness or unseemliness to be seen in the house, such
as a couch upset, or the table littered with rubbish, or vessels of price thrown away into dirty corners, while
those which serve ignobler uses are thrust forward for entering guests to see. He has everything arranged
neatly and in the proper place, where it stands to most advantage; and then he can welcome his guests,
without any misgivings that he need be ashamed of opening the interior of his house to receive them. The
same duty, I take it, is incumbent on that master of our "tabernacle," the mind; it has to arrange everything
within us, and to put each particular faculty of the soul, which the Creator has fashioned to be our implement
or our vessel, to fitting and noble uses.
The love of gain, which is a large, incalculably large, element in every soul, when once applied to the desire
for God, will bless the man who has it.
142
Slaves who have been freed and cease to serve their former masters, the very moment they become their own
masters, direct all their thoughts towards themselves so, I take it, the soul which has been freed from
ministering to the body becomes at once cognizant of its own inherent energy.
The good and eatable fish are separated by the fishers' skill from the bad and poisonous fish, so that the
enjoyment of the good should not be spoilt by any of the bad getting into the "vessels" with them. The work
of true sobriety is the same; from all pursuits and habits to choose that which is pure and improving, rejecting
in every case that which does not seem likely to be useful, and letting it go back into the universal and
secular life, called "the sea” (Matthew 13:47-48), in the imagery of the Parable.
AMBROSE (340-397)
Sed non solum locum Ecclesiae zelare debemus, sed hanc quoque interiorem in nobis domum Dei; ne sit
domus negotiationis, aut spelunca latronum.
Ambrosius, Expositio in psalmum David CXVIII § 16 (PL 15 1457B)
But it is not only of space in the Church which we ought to be jealous, but also of the interior of the
house of God in us, so that it might not become a house of merchandise, or a den of robbers.
Ambrose, Commentary on John 2:16, Exposition of the Psalms of David 118 (PL 15 1457B)
What need is there, then, that thou shouldest hasten to undergo the danger of condemnation by speaking,
when thou canst be more safe by keeping silent?
Ambrose, On The Duties of the Clergy, Book 1, Chapter 2
Prudence … fears not want, for she knows that nothing is wanting to the wise man, since the whole world of
riches is his. What is greater than the man that knows not how to be excited at the thought of money, and has
a contempt for riches, and looks down as from some lofty vantage-ground on the desires of men?
A Christian, whilst despising glory and the favour of men, desires to please God alone in what he does.
Blessed, plainly, is that life which is not valued at the estimation of outsiders, but is known, as judge of itself,
by its own inner feelings. It needs no popular opinion as its reward in any way; nor has it any fear of
punishments. Thus the less it strives for glory, the more it rises above it.
AUGUSTINE (354-430)
Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quærebam quid amarem, amans amare.
Not yet I loved, yet I loved to love, I sought what I might love, in love with loving.
Augustine
My mind was absorbed only in play, and I was punished for this by those who were doing the same things
themselves. But the idling of our elders is called business; the idling of boys, though quite like it, is punished
by those same elders, and no one pities either the boys or the men. For will any common sense observer
agree that I was rightly punished as a boy for playing ball—just because this hindered me from learning more
quickly those lessons by means of which, as a man, I could play more shameful games?
Augustine, describing his childhood, Confessions
Yet I chose rather to think thee mutable than to think that I was not as thou art. For this reason I was thrust
back.
Augustine, Confessions
143
I had my back toward the light, and my face toward the things on which the light falls, so that my face, which
looked toward the illuminated things, was not itself illuminated.
Augustine, Confessions
Inasmuch as love grows in you, in so much beauty grows; for love is itself the beauty of the soul.
Augustine, Ten Homilies on the First Epistle of John, Ninth Homily, §9, H. Browne and J. H. Meyers, trans. (1995)
When God commands a thing to be done against the customs or compact of any people, though it was never
by them done heretofore, it is to be done.
Augustine
He who stops, regresses.

Augustine
The soul is where she loves rather than where she is.
Augustine
It is not by change of place that we can come nearer to Him who is in every place, but by the cultivation of
pure desires and virtuous habits.
Augustine
As the soul is the life of the body, so God is the life of the soul. As therefore the body perishes when the soul
leaves it, so the soul dies when God departs from it.
Augustine
What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not.
Augustine
Go forth on your path, as it exists only through your walking.

Augustine, Sermon 169
Now he [the heathen] begins to praise Christ, not in order to do him honor, but to make you despair. It
is the deadly cunning of the serpent, to turn you away from Christ by praising Christ, to extol
deceitfully the one he doesn’t dare to disparage. He exaggerates the sovereign majesty of Christ in
order to make him out quite unique, to stop you hoping for anything like what was demonstrated in
his rising.
Augustine, “How to answer their exaggerated praise of Christ and their disparaging of Christians,” Sermon 361:15
Once for all, then, a short precept is given thee: Love, and do what thou wilt.
Augustine, Homily 7 on the First Epistle of John
On the Mystical Body of Christ

When He [Jesus] says, "For them I hallow Myself," what else can He mean but this: "I sanctify them
in Myself, since truly they are Myself"?
Augustine, On the Mystical Body of Christ, as cited in The Whole Christ: The Historical Development of the Doctrine of the Mystical Body in
Scripture and Tradition (1938), p. 431
On hearing His words let no one say either: "These are not Christ's words," or "These are not my
words." On the contrary, if he knows that he is in the body of Christ, let him say: "These are both
Christ's words and my words." Say nothing without Him, and He will say nothing without thee. We
must not consider ourselves as strangers to Christ, or look upon ourselves as other than Himself.
Augustine, On the Mystical Body of Christ, as cited in The Whole Christ: The Historical Development of the Doctrine of the Mystical Body in
Scripture and Tradition (1938), p. 422
144
Love all men, even your enemies; love them, not because they are your brothers, but that they may become
your brothers. Thus you will ever burn with fraternal love, both for him who is already your brother and for
your enemy, that he may by loving become your brother.
Augustine, On the Mystical Body of Christ
Confessions (c. 398)

English: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine/confessions.iv.html
O my God! What miseries and mockeries did I then experience when it was impressed on me that obedience
to my teachers was proper to my boyhood estate if I was to flourish in this world and distinguish myself in
those tricks of speech which would gain honor for me among men, and deceitful riches! To this end I was
sent to school to get learning.
Augustine, Confessions, A. Outler, trans. (Dover: 2002), Book 1, Chapter 9, p. 9
We were sinning by writing or reading or studying less than our assigned lessons. For I did not, O Lord, lack
memory or capacity, for, by thy will, I possessed enough for my age. However, my mind was absorbed only
in play, and I was punished for this by those who were doing the same things themselves. But the idling of
our elders is called business; the idling of boys, though quite like it, is punished by those same elders, and no
one pities either the boys or the men. For will any common sense observer agree that I was rightly punished
as a boy for playing ball—just because this hindered me from learning more quickly those lessons by means
of which, as a man, I could play at more shameful games?
Augustine, Confessions, A. Outler, trans. (Dover: 2002), Book 1, Chapter 9, pp. 9-10
I disobeyed them, not because I had chosen a better way, but from a sheer love of play. I loved the vanity of
victory, and I loved to have my ears tickled with lying fables, which made them itch even more ardently, and
a similar curiosity glowed more and more in my eyes for the shows and sports of my elders. Yet those who
put on such shows are held in such high repute that almost all desire the same for their children. They are
therefore willing to have them beaten, if their childhood games keep them from the studies by which their
parents desire them to grow up to be able to give such shows.
Augustine, Confessions, A. Outler, trans. (Dover: 2002), Book 1, Chapter 10
But why, then, did I dislike Greek learning, which was full of such tales? For Homer was skillful in inventing
such poetic fictions and is most sweetly wanton; yet when I was a boy, he was most disagreeable to me. I
believe that Virgil would have the same effect on Greek boys as Homer did on me if they were forced to
learn him. For the tedium of learning a foreign language mingled gall into the sweetness of those Grecian
myths. For I did not understand a word of the language, and yet I was driven with threats and cruel
punishments to learn it.
There was also a time when, as an infant, I knew no Latin; but this I acquired without any fear or tormenting,
but merely by being alert to the blandishments of my nurses, the jests of those who smiled on me, and the
sportiveness of those who toyed with me. I learned all this, indeed, without being urged by any pressure of
punishment, for my own heart urged me to bring forth its own fashioning, which I could not do except by
learning words: not from those who taught me but those who talked to me, into whose ears I could pour forth
whatever I could fashion. From this it is sufficiently clear that a free curiosity is more effective in learning
than a discipline based on fear.
But woe unto you, O torrent of human custom! Who shall stay your course? When will you ever run dry?
How long will you carry down the sons of Eve into that vast and hideous ocean, which even those who have
the Tree (for an ark) can scarcely pass over?
145
Woe unto you, O torrent of human custom! Who shall stay your course? When will you ever run dry? How
long will you carry down the sons of Eve into that vast and hideous ocean.
Augustine, Confessions, Book 1, Chapter 16
I do not blame the words [of fiction], for they are, as it were, choice and precious vessels, but I do deplore
the wine of error which was poured out to us by teachers already drunk. And, unless we also drank we were
beaten, without liberty of appeal to a sober judge.
What is it now to me, O my true Life, my God, that my declaiming was applauded above that of many of my
classmates and fellow students? Actually, was not all that smoke and wind? Besides, was there nothing else
on which I could have exercised my wit and tongue? Thy praise, O Lord, thy praises might have propped up
the tendrils of my heart by thy Scriptures; and it would not have been dragged away by these empty trifles, a
shameful prey to the spirits of the air.
Look down, O Lord God, and see patiently, as thou art wont to do, how diligently the sons of men observe
the conventional rules of letters and syllables, taught them by those who learned their letters beforehand,
while they neglect the eternal rules of everlasting salvation taught by thee. They carry it so far that if he who
practices or teaches the established rules of pronunciation should speak (contrary to grammatical usage)
without aspirating the first syllable of "hominem," he will offend men more than if he, a human being, were
to hate another human being contrary to thy commandments. It is as if he should feel that there is an enemy
who could be more destructive to himself than that hatred which excites him against his fellow man; or that
he could destroy him whom he hates more completely than he destroys his own soul by this same hatred.
Now, obviously, there is no knowledge of letters more innate than the writing of conscience—against doing
unto another what one would not have done to himself.
It is as if he should feel that there is an enemy who could be more destructive to himself than that hatred
which excites him against his fellow man; or that he could destroy him whom he hates more completely than
he destroys his own soul by this same hatred.
When a man seeking the reputation of eloquence stands before a human judge, while a thronging multitude
surrounds him, and inveighs against his enemy with the most fierce hatred, he takes most vigilant heed that
his tongue does not slip in a grammatical error, for example, and say inter hominibus [instead of inter
homines], but he takes no heed lest, in the fury of his spirit, he cut off a man from his fellow men [ex
hominibus].
This was the wrestling arena in which I was more fearful of perpetrating a barbarism than, having done so, of
envying those who had not.
Even in these trifles and also in my thoughts about trifles, I learned to take pleasure in truth.
Herein lay my sin, that it was not in him, but in his creatures—myself and the rest—that I sought for
pleasures, honors, and truths. And I fell thereby into sorrows, troubles, and errors.
Those things which thou hast given me shall be developed and perfected.
146
Thus thou mayest gather me up out of those fragments in which I was torn to pieces, while I turned away
from thee, O Unity, and lost myself among “the many.”
I did not keep the moderate way of the love of mind to mind—the bright path of friendship.
… rejoicing in that sort of inebriation in which the world so often forgets thee, its Creator, and falls in love
with thy creature instead of thee …
The law is punished by thy law, O Lord, and by the law written in men’s hearts, which not even ingrained
wickedness can erase. For what thief will tolerate another thief stealing from him?
Behold, now let my heart confess to thee what it was seeking there, when I was being gratuitously wanton,
having no inducement to evil but the evil itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own undoing. I loved
my error—not that for which I erred but the error itself. A depraved soul, falling away from security in thee
to destruction in itself, seeking nothing from the shameful deed but shame itself.
Ambition seeks honor and glory, whereas only thou shouldst be honored above all, and glorified forever. The
powerful man seeks to be feared, because of his cruelty; but who ought really to be feared but God only?
All things thus imitate thee—but pervertedly—when they separate themselves far from thee and raise
themselves up against thee.
I was not in love as yet, but I was in love with love; and, from a hidden hunger, I hated myself for not feeling
more intensely a sense of hunger. I was looking for something to love, for I was in love with loving, and I
hated security and a smooth way, free from snares. Within me I had a dearth of that inner food which is
thyself, my God—although that dearth caused me no hunger. And I remained without any appetite for
incorruptible food—not because I was already filled with it, but because the emptier I became the more I
loathed it. Because of this my soul was unhealthy; and, full of sores, it exuded itself forth, itching to be
scratched by scraping on the things of the senses. Yet, had these things no soul, they would certainly not
inspire our love.
Although he that grieves with the unhappy should be commended for his work of love, yet he who has the
power of real compassion would still prefer that there be nothing for him to grieve about. For if good will
were to be ill will—which it cannot be—only then could he who is truly and sincerely compassionate wish
that there were some unhappy people so that he might commiserate them.
Those studies I was then pursuing, generally accounted as respectable, were aimed at distinction in the courts
of law—to excel in which, the more crafty I was, the more I should be praised. Such is the blindness of men
that they even glory in their blindness.
147
I studied the books of eloquence, for it was in eloquence that I was eager to be eminent, though from a
reprehensible and vainglorious motive, and a delight in human vanity. In the ordinary course of study I came
upon a certain book of Cicero’s, whose language almost all admire, though not his heart. This particular book
of his contains an exhortation to philosophy and was called Hortensius. Now it was this book which quite
definitely changed my whole attitude and turned my prayers toward thee, O Lord, and gave me new hope and
new desires. Suddenly every vain hope became worthless to me, and with an incredible warmth of heart I
yearned for an immortality of wisdom and began now to arise that I might return to thee. It was not to
sharpen my tongue further that I made use of that book.
Augustine, Confessions, A. Outler, trans. (Dover: 2002), Book 3, Chapter 4, pp. 34-35
In Greek the love of wisdom is called “philosophy,” and it was with this love that that book inflamed me.
There are some who seduce through philosophy, under a great, alluring, and honorable name, using it to
color and adorn their own errors. And almost all who did this, in Cicero’s own time and earlier, are censored
and pointed out in his book.
I was delighted with Cicero’s exhortation, at least enough so that I was stimulated by it, and enkindled and
inflamed to love, to seek, to obtain, to hold, and to embrace, not this or that sect, but wisdom itself, wherever
it might be.
I resolved, therefore, to direct my mind to the Holy Scriptures, that I might see what they were. And behold, I
saw something not comprehended by the proud, not disclosed to children, something lowly in the hearing,
but sublime in the doing
The Holy Scriptures … were of a sort to aid the growth of little ones, but I scorned to be a little one and,
swollen with pride, I looked upon myself as fully grown.
O Truth, Truth, how inwardly even then did the marrow of my soul sigh for thee when, frequently and in
manifold ways, in numerous and vast books, [the Manicheans] sounded out thy name though it was only a
sound!
I sought after thee, but not according to the understanding of the mind, by means of which thou hast
willed that I should excel the beasts, but only after the guidance of my physical senses. Thou wast more
inward to me than the most inward part of me; and higher than my highest reach.
I came upon that brazen woman, devoid of prudence, who, in Solomon’s obscure parable, sits at the door of
the house on a seat and says, “Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.” This woman
seduced me, because she found my soul outside its own door, dwelling on the sensations of my flesh and
ruminating on such food as I had swallowed through these physical senses.
Though I was retreating from the truth, I appeared to myself to be going toward it, because I did not yet
know that evil was nothing but a privation of good (that, indeed, it has no being).
I was entirely ignorant as to what is that principle within us by which we are like God, and which is rightly
said in Scripture to be made "after God's image."
148
In my public life I was striving after the emptiness of popular fame, going so far as to seek theatrical
applause, entering poetic contests, striving for the straw garlands and the vanity of theatricals and
intemperate desires.
During those years I taught the art of rhetoric. Conquered by the desire for gain, I offered for sale speaking
skills with which to conquer others.
This evil thing I refused, but not out of a pure love of thee, O God of my heart, for I knew not how to love
thee because I knew not how to conceive of anything beyond corporeal splendors.
For it still seemed to me “that it is not we who sin, but some other nature sinned in us.” And it gratified my
pride to be beyond blame, and when I did anything wrong not to have to confess that I had done wrong. … I
loved to excuse my soul and to accuse something else inside me (I knew not what) but which was not I. But,
assuredly, it was I, and it was my impiety that had divided me against myself. That sin then was all the more
incurable because I did not deem myself a sinner.
They love the transitory mockeries of temporal things and the filthy gain which begrimes the hand that grabs
it; they embrace the fleeting world and scorn thee, who abidest and invitest us to return to thee and who
pardonest the prostituted human soul when it does return to thee.
The Catholic faith, … I now realized could be maintained without presumption. This was especially true
after I had heard one or two parts of the Old Testament explained allegorically—whereas before this, when I
had interpreted them literally, they had “killed” me spiritually.
Surely unhappy is he who knoweth all [the laws of astronomy], and knoweth not Thee; but happy whoso
knoweth Thee, though he know not these. And whoso knoweth both Thee and them is not the happier for
them, but for Thee only, if, knowing Thee, he glorifies Thee as God, and is thankful, and becomes not vain in
his imaginations (Romans 1:21). For as he is better off who knows how to possess a tree, and return thanks
to Thee for the use thereof, although he know not how many cubits high it is, or how wide it spreads, than he
that can measure it, and count all its boughs, and neither owns it, nor knows or loves its Creator: so a
believer, whose all this world of wealth is, and who having nothing, yet possesseth all things (2 Corinthians
6:10).
Augustine, Confessions, Book 5
Because a thing is eloquently expressed it should not be taken to be as necessarily true; nor because it is
uttered with stammering lips should it be supposed false. Nor, again, is it necessarily true because rudely
uttered, nor untrue because the language is brilliant. Wisdom and folly both are like meats that are
wholesome and unwholesome, and courtly or simple words are like town-made or rustic vessels — both
kinds of food may be served in either kind of dish.
I still thought that it is not we who sin but some other nature that sins within us. It flattered my pride to think
that I incurred no guilt and, when I did wrong, not to confess it. … I preferred to excuse myself and blame
this unknown thing which was in me but was not part of me. The truth, of course, was that it was all my own
self, and my own impiety had divided me against myself. My sin was all the more incurable because I did not
think myself a sinner.
149
For many of my years—perhaps twelve—had passed away since my nineteenth, when, upon the reading of
Cicero's Hortensius, I was roused to a desire for wisdom. And here I was, still postponing the abandonment
of this world's happiness to devote myself to the search. For not just the finding alone, but also the bare
search for it, ought to have been preferred above the treasures and kingdoms of this world; better than all
bodily pleasures, though they were to be had for the taking.
I had entreated chastity of thee and had prayed, "Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet." For I was
afraid lest thou shouldst hear me too soon, and too soon cure me of my disease of lust which I desired to have
satisfied rather than extinguished.
Men go out and gaze in astonishment at high mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the broad reaches of
rivers, the ocean that encircles the world, or the stars in their courses. But they pay no attention to
themselves.
[Alternative translation] Men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty billows of the sea,
the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, and pass themselves by.
[Alternative translation] And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves
of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but
themselves they consider not.
By continence the scattered elements of the self are collected and brought back into the unity from which we
have slid away into dispersion.
Augustine, Confessions, Book 10., Section 29
I could wish that men would consider three things which are within themselves. These three things are quite
different from the Trinity, but I mention them in order that men may exercise their minds and test themselves
and come to realize how different from it they are. The three things I speak of are: to be, to know, and to will.
For I am, and I know, and I will. I am a knowing and a willing being; I know that I am and that I will; and I
will to be and to know. In these three functions, therefore, let him who can see how integral a life is; for there
is one life, one mind, one essence. Finally, the distinction does not separate the things, and yet it is a
distinction.
Augustine, Confessions, A. Outler, trans. (Dover: 2002), Book 13, Chapter 11, Section 12, p. 275
A Treatise Concerning Man’s Perfection in Righteousness

http://books.google.com/books?id=4Sdcy9yJ9SAC
Let us, as many as are running our course to perfection, be thus resolved, that, being not yet perfected, we
pursue our course to perfection along the way by which we have thus far run perfectly, in order that “when
that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part may be done away;” (1 Corinthians 13:10) that is,
may cease to be but in part any longer, but become whole and complete.
Augustine, A Treatise Concerning Man’s Perfection in Righteousness, § 19 Works, vol. 4, p. 327
For why should not such perfection be enjoined on man, although in this life nobody may attain to it? The
course is a right one, even if it be not known whereunto it must finally run. How, indeed, could it be known
at all, unless it were pointed out in such precepts? Let us therefore “so run that we may obtain.”
(1 Corinthians 9:23) For all who run rightly will obtain,—not as in the contest of the theatre, where all indeed
run, but only one wins the prize.
Augustine, A Treatise Concerning Man’s Perfection in Righteousness, § 19 Works, vol. 4, p. 328
150
The City of God
Without any delusive representation of images or phantasms, I am most certain that I am, and that I know
and delight in this. In respect of these truths, I am not at all afraid of the arguments of the Academicians, who
say, What if you are deceived? For if I am deceived, I am. For he who is not, cannot be deceived; and if I am
deceived, by this same token I am. And since I am if I am deceived, how am I deceived in believing that I
am? for it is certain that I am if I am deceived. Since, therefore, I, the person deceived, should be, even if I
were deceived, certainly I am not deceived in this knowledge that I am.
Augustine, The City of God
In the home of the religious man, ... those who command serve those whom they appear to rule—because, of
course, they do not command out of lust to domineer, but out of a sense of duty—not out of pride like princes
but out of solicitude like parents.
Augustine, The City of God, chapter 14
De Trinitate (417)
The inclination to seek the truth is safer than the presumption which regards unknown things as known.
Augustine, On The Trinity (Cambridge: 2002), Book 9, Chapter 1, p. 24
When I, who conduct this inquiry, love something, then three things are found: I, what I love, and the love
itself. … There are, therefore three things: the lover, the beloved and the love.
Augustine, On The Trinity (Cambridge: 2002), Book 9, Chapter 2, p. 26
The mind itself, its love of itself and it knowledge of itself are a kind of trinity.
Augustine, On The Trinity (Cambridge: 2002), Book 9, Chapter 3, p. xvi
BASIL OF CAESAREA (329-379 AD)

Saint Basil on Social Justice, edited and translated by C. P. Schroeder (2009)
You begrudge your fellow human beings what you yourself enjoy; taking wicked counsel in your soul, you
consider not how you might distribute to others according to their needs, but rather how, after having
received so many good things, you might rob others.
Saint Basil on Social Justice, edited and translated by C. P. Schroeder (2009), p. 62
'But whom do I treat unjustly,' you say, 'by keeping what is my own?' Tell me, what is your own? What did
you bring into this life? From where did you receive it? It is as if someone were to take the first seat in the
theater, then bar everyone else from attending, so that one person alone enjoys what is offered for the benefit
of all in common — this is what the rich do. They seize common goods before others have the opportunity,
then claim them as their own by right of preemption. For if we all took only what was necessary to satisfy
our own needs, giving the rest to those who lack, no one would be rich, no one would be poor, and no one
would be in need.
151
Who are the greedy? Those who are not satisfied with what suffices for their own needs. Who are the
robbers? Those who take for themselves what rightfully belongs to everyone. And you, are you not greedy?
Are you not a robber? The things you received in trust as a stewardship, have you not appropriated them for
yourself? Is not the person who strips another of clothing called a thief? And those who do not clothe the
naked when they have the power to do so, should they not be called the same? The bread you are holding
back is for the hungry, the clothes you keep put away are for the naked, the shoes that are rotting away with
disuse are for those who have none, the silver you keep buried in the earth is for the needy. You are thus
guilty of injustice toward as many as you might have aided, and did not.
Ascetical Works
Where is Christ, the King? In heaven, to be sure. Thither it behooves you, soldier of Christ, to direct your
course. Forget all earthly delights. A soldier does not build a house; he does not aspire to possession of lands;
he does not concern himself with devious, coin-purveying trade. … The soldier enjoys a sustenance provided
by the king; he need not furnish his own, nor vex himself in this regard.
Saint Basil, “An introduction to the ascetical life,” Saint Basil: Ascetical Works, M. Wagner, trans. (1950), p. 9
Letters
We must try to keep the mind in tranquility. For just as the eye which constantly shifts its gaze, now turning
to the right or to the left, now incessantly peering up and down, cannot see distinctly what lies before it, but
the sight must be fixed firmly on the object in view if one would make his vision of it clear, so too man's
mind when distracted by his countless worldly cares cannot focus itself distinctly on the truth.
Basil of Caesarea, Letter to Gregory, Saint Basil: The Letters, R. Deferrari, trans. (1926), vol. 1, p. 9
Withdrawal from the world does not mean bodily removal from it, but the severance of the soul from
sympathy with the body, and the giving up city, home, personal possessions, love of friends, property, means
of subsistence, business, social relations, and knowledge derived from human teaching.
It is no more possible to write in wax without first smoothing away the letters previously written thereon,
than it is to supply the soul with divine teachings without first removing its preconceptions derived from
habit.
Solitude … calms our passions, and gives reason leisure to sever them completely from the soul. For just as
animals are easily subdued by caresses; so desire, anger, fear and grief, the venomous evils which beset the
soul, if they are lulled to sleep by solitude and are not exasperated by constant irritations, are more easily
subdued by the influence of reason. Therefore let the place of retirement be such as ours, so separated from
the intercourse of men that the continuity of our religious discipline may not be interrupted by any external
distraction.
Basil of Caesarea, Letter to Gregory, Saint Basil: The Letters, R. Deferrari, trans. (1926), vol. 1, pp. 12-13
The discipline of piety nourishes the soul with divine thoughts.

The very beginning of the soul’s purgation is tranquility, in which the tongue is not given to discussing the
affairs of men, nor the eyes to contemplating rosy cheeks or comely bodies, nor the ears to lowering the tone
of the soul by listening to songs whose sole object is to amuse, or to words spoken by wits and buffoons—a
practice which above all things tends to relax the tone of the soul.
152
When the mind is not dissipated upon extraneous things, nor diffused over the world about us through
the senses, it withdraws within itself, and of its own accord ascends to the contemplation of God.
Such too was Moses, who rose up in great wrath to oppose those who sinned against God, but endured with
meekness of spirit all slanders against himself.
In general, just as painters in working from models constantly gaze at their exemplar and thus strive to
transfer the expression of the original to their own artistry, so too he who is anxious to make himself perfect
in all the kinds of virtue must gaze upon the lives of the saints as upon statues, so to speak, that move and
act, and must make their excellence his own by imitation.
Prayer is to be commended, for it engenders in the soul a distinct conception of God.

We thus become temples of God whenever earthly cares cease to interrupt the continuity of our memory of
Him.
Let one hour, the same regularly each day, be set aside for food, so that out of the twenty-four hours of day
and night, barely shall this one be expended on the body, the ascetic devoting the remainder to the activities
of the mind.
As Plato says, in a very “storm and surge” of affairs you “withdraw under the shelter of a strong wall,” as it
were, and contaminate your soul by no disturbance—or rather, I should say, you do not suffer others, either,
to do this, so far as in you lies to prevent it.
Basil of Caesarea, Letter 3 to Candidianus, Saint Basil: The Letters, R. Deferrari, trans. (1926), vol. 1, p. 27
What do you mean, my dear Sir, by trying to drive my dear friend Poverty, nurse of philosophy, away from
my retreat?
Basil of Caesarea, Letter 4 to Olympius, Saint Basil: The Letters, R. Deferrari, trans. (1926), vol. 1, p. 29
As for Diogenes, Basil never ceased admiring him.

Basil of Caesarea, Letter to Olympius, Saint Basil: The Letters, R. Deferrari, trans. (1926), vol. 1, p. 31
“The kingdom of heaven is within you.” And concerning the inner man, it consists of nothing but
contemplation. Therefore the kingdom of heaven must be contemplation.
Basil of Caesarea, Letter 8, Saint Basil: The Letters, R. Deferrari, trans. (1926), vol. 1, p. 89
I consider it absurd that we should permit our senses to sate themselves without hindrance with their own
material food, but that we should exclude the mind alone from its own particular activity.
… purging your souls of all rivalry and ambition for preferment …

PIRKEI AVOT (3RD CENTURY AD)

My humiliation is my exaltation, my exaltation is my humiliation.
Hillel the Elder, in The Life and Teachings of Hillel, p. 204
Love work, loath mastery over others, and avoid intimacy with the government.
Shmaayah, Pirkei Avot 1:10
153
Fail to add—you diminish; fail to study—you deserve to die.
One who does not increase, diminishes. One who does not learn is deserving of death
Hillel the Elder, Pirkei Avot 1:13
Hillel the Elder, when asked to sum up the Torah concisely, answered, "What is hateful to thee, do not unto
thy fellow man: this is the whole Law; the rest is mere commentary."
Shabbat 31a
He stood in the gate of Jerusalem and met people going to work. He asked, ‘How much will you earn to-
day?’ One said, ‘A denarius,’ the other said, ‘Two denarii.’ He asked them, ‘What will you do with the
money?’ They gave answer, ‘We will pay for the necessities of life.’ Then he said to them, ‘Why don’t you
rather come with me and gain knowledge of the Torah, that you may gain life in this world and life in the
world-to-come?’ Thus Hillel was wont to do all his days and has brought many under the wings of Heaven.
Avot de Rabbi Nathan version A, 27, version B, 26
Do not say "When I free myself of my concerns, I will study,'' for perhaps you will never free yourself.
Do not say: ‘When I am free, I will study’; perhaps you will never be free.
A boor cannot be sin-fearing, an ignoramus cannot be pious, a bashful one cannot learn, a short-tempered
person cannot teach, nor does anyone who does much business grow wise.
In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.

One who increases flesh, increases worms; one who increases possessions, increases worry; one who
increases wives, increases witchcraft; one who increases maidservants, increases promiscuity; one who
increases man-servants, increases thievery; one who increases Torah, increases life; one who increases study,
increases wisdom; one who increases counsel, increases understanding; one who increases charity, increases
peace.
PATANJALI (4TH-5TH CENTURY AD)

Yoga Sutras (c. 400 AD)
http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/yogasutr.htm
Union is restraining the thought-streams natural to the mind. Then the seer dwells in his own nature.
Otherwise he is of the same form as the thought-streams.
Patanjali, Yoga Sutras, § 1.2
Desirelessness towards the seen and the unseen gives the consciousness of mastery.
By cultivating friendliness towards happiness and compassion towards misery, gladness towards virtue and
indifference towards vice, the mind becomes pure.
Egoism is the identification of the power that knows with the instruments of knowing.
Liberation of the seer is the result of the disassociation of the seer and the seen.
154
Supreme happiness is gained via contentment.
By study comes communion with the Lord in the Form most admired.
Realization is experienced by making the Lord the motive of all actions.

When the mind maintains awareness, yet does not mingle with the senses, nor the senses with sense
impressions, then self-awareness blossoms.
For one who sees the distinction, there is no further confusing of the mind with the self.
STOBAEUS (5TH CENTURY AD)

Quotes by and about Diogenes
Diogenes, on being sold as a slave at Corinth, was asked by the auctioneer what he could do. "Rule men," he
replied. "Do you suppose," asked the other, "that people want to buy masters?”
iii. 3. 52
Other dogs bite their enemies, but I my friends in order to save them.
iii. 13. 44
Pride, like a shepherd, drives people where it pleases.

iii. 22. 41
The things which philosophy attempts to teach by reasoning, poverty forces us to practice.
iv. 32a. 11
Pythagorean Ethical Sentences

http://www.hinduwebsite.com/divinelife/pythagoras/stobaeus.asp
When the wise man opens his mouth, the beauties of his soul present themselves to the view, like the
statues in a temple.
Stobaeus, “Pythagorean Ethical Sentences,” 11
Those things which the body necessarily requires, are easily to be procured by all men, without labour and
molestation; but those things to the attainment of which labour and molestation are requisite, are objects of
desire, not to the body, but to depraved opinion.
Stobaeus, “Pythagorean Ethical Sentences,” 20
As a bodily disease cannot be healed, if it be concealed, or praised, thus also, neither can a remedy be
applied to a diseased soul, which is badly guarded and protected.
Stobaeus, “Pythagorean ethical sentences,” 24
Be rather delighted with those that reprove, than with those that flatter you
The life of the avaricious resembles a funeral banquet. For though it has all things requisite to a feast, yet no
one present rejoices.
155
Pythagoras said, that it was requisite either to be silent, or to say something better than silence.
Pythagoras being asked how a man ought to conduct himself towards his country, when it had acted
iniquitously with respect to him, replied, as to a mother.
To the wise man every land is eligible as a place of residence; for the whole world is the country of the
worthy soul.
Pythagoras said, that of cities that was the best which contained most worthy men.
Expel by reasoning the unrestrained grief of a torpid soul.

Spare your life, lest you consume it with sorrow and care.
IMAM ALI IBN ABI TALIB (599-661)

Adages
http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/adg/index.htm
Satisfaction is an infinite money

Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib, Adage #1
Toleration and patience are twins.

If you feared poverty, then trade with Allah by charity.

He whose shyness bestowed upon him its veil, people would not see his flaws.
Be satisfied and you shall be exalted.

Cheerfulness is a sign of the free man.

Asceticism is the best of garments.

The completeness of the virtues, is to have the good manners.

Goodness is not useful without smartness.

Many hard things get easy with passion.

Many a low class man was raised by his good manners.

156
With asceticism, wisdom bears fruit.
He who advises himself is better at advising others.

The cure of the soul is to be less greedy.

A man is truthful according to the level of his nobility.

Doing good, that is the ornament of man.

The work is good as long the intention is good.

He who knows life, shall abstain from it.

You should be calm, for it is the best ornament.

Do the charities, and then you shall be safe from the lewdness of parsimony.
He who owns his mind is a wise man.

Go deep into the depths wherever truth is.

SANTIDEVA (8TH CENTURY AD)

A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life
The Spirit of Awakening is known to be of two kinds: the spirit of aspiring for Awakening, and the spirit of
venturing toward awakening. Just as one perceives the difference between a person who yearns to travel and
a traveler, so do the learned recognize the corresponding difference between these two.
Santideva, A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, V. Wallace and B. Wallace, trans. (1997), § 1.15
For the sake of all beings I have made this body pleasureless. Let them continually beat it, revile it, and cover
it with filth. Let them play with my body. Let them laugh at it and ridicule it. What does it matter to me? I
have given my body to them.
Let those who falsely accuse me, who harm me, and who ridicule me all partake of Awakening.
Just as a blind man might find a jewel amongst heaps of rubbish, so this Spirit of Awakening has somehow
arisen in me.
157
The Spirit of Awakening … is the tree of rest for beings exhausted from wandering on the pathways of
mundane existence.
Where would there be leather enough to cover the entire world? With just the leather of my sandals, it
is as if the whole world were covered. Likewise, I am unable to restrain external phenomena, but I
shall restrain my own mind. What need is there to restrain anything else?
Once I have forsaken the vow of guarding my mind, of what use are many vows to me?
Just as those standing in the midst of boisterous people carefully guard their wounds, so those standing in the
midst of evil people should always guard the wounds of their minds.
Let my possessions vanish; let my honor, my body, livelihood, and everything else pass away. But may my
virtuous mind never be lost.
One should eliminate yearning that arises for various idle conversations, which often take place, and for all
kinds of entertainment.
When one intends to move or when one intends to speak, one should first examine one’s own mind and then
act appropriately with composure. When one sees one’s mind to be attached or repulsed, then one should
neither act nor speak, but remain still like a piece of wood. When my mind is haughty, sarcastic, full of
conceit and arrogance, ridiculing, evasive and deceitful, when it is inclined to boast, or when it is
contemptuous of others, abusive, and irritable, then I should remain still like a piece of wood. When my
mind is averse to the interests of others and seeks my own self-interest, or when it wishes to speak out of a
desire for an audience, then I will remain still like a piece of wood. When it is impatient, indolent, timid,
impudent, garrulous, or biased in my own favor, then I will remain still like a piece of wood.
One should always look straight at sentient beings as if drinking them in with the eyes, thinking, “Relying on
them alone, I shall attain Buddhahood.”
One should always strive for the benefit of others. Even that which is prohibited has been permitted for the
compassionate one who foresees benefit.
One should do nothing other than benefit sentient beings either directly or indirectly; and for the sake of
sentient beings alone, one should subordinate everything to awakening.
If there is a remedy, then what is the use of frustration? If there is no remedy, then what is the use of
frustration?
Just as sharp pain arises although one does not desire it, so anger forcibly arises although one does not desire
it.
158
If inflicting harm on others is the nature of the foolish, then my anger toward them is as inappropriate as it
would be toward fire, which has the nature of burning.
At the loss of praise and fame, my own mind appears to me just like a child who wails in distress when its
sand castle is destroyed.
What is zeal? It is enthusiasm for virtue. What is said to be its antithesis? It is spiritual sloth, clinging to the
reprehensible, apathy, and self-contempt.
Upon finding the boat of human birth now, cross the great river of suffering. O fool, there is no time for
sleep, for this boat is hard to catch again.
This world overwhelmed by mental afflictions is incapable of accomplishing its own self-interest. Therefore,
I must do it for them. I am not as incapable as the world is.
Just as one would quickly, fearfully pick up a dropped sword, so should one pick up the dropped sword of
mindfulness.
Just as poison spreads throughout the body once it has reached the blood, so does a fault spread throughout
the mind once it has reached a vulnerable spot.
At every single disgrace, one should burn with remorse and ponder: “How shall I act so that this does not
happen to me again?”
A person whose mind is distracted lives between the fangs of mental afflictions.
They feel envy toward a superior, competitiveness with a peer, arrogance toward one who is inferior, conceit
due to praise and anger due to reproach. When could there be any benefit from a fool?
They revile a person without acquisitions and despise a person with acquisitions. How can those whose
company is by nature suffering bring forth joy?
A fool is no one’s friend, since the affection of a fool does not arise without self-interest.
You desire to look at it and touch it because you like its flesh. How can you desire flesh, which by nature is
devoid of consciousness? The mind you desire cannot be seen or touched; and that which can be is not
conscious. Why do you embrace it in vain?
The earth is crowded with insane people, diligent in deluding themselves.

A child is not able to earn money. When one is a youth, with what is one happy? The prime of one’s life
passes away in making a living. What can an old person do with sensual gratification?
159
Consider wealth as an unending misfortune because of the troubles of acquiring, protecting and losing it.
Those whose minds are attached to wealth on account of their distracted state have no opportunity for
liberation from the suffering of mundane existence.
For the sake of that bit of enjoyment, which is easily attainable even for an animal, an ill-fated one has
destroyed this leisure and endowment, which is very difficult to find.
FRANCIS OF ASSISI (1181-1226)

All those men and women … who in their body serve the world through the desires of the flesh, the concerns
of the world and the cares of this life: They are held captive by the devil, whose children they are, and whose
works they do.
Francis of Assisi, “Earlier Exhortation to the Brothers and Sisters of Penance,” Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, Volume 1, p. 43
We must not be wise and prudent according to the flesh, but, instead, we must be simple, humble and pure.
Francis of Assisi, “Later Admonition and Exhortation to the Brothers and Sisters of Penance,” Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, Volume 1, p. 48
He detested those in the Order who dressed in three layers of clothing or who wore soft clothes without
necessity. As for “necessity” not based on reason but on pleasure, he declared that it was a sign of a spirit
that was extinguished. “When the spirit is lukewarm,” he said, “and gradually growing cold as it moves from
grace, flesh and blood inevitably seek their own interests. When the soul finds no delight, what is left except
for the flesh to look for some? Then the base instinct covers itself with the excuse of necessity, and the mind
of the flesh forms the conscience.
Thomas of Celano, The Life of Saint Francis, Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, Volume 2, p. 293
He therefore wanted the brothers to dwell not only in cities, but also in the hermitages, so that people
everywhere might be given the opportunity for merit, and the dishonest might be stripped of the veil of an
excuse.
The brothers … owe the world good example, and the world owes them the supply of necessities of life.
When they break faith and withdraw their good example, the world withdraws its helping hand, a just
judgment.
Sacrum Commercium Sancti Francisci cum Domina Paupertate

[The Sacred Exchange of Saint Francis with Lady Poverty]
Holy poverty … is the foundation and guardian of all virtues.
Author Unknown, The Sacred Exchange of Saint Francis with Lady Poverty, Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, Volume 1, p. 529
The kingdom of heaven truly belongs to those who, of their own will, a spiritual intention, and a desire for
eternal goods, possess nothing of this earth.
160
At the beginning of his conversion, therefore, blessed Francis, as the Savior's true imitator and disciple,
gave himself with all eagerness, all longing, all determination to searching for, finding, and embracing holy
poverty. He did so neither wavering under adversity nor fearing injury, neither shirking effort nor shunning
bodily discomfort, in order to achieve his desire: to reach her to whom the Lord had entrusted the keys of the
kingdom of heaven.
He eagerly began to go about the streets and piazzas of the city, as a curious explorer diligently looking for
her whom his soul loved [i.e., Poverty]. He asked those standing about, inquired of those who came near
him: "Have you seen her whom my soul loves?" But that saying was hidden from them as though it was
barbaric. Not understanding him, they told him: "We do not know what you’re saying. Speak to us in our
own language and we will answer you."
At that time there was no voice and no sense among Adam's children of being willing to converse with or
to speak to anyone about poverty. They hated it with a vengeance, as they do even today, and could not speak
peacefully to anyone asking about it. Therefore, they answered him as they would a stranger and declared
that they did not know anything of what he was seeking.
“We haven't learned anything better than to rejoice, eat and drink while we live.”
Author Unknown, reply to St. Francis, The Sacred Exchange of Saint Francis with Lady Poverty, p. 531
We have heard that you [Poverty] are the queen of virtues and, to some extent, we have learned this from
experience.
When he [Jesus] chose some of the indispensable witnesses to his holy preaching and to his glorious manner
of living for the salvation of the human race, he surely did not choose rich merchants but poor fishermen, to
show by such esteem that you [Poverty] were to be loved by all. Finally, to reveal to everyone your
goodness, magnificence, dignity and strength, how you surpass all other virtues, how nothing can be a virtue
without you.
Author Unknown, The Sacred Exchange of Saint Francis with Lady Poverty, Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, Volume 1, pp. 535-536
Do not look back. Do not come down from the housetop to take something from the house. Do not turn back
from the field to put on clothing. Do not become involved in the business world. Do not become entangled in
the world's initiatives and the corruption you have fled through knowledge of the Savior. For it is inevitable
that those who are again entangled in these affairs will be overcome and their last state will become worse
than their first (2 Peter 2:20).
THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)

Virtue’s true reward is happiness itself, for which the virtuous work, whereas if they worked for
honor, it would no longer be virtue, but ambition.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
First, play is delightful, and the contemplation of wisdom brings with greatest joy; my spirit is sweet as
honey (Eccles. 24:27). Second, sports are not means to ends but are sought for their own sake, so also are the
delights of wisdom. When a man takes pleasure in thinking about an object he desires and for which he
proposes to act, his pleasure is conditional on what in fact may fail or be delayed. Then to the joy supervenes
no less a grief. ... But wisdom holds the cause of its own delight and suffers no anxiety, for there is no
waiting for something to arrive. Her conversation hath no bitterness nor her company any tediousness
(Wisd. 8:16). Divine wisdom compares its joy with play; I was delighted every day, playing before him at all
times; and suggests many gazings on a variety of truths.
Thomas Aquinas, as cited in Paul Kuntz, “Plotinus and Augustine,” Arbeit, Musse, Meditation (1985), p. 77
161
A song is the exultation of the mind dwelling on eternal things, bursting forth in the voice.
Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Psalms
The highest perfection of human life consists in the mind of man being detached from care, for the sake of
God.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles , III,130,3
Reason in man is rather like God in the world.

Thomas Aquinas, Opusc. 11, 1 de Regno, 12
MEISTER ECKHART, a.k.a. ECKHART VON HOCHHEIM (1260-

1328)
Womit die Leute umgehen, davon reden sie gern. ... Ein guter Mensch redet von nichts gern außer Gott.
Eckhart
God is closer to me than I am to myself.

Meister Eckhart, The Kingdom of Heaven Within You
We are not blessed because God is in us and close to us and that we have God, but rather because we
recognize God and how close he is to us.
One may have a quiet and restful life in God, and this is good; one may endure a life of labor with patience,
and this is better. Yet the greatest thing of all is to be at rest in the midst of one’s labors.
Nothing hinders the soul in recognizing God as much as place and time. Time and place are fragments, but
God is one.
We are all meant to be mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born.
Meister Eckhart, as quoted in Christianity (1995) by Joe Jenkins, p. 27
Love essentially resides in the will alone, so that whoever has more will, has more of love.
Meister Eckhart
Truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside from it, I could keep the truth and let God go.
Meister Eckhart
To be full of things is to be empty of God; to be empty of things is to be full of God.

Meister Eckhart
A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we
don't know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the
soul.
Meister Eckhart
Learn to know thyself, it shall profit thee more than any craft.
Meister Eckhart, “The Nobility of the Soul”
The outward work will never be puny if the inward work is great.
Meister Eckhart
162
To be right, a person must do one of two things: either he must learn to have God in his work and hold fast to
him there, or he must give up his work altogether. Since, however, we cannot live without activities that are
both human and various, we must learn to keep God in everything we do
Meister Eckhart
You must learn an inner solitude, wherever or with whomsoever you may be.
Meister Eckhart
The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God as if he stood there and
they here.
Meister Eckhart
The more we have the less we own.

Meister Eckhart
Time is what keeps the light from reaching us. There is no greater obstacle to God than time: and not only
time but temporalities, not only temporal things but temporal affections, not only temporal affections but the
very taint and smell of time.
Meister Eckhart
Deutsche Predigten [Sermons]

German: http://www.eckhart.de/index.htm?reden.htm
Wo der Mensch in Gehorsam aus seinem Ich herausgeht und sich des Seinen entschlägt, ebenda muss Gott
notgedrungen hinwiederum eingehen; denn wenn einer für sich selbst nichts will, für den muss Gott in
gleicher Weise wollen wie für sich selbst. Wenn ich mich meines Willens entäußert habe in die Hand meines
Oberen und für mich selbst nichts will, so muss Gott drum für mich wollen, und versäumt er etwas für mich
darin, so versäumt er es zugleich für sich selbst. So steht’s in allen Dingen: Wo ich nichts für mich will, da
will Gott für mich. Nun gib acht! Was will er denn für mich, wenn ich nichts für mich will? Darin, wo ich
von meinem Ich lasse, da muss er für mich notwendig alles das wollen, was er für sich selber will, nicht
weniger noch mehr, und in derselben Weise, mit der er für sich will.
Meister Eckhart, „Von wahren Gehorsam,“ Deutsche Predigte, Predigt 1
Where the human being in obedience goes out from his “I” and dismisses what is his own, God must
necessarily enter in precisely there; for when someone does not will anything for himself, God must will for
that person in the same ay as He wills for himself.
Meister Eckhart, Sermons, in J. Hackett, A Companion to Meister Eckhart
Die Leute brauchten nicht soviel nachzudenken, was sie tun sollten; sie sollten vielmehr bedenken, was
sie wären. Wären nun aber die Leute gut und ihre Weise, so könnten ihre Werke hell leuchten. Bist du
gerecht, so sind auch deine Werke gerecht. Nicht gedenke man Heiligkeit zu gründen auf ein Tun; man soll
Heiligkeit vielmehr gründen auf ein Sein, denn die Werke heiligen nicht uns, sondern wir sollen die Werke
heiligen.
Meister Eckhart, „Von wahren Gehorsam,“ Deutsche Predigte, Predigt 4
Nun könntest du sagen: Ach, Herr, ich finde mich so leer und kalt und träge, darum getraue ich mich nicht,
zu unserm Herrn hinzugehen. Dann sage ich: Um so mehr bedarfst du's, daß du zu deinem Gott gehest! Denn
in ihm wirst du entzündet und heiß, und in ihm wirst du geheiligt und ihm allein verbunden und vereint.
Meister Eckhart, Deutsche Predigte § 59
… bei der Wahrheit, die Gott ist

Meister Eckhart, „Von wahren Gehorsam,“ Deutsche Predigte
163
Thus must the soul, which would know God, be rooted and grounded in Him so steadfastly, as to suffer no
perturbation of fear or hope, or joy or sorrow, or love or hate, or anything which may disturb its peace... the
soul should be remote from all earthly things alike so as not to be nearer to one than another. It should keep
the same attitude of aloofness in love and hate, in possession and renouncement.
Meister Eckhart, Sermons, Sermon 2, "The Nearness of the Kingdom," C. Field, trans.
Nothing hinders the soul so much in attaining to the knowledge of God as time and place. Therefore, if the
soul is to know God, it must know Him outside time and place.
Meister Eckhart, Sermons, Sermon 2, "The Nearness of the Kingdom," C. Field, trans.
He knows God rightly who knows Him everywhere.

Meister Eckhart, Sermons, Sermon 2, "The Nearness of the Kingdom"
Slavish fear of God is to be put away. The right fear is the fear of losing God.
Meister Eckhart, Sermons, Sermon 3, "The Angel’s Greeting"
The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God's eye is one eye, and
one sight, and one knowledge, and one love.
Meister Eckhart, Sermons, Sermon 4 , “True Hearing”
The moral task of man is a process of spiritualization.

Meister Eckhart, Sermons, Sermon 7, "Outward and Inward Morality"
The aim of man is beyond the temporal — in the serene region of the everlasting Present.
All grief except grief for sin comes from love of the world.
Through the higher love the whole life of man is to be elevated from temporal selfishness to the spring of all
love, to God: man will again be master over nature by abiding in God and lifting her up to God.
As the peculiar faculty of the eye is to see form and color, and of the ear to hear sweet tones and voices, so is
aspiration peculiar to the soul. To relax from ceaseless aspiration is sin.
DANTE ALIGHERI (1265-1321)

Midway on our life's journey, I found myself
In dark woods, the right road lost. To tell
About those woods is hard—so tangled and rough
And savage that thinking of it now, I feel
The old fear stirring: death is hardly more bitter.
And yet, to treat the good I found there as well
I'll tell what I saw, . . .
Dante, The Inferno, R. Pinsky, trans., Canto 1, Lines 1-7
PETRARCH, a.k.a. FRANCESCO PETRARCA (1304-1374)

Quanto piace al mondo è breve sogno.
Whatever pleases in the world is a brief dream.
Petrarch, Canzoniere, #1
164
Of my past wanderings the sole fruit is shame,
And deep repentance, of the knowledge born
That all we value in this world is naught.
Petrarch, The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch, p. 117
Nothing is wonderful but the soul, which, when great itself, finds nothing great outside itself.
Petrarch
We look about us for what is to be found only within.

Petrarch
After the death of his father in 1326, Petrarch abandoned law altogether, later asserting, “I couldn’t face
making a merchandise of my mind.” Instead, he served in various clerical positions, which granted him
adequate time for his writing and literary studies.
“Petrarch” at poets.org
I couldn’t face making a merchandise of my mind.

Petrarch, Rerum familiarum libri (1359) 24.11
De remediis utriusque fortune

http://www.tuttotempolibero.com/poesia/trecento/francescopetrarca/deremediisutriusquefortune.html
Ut stomachis sic ingeniis nausea sepius nocuit quam fames.

Like our stomachs, our minds are hurt more often by overeating than by hunger.
Petrarch, “On the Abundance of Books,” De remediis utriusque fortune, C. Rawski, trans. (1967), p. 31
Itaque sapiens non copiam, sed sufficientiam rerum vult; illa enim sepe pestilens, hec semper est utilis.
A wise man does not desire the abundance but rather the sufficiency of things, for former often being
harmful, the latter always beneficial.
Do you remember Seneca’s Sabinus boasting about the talents of his slaves? … Both of you boast about that
which belongs to someone else: he about his slaves … and you about the knowledge in your books which is
not your own.
There are some who seem to know themselves whatever is written in the books they have at home. And
when any subject happens to be mentioned, they say this book is in my bookcase, believing this is enough to
indicate that it is also in their heart; and with smug superiority, they say no more—a ridiculous kind of
people.
Petrarch, “On the Abundance of Books,” De remediis utriusque fortune, C. Rawski, trans. (1967), pp. 39-40
A large number of books keep many from learning.

If you want glory from your books, you must … not just have them but know them; not place them in your
library but in your memory; and lock them in your mind and not in your bookcase.
165
Everybody is busy writing books. No age has had such an abundance of writers and commentators and such a
want of knowledgeable and articulate men. What happens with these books Cicero describes in the same
passage: The result is, he says, that such writers read their own books themselves along with their own
circle, and none of them reaches any wider public than that which wishes to have the same privilege of
scribbling extended to itself. This was unusual in Cicero’s time, but now it is a common practice. Everybody
engages in it, because everybody, of course, wants the same privilege. Thus they encourage and admonish
each other, scribbling foolishness, praising it, and grabbing for the praise of others who themselves are
falsely praised.
Petrarch, “On the Fame of Writers,” De remediis utriusque fortune, C. Rawski, trans. (1967), p. 49
Multis ne magistri veri essent magisterii falsum nomen obstitit: dum de se plus omnibus quam sibi dumque
quod dicebantur, sed non erant, esse crediderunt, quod esse poterant non fuerunt.
A meaningless master’s degree has kept many from becoming true masters. Believing others rather than
themselves, and believing to be what they were cried up to be but really were not, they never became
what they could have become.
Petrarch, “On the Master’s Degree,” De remediis utriusque fortune, C. Rawski, trans. (1967), p. 59
There are some so given to deceit that, through long habit of deceiving others, at last they begin to deceive
themselves. Of what they persuaded others for so long, they now persuade themselves and hold to be true
what they know to be false.
Petrarch, “On the Master’s Degree,” De remediis utriusque fortune, C. Rawski, trans. (1967), pp. 60-61
Virtus uno seu potius nullo titulo contenta sibi est titulus.
Virtue is content with one title, or rather with none at all. It itself is a true title.
Petrarch, “On the Various Academic Titles,” De remediis utriusque fortune, C. Rawski, trans. (1967), p. 65
Philosophia non sapientiam, sed amorem sapientie pollicetur.

Philosophy offers not wisdom but the love of wisdom.
Modo verus amor sit et vera quam ames sapientia, philosophus verus eris.
As long as your love is true and the wisdom true which you love, you shall be a true philosopher.
When it comes to confessing, professing is safer indeed. The latter induces humility and penitence—the
former, levity and ignorance.
To seek the truth … and to express something so that it delights the ear is a great thing, hard, troublesome,
and, hence, most rare. True poets certainly devote themselves to both these duties. Poets of the more
common sort neglect the first and are content with the sonorous phrase.
There are a precious few whose studies are sound and honest and whose goal is truth and virtue. This is the
knowledge of things and the improvement of moral conduct. … As for the others, of whom there is an
enormous mass, some seek glory, an insipid, yet gleaming prize. But the majority aims only at the gleam of
money, which is not only a rather poor reward, but dirty, and neither equal to the trouble involved, nor
worthy of efforts of the mind.
Petrarch, “On the Various Academic Titles,” De remediis utriusque fortune, C. Rawski, trans. (1967), pp. 72-73
To those who are given to virtue, the boast of titles is wholly alien and distasteful.
166
THOMAS À KEMPIS (1380-1471)
Read with humility, simplicity, and faithfulness; nor even desire the repute of learning.
Thomas à Kempis, cited in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 37
Imitation of Christ (1418)

English: http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1653/pg1653.html
Latin: http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/kempis.html
Qui autem vult plene et sapide verba Christi intelligere, oportet ut totam vitam suam illi studeat conformare.
He who would fully and wisely understand the words of Christ will strive to conform his whole life to those
words.
Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ, Book 1, ch. 1
It is not learning that makes a man holy and just, but a virtuous life. ... I would rather feel contrition than
know how to define it. For what would it profit us to know the whole Bible by heart and the principles of all
the philosophers if we live without grace?
A humble knowledge of oneself is a surer road to God than a deep searching of the sciences.
If only such people were as diligent in the uprooting of vices and the planting of virtues as they are in the
debating of problems ...
No man ruleth safely but that he is willingly ruled.

Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you
wish to be.
Magnam habet cordis tranquillitatem, qui nec laudes curat, nec vituperia.
He has great tranquility of heart who cares neither for the praises nor the fault-finding of men.
Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ, book 2, ch. 6, paragraph 2
PETR CHELČICKÝ (1390-1460)

Net of Faith (1443)
http://www.nonresistance.org/docs_htm/~Net_of_Faith/Net_of_Faith.html
Facts witness to the reality that they [Christians] have abandoned God, that they have entered the
world and become one with the world. Whatever the world considers praiseworthy – vanity, comfort,
wealth, fancy notions, blasphemies – the Christians, too, praise with one accord, quite blatantly
without shame and without conscience. We can find with difficulty one man in a thousand who does
not conform himself to the world. For this reason authority is necessary for the pagan world, since a
man of weak faith will not be better than a pagan. A world contrary to God must be kept within
bounds by the world’s sword.
But true Christians love God and their neighbors as themselves; they commit no evil by the grace of
God. It is not necessary to compel them to goodness since they know better what is good than the law
imposing authority.
Petr Chelčický, Net of Faith (1443), E. Molnár, trans. (1947), Chapter 95
167
NICHOLAS OF CUSA (1401-1464)
Of Learned Ignorance
http://wadsworth.com/history_d/special_features/ilrn_legacy/wawc1c01c/content/wciv1/readings/cusa.html
God has implanted in all things a natural desire to exist with the fullest measure of existence that is
compatible with their particular nature. To this end they are endowed with suitable faculties and activities;
and by means of these there is in them a discernment that is natural and in keeping with the purpose of their
knowledge, which ensures their natural inclination serving its purpose and being able to reach its fulfillment
in that object towards which it is attracted by the weight of its own nature.
Nicholas of Cusa, Of Learned Ignorance, book 1, chapter 1
In every enquiry men judge of the uncertain by comparing it with an object presupposed certain, and their
judgment is always approximative; every enquiry is, therefore, comparative and uses the method of analogy.
When there is comparatively little distance from the object of enquiry back to the object regarded as certain,
a judgment is easily formed; when many intermediaries are required, the task becomes difficult.
While proportion expresses an agreement in some one thing, it expresses at the same time a distinction, so
that it cannot be understood without number. Number, in consequence, includes all things that are capable of
comparison. It is not then in quantity only that number produces proportion; it produces it in all things that
are capable of agreement and differences in any way.
Since the natural desire in us for knowledge is not without a purpose, its immediate object is our own
ignorance. If we can fully realize this desire, we will acquire learned ignorance. Nothing could be more
beneficial for even the most zealous searcher for knowledge than his being in fact most learned in that very
ignorance which is peculiarly his own; and the better a man will have known his own ignorance, the greater
his learning will be.
Nicholas of Cusa, Of Learned Ignorance
I am about to deal with ignorance as the greatest learning.

Nicholas of Cusa, Of Learned Ignorance
ERASMUS (1466-1536)
Socrates, at a feast, happened to give an acquaintance of his own a very severe rebuke in face of the
company, whereupon Plato says, “Were it not better that you had reproved him for that in private?’ To which
Socrates replied, “And would not you do better to reprove me for that in private?”
Erasmus, Apophthegms, #53
A constant element of enjoyment must be mingled with our studies, so that we think of learning as a game
rather than a form of drudgery, for no activity can be continued for long if it does not to some extent afford
pleasure to the participant.
Erasmus, Letter to Christian Northoff (1497), as translated in Collected Works of Erasmus (1974), p. 114
The Praise of Folly: An Oration, of Feigned Matter, Spoken by Folly in Her Own
Person.
English: http://files.libertyfund.org/files/551/Erasmus_0136.pdf
I well know how disingenuously Folly is decried, even by those who are themselves the greatest fools.
Erasmus, Praise of Folly
168
How slightly soever I am esteemed in the common vogue of the world, (for I well know how disingenuously
Folly is decried, even by those who are themselves the greatest fools,) yet it is from my influence alone that
the whole universe receives her ferment of mirth and jollity: of which this may be urged as a convincing
argument, in that as soon as I appeared to speak before this numerous assembly all their countenances were
gilded over with a lively sparkling pleasantness: you soon welcomed me with so encouraging a look, you
spurred me on with so cheerful a hum, that truly in all appearance, you seem now flushed with a good dose
of reviving nectar, when as just before you sate drowsy and melancholy, as if you were lately come out of
some hermit’s cell. But as it is usual, that as soon as the sun peeps from her eastern bed, and draws back the
curtains of the darksome night; or as when, after a hard winter, the restorative spring breathes a more
enlivening air, nature forthwith changes her apparel, and all things seem to renew their age; so at the first
sight of me you all unmask, and appear in more lively colours. That therefore which expert orators can scarce
effect by all their little artifice of eloquence, to wit, a raising the attentions of their auditors to a
composedness of thought, this a bare look from me has commanded.
Prepare therefore to be entertained with a panegyric, yet not upon Hercules, Solon, or any other grandee, but
on myself, that is, upon Folly. And here I value not their censure that pretend it is foppish and affected for
any person to praise himself: yet let it be as silly as they please, if they will but allow it needful: and indeed
what is more befitting than that Folly should be the trumpet of her own praise, and dance after her own pipe?
for who can set me forth better than myself? or who can pretend to be so well acquainted with my condition?
I verify the old observation, that allows him a right of praising himself, who has nobody else to do it for him:
for really, I cannot but admire at that ingratitude, shall I term it, or blockishness of mankind, who when they
all willingly pay to me their utmost devoir, and freely acknowledge their respective obligations; that
notwithstanding this, there should have been none so grateful or complaisant as to have bestowed on me a
commendatory oration
Erasmus, In Praise of Folly
I shall entertain you with a hasty and unpremeditated, but so much the more natural discourse.
The reason of my not being provided beforehand is only because it was always my humour constantly to
speak that which lies uppermost.
Let no one be so fond as to imagine, that I should so far stint my invention to the method of other pleaders, as
first to define, and then divide my subject, i.e., myself. For it is equally hazardous to attempt the crowding
her within the narrow limits of a definition, whose nature is of so diffusive an extent, or to mangle and
disjoin that, to the adoration whereof all nations unitedly concur. Beside, to what purpose is it to lay down a
definition for a faint resemblance, and mere shadow of me, while appearing here personally, you may view
me at a more certain light?
169
Wherefore since they are so eager to be accounted wise, when in truth they are extremely silly, what, if to
give them their due, I dub them with the title of wise fools: and herein they copy after the example of some
modern orators, who swell to that proportion of conceitedness, as to vaunt themselves for so many giants of
eloquence, if with a double-tongued fluency they can plead indifferently for either side, and deem it a very
doughty exploit if they can but interlard a Latin sentence with some Greek word, which for seeming garnish
they crowd in at a venture; and rather than be at a stand for some cramp words, they will furnish up a long
scroll of old obsolete terms out of some musty author, and foist them in, to amuse the reader with, that those
who understand them may be tickled with the happiness of being acquainted with them: and those who
understand them not, the less they know the more they may admire; whereas it has been always a custom to
those of our side to contemn and undervalue whatever is strange and unusual, while those that are better
conceited of themselves will nod and smile, and prick up their ears, that they may be thought easily to
apprehend that, of which perhaps they do not understand one word.
My father was neither the chaos, nor hell, nor Saturn, nor Jupiter, nor any of those old, worn out, grandsire
gods, but Plutus, the very same that, maugre Homer, Hesiod, nay, in spite of Jove himself, was the primary
father of the universe; at whose alone beck, for all ages, religion and civil policy, have been successively
undermined and re-established; by whose powerful influence war, peace, empire, debates, justice,
magistracy, marriage, leagues, compacts, laws, arts, (I have almost run myself out of breath, but) in a word,
all affairs of church and state, and business of private concern, are severally ordered and administered;
without whose assistance all the Poets’ gang of deities, nay, I may be so bold as to say the very majordomos
of heaven, would either dwindle into nothing, or at least be confined to their respective homes without any
ceremonies of devotional address: whoever he combats with as an enemy, nothing can be armour-proof
against his assaults; and whosoever he sides with as a friend, may grapple at even hand with Jove, and all his
bolts.
I did not, like other infants, come crying into the world, but perked up, and laughed immediately in my
mother’s face.
There is no reason I should envy Jove for having a she-goat to his nurse, since I was more creditably suckled
by two jolly nymphs; the name of the first drunkenness, one of Bacchus’s offspring, the other ignorance, the
daughter of Pan; both which you may here behold among several others of my train and attendants, whose
particular names, if you would fain know, I will give you in short. This, who goes with a mincing gait, and
holds up her head so high, is Self-Love. She that looks so spruce, and makes such a noise and bustle, is
Flattery. That other, which sits hum-drum, as if she were half asleep, is called Forgetfulness. She that leans
on her elbow, and sometimes yawningly stretches out her arms, is Laziness. This, that wears a plighted
garland of flowers, and smells so perfumed, is Pleasure. The other, which appears in so smooth a skin, and
pampered-up flesh, is Sensuality. She that stares so wildly, and rolls about her eyes, is Madness. As to those
two gods whom you see playing among the lasses the name of the one is Intemperance, the other Sound
Sleep. By the help and service of this retinue I bring all things under the verge of my power, lording it over
the greatest kings and potentates.
If, as one has ingenuously noted, to be a god is no other than to be a benefactor to mankind; and if they have
been thought deservedly deified who have invented the use of wine, corn, or any other convenience for the
well-being of mortals, why may not I justly bear the van among the whole troop of gods, who in all, and
toward all, exert an unparalleled bounty and beneficence?
170
Ciceronianus
Or: A Dialogue on the Best Style of Speaking
http://ia600404.us.archive.org/35/items/ciceronianusorad00erasuoft/ciceronianusorad00erasuoft.pdf
You tell of a love as enduring as it is unhappy, since in so many years it neither has been able to fade nor to
win its object.
Erasmus, Bulephorus, Ciceronianus
The Muses know not envy, much less the Graces, companions of the Muses. To the comrade of one’s aims
nothing must be denied. All possessions of friends should be common.
Erasmus, Nosoponus, Ciceronianus, p. 23
Adagia
http://sites.univ-lyon2.fr/lesmondeshumanistes/category/adages-erasme/
Homo homini deus.

Man is a god to man.
Erasmus, Adagia, 1.1.69
Delphinum natare doces.

You're teaching a dolphin to swim.
Cum adsit ursus, vestigia quaeris.

When the bear is right there, you're still looking for tracks.
MARTIN LUTHER (1483-1546)

Des Antichrists Geist oder Seele ist der Papst; sein Fleisch aber oder Leib ist der Türk. Denn dieser
verwüstet, vertilget und verfolget die Kirche Gottes leiblich; jener, der Papst, geistlich, wiewohl auch leiblich
mit Sengen, Hängen, Morden.
Martin Luther, Tischreden (1569)
The Pope is the spirit of the Antichrist, and the Turk is the flesh of the Antichrist. They help each other in
their murderous work. The latter slaughters bodily and by the sword, the former spiritually and by doctrine.
Martin Luther, Table Talk (1569)
We do not become righteous by doing righteous deeds but, having been made righteous, we do righteous
deeds.
Martin Luther, “Disputation against Scholastic Theology” (1517), Thesis 40, The Freedom of a Christian, M. Tranvik, trans. (2008), p. 74
Baptism does not make men free in body and property, but in soul; and the gospel does not make goods
common, except in the case of those who, of their own free will, do what the apostles and disciples did in
Acts 4. They did not demand, as do our insane peasants in their raging, that the goods of others—of Pilate
and Herod—should be common, but only their own goods. Our peasants, however, want to make the goods
of other men common, and keep their own for themselves. Fine Christians they are!
Martin Luther, Works (Concordia, 1955–1986), vol. 46, pp. 50–51
171
The Freedom of a Christian (1520)
When speaking of the spiritual nature or the soul, we are referring to that which is “inner” or “new.” When
speaking of the bodily nature, or that which is flesh and blood, we are referring to that which is called
“sensual,” “outward,” or “old.” Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:16: “Even though our outer nature is wasting
away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.”
Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian (1520), M. Tranvik, trans. (Minneapolis: 2008), p. 51
Christ ought to be preached with this goal in mind—that we might be moved to faith in him so that he is not
just a distant historical figure but actually Christ for you and me.
Faith is born and preserved in us by preaching why Christ came, what be brought and gave to us, and the
benefits we obtain when we receive him. This happens when Christian liberty—which he gives to us—is
rightly taught and we are told in what way as Christians we are all kings and priests and therefore lords of all.
A person must take care to exercise moderate discipline over the body and subject it to the Spirit by means of
fasting, vigils, and labor. The goal is to have the body obey and conform—and not hinder—the inner person
and faith. Unless it is held in check, we know it is the nature of the body to undermine faith and the inner
person.
Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian (1520), M. Tranvik, trans. (Minneapolis: 2008), pp. 71-72
One ought to fast, watch, and labor to the extent that such activities are needed to harness the body’s desires
and longings; however, those who presume that they are justified by works pay no attention to the need for
self-discipline but see the works themselves as the way to righteousness. They believe that if they do a great
number of impressive works all will be well and righteousness will be the result. Sometimes this is pursued
with such zeal that they become mentally unstable and their bodies are sapped of all strength. Such disastrous
consequences demonstrate that the belief that we are justified and saved by works without faith is extremely
foolish.
Adam was created righteous, acceptable, and without sin. He had no need from his labor in the garden to be
made righteous and acceptable to God. Rather, the Lord gave Adam work in order to cultivate and protect the
garden. This would have been the freest of all works because they were done simply to please God and not to
obtain righteousness. … The works of the person who trusts God are to be understood in a similar manner.
Through faith we are restored to paradise and created anew. We have no need of works in order to be
righteous; however, in order to avoid idleness and so that the body might be cared for an disciplined, works
are done freely to please God.
Through faith we are restored to paradise and created anew.

It is always necessary that the substance or essence of a person be good before there can be any good works
and that good works follow and proceed from a person who is already good. Christ says in Matthew 7:18:
“A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.” It is clear that the fruit does not bear
the tree nor does the tree grow on the fruit. In reality the reverse is true: the tree bears the fruit and the fruit
grows on the tree. It is necessary that the tree is prior to the fruit. The fruit does not make the tree good or
bad but the tree itself is what determines the nature of the fruit. In the same way, a person first must be good
or bad before doing a good or bad work.
172
A Christian has no need of any law in order to be saved, since through faith we are free from every law. Thus
all the acts of a Christian are done spontaneously, out of a sense of pure liberty. As Christians we do not seek
our own advantage or salvation because we are already fully satisfied and saved by God’s grace through
faith. Now our only motive is to do that which is pleasing to God.
In Matthew 12:23 Christ says: “Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad and its
fruit bad,” as if to say: “Let the one who wishes to have good fruit begin by planting a good tree.” Therefore,
let the person who wishes to do good works being not with the works but with the believing, for this alone
makes a person good.
Many have been deceived by outward appearances and have proceeded to write and teach about good works
and how they justify without even mentioning faith. … Wearying themselves with many works, they never
come to righteousness.
Our preaching does not stop with the law. That would lead to wounding without binding up, striking down
and not healing, killing and not making alive, driving down to hell and not bringing back up, humbling and
not exalting. Therefore, we must also preach grace and the promise of forgiveness—this is the means by
which faith is awakened and properly taught. Without this word of grace, the law, contrition, penitence, and
everything else are done and taught in vain.
The Apostle Paul wants us to work with our hands in order to share with the needy (Ephesians 5:28). Notice
that he could have said that we should work to support ourselves. But Paul says that we work to give to those
in need. This is why caring for our body is also a Christian work. If the body is healthy and fit, we are able to
work and save money that can be used to help those in need.
A Sermon on Keeping Children in School (1530)
Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535)

http://www.ntslibrary.com/PDF%20Books/Luther%20Commentary%20on%20Galatians.pdf
We refuse to have our conscience bound by any work or law, so that by doing this or that we should be
righteous, or leaving this or that undone we should be damned.
Martin Luther, Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535), Chapter 2
Our stubbornness is right, because we want to preserve the liberty which we have in Christ. Only by
preserving our liberty shall we be able to retain the truth of the Gospel inviolate.
Some will object that the Law is divine and holy. Let it be divine and holy. The Law has no right to tell me
that I must be justified by it.
Leave the ass burdened with laws behind in the valley. But your conscience, let it ascend with Isaac into the
mountain.
Martin Luther, Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535), Chapter 2, Verse 14
The Law continues to exist and to function. But it no longer exists for me.
173
When you see a person squirming in the clutches of the Law, say to him: “Brother, get things straight. You
let the Law talk to your conscience. Make it talk to your flesh.
I know that a Christian should be humble, but against the Pope I am going to be proud and say to him: “You,
Pope, I will not have you for my boss, for I am sure that my doctrine is divine.”
The true Gospel has it that we are justified by faith alone, without the deeds of the Law.
To turn one's eyes away from Jesus means to turn them to the Law.
PHILIPP MELANCHTHON (1497-1560)

Praise of eloquence (1523)
It does not make such a difference whether you are simply mute or employ no art for speaking. For it is not
feasible that you can express what you think as it should be understood unless you acquire and strengthen the
ability to speak by art.
Philipp Melanchthon, “Praise of eloquence” (1523), Orations on Philosophy and Education, C. Salazar, trans. (1999), p. 61
No one will be able to speak suitably and clearly about anything unless he has shaped his speech by some art,
by imitation of the best.
Does the painter imitate the body correctly if he guides his brush without any method, and if his hand is
moved at random and the lines are not drawn with art? In the same way you will not put the sentiment of
your mind in front of the others’ eyes unless you use appropriate and distinct words, a fitting arrangement of
words and the right order of sentences. For, just as we represent bodies by colours, we represent the
sentiment of our mind by speech.
You can see for what reason I commend the study of eloquence to you—because we can neither explain what
we ourselves want, nor understand the surviving writing written by our ancestors, unless we have thoroughly
studied a fixed rule for speaking. For my part, I do not see how there could be others who wish neither to
explain what they think, nor to understand what is excellently said.
The shadow does not follow the body more closely than eloquence accompanies sagacity.
Sagacity and eloquence are linked together to such an extent that they cannot be torn asunder for any reason.
What do you believe was on the mind of ancient Romans that they called the arts of speaking humanity?
They judged that, indisputably, by the study of these disciplines not only was the tongue refined, but also the
wildness and barbarity of people’s minds was amended.
174
GIOVANNI DELLA CASA (1503-1556)
For tho' it is certainly more laudable, and a thing of greater moment, to be generous, constant, and
magnanimous, than merely to be polite and well bred; yet we find, from daily experience, that sweetness of
manners, a genteel carriage, and, polite address are frequently of more advantage to those who are so happy
as to be possessed of them, than any greatness of soul or brightness of parts are to those who are adorned
with those more shining talents. For those slighter accomplishments are of more frequent, or rather of
constant and daily use on every occasion; as we are under a necessity of conversing daily with other people:
Whereas justice, fortitude, and those other more exalted virtues, are of much less frequent occurrence. For
neither is a generous or a brave man obliged to exhibit those virtues, every hour of the day (which indeed
would be impossible,) neither has a wise man, or a man of great genius, an opportunity of displaying those
extraordinary talents, but very rarely. As much therefore as those greater qualities exceed those more trifling
accomplishments in weight and importance; so much the latter exceed the former in number and more
frequent use.
Giovanni Della Casa, Galateo: Or, A treatise on politeness and delicacy of manners, p. 3
You ought to regulate your manner of behaviour towards others, not according to your own humour, but
agreeably to the pleasure and inclination of those with whom you converse.
As therefore, when we consult, not our own pleasures, but that of our friends, our behaviour will be pleasing
and agreeable; our first enquiry must be, what those particulars are, with which the greatest part of mankind
are universally delighted; and what those are which, in general, they detest, as troublesome and offensive:
For thus we shall easily discover, what kind of conduct, in our intercourse with others, is to be avoided, and
what to be adopted and pursued.
Now, as in the Latin and other languages, a yawning fellow is synonymous or equivalent to a negligent and
sluggish fellow; this idle custom ought certainly to be avoided; being (as was observed) disagreeable to the
sight, offensive to the ear, and contrary also to that natural claim, which every one has to respect. For when
we indulge ourselves in this listless behaviour, we not only intimate, that the company we are in, does not
greatly please us; but also make a discovery, not very advantageous to ourselves; I mean, that we are of a
drowsy, lethargic disposition: which must render us by no means amiable or pleasing, to those with whom
we converse.
Giovanni Della Casa, Galateo: Or, A treatise on politeness and delicacy of manners, pp. 14-15
It is moreover extremely indecent to spit, cough, and expectorate (as it were) in company, as some hearty
fellows are apt to do: and more so, when you have blown your nose, to draw aside and examine the contents
of your handkerchief; as if you expected pearls or rubies to distil from your brain.
These kinds of habits, in good company, are so very nauseous and disgusting, that if we indulge ourselves in
them, no one can be very fond of our acquaintance. So far from it, that even those, who are inclined to wish
us well, must, by these and the like disagreeable customs, be entirely alienated from us.— Those ill-bred
people, who expect their acquaintance to love and caress them, with all their foibles, are as absurd as a poor
ragged cinder-wench; who should roll about upon an heap of ashes, scrabbling and throwing dust in the face
of every one that passed by; and yet flatter herself that she should allure some youth to her embraces, by
these dirty endearments; which would infallibly keep him at a distance.
175
Galateo with an open and free air, and in the most obliging expressions, thus addressed the Count: "My
Lord, says he, the Bishop of Verona, my master, returns you many thanks for the honour which you have
done him: particularly, that you did not disdain to take up your residence with him, and to make some little
stay within the narrow confines of his humble habitation.
"Moreover, as he is thoroughly sensible of the singular favour you have conferred upon him on this
occasion; he has enjoined me, in return, to make you a tender of some favour on his part; and begs you, in a
more particular manner, to accept cheerfully, and in good part, his intended kindness.
"Now, my Lord, the favour is this. The Bishop, my master, esteems your Lordship as a person truly noble;
so graceful in all your deportment, and so polite in your behaviour, that he hardly ever met with your equal in
this respect; on which account, as he studied your Lordship's character with a more than ordinary attention,
and minutely scrutinized every part of it, he could not discover a single article, which he did not judge to be
extremely agreeable, and deserving of the highest encomiums. Nay, he would have thought your Lordship
complete in every respect, without a single exception; but that in one particular action of yours, there
appeared some little imperfection: which is, that when you are eating at table, the motion of your lips and
mouth causes an uncommon smacking kind of a sound, which is rather offensive to those who have the
honour to sit at table with you. This is what the good Prelate wished to have your Lordship acquainted with:
and entreats you, if it is in your power, carefully to correct this ungraceful habit for the future: and that your
Lordship would favourably accept this friendly admonition, as a particular mark of kindness.
There are many and various particulars, which, by a kind of natural instinct, every one judges to be right, and
expects to meet with, from those with, whom he converses. Such as mutual benevolence and respect; a desire
of pleasing and obliging each other; and the like. Nothing therefore ought to be said or done, which may by
any means discover, that those, whose company we are in, are not much beloved, or, at least, much esteemed
by us.
When you go into public, let your dress be genteel, and suitable to your age and station of life. He that does
otherwise, shows a contempt of the world, and too great an opinion of his own importance.
There is no other difference between an olive and a wild olive tree; or between a crab and an apple and other
fruits of this kind; but that some are cultivated in gardens, and are a sort of domestic fruits, whilst the others
grow wild in woods and fields. Now we ought to esteem him alone an agreeable and good-natured man,
who, in his daily intercourse with others, behaves in such a manner as friends usually behave to each
other. For as a person of that rustic character appears, wherever he comes, like a mere stranger: so, on
the contrary, a polite man, wherever he goes, seems as easy as if he were amongst his intimate friends
and acquaintance.
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564)

Then let every one of us, being warned by this sentence of the angel, acknowledge that he as yet cleaves to
first principles, or, at least, does not comprehend all those things which are necessary to be known; and that
therefore progress is to be made to the very end of life: for this is our wisdom, to be learners to the end.
John Calvin, Commentaries on the Prophet Zechariah, Part 9
ÉTIENNE DE LA BOÉTIE (1530-1563)

Freedom from servitude comes not from violent action, but from the refusal to serve.
Étienne de la Boétie
176
If things are to change, one must realize the extent to which the foundation of tyranny lies in the vast
networks of corrupted people with an interest in maintaining tyranny.
The sacred name of Liberty must never be used to cover a false enterprise.
The mob has always behaved in this way—eagerly open to bribes that cannot be honorably accepted,
and dissolutely callous to degradation and insult that cannot be honorably endured.
Whenever a ruler makes himself a dictator, all the wicked dregs of the nation... all those who are corrupted
by burning ambition or extraordinary avarice, these gather around him and support him in order to have a
share in the booty and to constitute themselves petty chiefs under the big tyrant.
Discourse of Voluntary Servitude (1553)

http://mises.org/rothbard/boetie.pdf
There is in our souls some native seed of reason, which, if nourished by good counsel and training, flowers
into virtue, but which, on the other hand, if unable to resist the vices surrounding it, is stifled and blighted.
Étienne de la Boétie, Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, Part 2
The good seed that nature plants in us is so slight and so slippery that it cannot withstand the least harm from
wrong nourishment.
Men are like handsome race horses who first bite the bit and later like it, and rearing under the saddle a
while soon learn to enjoy displaying their harness and prance proudly beneath their trappings. Men will grow
accustomed to the idea that they have always been in subjection, that their fathers lived in the same way; they
will think they are obliged to suffer this evil, and will persuade themselves by example and imitation of
others, finally investing those who order them around with proprietary rights, based on the idea that it has
always been that way.
There are always a few, better endowed than others, who feel the weight of the yoke and cannot restrain
themselves from attempting to shake it off: these are the men who never become tamed under subjection and
who always, like Ulysses on land and sea constantly seeking the smoke of his chimney, cannot prevent
themselves from peering about for their natural privileges and from remembering their ancestors and their
former ways. These are in fact the men who, possessed of clear minds and far-sighted spirit, are not satisfied,
like the brutish mass, to see only what is at their feet, but rather look about them, behind and before, and
even recall the things of the past in order to judge those of the future, and compare both with their present
condition. These are the ones who, having good minds of their own, have further trained them by study and
learning. Even if liberty had entirely perished from the earth, such men would invent it. For them slavery has
no satisfactions, no matter how well disguised.
177
The dictator does not consider his power firmly established until he has reached the point where there is no
man under him who is of any worth. ... This method tyrants use of stultifying their subjects cannot be more
clearly observed than in what Cyrus did with the Lydians after he had taken Sardis, their chief city, and had
at his mercy the captured Croesus, their fabulously rich king. When news was brought to him that the people
of Sardis had rebelled, it would have been easy for him to reduce them by force; but being unwilling either to
sack such a fine city or to maintain an army there to police it, he thought of an unusual expedient for
reducing it. He established in it brothels, taverns, and public games, and issued the proclamation that the
inhabitants were to enjoy them. He found this type of garrison so effective that he never again had to draw
the sword against the Lydians. These wretched people enjoyed themselves inventing all kinds of games, so
that the Latins have derived the word from them, and what we call pastimes they call ludi, as if they meant to
say Lydi. Not all tyrants have manifested so clearly their intention to effeminize their victims; but in fact,
what the aforementioned despot publicly proclaimed and put into effect, most of the others have pursued
secretly as an end.
Do not imagine that there is any bird more easily caught by decoy, nor any fish sooner fixed on the hook by
wormy bait, than are all these poor fools neatly tricked into servitude by the slightest feather passed, so to
speak, before their mouths. Truly it is a marvelous thing that they let themselves be caught so quickly at the
slightest tickling of their fancy. Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and
other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the
instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their
subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed
before their eyes, learned subservience as naïvely, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by
looking at bright picture books.
Tyrants would distribute largess, a bushel of wheat, a gallon of wine, and a sesterce: and then everybody
would shamelessly cry, “Long live the King!” The fools did not realize that they were merely recovering a
portion of their own property, and that their ruler could not have given them what they were receiving
without having first taken it from them.
The mob has always behaved in this way—eagerly open to bribes that cannot be honorably accepted, and
dissolutely callous to degradation and insult that cannot be honorably endured.
Men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire anything of their own when
they cannot even assert that they belong to themselves.
Friendship ... flourishes not so much by kindnesses as by sincerity.

Friendship ... receives its real sustenance from an equality that, to proceed without a limp, must have its two
limbs equal.
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE (1533-1592)

The worst of my actions and conditions does not seem to me so ugly as the cowardice of not daring to
avow it.
Montaigne, "On some verses of Virgil," Essays, D. Frame, trans. (1943), p. 778
178
Whoever would oblige himself to tell all, would oblige himself not to do anything about which we are
constrained to keep silent.
Montaigne, "On some verses of Virgil," Essays, D. Frame, trans. (1943), p. 778
There is a greater difference between one man and another then between two animals of different species.
Montaigne, as cited in Diary of a Genius (1965), p. 1
In the year of Christ 1571, at the age of thirty-eight, on the last day of February, anniversary of his birth,
Michel de Montaigne, long weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire,
retired to the bosom of the learned Virgins, where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what
little remains of his life now more than half run out. If the fates permit, he will complete this abode, this
sweet ancestral retreat; and he has consecrated it to his freedom, tranquility, and leisure.
Latin inscription painted on the wall of the side-chamber of Montaigne’s library
God has made man like a shadow, of which who shall judge after the setting of the sun?
Montaigne, Inscription on beam 37 in his library http://lazenby.tumblr.com/post/1599204509/a-catalog-of-montaignes-beam-inscriptions
How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which today are fables to us?
Montaigne
Philosophy is doubt.
Montaigne
To know much is often the cause of doubting more.

Montaigne
Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.

Montaigne
Man is certainly stark mad. He cannot make a flea, and yet he will be making gods by the dozen.
Montaigne
I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little the more, as I grow older.
Michel de Montaigne
It vexes me that he [Plutarch] is exposed to the spoil of those that are conversant with him.
Montaigne, cited by Emerson in his Introduction to Plutarch’s Moralia
I gladly come back to the theme of the absurdity of our education: its end has not been to make us good and
wise, but learned. And, to a large extent, it has succeeded. … It has not taught us to seek virtue and to
embrace wisdom: it has impressed upon us their derivation and their etymology.
Montaigne
The louder a good action resounds, the more I question its goodness, and the shrewder I suspect it was
done for the sake of the noise: exposed in the market, it is already half-sold.
Montaigne, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 126
I have always observed a singular accord between super-celestial ideas and subterranean behavior.
The most certain sign of wisdom is a continued cheerfulness.

I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself.

Montaigne
179
He who establishes his argument by noise and command, shows that his reason is weak.
Montaigne
The most profound joy has more of gravity than of gaiety in it.
Montaigne
Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

Montaigne
There is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and others.
Montaigne
The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to
avouch for them.
Montaigne
There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.

Montaigne
Don’t discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise
yourself, you are disbelieved.
Montaigne
Some one may say of me, that I have here only made a nosegay of other men’s flowers, having furnished
nothing of my own but the thread to tie them.
Montaigne
Essays (1580)
English: http://books.google.com/books?id=ExBEAAAAYAAJ
English: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Essays_of_Montaigne
French: http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/ARTFL/projects/montaigne/
French: http://www.bribes.org/trismegiste/montable.htm
French: http://books.google.com/books?id=jTk9AAAAYAAJ
We exchange one word for another word, often more unknown. I know better what is man than I know what
is animal, or mortal, or rational.
Montaigne F818–19, V1069B
1.20 To philosophize is to learn how to die
He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.

Montaigne, Essays, Book I, ch. 20
1.25 On Schoolmasters’ Learning
How can it happen that a soul enriched by so much knowledge should not be more alert and alive, or that a
grosser, more commonplace spirit can without moral improvement lodge within itself the reasonings and
judgments of the most excellent minds which the world has ever produced: that still leaves me wondering.
Montaigne, Essays, M. Screech, trans. (1991), Book I, ch. 25, “On Schoolmasters’ Learning,” p. 151
A young woman, the foremost of our princesses, said to me of a particular man that, by welcoming as he did
the brains of others, so powerful and numerous, his own brain was forced to squeeze up, crouch down and
contract in order to make room for them all.
We work merely to fill the memory, leaving the understanding empty.

180
Just as birds go in search of grain, carrying it in their beaks without tasting it to stuff it down the beaks of
their young, so too do our schoolmasters go foraging for learning in their books and merely lodge it on the tip
of their lips, only to spew it out and scatter it on the wind.
“Knowing” no more consists in what we once knew than in what we shall know in the future.
Whenever I ask a certain acquaintance of mine to tell me what he knows about anything, he wants to
show me a book
Learned we may be with another man’s learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.
Dionysus used to laugh at professors who did research into the bad qualities of Ulysses yet knew nothing of
their own; at musicians whose flutes were harmonious but not their morals; at orators whose studies led to
talking about justice, not to being just.
He ought to have brought back a fuller soul: he brings back a swollen one; instead of making it weightier he
has merely blown wind into it.
Montaigne, describing the consequences of education on a typical student, Essays, M. Screech, trans. (1991), Book I, ch. 25, “On Schoolmasters’
Learning,” p. 156
It is no so great wonder, as they make of it, that our ancestors had letters in no greater esteem, and that
even to this day they are but rarely met with in the principal councils of princes; and if the end and design of
acquiring riches, which is the only thing we propose to ourselves, by the means of law, physic, pedantry, and
even divinity itself, did not uphold and keep them in credit, you would, with doubt, see them in as pitiful a
condition as ever. And what loss would this be, if they neither instruct us to think well nor to do well?
“Postquam docti prodierunt, boni desunt.” [Seneca, Ep., 95.] “Since the 'savans' have made their appearance
among us, the good people have become eclipsed.” [Rousseau, Discours sur les Lettres] All other knowledge
is hurtful to him who has not the science of goodness.
But the reason I glanced upon but now, may it not also hence proceed, that, our studies in France having
almost no other aim but profit, except as to those who, by nature born to offices and employments rather of
glory than gain, addict themselves to letters, if at all, only for so short a time (being taken from their studies
before they can come to have any taste of them, to a profession that has nothing to do with books), there
ordinarily remain no others to apply themselves wholly to learning, but people of mean condition, who in
that only seek the means to live; and by such people, whose souls are, both by nature and by domestic
education and example, of the basest alloy the fruits of knowledge are immaturely gathered and ill digested,
and delivered to their recipients quite another thing. For it is not for knowledge to enlighten a soul that is
dark of itself, nor to make a blind man see. Her business is not to find a man's eyes, but to guide, govern, and
direct them.
The lame are not suited to physical exercises, nor are lame souls suited to spiritual ones: misbegotten and
vulgar souls are unworthy of philosophy.
We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there.

Montaigne, Essays, Book I, ch. 25, “On Pedantry”
181
1.26 On educating children
I quote others only in order the better to express myself.

Since I would rather make of him an able man than a learned man, I would also urge that care be taken to
choose a guide with a well-made rather than a well-filled head.
1.32 Judgments on God’s ordinances must be embarked upon with prudence
Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.

1.39 On Solitude
La plus grande chose du monde, c’est de savoir être à soi.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
1.54 Of vain subtleties
A man may say with some color of truth that there is an Abecedarian ignorance that precedes knowledge, and
a doctoral ignorance that comes after it: an ignorance that knowledge creates and begets
Montaigne, Essays, Book I, Chapter 54, “Of vain subtleties”
2.6 On practice
Mon métier et mon art, c’est vivre.

Montaigne, Essais, Livre II, Chapitre 6
My trade and my art is living.
Montaigne, Essays, Book II, ch. 6, “On practice”
2.10 Of Books
If I encounter difficulties in reading, I do not gnaw my nails over them; I leave them there. I do nothing
without gaiety.
Montaigne, Essays, 2:10
C'est icy purement l'essay de mes facultez naturelles, et nullement des acquises; et qui me surprendra
d'ignorance, il ne fera rien contre moy, car à peine respondroy-je à autruy de mes discours, qui ne m'en
responds point à moy; ny n'en suis satisfaict. Qui sera en cherche de science, si la pesche où elle se loge: il
n'est rien dequoy je face moins de profession. Ce sont icy mes fantasies, par lesquelles je ne tasche point à
donner à connoistre les choses, mais moy.
Montaigne, Essais, Livre II, Chapitre 10, «Des Livres»
What you have here is purely an assay of my natural, not at all of my acquired, capabilities. Anyone who
catches me out in ignorance does me no harm: I cannot vouch to other people for my reasonings: I can
scarcely vouch for them to myself and am by no means satisfied with them. If anyone is looking for
knowledge let him go where such fish are to be caught: there is nothing I lay claim to less. These are my own
thoughts, by which I am striving to make known not matter but me.
Montaigne, Essays, M. Screech, trans. (1991), Book II, ch. 10, “Of books,”, p. 457
182
J'aimeray quelqu'un qui me sçache deplumer, je dy par clairté de jugement et par la seule distinction de la
force et beauté des propos.
I shall love any one that can unplume me, that is, by clearness of understanding and judgment, and by the
sole distinction of the force and beauty of the discourse.
Montaigne, Essays, Book II, ch. 10, “Of books”
Moy, qui, à faute de memoire, demeure court tous les coups à les trier, par cognoissance de nation, sçay tres-
bien sentir, à mesurer ma portée, que mon terroir n'est aucunement capable d'aucunes fleurs trop riches que
j'y trouve semées, et que tous les fruicts de mon creu ne les sçauroient payer.
I who, for want of memory, am at every turn at a loss to pick them out of their national livery, am yet wise
enough to know, by the measure of my own abilities, that my soil is incapable of producing any of those rich
flowers that I there find growing; and that all the fruits of my own growth are not worth any one of them.
Il eschape souvent des fautes à nos yeux, mais la maladie du jugement consiste à ne les pouvoir apercevoir
lorsqu'un autre nous les descouvre.
Many faults escape our eye, but the infirmity of judgment consists in not being able to discern them, when by
another laid open to us.
Voire la reconnoissance de l'ignorance est l'un des plus beaux et plus seurs tesmoignages de jugement que je
trouve.
Recognizing ignorance is one of the finest and surest testimonies of judgment that I know.
Je veux qu'on voye mon pas naturel et ordinaire, ainsin detraqué qu'il est.
I want people to see my natural ordinary stride, however much it wanders off the path.
Je souhaiterois bien avoir plus parfaicte intelligence des choses, mais je ne la veux pas achepter si cher
qu'elle couste. Mon dessein est de passer doucement, et non laborieusement, ce qui me reste de vie. Il n'est
rien pourquoy je me vueille rompre la teste, non pas pour la science, de quelque grand pris qu'elle soit. Je ne
cherche aux livres qu'à m'y donner du plaisir par un honneste amusement; ou, si j'estudie, je n'y cherche que
la science qui traicte de la connoissance de moy mesmes, et qui m'instruise à bien mourir et à bien vivre.
I could wish to have a more perfect knowledge of things, but I will not buy it so dear as it costs. My design is
to pass over easily, and not laboriously, the remainder of my life; there is nothing that I will cudgel my brains
about; no, not even knowledge, however precious it may be. I seek, in the reading of books, only to please
myself by an honest diversion; or, if I study, it is for no other science than that which treats of the
knowledge of myself, and instructs me how to die well and how to live well.
183
Les difficultez, si j'en rencontre en lisant, je n'en ronge pas mes ongles; je les laisse là, apres leur avoir fait
une charge ou deux. Si je m'y plantois, je m'y perdrois, et le temps: car j'ay un esprit primsautier. Ce que je
ne voy de la premiere charge, je le voy moins en m'y obstinant. Je ne fay rien sans gayeté; et la continuation
et la contention trop ferme esblouit mon jugement, l'attriste et le lasse. Ma veue s'y confond et s'y dissipe. Il
faut que je le retire et que je l'y remette à secousses: tout ainsi que, pour juger du lustre de l'escarlatte, on
nous ordonne de passer les yeux par-dessus, en la parcourant à diverses veues, soudaines, reprinses, et
reiterées.
I do not bite my nails about the difficulties I meet with in my reading; after a charge or two, I give them over.
Should I insist upon them, I should both lose myself and time; for I have an impatient understanding, that
must be satisfied at first: what I do not discern at once is by persistence rendered more obscure. I do nothing
without gaiety; continuation and a too obstinate endeavour, darkens, stupefies, and tires my judgment. My
sight is confounded and dissipated with poring; I must withdraw it, and refer my discovery to new attempts.
Ce que j'en opine, c'est aussi pour declarer la mesure de ma veue, non la mesure des choses.
When I express my opinions it is so as to reveal the measure of my sight not the measure of the thing.
Mais, à confesser hardiment la verité (car, puis qu'on a franchi les barrieres de l'impudence, il n'y a plus de
bride), sa façon d'escrire me semble ennuyeuse, et toute autre pareille façon. Car ses prefaces, definitions,
partitions, etymologies, consument la plus part de son ouvrage; ce qu'il y a de vif et de mouelle, est estouffé
par ses longueries d'apprets. Si j'ay employé une heure à le lire, qui est beaucoup pour moy, et que je
r'amentoive ce que j'en ay tiré de suc et de substance, la plus part du temps je n'y treuve que du vent: car il
n'est pas encor venu aux argumens qui servent à son propos, et aux raisons qui touchent proprement le neud
que je cherche. Pour moy, qui ne demande qu'à devenir plus sage, non plus sçavant ou eloquent, ces
ordonnances logiciennes et Aristoteliques ne sont pas à propos: je veux qu'on commence par le dernier point;
j'entens assez que c'est que mort et volupté; qu'on ne s'amuse pas à les anatomizer: je cherche des raisons
bonnes et fermes d'arrivée, qui m'instruisent à en soustenir l'effort. Ny les subtilitez grammairiennes, ny
l'ingenieuse contexture de parolles et d'argumentations n'y servent; je veux des discours qui donnent la
premiere charge dans le plus fort du doubte: les siens languissent autour du pot.
Montaigne, Essais, Livre II, Chapitre 10, «Des Livres», pp. 413-414
His [Cicero’s] style of writing seems boring to me, and so do all similar styles. His introductory passages, his
definitions, his subdivisions and his etymologies eat up most of his work; what living marrow there is in him
is smothered by the tedium of his preparations. … I want arguments which drive home their first attack
right into the strongest point of doubt.
184
J'ay aussi remerqué cecy, que de tant d'ames et effects qu'il juge, de tant de mouvemens et conseils, il n'en
rapporte jamais un seul à la vertu, religion et conscience, comme si ces parties là estoyent du tout esteintes au
monde; et, de toutes les actions, pour belles par apparence qu'elles soient d'elles mesmes, il en rejecte la
[Image 0176] cause à quelque occasion vitieuse ou à quelque profit. Il est impossible d'imaginer que, parmy
cet infiny nombre d'actions dequoy il juge, il n'y en ait eu quelqu'une produite par la voye de la raison. Nulle
corruption peut avoir saisi les hommes si universellement que quelqu'un n'eschappe de la contagion: cela me
faict craindre qu'il y aye un peu du vice de son goust: et peut estre advenu qu'il ait estimé d'autruy selon soy.
Montaigne, Essais, Livre II, Chapitre 10, «Des Livres» p. 419
Of so many souls and so many effects, so many motives and so many counsels as he [Guicciardini] judges,
he never attributes any one to virtue, religion, or conscience, as if all these were utterly extinct in the world:
and of all the actions, how brave soever in outward show they appear in themselves, he always refers the
cause and motive to some vicious occasion or some prospect of profit. It is impossible to imagine but that,
amongst such an infinite number of actions as he makes mention of, there must be some one produced by the
way of honest reason. No corruption could so universally have infected men that some one would not escape
the contagion which makes me suspect that his own taste was vicious, whence it might happen that he judged
other men by himself.
2.12 Apologie de Raimond Sebond
Our religion is made to eradicate vices, instead it encourages them, covers them, and nurtures them.
Montaigne, Essays, Book II, Chapter 12, “Apology for Raymond Sebond”
L’homme est bien insensé. Il ne saurait forger un ciron, et forge des Dieux à douzaines.
Montaigne, Essais, Livre II, Chapitre 12, “Apologie de Raimond Sebond”
Man is certainly stark mad. He cannot make a mite, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.
Montaigne, Essays, Book II, ch. 12, “Apology for Raymond Sebond”
Leur effect, c'est une pure, entiere et tres-parfaicte surceance et suspension de jugement. Ils se servent de leur
raison pour enquerir et pour debatre, mais non pas pour arrester et choisir.
Montaigne, Essais, Livre II, Chapitre 12, “Apologie de Raimond Sebond,” V505
[The teaching of the Pyrrhonists] is a pure, complete and very perfect postponement and suspension of
judgment. They use their reason to inquire and debate, but not to conclude and choose.
Montaigne, Essays, F374, V505B, cited in Ian Maclean, “Montaigne and the truth of the schools,” The Cambridge Companion to Montaigne, pp.
155-156
That learning is in small repute with me which nothing profited the teachers themselves.
Montaigne, “Apology for Raimond de Sebond” Essays
Mes meurs sont naturelles; je n'ay point appellé à les bastir le secours d'aucune discipline. Mais, toutes
imbecilles qu'elles sont, quand l'envie m'a pris de les reciter, et que, pour les faire sortir en publiq un peu plus
decemment, je me suis mis en devoir de les assister et de discours et d'exemples, ce a esté merveille à moy
mesmes de les rencontrer, par cas d'adventure, conformes à tant d'exemples et discours philosophiques. De
quel regiment estoit ma vie, je ne l'ay appris qu'apres qu'elle est exploitée et employée. Nouvelle figure: un
philosophe impremedité et fortuite.
Montaigne, « Apologie de Raimond Sebond » Essais, F409, V546C
My behaviour is natural: I have not called in the help of any teaching to build it. But feeble as it is, when the
desire to tell it seized me, and then, to make it appear in public a little more decently, I set myself to support
it with reasons and examples, it was a marvel to myself to find it, simply by chance, in conformity with so
many philosophical examples and reasons. What rule my life belonged to, I did not learn until after it was
completed and spent. A new figure: an unpremeditated and accidental philosopher!
Montaigne, Essays, F409, V546C
I cannot keep a record of my life by my actions; fortune places them too low. I keep it by my thoughts.
Montaigne F721, V945–6
185
Mais aux affections qui me distrayent de moy et attachent ailleurs, à celles là certes m’oppose-je de toute ma
force. Mon opinion est qu’il se faut prester à autruy et ne se donner qu’à soy-mesme.
Montaigne, Essais, Livre III, Chapitre 10, “De Mesnager sa Volonté,” V1003
Against such affections as wholly carry me away from myself and fix me elsewhere, I oppose myself with
my utmost power. It is my opinion that a man should lend himself to others, and only give himself to
himself.
Montaigne, Essays, Book III, Chapter 10, “On restraining the will”
3.11 Of the lame
Men, when facts are put before them, are more ready to amuse themselves by inquiring into their
reasons than by inquiring into their truth.
Montaigne, Essays, Book III, Chapter 11,”Of the lame”
Both the body and the soul disturb and alter the right they have to enjoyment of the world by mixing with it
the [authority of science].
Montaigne, Essays, Book III, Chapter 11,”Of the lame,” F785, V1026B, cited in Ian Maclean, “Montaigne and the truth of the schools,” The
Cambridge Companion to Montaigne, p. 148
Truth and falsehood are alike in face, similar in bearing, taste, and movement.
Montaigne, Essays, Book III, Chapter 11,”Of the lame,” F785, V1027
How much more natural and likely it seems to me that two men are lying than that one man should pass with
the winds in twelve hours from the east to the west! How much more natural that our understanding should
be carried away from its base by the volatility of our untracked mind than that one of us, in flesh and bone,
should be wafted up a chimney on a broomstick by a strange spirit!
Montaigne, Essays, Book III, Chapter 11,”Of the lame,” F789, V1032
Of Physiognomy
Socrates … n’a jamais en la bouche que cochers, menuisiers, savetiers et maçons. Ce sont inductions et
similitudes tirées des plus vulgaires et cogneues actions des hommes; chacun l’entend. Soubs une si vile
forme nous n’eussions jamais choisi la noblesse et splendeur de ses conceptions admirables, nous, qui
estimons plates et basses toutes celles que la doctrine ne releve, qui n’apercevons la richesse qu’en montre et
en pompe. Nostre monde n’est formé qu’à l’ostentation: les hommes ne s’enflent que de vent, et se manient à
bonds, comme les balons. Cettuy-cy ne se propose point des vaines fantasies: sa fin fut nous fournir de
choses et de preceptes qui reelement et plus jointement servent à la vie.
Montaigne, Essais, “De la Phisionomie,” V1037
Socrates … has nothing on his lips but draymen, joiners, cobblers and masons. His inductions and
comparisons are drawn from the most ordinary and best-known of men’s activities; anyone can
understand him. Under so common a form we today would never have discerned the nobility and
splendour of his astonishing concepts; we who judge any which are not swollen up by erudition to be
base and commonplace and who are never aware of riches except when pompously paraded. Our
society has been prepared to appreciate nothing but ostentation: nowadays you can fill men up with
nothing but wind and them bounce them about like balloons. But this man, Socrates, did not deal with
vain notions: his aim was to provide us with matter and precepts which genuinely and intimately serve
our lives.
Montaigne, Essays, M. Screech, trans. (1991), Book III, Chapter 12, “Of Physiognomy,” p. 1173
C’est grand cas d’avoir peu donner tel ordre aux pures imaginations d’un enfant, que, sans les alterer ou
estirer, il en ait produict les plus beaux effects de nostre ame.
Montaigne, “De la Phisionomie,” Essais, V1038
Socrates … could order the purest and most child-like thoughts that, without stretching them or perverting
them, he could produce by them the most beautiful actions of our souls.
186
C’est luy [Socrates] qui ramena du ciel, où elle perdoit son temps, la sagesse humaine, pour la rendre à
l’homme, où est sa plus juste et plus laborieuse besoigne, et plus utile.
He [Socrates] it was who brought human wisdom back from the heavens where she was wasting her time and
returned her to mankind, in whom lies her most proper and most demanding task as well as her most useful
one.
Montaigne, Essays, M. Screech, trans. (1991), Book III, Chapter 12, “Of Physiognomy,” pp.1174-1175
Socrates … a faict grand faveur à l’humaine nature de montrer combien elle peut d’elle mesme. Nous
sommes chacun plus riche que nous ne pensons; mais on nous dresse à l’emprunt et à la queste: on nous duict
à nous servir plus de l’autruy que du nostre.
Socrates … did a great favour to human nature by showing how much she can do by herself. We are richer
than we think, each one of us. Yet we are schooled for borrowing and begging! We are trained to make more
use of other men’s goods than our own.
En aucune chose l’homme ne sçait s’arrester au point de son besoing: de volupté, de richesse, de puissance, il
en embrasse plus qu’il n’en peut estreindre; son avidité est incapable de moderation. Je trouve qu’en curiosité
de sçavoir il en est de mesme: il se taille de la besongne bien plus qu’il n’en peut faire et bien plus qu’il n’en
a affaire, estendant l’utilité du sçavoir autant qu’est sa matiere. Ut omnium rerum, sic literarum quoque
intemperantia laboramus. Et Tacitus a raison de louer la mere d’Agricola d’avoir bridé en son fils un appetit
trop bouillant de science. C’est un bien, à le regarder d’yeux fermes, qui a, comme les autres biens des
hommes, beaucoup de vanité et foiblesse propre et naturelle, et d’un cher coust. L’emploite en est bien plus
hazardeuse que de toute autre viande ou boisson. Car au reste, ce que nous avons achetté nous l’emportons
au logis en quelque vaisseau; et là avons loy d’en examiner la valeur, combien et à quelle heure nous en
prendrons. Mais les sciences, nous ne les pouvons d’arrivée mettre en autre vaisseau qu’en nostre ame: nous
les avallons en les achettant, et sortons du marché ou infects desjà ou amendez. Il y en a qui ne font que nous
empescher et charger au lieu de nourrir, et telles encore qui, sous tiltre de nous guerir, nous empoisonnent.
Montaigne, “De la Phisionomie,” Essais, V1038-1039
In nothing does man know how to halt at the point of his need; be it pleasure, wealth or power, he clasps at
more than he can hold: his greed is not susceptible to moderation. it is the same, I find, with his curiosity for
knowledge: he hacks out for himself much greater tasks than he needs or can achieve, making the extent of
knowledge and the usefulness of knowledge co-equal: ‘Ut omnium rerum, sic litterarum quoque
intemperantia laboramus.’ [In learning as in everything else, we suffer from lack of temperance.—Seneca,
Epist. moral., CVI, 12] And Tacitus is right to praise the mother of Agricola for having restrained in her son
too seething an appetite for knowledge: [Tacitus, Agricola, I, x] like the rest of men’s goods, knowledge is
one which, if we look at it steadily, has much inherent vanity and natural feebleness. And it costs us dear. To
acquire such pabulum is more hazardous than the acquiring of other food and drink; for in other
cases whatever food we have bought we can carry home in containers—which gives us time to decide
on its worth, and on how much of it we shall take and when. But from the outset all kinds of learning
can be put into no container but our soul: as we buy them we ingest them, leaving the market-place either
already contaminated or else improved. Some of them, instead of nourishing us, burden us and hamper us;
others still, under pretence of curing us, poison us.
187
J’ay pris plaisir de voir en quelque lieu des hommes, par devotion, faire veu d’ignorance, comme de chasteté,
de pauvreté, de poenitence. C’est aussi chastrer nos appetits desordonnez, d’esmousser cette cupidité qui
nous espoinçonne à l’estude des livres, et priver l’ame de cette complaisance voluptueuse qui nous chatouille
par l’opinion de science.
Montaigne, “De la Phisionomie,” Essais, V 1039
I have taken pleasure in hearing of men somewhere or other who, from piety, make vows of ignorance
similar to vows of chastity, poverty and penance. To take the edge off that cupidity which goads us toward
the study of books, and to deprive our souls of that pleasurable self-satisfaction which thrills us with the
opinion that we know something is farther to castrate our disordered desires.
Montaigne, Essays, M. Screech, trans. (1991), Book III, Chapter 12, “Of Physiognomy,” pp. 1175-1176
Il me plaist de voir combien il y a de lascheté et de pusillanimité en l’ambition, par combien d’abjection et de

servitude il luy faut arriver à son but. Mais cecy me deplaist il de voir des natures debonnaires et capables de
justice, se corrompre tous les jours au maniement et commandement de cette confusion. La longue
souffrance engendre la coustume, la coustume le consentement et l’imitation. Nous avions assez d’ames mal
nées sans gaster les bonnes et genereuses.
Aussi qu’en matiere d’interests publiques, à mesure que mon affection est plus universellement espandue,
elle en est plus foible.
Montaigne, “De la Phisionomie,” Essais, V 1046-1047
Where public misfortunes are concerned, the more my compassion is spread overall the weaker it becomes.
Montaigne, Essays, M. Screech, trans. (1991), Book III, Chapter 12, “Of Physiognomy,” p.1185
Nous troublons la vie par le soing de la mort, et la mort par le soing de la vie. L’une nous ennuye, l’autre
nous effraye. Ce n’est pas contre la mort que nous nous preparons; c’est chose trop momentanée. Un quart
d’heure de passion sans consequence, sans nuisance, ne merite pas des preceptes particuliers. A dire vray,
nous nous preparons contre les preparations de la mort. La philosophie nous ordonne d’avoir la mort
tousjours devant les yeux, de la prevoir et considerer avant le temps, et nous donne apres les reigles et les
precautions pour prouvoir à ce que cette prevoiance et cette pensée ne nous blesse. Ainsi font les medecins
qui nous jettent aux maladies, affin qu’ils ayent où employer leurs drogues et leur art.
Philosophy first commands us to have death ever before our eyes, to anticipate it and consider it beforehand,
and then she gives us rules and caveats in order to forestall our being hurt by our reflections!
Si nous n’avons sçeu vivre, c’est injustice de nous apprendre à mourir, et de difformer la fin de son tout. Si
nous avons sçeu vivre constamment et tranquillement, nous sçaurons mourir de mesme. Ils s’en venteront
tant qu’il leur plaira. Tota philosoforum vita commentatio mortis est. Mais il m’est advis que c’est bien le
bout, non pourtant le but de la vie; c’est sa fin, son extremité, non pourtant son object. Elle doit estre elle
mesme à soy sa visée, son dessein; son droit estude est se regler, se conduire, se souffrir. Au nombre de
plusieurs autres offices que comprend ce general et principal chapitre de sçavoir vivre, est cet article de
sçavoir mourir; et des plus legiers si nostre crainte ne luy donnoit poids.
Montaigne, “De la Phisionomie,” Essais, V 1051-1052
If we do not know how to live, it is not right to teach us how to die, making the form of the end incongruous
with the whole. … They may bluster as much as they like, saying that ‘tota philosoforum vita
commentatio mortis est’ [the entire life of philosophers is a preparation for death]; but my opinion is
that death is indeed the ending of life, but not therefore its end: it puts an end to it; it is its ultimate
point; but it is not its objective. Life must be its own objective, its own purpose. Its right concern is to
rule itself, govern itself, put up with itself. Numbered among its other duties included under the general and
principal heading How to live, there is the sub-section, How to die. If our fears did not lend it weight, dying
would be one of our lighter duties.
Montaigne, Essays, M. Screech, trans. (1991), Book III, Chapter 12, “Of Physiognomy,” pp.1190-1191
188
Vrayment il est bien plus aisé de parler comme Aristote et vivre comme Caesar, qu’il n’est aisé de parler et
vivre comme Socrates.
It is much easier to talk like Aristotle and live like Caesar than it is to talk and live like Socrates.
Montaigne, “On Physiognomy,” Essays
It is far easier to talk like Aristotle and to live like Caesar than both to talk like Socrates and live like
Socrates.
Nos facultez ne sont pas ainsi dressées. Nous ne les essayons ny ne les cognoissons; nous nous investissons
de celles d’autruy, et laissons chomer les nostres.
We neither assay [our faculties] nor understand them: we clothe ourselves in those of others and allow our
own to lie unused.
Quelqu’un pourroit dire de moy que j’ay seulement faict icy un amas de fleurs estrangeres, n’y ayant fourny
du mien que le filet à les lier.
Some may say … that I have merely gathered here a big bunch of other men’s flowers, having furnished
nothing of my own but the string to hold them together.
Certes j’ay donné à l’opinion publique que ces parements empruntez m’accompaignent. Mais je n’entends
pas qu’ils me couvrent, et qu’ils me cachent: c’est le rebours de mon dessein, qui ne veux faire montre que
du mien, et de ce qui est mien par nature; et si je m’en fusse creu, à tout hazard, j’eusse parlé tout fin seul.
I have indeed made a concession to the taste of the public with these borrowed ornaments which accompany
me. But I do not intend them to cover me up or to hide me: that is the very reverse of my design: I want to
display nothing but my own—what is mine by nature. If I had had confidence to do what I really wanted, I
would have spoken utter alone.
Socrates, qui a esté un exemplaire parfaict en toutes grandes qualitez, j’ay despit qu’il eust rencontré un
corps et un visage si vilain, comme ils disent, et disconvenable à la beauté de son ame, luy si amoureux et si
affolé de la beauté. Nature luy fit injustice. Il n’est rien plus vraysemblable que la conformité et relation du
corps à l’esprit.
Montaigne, “De la Phisionomie,” Essais, F809, V1057
About Socrates, who was a perfect model in all great qualities, it vexes me that he hit on a body and face so
ugly as they say he had, and so incongruous with the beauty of his soul . . . There is nothing more likely than
the conformity and relation of the body to the spirit.
Montaigne, “On Physiognomy,” Essays
It vexes me that Socrates, who was a perfect exemplar of all the great qualities, should have chanced to have
so ugly a face and body (as they say he did), one so unbecoming to the beauty of his soul. One who was so
much in love, so madly in love, with beauty. nature did him an injustice there. There is nothing more
probable than the conformity and correspondence of the body and the mind.
Aristote dict aux beaux appartenir le droict de commander, et quand il en est de qui la beauté approche celle
des images des Dieux, que la veneration leur est pareillement deue.
Aristotle says that the right to command belongs to the beautiful and that, whenever there are persons whose
beauty approaches that of the portraits of the gods, like veneration is due to them.
189
La pluspart et les plus grands philosophes payarent leur escholage et acquirent la sagesse par l’entremise et
faveur de leur beauté.
Most of the philosophers, and the greatest, paid for their tuition and acquired their wisdom by the favour and
agency of their beauty.
I do not believe in perverted and disnatured tendencies, any more than in portents and miracles, unless I am
forced to do so by some major piece of evidence.
Montaigne, “On Physiognomy,” Essays, M. Screech, trans. (1991), p. 1203
Aristote d’avoir esté trop misericordieux envers un meschant homme: J’ay esté de vray, dict-il,
misericordieux envers l’homme, non envers la meschanceté.
Les jugements ordinaires s’exasperent à la vengeance par l’horreur du meffaict. Cela mesme refroidit le
mien: l’horreur du premier meurtre m’en faict craindre un second, et la haine de la premiere cruauté m’en
faict hayr toute imitation.
Judgments normally inflame themselves towards revenge out of horror for the crime. That is precisely what
tempers mine: my horror for the first murder makes me frightened of committing a second, and my loathing
for the original act of cruelty makes me loathe to imitate it.
3.2 On repenting
If my mind could gain a firm footing, I would not make essays, I would make decisions; but it is always in
apprenticeship and on trail.
Montaigne, Essays, 3:2, 740
I do not portray being. I portray passing.

3.5 On Some Verses of Virgil
The worst of my actions and conditions does not seem to me so ugly as the cowardice of not daring to avow
it.
Montaigne, "On some verses of Virgil," Essays (1580), D. Frame, trans. (1943), p. 778
Whoever would oblige himself to tell all, would oblige himself not to do anything about which we are
constrained to keep silent.
Montaigne, "On some verses of Virgil," Essays (1580), D. Frame, trans. (1943), p. 778
3.13 On experience
We must learn to endure what we cannot evade. Our life, like the harmony of the world, consists of contrary
things—of diverse tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, gay and solemn. If a musician should use but one
of these, it would be meaningless? He must know how to employ them all and mingle them together. We
likewise must learn to blend the goods and evils which are part and parcel of our life. Our being cannot
subsist without this mixture, and the one are no less necessary to it than the other.
Montaigne, “Of Experience,” Essays
Never take on, and still less give to your wives, the charge of their [children’s] upbringing. Let them be
formed by fortune under the laws of the common people and of nature; leave it to custom to train them to
frugality and austerity, so that they may have rather the com down from rigorousness than climb toward it.
Montaigne, Essay, 3:13, 1028
190
Let the tutor make his charge pass everything through a sieve and lodge nothing in his head on mere
authority and trust: let not Aristotle's principles be principles to him any more than those of the Stoics or
Epicureans. Let this variety of ideas be set before him; he will choose if he can; if not, he will remain in
doubt. Only the fools are certain and assured. For if he embraces Xenophon's and Plato's opinions by his own
reasoning, they will no longer be theirs, they will be his. He who follows another follows nothing. He finds
nothing; indeed he seeks nothing. We are not under a king; let each one claim his own freedom. Let him
know that he knows, at least. He must imbibe their ways of thinking, not learn their precepts. And let him
boldly forget, if he wants, where he got them, but let him know how to make them his own. Truth and reason
are common to everyone, and no more belong to the man who first spoke them than to the man who says
them later. It is no more according to Plato than according to me, since he and I understand and see it the
same way. The bees plunder the flowers here and there, but afterward they make of them honey, which is all
theirs; it is no longer thyme or marjoram. Even so with the pieces borrowed from others; he will transform
and blend them to make a work of his own, to wit, his judgment. His education, work, and study aim only at
forming this.
Montaigne, Essays, 1:26 “Of the education of children”
Especially at this moment, when I perceive that [my life] is so brief in time, I try to increase it in weight, I try
to arrest the speed of its flight be the speed with which I grasp it, and compensate for the haste of its ebb by
my vigor in using it. The shorter my possession of life, the deeper and fuller I must make it.
I meditate on my satisfaction. ... I do not skim over it; I sound it.

FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626)

He that cannot contract the sight of his mind, as well as disperse and dilate it, wanteth a great faculty.
Francis Bacon
Aphorisms, representing a knowledge broken, do invite men to inquire further; whereas methods, carrying
the show of a total, do secure men, as if they were at farthest.
Francis Bacon , Advancement of Learning (1605), Second Book XI–XX, p. 5
It is better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an opinion as is unworthy of him.
Francis Bacon
It is part of my intention to set out everything as openly and clearly as possible. For nakedness of mind is the
companion of innocence and simplicity, as nakedness of body once was.
Francis Bacon, The Great Instauration
[That] philosophy only is the true one which reproduces most faithfully the statements of nature, and is
written down, as it were, from nature's dictation, so that it is nothing but a copy and a reflection of nature,
and adds nothing of its own, but is merely a repetition and echo.
[opposition] Francis Bacon, The Enlargement of Science, 1. 2, ch. 3
There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying.
Francis Bacon
Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so
is the other.
Francis Bacon
191
Certainly, great persons had need to borrow other men's opinions to think themselves happy; for if they judge
by their own feeling, they cannot find it: but if they think with themselves what other men think of them, and
that other men would fain be as they are, then they are happy as it were by report, when perhaps they find the
contrary within.
Francis Bacon, Of Great Place
Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.
Francis Bacon
I have taken all knowledge to by my province.

Francis Bacon, Letter to Lord Burleigh
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
Francis Bacon
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
Francis Bacon, “Of Beauty”
Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.
Francis Bacon
Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.
Francis Bacon, “Of Studies,” Essays
Praise from the common people is generally false, and rather follows the vain than the virtuous.
Francis Bacon
Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study.
Francis Bacon
In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.
Francis Bacon, “Of Revenge,” Essays, §4 lines 7-8
Advancement of Learning
The answer was good that Diogenes made to one that asked him in mockery, "How it came to pass that
philosophers were the followers of rich men, and not rich men of philosophers?" He answered soberly, and
yet sharply, "Because the one sort knew what they had need of, and the other did not." And of the like nature
was the answer which Aristippus made, when having a petition to Dionysius, and no ear given to him, he fell
down at his feet; whereupon Dionysius stayed, and gave him the hearing, and granted it; and afterward some
person, tender on the behalf of philosophy, reproved Aristippus, that he would offer the profession of
philosophy such an indignity as for a private suit to fall at a tyrant's feet: but he answered, "It was not his
fault, but it was the fault of Dionysius, that had his ears in his feet." Neither was it accounted weakness, but
discretion in him that would not dispute his best with Adrianus Cassar; excusing himself, "That it was reason
to yield to him that commanded thirty legions." These and the like applications, and stooping to points of
necessity and convenience, cannot be disallowed; for though they may have some outward baseness, yet in a
judgment truly made, they are to be accounted submissions to the occasion, and not to the person.
Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Book 1
Books, such as are worthy the name of books, ought to have no patrons but truth and reason.
Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning, 1. 36
192
Ornamenta Rationalia [Elegant Sentences]
http://books.google.com/books?id=_HoZAAAAYAAJ
Arcum intensio frangit; animum, remissio.

Francis Bacon, Ornamenta Rationalia
Much bending breaks the bow. Much unbending, the mind.
Cum vitia prosint, peccat qui recte facit.

If vices were profitable, the virtuous man would be the sinner.
[opposition] Francis Bacon, Ornamenta Rationalia
The flood of grief decreaseth, when it can swell no higher.

The fortune which nobody sees makes a man happy and unenvied.
Malus ubi bonum se simulat, tunc est pessimus.

A bad man is worst when he pretends to be a saint.
They live ill, who think to live for ever.

The coward calls himself a cautious man; and the miser says, he is frugal.
It is a strange desire which men have, to seek power and lose liberty.
A mixture of falsehood is like alloy in gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it
debaseth it.
Death ... extinguisehs envy.

He that studieth revenge, keepeth his own wounds green.

If [things] be not tossed upon the arguments of counsel, they will be tossed upon- the waves of fortune.
Extreme self-lovers will set a man's house on fire, though it were but to roast their eggs.
Riches are the baggage of virtue; they cannot be spared nor left behind, but they hinder the march.
Riches have sold more men than ever they have bought.
A man's nature runs either to herbs or weeds; therefore let him seasonably water the one, and destroy the
other.
193
The beautiful prove accomplished, but not of great spirit; and study, for the most part, rather behaviour than
virtue.
The best part of beauty is that which a picture cannot express.

While a man maketh his train longer, he maketh his wings shorter.
Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity the blessing of the New.
Novum Organum (1620)

Latin: http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/bacon.html
English: http://books.google.com/books?id=XQF-bwn5hXIC
Quotations are from the authorized translation by M. Oxenford
It seems to me that men do not rightly understand either their store or their strength, but overrate the one and
underrate the other. Hence it follows, that either from an extravagant estimate of the value of the arts which
they possess, they seek no further; or else from too mean an estimate of their own powers, they spend their
strength in small matters and never put it fairly to the trial in those which go to the main. These are as the
pillars of fate set in the path of knowledge; for men have neither desire nor hope to encourage them to
penetrate further. And since opinion of store is one of the chief causes of want, and satisfaction with the
present induces neglect of provision for the future, it becomes a thing not only useful, but absolutely
necessary, that the excess of honour and admiration with which our existing stock of inventions is regarded
be in the very entrance and threshold of the work, and that frankly and without circumlocution, stripped off,
and men be duly warned not to exaggerate or make too much of them.
Francis Bacon, The Great Instauration, preface
For time, like a river, bears down to us that which is light and inflated, and sinks that which is heavy
and solid.
Time is like a river, which has brought down to us things light and puffed up, while those which are weighty
and solid have sunk.
Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.
Whatever the mind seizes and dwells upon with peculiar satisfaction is to be held in suspicion.
Francis Bacon, Novum Organum
The art of logic ... has tended more to confirm errors than to disclose truth.
Francis Bacon, New Organon, preface
Our only remaining hope and salvation is to begin the whole labour of the mind again; not leaving it to itself,
but directing it perpetually from the very first, and attaining our end as it were by mechanical aid. If men, for
instance, had attempted mechanical labours with their hands alone, and without the power and aid of
instruments, as they have not hesitated to carry on the labours of their understanding with the unaided efforts
of their mind, they would have been able to move and overcome but little, though they had exerted their
utmost and united powers.
194
Let there exist then (and may it be of advantage to both) two sources, and two distributions of learning, and
in like manner two tribes, and as it were kindred families of contemplators or philosophers, without any
hostility or alienation between them; but rather allied and united by mutual assistance. ... We have
accustomed ourselves to call the one method the anticipation of the mind, and the other the interpretation of
nature.
Those who have taken upon them to lay down the law of nature as a thing already searched out and
understood, whether they have spoken in simple assurance or professional affectation, have therein done
philosophy and the sciences great injury. For as they have been successful in inducing belief, so they have
been effective in quenching and stopping inquiry; and have done more harm by spoiling and putting an end
to other men's efforts than good by their own. Those on the other hand who have taken a contrary course, and
asserted that absolutely nothing can be known,—whether it were from hatred of the ancient sophists, or from
uncertainty and fluctuation of mind, or even from a kind of fullness of learning, that they fell upon this
opinion,—have certainly advanced reasons for it that are not to be despised; but yet they have neither started
from true principles nor rested in the just conclusion, zeal and affectation having carried them much too far.
The more ancient of the Greeks (whose writings are lost) took up with better judgment a position between
these two extremes,— between the presumption of pronouncing on everything, and the despair of
comprehending anything; and though frequently and bitterly complaining of the difficulty of inquiry and the
obscurity of things, and like impatient horses champing the bit, they did not the less follow up their object
and engage with Nature; thinking (it seems) that this very question,—viz. whether or no anything can be
known,—was to be settled not by arguing, but by trying.
Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has
observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature: beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do
anything.
[opposition] Francis Bacon, Aphorisms Concerning the Interpretation of Nature and the Kingdom of Man, § 1
Neither the naked hand nor the understanding left to itself can effect much. It is by instruments and helps that
the work is done, which are as much wanted for the understanding as for the hand. And as the instruments of
the hand either give motion or guide it, so the instruments of the mind supply either suggestions for the
understanding or cautions.
Francis Bacon, Aphorisms Concerning the Interpretation of Nature and the Kingdom of Man, § 2
Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as
the rule.
Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, § 3
It would be an unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done
can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.
The sciences we now possess are merely systems for the nice ordering and setting forth of things already
invented; not methods of invention or directions for new works.
The logic now in use serves rather to fix and give stability to the errors which have their foundation in
commonly received notions than to help the search after truth.
195
The discoveries which have hitherto been made in the sciences are such as lie close to vulgar notions,
scarcely beneath the surface. In order to penetrate into the inner and further recesses of nature, it is necessary
that both notions and axioms be derived from things by a more sure and guarded way; and that a method of
intellectual operation be introduced altogether better and more certain.
There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses
and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled
and immoveable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in
fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent,
so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried.
The mind longs to spring up to positions of higher generality, that it may find rest there; and so after a little
while wearies of experiment. But this evil is increased by logic, because of the order and solemnity of its
disputations.
There is a great difference between the Idols of the human mind and the Ideas of the divine. That is to say,
between certain empty dogmas, and the true signatures and marks set upon the works of creation as they are
found in nature.
If some opposite instance, not observed or not known before, chance to come in the way, the axiom is
rescued and preserved by some frivolous distinction; whereas the truer course would be to correct the axiom
itself.
The conclusions of human reason as ordinarily applied in matter of nature, I call for the sake of distinction
Anticipations of Nature (as a thing rash or premature). That reason which is elicited from facts by a just and
methodical process, I call Interpretation of Nature.
Anticipations are a ground sufficiently firm for consent; for even if men went mad all after the same
fashion, they might agree one with another well enough.
For the winning of assent, indeed, anticipations are far more powerful than interpretations; because being
collected from a few instances, and those for the most part of familiar occurrence, they straightway touch the
understanding and fill the imagination; whereas interpretations on the other hand, being gathered here and
there from very various and widely dispersed facts, cannot suddenly strike the understanding; and therefore
they must needs, in respect of the opinions of the time, seem harsh and out of tune; much as the mysteries of
faith do.
In sciences founded on opinions and dogmas, the use of anticipations and logic is good; for in them the
object, is to command assent to the proposition, not to master the thing.
Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, § 26-29
Though all the wits of all the ages should meet together and combine and transmit their labours, yet will no
great progress ever be made in science by means of anticipations; because radical errors in the first
concoction of the mind are not to be cured by the excellence of functions and remedies subsequent.
It is idle to expect any great advancement in science from the superinducing and engrafting of new things
upon old. We must begin anew from the very foundations, unless we would revolve for ever in a circle with
mean and contemptible progress.
196
The honour of the ancient authors, and indeed of all, remains untouched; since the comparison I challenge is
not of wits or faculties, but of ways and methods, and the part I take upon myself is not that of a judge,
but of a guide.
No judgment can be rightly formed either of my method or of the discoveries to which it leads, by
means of anticipations (that is to say, of the reasoning which is now in use); since I cannot be called on
to abide by the sentence of a tribunal which is itself on its trial.
Even to deliver and explain what I bring forward is no easy matter; for things in themselves new will yet be
apprehended with reference to what is old.
Confutations cannot be employed, when the difference is upon first principles and very notions and even
upon forms of demonstration.
Men ... must force themselves for awhile to lay their notions by and begin to familiarize themselves with
facts.
The doctrine of those who have denied that certainty could be attained at all, has some agreement with my
way of proceeding at the first setting out; but they end in being infinitely separated and opposed. For the
holders of that doctrine assert simply that nothing can be known; I also assert that not much can be known in
nature by the way which is now in use. But then they go on to destroy the authority of the senses and
understanding; whereas I proceed to devise helps for the same.
Francis Bacon, Aphorisms Concerning the Interpretation of Nature and the Kingdom of Man, § 37
The idols and false notions which are now in possession of the human understanding, and have taken deep
root therein, not only so beset men's minds that truth can hardly find entrance, but even after entrance
obtained, they will again in the very instauration of the sciences meet and trouble us, unless men being
forewarned of the danger fortify themselves as far as may be against their assaults.
Quatuor sunt genera idolorum, quae mentes humanas obsident. Iis (docendi gratia) nomina imposuimus; ut
primum genus, idola tribus; secundum, idola specus; tertium, idola fori; quartum, idola theatri, vocentur.
There are four classes of idols which beset men's minds. To these for distinction's sake I have assigned
names,—calling the first class Idols of the Tribe; the second, Idols of the Cave; the third, Idols of the
Market-place; the fourth, Idols of the Theater.
The doctrine of Idols is to the Interpretation of Nature what the doctrine of the refutation of Sophisms is to
common Logic.
The human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolours the
nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.
It was well observed by Heraclitus that men look for sciences in their own lesser worlds, and not in the
greater or common world.
197
There are also Idols formed by the intercourse and association of men with each other, which I call Idols of
the Market-place, on account of the commerce and consort of men there.
Words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into
numberless empty controversies and idle fancies.
Errors the most widely different have nevertheless causes for the most part alike.
The human understanding is of its own nature prone to suppose the existence of more order and
regularity in the world than it finds.
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as
being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater
number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else
by some distinction sets aside and rejects; in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the
authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate. And therefore it was a good answer that was made
by one who when they showed him hanging in a temple a picture of those who had paid their vows as having
escaped shipwreck, and would have him say whether he did not now acknowledge the power of the gods,—
”Aye,” asked he again, “but where are they painted that were drowned after their vows?” And such is the
way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like; wherein men,
having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, though this
happen much oftener, neglect and pass them by. But with far more subtlety does this mischief insinuate itself
into philosophy and the sciences; in which the first conclusion colours and brings into conformity with itself
all that come after, though far sounder and better. Besides, independently of that delight and vanity which I
have described, it is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human intellect to be more moved and excited by
affirmatives than by negatives; whereas it ought properly to hold itself indifferently disposed towards both
alike. Indeed in the establishment of any true axiom, the negative instance is the more forcible of the two.
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as
being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater
number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else
by some distinction sets aside and rejects; in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the
authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.
It was a good answer that was made by one who when they showed him hanging in a temple a picture of
those who had paid their vows as having escaped shipwreck, and would have him say whether he did not
now acknowledge the power of the gods,—”Aye,” asked he again, “but where are they painted that were
drowned after their vows?” And such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens,
divine judgments, or the like; wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are
fulfilled, but where they fail, though this happen much oftener, neglect and pass them by.
It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human intellect to be more moved and excited by affirmatives
than by negatives; whereas it ought properly to hold itself indifferently disposed towards both alike. Indeed
in the establishment of any true axiom, the negative instance is the more forcible of the two.
198
At majore cum pernicie intervenit haec impotentia mentis in inventione causarum: nam cum maxime
universalia in natura positiva esse debeant, quemadmodum inveniuntur, neque sunt revera causabilia; tamen
intellectus humanus, nescius acquiescere, adhuc appetit notiora.
Although the most general principles in nature ought to be held merely positive, as they are discovered, and
cannot with truth be referred to a cause; nevertheless the human understanding being unable to rest still seeks
something prior in the order of nature.
Human understanding ... falls back upon that which is more nigh at hand; namely, on final causes: which
have relation clearly to the nature of man rather than to the nature of the universe
He is no less an unskilled and shallow philosopher who seeks causes of that which is most general, than he
who in things subordinate and subaltern omits to do so.
The human understanding is no dry light, but receives an infusion from the will and affections; whence
proceed sciences which may be called “sciences as one would.” For what a man had rather were true he more
readily believes. Therefore he rejects difficult things from impatience of research; sober things, because they
narrow hope; the deeper things of nature, from superstition; the light of experience, from arrogance and
pride, lest his mind should seem to be occupied with things mean and transitory; things not commonly
believed, out of deference to the opinion of the vulgar. Numberless in short are the ways, and sometimes
imperceptible, in which the affections colour and infect the understanding.
Our method of discovering the sciences is such as to leave little to the acuteness and strength of wit, and
indeed rather to level wit and intellect. For, as in the drawing of a line or accurate circle by the hand, much
depends upon its steadiness and practice, but if a ruler or compass be employed there is little occasion for
either; so it is with our method.
Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature

Works, volume 1: http://books.google.com/books?id=hSnbMsCjTXEC
And therefore it is not the pleasure of curiosity, nor the quiet of resolution, nor the raising of the spirit,
nor victory of wit, nor faculty of speech, nor lucre of profession, nor ambition of honour or fame, or
inablement for business, that are the true ends of knowledge; some of these being more worthy than other,
though all inferior and degenerate: but it is a restitution and reinvesting, in great part, of man to the
sovereignty and power, for whensoever he shall be able to call the creatures by their true names, he
shall again command them, which he had in his first state of creation. And to speak plainly and clearly, it is
a discovery of all operations and possibilities of operations from immortality, if it were possible, to the
meanest mechanical practice. And therefore knowledge, that tendeth but to satisfaction, is but as a
courtesan, which is for pleasure, and not for fruit or generation. And knowledge that tendeth to profit or
profession, or glory, is but as the golden ball thrown before Atalanta; which while she goeth aside, and
stoopeth to take up, she hindereth the race. And knowledge referred to some particular point of use, is but as
Harmodius, which putteth down one tyrant: and not like Hercules, who did perambulate the world to
suppress tyrants and giants and monsters in every part.
Francis Bacon, Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature, Works, vol. 1 (1842), p. 83
199
For I find that even those that have sought knowledge for itself, and not for benefit, or ostentation, or any
practicable enablement in the course of their life, have nevertheless propounded to themselves a wrong mark,
namely, satisfaction, which men call truth, and not operation. For as in the courts and services of princes and
states, it is a much easier matter to give satisfaction than to do the business; so in the inquiring of causes and
reasons it is much easier to find out such causes as will satisfy the mind of man and quiet objections, than
such causes as will direct him and give him light to new experiences and inventions.
The learning that now is hath the curse of barrenness, and is courtesan-like, for pleasure and not for fruit.
The true end, scope, or office of knowledge, which I have set down to consist not in any plausible,
delectable, reverend, or admired discourse, or any satisfactory arguments, but in effecting and working, and
in discovery of particulars not revealed before, for the better endowment and help of man's life.
The Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall

Modernized spelling: http://www.bartleby.com/3/1/
Certainly there be, that delight in Giddinesse; And count it a Bondage, to fix a Beleefe; Affecting Freewill in
Thinking, as well as in Acting.
Francis Bacon, “Of Truth,” Essayes, §1 lines 4-6
Doth any man doubt that, if there were taken out of Men’s Mindes Vaine Opinions, Flattering Hopes, False
valuations, Imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the Mindes of a Number of Men
poore shrunken Things, full of Melancholy and Indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves.
It is not the Lie that passeth through the Minde, but the Lie that sinketh in and setleth in it, that doth the hurt.
It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tost upon the Sea: A pleasure to stand in the window
of a Castle, and to see a Battaile, and the Adventures thereof, below: But no pleasure is comparable to the
standing upon the vantage ground of Truth, And to see the Errours, and Wandrings, and Mists, and
Tempests, in the vale below.
Francis Bacon, paraphrasing Lucretius, “Of Truth,” Essayes, §1 lines 50-57
‘Tis a pleasant thing, from the shore to behold the dangers of another upon the mighty ocean, when the winds
are lashing the main: not because it is a grateful pleasure for any one to be in misery, but because it is a
pleasant thing to see those misfortunes from which you yourself are free: ‘tis also a pleasant thing to behold
the mighty contests of warfare, arrayed upon the plains, without a share in the danger; but nothing is there
more delightful than to occupy the elevated temples of the wise, well fortified by tranquil learning, whence
you may be able to look down upon others, and see them straying in every direction, and wandering in search
of the path of life.
Lucretius
Men feare Death, as Children feare to goe in the darke.

Francis Bacon, “Of Death,” Essayes, §2 line 3
In taking Revenge, A Man is but even with his 5 Enemy; But in passing it over, he is Superiour.
Francis Bacon, “Of Revenge,” Essayes, §4 lines 7-8
That which is past, is gone and Irrevocable; And wise Men have Enough to doe with things present and to
come: Therefore, they doe but trifle with themselves that labour in past matters.
200
There is no man doth a wrong for the wrong’s sake, But therby to purchase himselfe Profit, or Pleasure, or
Honour, or the like. Therfore why should I be angry with a Man, for loving himselfe better then mee?
If any Man should doe wrong, meerely out of ill nature, why, yet it is but like the Thorn, or Bryar, which
prick and scratch because they can doe no other.
Shall wee (saith he [Job]) take good at God’s Hands, and not be content to take evill also? And so of Friends
in a proportion.
A Man that studieth Revenge keepes his owne Wounds greene, which otherwise would heale.
Vere magnum, habere Fragilitatem Hominis, Securitatem Dei.

It is true greatnesse, to have in one” the Frailly of a Man and the Security of a God.
Seneca, cited in Francis Bacon, “Of Adversitie,” Essayes, §5 lines 10-11
The Vertue of Prosperitie is Temperance; The Vertue of Adversity is Fortitude.

Francis Bacon, “Of Adversitie,” Essayes, §5 lines 23-24
For if a Man have that Penetration of Judgment as he can discerne what Things are to be laid open, and what
to be secretted, and what to be shewed at Halfe lights, and to whom, and when, (which indeed are Arts of
State, and Arts of Life, as Tacitus well calleth them) to him a Habit of Dissimulation is a Hinderance and a.
Poorenesse. But if a Man cannot obtaine to that Judgment, then it is left to him, generally, to be Close, and a
Dissembler. For where a Man cannot choose or vary in Particulars, there it is good to take the safest and
wariest Way in generall; Like the Going softly by one that cannot well see.
Francis Bacon, “Of Simulation and Dissimulation,” Essayes, §6 lines 17-28
Nakednesse is uncomely, as well in Minde as Body.

Francis Bacon, “Of Simulation and Dissimulation,” Essayes, §6 line 55
He that talketh what he knoweth, will also talke what he knoweth not. Therfore set it downe, That an Habit
of Secrecy is both Politick and Morall.
Dissimulation … followeth many times upon Secrecy by a necessity; So that he that will be Secret must be a
Dissembler in some degree. For Men are too cunning to suffer a Man to keepe an indifferent carriage
betweene both, and to be Secret, without Swaying the Ballance on either side. They will so beset a man with
Questions, and draw him on, and picke it out of him, that, without an absurd Silence, he must shew an
Inclination one way; Or if he doe not, they will gather as much by his Silence as by his Speech. As for
Equivocations, or Oraculous Speeches, they cannot hold out long. So that no man can be secret, except he
give himselfe a little Scope of Dissimulation; which is, as it were, but the Skirts or Traine of Secrecy.
The Perpetuity by Generation is common to Beasts; But Memory, Merit, and Noble workes, are proper to
Men: And surely a Man shall see the Noblest workes and Foundations have proceeded from Childlesse Men,
which have sought to expresse the Images of their Minds, where those of their Bodies have failed; So the
care of Posterity is most in them that have no Posterity.
Francis Bacon, “Of Parents and Children,” Essayes, §7 lines 8-15
He that hath Wife and Children hath given Hostages to Fortune.

Francis Bacon, “Of Marriage and Single Life,” Essayes, §8 lines 5-6
201
SAMUEL DANIEL (1562-1619)
To the Lady Margaret, Countess of Cumberland
He that of such a height hath built his mind,
And rear'd the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,
As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame
Of his resolved powers; nor all the wind
Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong
His settled peace, or to disturb the same ;
What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may
The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey?
And with how free an eye doth he look down

Upon these lower regions of turmoil?
Where all the storms of passions mainly beat
On flesh and blood: where honour, power, renown,
Are only gay afflictions, golden toil ;
Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet,
As frailty doth; and only great doth seem
To little minds, who do it so esteem.
He looks upon the mightiest monarchs' wars

But only as on stately robberies ;
Where evermore the fortune that prevails
Must be the right; the ill-succeeding mars
The fairest and the best-fac'd enterprise.
Great pirate Pompey lesser pirates quails :
Justice, he sees, as if seduced, still
Conspires with power, whose cause must not be ill.
Samuel Daniel, To the Lady Margaret, Countess of Cumberland
unless above himself he can

Erect himself, how poor a thing is man.
Samuel Daniel, To the Lady Margaret, Countess of Cumberland
SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616)
http://shakespeare.mit.edu/
http://books.google.com/books?output=text&id=YcYjAAAAMAAJ
ISABEL. Yet show some pity.

ANGELO. I show it most of all, when I show justice;
For then I pity those I do not know,
Which a dismissed offence would after gall;
And do him right, that, answering one foul wrong,
Lives not to act another.
Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act 2, Scene 2
202
man, proud man,
Dressed in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d—
His glassy essence—like an angry ape
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.
Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act 2, Scene 2
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have.
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 1
Virtue and genuine graces in themselves speak what no words can utter.
Shakespeare
We are advertis’d by our loving friends.

Shakespeare
Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance.

Shakespeare, A Winter’s Tale, Act 4, Scene 3
Thou shalt be both the plaintiff and the judge of thine own cause.
Shakespeare
Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie.

Shakespeare
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.

Shakespeare
It is not enough to help the feeble up, but to support him after.
Shakespeare
I pray you know me when we meet again.

William Shakespeare
In time we hate that which we often fear.

Shakespeare
I pray thee cease thy counsel,

Which falls into mine ears as profitless as water in a sieve.
Shakespeare
I did never know so full a voice issue from so empty a heart: but the saying is true ‘The empty vessel makes
the greatest sound’.
Shakespeare
He who has injured thee was either stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him; if stronger,
spare thyself.
Shakespeare
Be great in act, as you have been in thought.

Shakespeare, (Bastard) King John, Act 5, Scene 2
203
And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With old odd ends, stol’n forth of holy writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.
Shakespeare
Action is eloquence.
Shakespeare
I am too high-born to be propertied,

To be a secondary at control,
Or useful serving-man and instrument,
To any sovereign state throughout the world.
Shakespeare, Lewis in King John
The Tempest
He is winding the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.
Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act II scene I
There’s nothing ill can dwell in such a temple:

If the ill spirit have so fair a house,
Good things will strive to dwell with’t.
Shakespeare, Miranda, The Tempest, Act II scene I
Might I but through my prison once a day

Behold this maid: all corners else o’ the earth
Let liberty make use of; space enough
Have I in such a prison.
The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness,

And time to speak it in: you rub the sore,
When you should bring the plaster
I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated

To closeness and the bettering of my mind.
Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 1 scene 2
Do not, for one repulse, forego the purpose that you resolved to effect.
Shakespeare, The Tempest
My library
Was dukedom large enough.
Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 1 scene 2
I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated

To closeness and the bettering of my mind.
Shakespeare, The Tempest (Prospero), Act I Scene II
204
Full many a lady
I have eyed with best regard and many a time
The harmony of their tongues hath into bondage
Brought my too diligent ear: for several virtues
Have I liked several women; never any
With so full soul, but some defect in her
Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed
And put it to the foil: but you, O you,
So perfect and so peerless, are created
Of every creature’s best!
Shakespeare, The Tempest (Ferdinand), Act 3 Scene 1
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th’ quick,

Yet with my nobler reason ‘gainst my fury
Do I take part
Two Gentlemen of Verona

Come not within the measure of my wrath.
Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 5 scene 4
Measure for Measure

Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt.
Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act 1 scene 4
Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.

Our doubts are traitors,

And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt.
205
The Comedy of Errors
Much Ado about Nothing

He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat.
Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, Act 1 scene 1
Love’s Labour’s Lost

He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.
Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act 5 scene 1
A Midsummer-Night’s Dream
The Merchant of Venice
Let me play the fool
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.
And let my liver rather hear with wine,
Then my heart cool with mortifying groans.
Shakespeare, Gratiano in The Merchant of Venice, Act I, Scene I
There are a sort of men, whose visages

Do cream and mantle, like a standing pond;
And do a wilful stillness entertain,
With purpose to be dress'd in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit;
As who should say, I am Sir Oracle,
And, when I ope my lifts, let no dog bark!
O, my Antonio, I do know of these,
That therefore only are reputed wise,
For saying nothing; who, I am very sure,
If they should speak, would almost damn those ears,
Which, hearing them, would call their brothers fools.
Shakespeare, Gratiano in The Merchant of Venice, Act I, Scene I
His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff; you shall seek all day ere you find them;
and, when you have them, they are not worth the search.
Shakespeare, Bassiano describing Gratiano, The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 1
They are as sick, that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing.
Shakespeare, Nerissa in The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 2
It is no mean happiness, therefore, to be seated in the mean.

Shakespeare, Nerissa in The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 2
I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.
The brain may devise laws for the blood; but a hot temper leaps over a cold decree.
Shakespeare, Portia in The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 2
I fear he will prove the weeping philosopher when he grows old, being so full of unmannerly sadness in his
youth.
Shakespeare, Portia describing one of her suitors, The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 2
206
He is every man in no man.
NERISSIA. What say you then to Faulconbridge, the young baron of England?
PORTIA. You know, I say nothing to him; for he understands not me, nor I him: he hath neither Latin, French,
nor Italian; and you will come into the court and swear, that I have a poor penny-worth in the English. He is
a proper man's picture; But, alas! who can converse with a dumb show? How oddly he is suited! I think, he
bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behaviour every where.
Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 2
When he is best, he is a little worse than a man: and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast.
I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you,
drink with you, nor pray with you.
Shakespeare, Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 3
I hate him for he is a Christian: But more, for that, in low simplicity, He lends out money gratis, and brings
down The rate of usance here with us in Venice.
Shakespeare, Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 3
The devil can cite scripture for his purpose.

Shakespeare, Antonio in The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 3
207
SHYLOCK. Signior Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto you have rated me
About my moneys and my usances:
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug,
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,
And all for use of that which is mine own.
Well then, it now appears you need my help:
Go to, then; you come to me, and you say
'Shylock, we would have moneys:' you say so;
You, that did void your rheum upon my beard
And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur
Over your threshold: moneys is your suit
What should I say to you? Should I not say
'Hath a dog money? is it possible
A cur can lend three thousand ducats?' Or
Shall I bend low and in a bondman's key,
With bated breath and whispering humbleness, Say this;
'Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last;
You spurn'd me such a day; another time
You call'd me dog; and for these courtesies
I'll lend you thus much moneys?’
ANTONIO. I am as like to call thee so again,
To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too.
If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not
As to thy friends; for when did friendship take
A breed for barren metal of his friend?
But lend it rather to thine enemy,
Who, if he break, thou mayst with better face
Exact the penalty.
Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 3
I like not fair terms and a villain's mind.

Shakespeare, Bassiano in The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 3
Venus and Adonis

Foul-cankering rust the hidden treasure frets,
But gold that's put to use more gold begets.
Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis
Cymbeline
Thy words, I grant are bigger, for I wear not
My dagger in my mouth.
Shakespeare, (Guiderius) Cymbeline, Act 4, Scene 2
Troilus and Cressida

Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing.
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act 1, Scene 2
208
Sonnets
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments: love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds.
Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
The Taming of the Shrew

No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en;
Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, Act 1 scene 1
Coriolanus
There was a time when all the body’s members
Rebelled against the belly; thus accused it:
That only like a gulf it did remain
I’ the midst o’ the body, idle and unactive,
Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing
Like labor with the rest; where the other instruments
Did see and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel,
And, mutually participate, did minister
Unto the appetite and affection common
Of the whole body. The belly answered . . .
‘True is it, my incorporate friends,’ quoth he,
‘That I receive the general food at first
Which you do live upon; and fit it is,
Because I am the storehouse and the shop
Of the whole body. But, if you do remember,
I send it through the rivers of your blood,
Even to the court, the heart, to the seat o’ the brain;
And, through the cranks and offices of man,
The strongest nerves and small inferior veins
From me receive that natural competency
Whereby they live. …
Though all at once cannot
See what I do deliver out to each,
Yet I can make my audit up, that all
From me do back receive the flour of all,
And leave me but the bran. . . .
The senators of Rome are this good belly,
And you the mutinous members; for, examine
Their counsels and their cares, digest things rightly
Touching the weal o’ the common, you shall find
No public benefit which you receive
But it proceeds or comes from them to you,
And no way from yourselves.
Shakespeare, Coriolanus, cited in The Closing of the American Mind, pp. 110-111
I’ll never be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand as if a man were author of himself and knew no other
kin.
Shakespeare, Coriolanus
209
As You Like It
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act 5 scene 1
All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act 2 scene 7
Julius Caesar
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 2 scene 2
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;

He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 1 scene 2
And since you know you cannot see yourself,

so well as by reflection, I, your glass,
will modestly discover to yourself,
that of yourself which you yet know not of.
Shakespeare, Cassius in Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene 1
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world

Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Shakespeare, Cassius in Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene 1
All’s Well That Ends Well

Love all, trust a few. Do wrong to none.
Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well, Act 1 Scene 1
Henry IV
The better part of valour is discretion.
Shakespeare, King Henry IV part I
If all the year were playing holidays,

To sport would be as tedious as to work.
Shakespeare, King Henry IV Part I, Act 1 scene 2
210
Henry V
Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting.
Shakespeare, Dauphin in Henry V, Act 2, Scene 4
Henry VI
Love foreswore me in my mother’s womb.
Shakespeare, Duke of Closter, Henry VI Part III, Act 3, Scene 2
And many strokes, though with a little axe,

Hew down and fell the hardest-timbered oak.
Shakespeare, King Henry VI Part III, Act 2 scene 1
Henry VIII
‘T is better to be lowly born,
And range with humble livers in content,
Than to be perked up in a glistering grief,
And wear a golden sorrow.
Shakespeare, King Henry VIII, Act 2 scene 3
Macbeth
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 5 scene 5
Othello
I understand a fury in your words,
But not the words.
Shakespeare, Othello, Act 4 scene 2
Speak to me as to thy thinkings,

As thou dost ruminate, and give thy worst of thoughts
The worst of words.
Shakespeare, (Othello) Othello, Act 3 scene 3
He that filches from me my good name

Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.
Shakespeare, Othello, Act 3 scene 3
211
Oh curse of marriage!
That we can call these delicate creatures ours,
And not their appetites!
Shakespeare, (Othello) Othello, Act 3, Scene 2
Richard III
Thus it is when men are ruled by women.
Shakespeare, Gloster, Richard III, Act 1, Scene 1
I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks

Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass,
I, that am rudely stamped and want love’s majesty,
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph,
I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time
Into this breathing world scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them,
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace
Have no delight to pass away the time
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on my own deformity.
Then since this earth affords no joy to me,

But to command, to check, and o’erbear such
As are of happier person than myself,
Why, then, to me this restless world’s but hell,
Till this mis-shapen trunk's aspiring head
Be circled in a glorious diadem.
But then I sigh; and, with a piece of scripture,

Tell them that God bids us do good for evil:
And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With old odd ends stolen out of holy writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.
Fear not, my lord, we will not stand to prate;

Talkers are no good doers: be assured
We come to use our hands and not our tongues.
Shakespeare, First Murderer, Richard III, Act 1, Scene 3
Princes have but their titles for their glories;

An outward honour for an inward toil.
Shakespeare, Brakenbury, Richard III, Act 1, Scene 4
True hope is swift, and flies with swallow’s wings;

Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.
Shakespeare, Richard III, Act 5 scene 2
212
King Lear
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are
sick in fortune, often the surfeit of our own behaviour, we make
guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if
we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion;
knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical pre-dominance;
drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforc’d obedience of
planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine
thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whore-master man, to lay
his goatish disposition to the charge of a star!
Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 1 Scene 2
Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.

Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 1
Have more than thou showest; Speak less than thou knowest.
Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 1 scene iv
The art of our necessities is strange,

That can make vile things precious.
Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 3, Scene 2
Where the greater malady is fix’d,

The lesser is scarce felt.
That way madness lies; let me shun that!

No more of that.
When we our betters see bearing our woes,

We scarcely think our miseries our foes.
Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile;

Filths savour but themselves.
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is

To have a thankless child!
William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 1 scene 4
Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow

Upon the foul disease. Revoke thy gift,
Or, whilst I can vent clamour from my throat,
I’ll tell thee thou dost evil.
Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 1 Scene 1
Hamlet
Foul Deeds will rise, Tho' all the Earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.
Shakespeare, Hamlet
213
Give every man thine ear; but few thy voice.
Shakespeare, Hamlet
Take each man’s censure; but reserve thy judgment.

Shakespeare, Hamlet
One may smile and smile and be a villain.

Shakespeare, Hamlet
Brevity is the soul of wit.

Shakespeare, Hamlet
What is Man, if his chief good be but to sleep and feed?

Shakespeare, Hamlet
We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

Shakespeare, Hamlet
Sure, He that made us with such large discourse,

Looking before, and after,—gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To rust in us unus'd.
Shakespeare, Hamlet
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.

Shakespeare (Hamlet), Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4

That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat—
Of habits devil,—is angel yet in this,—
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock, or livery.
That aptly is put on: Refrain to-night:
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence: the next more easy;
For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
And master the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency.
Shakespeare (Hamlet), Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4
A mote it is, to trouble the mind’s eye.

Shakespeare, Horatio, Hamlet, 1.1
214
'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
To give these mourning duties to your father:
But, you must know, your father lost a father;
That father lost, lost his; and the survivor bound
In filial obligation, for some term To do obsequious sorrow; but to persevere
In obstinate condolement, is a course
Of impious stubbornness ; 'tis unmanly grief:
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven;
A heart unfortified, or mind impatient:
An understanding simple and unschool'd;
For what, we know, must be, and is as common
As any of the most vulgar thing to sense,
Why should we, in our peevish opposition,
Take it to heart ? Fye! 'tis a fault to heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd; whose common theme
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
From the first corse, till he that died to-day,
This must be so. We pray you, throw to earth
This unprevailing woe.
Shakespeare, Claudius, Hamlet, 1.2
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fye on't'. O fye! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank, and gross in nature,
Possess it merely.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.2
Frailty, thy name is woman.

I have that within which passeth show.

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,

Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be:

For loan oft loses both itself and friend;
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all, —to thine own self be true;

And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
215
More matter, with less art.
Though this be madness, yet there is a method in’t

What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me.
There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.

Foul deeds will rise,

Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.
Shakespeare, Hamlet 1.2.256
How unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you
would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my
compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. ‘Sblood,
do you think I am easier to be play’d on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret
me, you cannot play upon me.
Shakespeare, Hamlet in Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2
Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honor’s at the stake.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 4
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.

Shakespeare, Hamlet
Yea, from the table of my memory

I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there;
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmix’d with baser matter
Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5, Line 98
Oh what a noble mind is here o’erthrown

Shakespeare, Hamlet
blest are those

Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled,
That they are not a pipe for fortune’s finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him
In my heart’s core.
Shakespeare, Hamlet
216
May one be pardon’d and retain the offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft ‘tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law
Shakespeare, Hamlet

… Refrain to-night,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence: the next more easy.
Shakespeare, Hamlet
JOHN SELDEN (1584-1654)

Table Talk
http://books.google.com/books?id=9QtKAAAAIAAJ&dq=selden+table+talk
The Clergy would have us believe them against our own Reason, as the Woman would have had her
Husband against his own Eyes.
John Selden, Table Talk, 21.2
He that hath a Scrupulous Conscience, is like a Horse that is not well wayed; he starts at every Bird
that flies out of the Hedge.
A knowing Man will do that, which a tender conscienced Man dares not do, … as a Child is afraid to go in
the dark, when a Man is not.
If the Physician sees you eat any thing that is not good for your Body, to keep you from it, he cries ‘tis
Poison; if the Divine sees you do any thing that is hurtful for your Soul, to keep you from it, he cries you are
damned.
He that speaks ill of another, commonly before he is aware, makes himself such a one as he speaks against.
Speak not ill of a great Enemy, but rather give him good words, that he may use you the better, if you chance
to fall into his Hands. The Spaniard did this when he was dying. His Confessor told him (to work him to
Repentance) how the Devil tormented the wicked that went to Hell: the Spaniard replying, called the Devil
my Lord. I hope my Lord the Devil is not so cruel; his Confessor reproved him. Excuse me said the Don, for
calling him so, I know not into what Hands I may fall, and if I happen into his, I hope he will use me the
better, for giving him good words.
There is Humilitas quaedam in Vitio. If a Man does not take notice of that excellency and perfection that is in
himself, how can he be thankful to God, who is the Author of all excellency and perfection?
In Gluttony there must be Eating, in Drunkenness there must be drinking: ‘tis not the eating, nor ‘tis not the
drinking that is to be blamed, but the Excess. So in Pride.
217
In time of a Parliament, when things are under debate, they are indifferent; but in a Church or State settled,
there’s nothing left indifferent.
Patience is the chiefest fruit of study.

A man that strives to make himself a different thing from other men by much reading, gains this chiefest
good, that in all Fortunes, he hath something to entertain and comfort himself withal.
The Reason of a Thing is not to be enquired after, till you are sure the Thing itself be so. We commonly are
at What’s the Reason of it? before we are sure of the Thing.
John Selden, Table Talk, 121.3 (cf. Montaigne, “Of the lame”)
THOMAS HOBBES (1588-1679)

Leviathan (1651)
Nature (the art whereby God hath made and governs the world) is by the art of man, as in many other things,
so in this also imitated, that it can make an artificial animal. For seeing life is but a motion of limbs, the
beginning whereof is in some principal part within; why may we not say, that all automata (engines that
move themselves by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life? For what is the heart, but a
spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole
body, such as was intended by the artificer? Art goes yet further, imitating that rational and most excellent
work of nature, man. For by art is created that great Leviathan called a commonwealth, or state, (in Latin
civitas) which is but an artificial man; though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose
protection and defence it was intended; and in which, the sovereignty is an artificial soul, as giving life and
motion to the whole body; The magistrates, and other officers of judicature and execution, artificial joints;
reward and punishment (by which fastened to the seat of the sovereignty, every joint and member is moved
to perform his duty) are the nerves, that do the same in the body natural; the wealth and riches of all the
particular members, are the strength; salus populi (the peoples safety) its business; counselors, by whom all
things needful for it to know, are suggested unto it, are the memory; equity and laws, an artificial reason and
will; concord, health; sedition, sickness; and civil war, death. Lastly, the pacts and covenants, by which the
parts of this body politique were at first made, set together, and united, resemble that fiat, or the “let us make
man,” pronounced by God in the creation.
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651), Chapter 1
Man observeth how one event hath been produced by another, and remembereth in them antecedence and
consequence; and when he cannot assure himself of the true causes of things (for the causes of good and evil
fortune for the most part are invisible), he supposes causes of them, either such as his own fancy suggesteth,
or trusteth to the authority of other men such as he thinks to be his friends and wiser than himself.
Being assured that there be causes of all things that have arrived hitherto, or shall arrive hereafter, it is
impossible for a man, who continually endeavoureth to secure himself against the evil he fears, and procure
the good he desireth, not to be in a perpetual solicitude of the time to come; so that every man, especially
those that are over-provident, are in an estate like to that of Prometheus. For as Prometheus (which,
interpreted, is the prudent man) was bound to the hill Caucasus, a place of large prospect, where an eagle,
feeding on his liver, devoured in the day as much as was repaired in the night: so that man, which looks too
far before him in the care of future time, hath his heart all the day long gnawed on by fear of death, poverty,
or other calamity; and has no repose, nor pause of his anxiety, but in sleep.
218
Men that know not what it is that we call causing (that is, almost all men) have no other rule to guess by but
by observing and remembering what they have seen to precede the like effect at some other time, or times
before, without seeing between the antecedent and subsequent event any dependence or connexion at all: and
therefore from the like things past, they expect the like things to come; and hope for good or evil luck,
superstitiously, from things that have no part at all in the causing of it.
Men are naturally at a stand; save that using to conjecture of the time to come by the time past, they are very
apt, not only to take casual things, after one or two encounters, for prognostics of the like encounter ever
after, but also to believe the like prognostics from other men of whom they have once conceived a good
opinion.
The same authors of the religion of the Gentiles, observing the second ground for religion, which is men's
ignorance of causes, and thereby their aptness to attribute their fortune to causes on which there was no
dependence at all apparent, took occasion to obtrude on their ignorance, instead of second causes, a kind of
second and ministerial gods; ascribing the cause of fecundity to Venus, the cause of arts to Apollo, of
subtlety and craft to Mercury, of tempests and storms to Aeolus, and of other effects to other gods; insomuch
as there was amongst the heathen almost as great variety of gods as of business.
RENÉ DESCARTES (1596-1650)

Discourse on Method (1637)
http://books.google.com/books?id=DSjXAAAAMAAJ
If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all
things.
René Descartes, Discours de la Methode (1637)
I has been my singular good fortune to have very early in life fallen in with certain tracks which have
conducted me to considerations and maxims, of which I have formed a Method that gives me the means, as I
think, of gradually augmenting my knowledge, and of raising it by little and little to the highest point which
the mediocrity of my talents and the brief duration of my life will permit me to reach.
Descartes, Discourse on Method, J. Veitch, trans. (1899), part 1, p. 2
My present design, then, is not to teach the Method which each ought to follow for the right conduct of his
reason, but solely to describe the way in which I have endeavored to conduct my own. They who set
themselves to give precepts must of course regard themselves as possessed of greater skill than those to
whom they prescribe; and if they err in the slightest particular, they subject themselves to censure. But as this
Tract is put forth merely as a history, or, if you will, as a tale, in which, amid some examples worthy of
imitation, there will be found, perhaps, as many more which it were advisable not to follow, I hope it will
prove useful to some without being hurtful to any, and that my openness will find some favor with all.
Descartes, Discourse on Method, J. Veitch, trans. (1899), part 1, pp. 3-4
From my childhood, I have been familiar with letters; and as I was given to believe that by their help a clear
and certain knowledge of all that is useful in life might be acquired, I was ardently desirous of instruction.
But as soon as I had finished the entire course of study, at the close of which it is customary to be admitted
into the order of the learned, I completely changed my opinion. For I found myself involved in so many
doubts and errors, that I was convinced I had advanced no farther in all my attempts at learning, than the
discovery at every turn of my own ignorance. And yet I was studying in one of the most celebrated Schools
in Europe, in which I thought there must be learned men, if such were anywhere to be found.
Descartes, Discourse on Method, J. Veitch, trans. (1899), p. 4
219
To hold discourse with those of other ages and to travel and to travel, are almost the same thing..
Of Philosophy I will say nothing, except that when I saw that it had been cultivated for many ages by the
most distinguished men, and that yet there is not a single matter within its sphere which is not still in dispute,
and nothing, therefore, which is above doubt, I did not presume to anticipate that my success would be
greater in it than that of others.
I was not, thank heaven, in a condition which compelled me to make merchandise of Science for the
bettering of my fortune.
Of false Sciences I thought I knew the worth sufficiently to escape being deceived by the professions of an
alchemist, the predictions of an astrologer, the impostures of a magician, or by the artifices and boasting of
any of those who profess to know things of which they are ignorant..
I entirely abandoned the study of letters, and resolved no longer to seek any other science than the knowledge
of myself, or of the great book of the world.
It occurred to me that I should find much more truth in the reasonings of each individual with reference to
the affairs in which he is personally interested, and the issue of which must presently punish him if he has
judged amiss, than in those conducted by a man of letters in his study, regarding speculative matters that are
of no practical moment, and followed by no consequences to himself, farther, perhaps, than that they foster
his vanity the better the more remote they are from common sense.
I learned to entertain too decided a belief in regard to nothing of the truth of which I had been persuaded
merely by example and custom: and thus I gradually extricated myself from many errors powerful enough to
darken our Natural Intelligence, and incapacitate us in great measure from listening to Reason.
After I had been occupied several years in thus studying the book of the world, and in essaying to gather
some experience, I at length resolved to make myself an object of study.
There is seldom so much perfection in works composed of many separate parts, upon which different hands
have been employed, as in those completed by a single master..
I thought that the sciences contained in books, (such of them at least as are made up of probable reasonings,
without demonstrations,) composed as they are of the opinions of many different individuals massed
together, are farther removed from truth than the simple inferences which a man of good sense using his
natural and unprejudiced judgment draws respecting the matters of his experience.
Because we have all to pass through a state of infancy to manhood, and have been of necessity, for a length
of time, governed by our desires and preceptors, (whose dictates were frequently conflicting, while neither
perhaps always counseled us for the best), I further concluded that it is almost impossible that our judgments
can be so correct or solid as they would have been, had our Reason been mature from the moment of our
birth, and had we always been guided by it alone.
220
It is not customary to pull down all the houses of a town with the single design of rebuilding them
differently, and thereby rendering the streets more handsome; but it often happens that a private individual
takes down his own with the view of erecting it anew, and that people are even sometimes constrained to this
when their houses are in danger of falling from age, or when the foundations are insecure. With this before
me by way of example, I was persuaded that it would indeed be preposterous for a private individual to think
of reforming a state by fundamentally changing it throughout, and overturning it in order to set it up
amended; and the same I thought was true of any similar project for reforming the body of the Sciences, or
the order of teaching them established in the Schools: but as for the opinions which up to that time I had
embraced, I thought that I could not do better than resolve at once to sweep them wholly away, that I might
afterwards be in a position to admit either others more correct, or even perhaps the same when they had
undergone the scrutiny of Reason. I firmly believed that in this way I should much better succeed in the
conduct of my life, than if I built only upon old foundations, and leant upon principles which, in my youth, I
had taken upon trust. For although I recognized various difficulties in this undertaking, these were not,
however, without remedy, nor once to be compared with such as attend the slightest reformation in public
affairs.
Large bodies, if once overthrown, are with great difficulty set up again, or even kept erect when once
seriously shaken, and the fall of such is always disastrous. Then if there are any imperfections in the
constitutions of states, (and that many such exist the diversity of constitutions is alone sufficient to assure
us,) custom has without doubt materially smoothed their inconveniences, and has even managed to steer
altogether clear of, or insensibly corrected a number which sagacity could not have provided against with
equal effect; and, in fine, the defects are almost always more tolerable than the change necessary for their
removal; in the same manner that highways which wind among mountains, by being much frequented,
become gradually so smooth and commodious, that it is much better to follow them than to seek a straighter
path by climbing over the tops of rocks and descending to the bottoms of precipices.
Hence it is that I cannot in any degree approve of those restless and busy meddlers who, called neither by
birth nor fortune to take part in the management of public affairs, are yet always projecting reforms; and if I
thought that this Tract contained aught which might justify the suspicion that I was a victim of such folly, I
would by no means permit its publication. I have never contemplated anything higher than the reformation of
my own opinions.
Although my own satisfaction with my work has led me to present here a draft of it, I do not by any means
therefore recommend to every one else to make a similar attempt. Those whom God has endowed with a
larger measure of genius will entertain, perhaps, designs still more exalted; but for the many I am much
afraid lest even the present undertaking be more than they can safely venture to imitate. The single design to
strip one's self of all past beliefs is one that ought not to be taken by every one. The majority of men is
composed of two classes, for neither of which would this be at all a befitting resolution: in the first
place, of those who with more than a due confidence in their own powers, are precipitate in their
judgments and want the patience requisite for orderly and circumspect thinking; whence it happens,
that if men of this class once take the liberty to doubt of their accustomed opinions, and quit the beaten
highway, they will never be able to thread the byway that would lead them by a shorter course, and
will lose themselves and continue to wander for life; in the second place, of those who, possessed of
sufficient sense or modesty to determine that there are others who excel them in the power of
discriminating between truth and error, and by whom they may be instructed, ought rather to content
themselves with the opinions of such than trust for more correct to their own Reason.
221
As a multitude of laws often only hampers justice, so that a state is best governed when, with few laws,
these are rigidly administered; in like manner, instead of the great number of precepts of which Logic is
composed, I believed that the four following would prove perfectly sufficient for me, provided I took the
firm and unwavering resolution never in a single instance to fail in observing them.
The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say,
carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than what was
presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.
The second, to divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, and as
might be necessary for its adequate solution.
The third, to conduct my thoughts in such order that, by commencing with objects the simplest and easiest
to know, I might ascend by little and little, and, as it were, step by step, to the knowledge of the more
complex; assigning in thought a certain order even to those objects which in their own nature do not stand in
a relation of antecedence and sequence.
And the last, in every case to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so general, that I might be
assured that nothing was omitted.
I resolved to commence, therefore, with the examination of the simplest objects, not anticipating, however,
from this any other advantage than that to be found in accustoming my mind to the love and nourishment of
Truth, and to a distaste for such reasonings as were unsound.
The child, for example, who has been instructed in the elements of Arithmetic, and has made a particular
addition, according to rule, may be assured that he has found, with respect to the sum of the numbers before
him, all that in this instance is within the reach of human genius.
222
As it is not enough, before commencing to rebuild the house in which we live, that it be pulled down, and
materials and builders provided, or that we engage in the work ourselves, according to a plan which we have
beforehand carefully drawn out, but as it is likewise necessary that we be furnished with some other house in
which we may live commodiously during the operations, so that I might not remain irresolute in my actions,
while my Reason compelled me to suspend my judgment, and that I might not be prevented from living
thenceforward in the greatest possible felicity, I formed a provisory code of Morals, composed of three or
four maxims, with which I am desirous to make you acquainted.
The first was to obey the laws and customs of my country, adhering firmly to the Faith in which, by the
grace of God, I had been educated from my childhood, and regulating my conduct in every other matter
according to the most moderate opinions, and the farthest removed from extremes, which should happen to
be adopted in practice with general consent of the most judicious of those among whom I might be living
For, as I had from that time begun to hold my own opinions for nought because I wished to subject them all
to examination, I was convinced that I could not do better than follow in the meantime the opinions of the
most judicious. ... Amid many opinions held in equal repute, I chose always the most moderate, as much I for
the reason that these are always the most convenient for practice, and probably the best, (for all excess is
generally vicious,) as that, in the event of my falling into error, I might be at less distance from the truth than
if, having chosen one of the extremes, it should turn out to be the other which I ought to have adopted. ...
My second maxim was to be as firm and resolute in my actions as I was able, and not to adhere less
steadfastly to the most doubtful opinions, when once adopted, than if they had been highly certain; imitating
in this the example of travelers who, when they have lost their way in a forest, ought not to wander from side
to side, far less remain in one place, but proceed constantly towards the same side in as straight a line as
possible, without changing their direction for slight reasons, although perhaps it might be chance alone which
at first determined the selection; for in this way, if they do not exactly reach the point they desire, they will
come at least in the end to some place that will probably be preferable to the middle of a forest.
My third maxim was to endeavor always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and change my
desires rather than the order of the world, and in general, to accustom myself to the persuasion that,
except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power. ... This single principle seemed to me
sufficient to prevent me from desiring for the future anything which I could not obtain, and thus render me
contented; for since our will naturally seeks those objects alone which the understanding represents as in
some way possible of attainment, it is plain, that if we consider all external goods as equally beyond our
power, we shall no more regret the absence of such goods as seem due to our birth, when deprived of them
without any fault of ours, than our not possessing the kingdoms of China or Mexico; and thus making, so to
speak, a virtue of necessity, we shall no more desire health in disease, or freedom in imprisonment, than we
now do bodies incorruptible as diamonds, or the wings of birds to fly with. But I confess there is need of
prolonged discipline and frequently repeated meditation to accustom the mind to view all objects in this
light; and I believe that in this chiefly consisted the secret of the power of such philosophers as in former
times were enabled to rise superior to the influence of fortune, and, amid suffering and poverty, enjoy a
happiness which their gods might have envied. For, occupied incessantly with the consideration of the limits
prescribed to their power by nature, they became so entirely convinced that nothing was at their disposal
except their own thoughts, that this conviction was of itself sufficient to prevent their entertaining any desire
of other objects; and over their thoughts they acquired a sway so absolute, that they had some ground on this
account for esteeming themselves more rich and more powerful, more free and more happy, than other men
who, whatever be the favors heaped on them by nature and fortune, if destitute of this philosophy, can never
command the realization of all their desires.
Descartes, Discourse on Method (1637), J. Veitch, trans. (1899), part 3, pp. 24-28
Without wishing to offer any remarks on the employments of others, I may state that it was my conviction
that I could not do better than continue in that in which I was engaged, viz., in devoting my whole life to the
culture of my Reason, and in making the greatest progress I was able in the knowledge of truth.
223
This Method, from the time I had begun to apply it, had been to me the source of satisfaction so intense as to
lead me to believe that more perfect or more innocent could not be enjoyed in this life; and as by its means I
daily discovered truths that appeared to me of some importance, and of which other men were generally
ignorant, the gratification thence arising so occupied my mind that I was wholly indifferent to every other
object.
Since God has endowed each of us with some Light of Reason by which to distinguish truth from error, I
could not have believed that I ought for a single moment to rest satisfied with the opinions of another, unless
I had resolved to exercise my own judgment in examining these whenever I should be duly qualified for the
task.
All that is necessary to right action is right judgment.

[opposition] Descartes, Discourse on Method, J. Veitch, trans. (1899), part 3, p. 30
During the nine subsequent years, I did nothing but roam from one place to another, desirous of being a
spectator rather than an actor in the plays exhibited on the theatre of the world; and, as I made it my
business in each matter to reflect particularly upon what might fairly be doubted and prove a source of error,
I gradually rooted out from my mind all the errors which had hitherto crept into it. Not that in this I imitated
the Sceptics who doubt only that they may doubt, and seek nothing beyond uncertainty itself
Just as in pulling down an old house, we usually reserve the ruins to contribute towards the erection, so, in
destroying such of my opinions as I judged to be ill-founded, I made a" variety of observations and acquired
an amount of experience of which I availed myself in the establishment of more certain.
Study to sever pleasure from vice.

BALTASAR GRACIÁN (1601-1658)

Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia
Más se requiere hoi para un sabio que antiguamente para siete.
It takes more to make one sage today than it did to make the seven of Greece.
Gracián, Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia, § 1 (Christopher Maurer trans.)
No basta lo entendido, deséase lo genial.

It is not enough to be intelligent; you must also have the right character
Sin valor es estéril la sabiduría.

Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit
El sagaz más quiere necessitados de sí que agradecidos

He who is truly shrewd would rather have people need him than thank him.
Que el aviso haga antes viso de recuerdo de lo que olvidava que de luz de lo que no alcanzó
When you counsel someone, you should appear to be reminding him of something he had forgotten, not of
the light he was unable to see.
224
Hazer de los amigos maestros, penetrando el útil del aprender con el gusto del conversar.
Make your friends your teachers and blend the usefulness of learning with the pleasure of conversation.
Freqüenta el atento las casas de aquellos Héroes Cortesanos, que son más teatros de la Heroicidad que
palacios de la vanidad.
Gracián, Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia, § 11
Las verdades que más nos importan vienen siempre a medio dezir; recíbanse del atento a todo entender: en lo
favorable, tirante la rienda a la credulidad; en lo odioso, picarla.
The truths that matter most to us are always half spoken, fully understood only by the prudent. In matters that
seem favorable, rein in your credulity. In those that seem hateful, give it the spur.
Estiman algunos los libros por la corpulencia, como si se escriviessen para exercitar antes los braços que los
ingenios.
Some praise books for their girth, as if they were written to exercise our arms, not our wits.
¿quién será este Fenis de la equidad?, que tiene pocos finos la entereza. Celébranla muchos, mas no por su
casa; síguenla otros hasta el peligro; en él los falsos la niegan, los políticos la dissimulan.
Few are devoted to righteousness. Many celebrate her but few visit her.
Peor es ocuparse en lo impertinente que hazer nada.

It is worse to busy yourself with the trivial than to do nothing.
Hazen algunos mucho caso de lo que importa poco, y poco de lo que mucho, ponderando siempre al rebés.
Some ponder things backward, paying much attention to what matters little and little to what matters much.
Ni por el hablar en la plaza se ha de sacar el sabio, pues no habla allí con su voz, sino con la de la necedad
común, por más que la esté desmintiendo su interior.
You can never tell the wise by what they say in public. They speak not in their own voices, but in that of
common stupidity, though deep inside they are cursing it.
Gracián, Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia, § 43 “Sentir con los menos y hablar con los más” [“Feel with the few, speak with the many”]
Estima por más valor el no empeñarse que el vencer

There is more courage in avoiding danger than in conquering it
Hombre juicioso y notante. Señoréase él de los objectos, no los objectos dél.

A person of sharp observation and sound judgment rules over objects and keeps objects from ruling him.
Sea su misma entereza norma propria de su rectitud, y deva más a la severidad de su dictamen que a todos
los extrínsecos preceptos.
Let your own integrity keep you righteous. You should owe more to the severity of your own judgment than
to all external precepts.
Es el oído la puerta segunda de la verdad y principal de la mentira.

The ear is the second door of truth and the first door for lies.
Gracián, Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia, § 80 (my translation)
225
La verdad ordinariamente se ve, extravagantemente se oye; raras vezes llega en su elemento puro, y menos
quando viene de lejos; siempre trae algo de mixta, de los afectos por donde passa; tiñe de sus colores la
passión quanto toca, ya odiosa, ya favorable.
Truth is more often seen than heard. Seldom does it reach us unalloyed, even less so when it comes from
afar. It is always blended with the emotions it has passed through.
Usar, pues, del renacer en el valor, en el ingenio, en la dicha, en todo: empeñarse con novedades de bizarría,
amaneciendo muchas veces como el sol, variando teatros al lucimiento, para que en el uno la privación y en
el otro la novedad soliciten aquí el aplauso, si allí el deseo.
Dare to renew your brilliance, dawning many times, like the sun … Withhold it and make people miss it;
renew it and make them applaud.
Al varón sabio más le aprovechan sus enemigos que al necio sus amigos.
The wise man finds enemies more useful than the fool does friends.
Fabricáronles a muchos su grandeza sus malévolos. Más fiera es la lisonja que el odio, pues remedia este
eficazmente las tachas que aquella disimula. Hace el cuerdo espejo de la ojeriza, más fiel que el de la afición,
y previene a la detracción los defectos, o los enmienda, que es grande el recato cuando se vive en frontera de
una emulación, de una malevolencia.
Many owe their greatness to their enemies … The prudent man makes a mirror out of the evil eye of others;
it is more truthful than that of affection, and helps him reduce his defects or emend them.
Es muy tosca la ignorancia; no hay cosa que más cultive que el saber. Pero aun la misma sabiduría fue
grosera, si desaliñada. No sólo ha de ser aliñado el entender, también el querer, y más el conversar.
Wisdom herself is coarse when polish is lacking. Not only must understanding be refined, but also our
desires and especially our conversation.
Son peligrosas las acciones en duda de prudencia; más segura sería la omisión. No admite probabilidades la
cordura: siempre camina al mediodía de la luz de la razón. ¿Cómo puede salir bien una empresa que, aun
concebida, la está ya condenando el recelo? Y si la resolución más graduada con el nemine discrepante
interior suele salir infelizmente, ¿qué aguarda la que comenzó titubeando en la razón y mal agorada del
dictamen?
It is dangerous to undertake something when you doubt its wisdom. … How can something turn out well if
caution started to condemn it the moment it was conceived? Even resolutions that passed the inner
examination nemine discrepante often turn out badly; so what can we expect from those that reason doubted
over and judgment considered rash?
Trabajosa ocupación gobernar hombres, y más, locos o necios: doblado seso es menester para con quien no le
tiene.
It takes double intelligence to rule those who have none.
Nace la satisfacción en los más de ignorancia, y para en una felicidad necia, que, aunque entretiene el gusto,
no mantiene el crédito. Como no alcanza las superlativas perfecciones en los otros, págase de cualquiera
vulgar medianía en sí.
Unable to discern the high perfection of others, [self-complacency] is content with its own vulgar mediocrity
226
Máxima es de cuerdos dejar las cosas antes que los dejen.
Abandon things before being abandoned by them.
Hacerse a las malas condiciones de los familiares; así como a los malos rostros: es conveniencia donde
tercia dependencia. Hay fieros genios que no se puede vivir con ellos, ni sin ellos. Es, pues, destreza irse
acostumbrando, como a la fealdad, para que no se hagan de nuevo en la terribilidad de la ocasión. La primera
vez espantan, pero poco a poco se les viene a perder aquel primer horror, y la refleja previene los disgustos, o
los tolera.
Get used to the failings of your friends, family, and acquaintances, as you do to ugly faces. Where there is
dependence, try for convenience. There are nasty-minded people whom we cannot live with and cannot live
without. It takes skill to get used to them, as we do to ugliness, so that they won’t surprise us on some dire
occasion. At first they frighten us, but little by little they stop looking so horrible, and caution foresees, or
learns to tolerate, their unpleasantness.
Nunca hablar de sí. O se ha de alabar, que es desvanecimiento, o se ha de vituperar, que es poquedad

Don’t talk about yourself. You must either praise yourself, which is vanity, or criticize yourself, which
is meekness.
Tiénese por deuda entre enemigos para que se vea su valor. Cuesta poco y vale mucho.
Treat your enemies with courtesy
Todo honrador es honrado.

Those who honor are honored.
La galantería y la honra tienen esta ventaja, que se quedan: aquélla en quien la usa, ésta en quien la hace.
Politeness and honor have this advantage: we bestow them on others without losing a thing.
Ése se ha de seguir por entonces, y adelantar a eminencia. Acomódese el cuerdo a lo presente, aunque le
parezca mejor lo pasado, así en los arreos del alma como del cuerpo. Sólo en la bondad no vale esta regla de
vivir, que siempre se ha de practicar la virtud.
The wise should adapt themselves to the present, even when the past seems more attractive
Pocas cosas de enfado se han de tomar de propósito, que sería empeñarse sin él.
Few bothersome things are important enough to bother with.
Pierden su mérito las mismas eminencias con ella, porque se juzgan nacidas antes de la artificiosa violencia
que de la libre naturaleza, y todo lo natural fue siempre más grato que lo artificial. Los afectados son tenidos
por extranjeros en lo que afectan.
Even great gifts seem less valuable on account of affectation, for people attribute them to strain and artifice
rather than to natural grace, and the natural is always more pleasant than the artificial. The affected are held
as strangers to the talents they affect.
Dos veces es eminente el que encierra todas las perfecciones en sí, y ninguna en su estimación; y por
encontrada senda llega al término de la plausibilidad.
The eminent person who takes no notice of his own perfection is twice eminent.
227
Nunca quejarse. La queja siempre trae descrédito. Más sirve de ejemplar de atrevimiento a la pasión que de
consuelo a la compasión. Abre el paso a quien la oye para lo mismo, y es la noticia del agravio del primero
disculpa del segundo. Dan pie algunos con sus quejas de las ofensiones pasadas a las venideras, y
pretendiendo remedio o consuelo, solicitan la complacencia, y aun el desprecio. Mejor política es celebrar
obligaciones de unos para que sean empeños de otros, y el repetir favores de los ausentes es solicitar los de
los presentes, es vender crédito de unos a otros. Y el varón atento nunca publique ni desaires ni defectos, sí
estimaciones, que sirven para tener amigos y de contener enemigos.
Never complain. Complaints … encourage those who hear our complaints to behave like those we
complain about. Once divulged, the offenses done to us seem to make others pardonable. … It is better
to praise the favors others have done for you, so as to win still more of them. When you tell how those
absent have favored you, you are asking those present to do the same.
Valer y saberlo mostrar es valer dos veces.

To excel and to know how to show it is to excel twice.
Vanse muchos o por las ramas de un inútil discurrir, o por las hojas de una cansada verbosidad, sin topar con
la sustancia del caso. Dan cien vueltas rodeando un punto, cansándose y cansando, y nunca llegan al centro
de la importancia. Procede de entendimientos confusos, que no se saben desembarazar. Gastan el tiempo y la
paciencia en lo que habían de dejar, y después no la hay para lo que dejaron.
Many see the trees but not the forest, or bark up the wrong tree, speaking endlessly, reasoning uselessly,
without getting to the heart of the matter. They go round and round, tiring themselves and us, and never get
to what is important. This happens to people with confused minds who do not know how to clear away the
brambles. They waste time and patience on what it would be better to leave alone.
Nunca por tema seguir el peor partido, porque el contrario se adelantó y escogió el mejor. Ya comienza
vencido, y así será preciso ceder desairado. Nunca se vengará bien con el mal.
Don’t defend the wrong side out of stubbornness, just because your opponent happened to arrive first and
choose the right side.
Gracián, Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia, § 142 (cf. La Rochefoucauld Maxim #234)
Vulgaridad de temáticos, no reparar en la verdad, por contradecir, ni en la utilidad, por litigar. El atento
siempre está de parte de la razón, no de la pasión, o anticipándose antes o mejorándose después
The vulgar ignorance of stubborn people makes them prefer contention to truth and utility.
La mentira es siempre la primera en todo, arrastra necios por vulgaridad continuada. La verdad siempre llega
la última, y tarde, cojeando con el tiempo;
In all things, deceit arrives first, dragging fools behind it in endless vulgarity. Truth is always late, last to
arrive, limping along with time.
Para prevenidos no hay acasos, ni para apercibidos aprietos. No se ha de aguardar el discurrir para el ahogo,
y ha de ir de antemano; prevenga con la madurez del reconsejo el punto más crudo.
Don’t save your reason for difficult situations; use it to anticipate them.
Es muy ordinario el mentir, sea extraordinario el creer.

Lying is ordinary; let belief be extraordinary.
228
El primer paso del apasionarse es advertir que se apasiona, que es entrar con señorío del afecto, tanteando la
necesidad hasta tal punto de enojo, y no más. Con esta superior refleja entre y salga en una ira.
The first thing to do when you are upset is to notice that you are.
Más vale ser engañado en el precio que en la mercadería.

Better to be cheated by the price than by the merchandise.
Conocer los defectos dulces. El hombre más perfecto no se escapa de algunos, y se casa o se amanceba con
ellos. Haylos en el ingenio, y mayores en el mayor, o se advierten más. No porque no los conozca el mismo
sujeto, sino porque los ama. Dos males juntos: apasionarse y por vicios.
Even the most perfect person cannot escape [faults], but why marry them or take them as lovers. … Two
evils in one: irrational affection bestowed on faults.
Cada uno ha de obrar como quien es, no como le obligan.

Act like the person you are, not the way they make you act.
Vencer a lo ruin no es victoria, sino rendimiento.

To conquer without nobility is not victory but surrender.
Toda monstruosidad del ánimo es más deforme que la del cuerpo, porque desdice de la belleza superior.
Spiritual deformity is worse than bodily deformity, for it contradicts a superior beauty.
Gracián, Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia, § 168 (my trans.)
Un embeleco ha menester otros muchos, y así toda la fábrica es quimera, y como se funda en el aire es
preciso venir a tierra.
One act of deceit begets many others, and soon the whole ghastly construction, which is founded in the air,
comes tumbling down.
Achaques de necedad son irremediables, que como los ignorantes no se conocen, tampoco buscan lo que les
falta.
Because the ignorant do not know themselves, they never look for what they are lacking.
Serían sabios algunos si no creyesen que lo son.

Some would be sages if they did not believe they were so already.
Aun en caso de evidencia, es ingenuidad el ceder, que no se ignora la razón que tuvo y se conoce la
galantería que tiene. Más se pierde con el arrimamiento que se puede ganar con el vencimiento; no es
defender la verdad, sino la grosería.
Even when you are right, it is good to make concessions: people will recognize you were right but admire
your courtesy.
Cuando se junta lo caprichoso con lo persuadido, cásanse indisolublemente con la necedad.

When whim meets stubbornness, they bond forever into foolishness.
229
Ven algunos que aquel héroe tuvo aquel accidente, pero no ven que no fue héroe por aquello.
Some people see a hero with a certain fault, but they don’t realize that it wasn’t the fault that made
him a hero.
Es tan retórico el ejemplo superior, que aun las fealdades persuade; hasta las del rostro afectó tal vez la
lisonja, no advirtiendo que, si en la grandeza se disimulan, en la bajeza se abominan..
The example of people in high places is so persuasive that it makes people imitate even their ugliness.
Hacen política algunos de estimar más las medianías de hoy que los extremos de ayer.
People make it a habit to admire the mediocrities of today more than the eminences of yesterday.
El sabio estima a todos porque reconoce lo bueno en cada uno y sabe lo que cuestan las cosas de hacerse
bien. El necio desprecia a todos por ignorancia de lo bueno y por elección de lo peor.
The wise person esteems everyone, for he recognizes the good in each, and he realizes how hard it is to do
things well.
Few fools ever really die, for few ever begin to live.
Librarse de las necedades comunes. Es cordura bien especial. Están muy validas por lo introducido, y
algunos, que no se rindieron a la ignorancia particular, no supieron escaparse de la común.
Free yourself from common foolishness. This requires a special sort of sanity. Common foolishness is
authorized by custom, and some people who resisted the ignorance of individuals were unable to resist that
of the multitude.
Vulgaridad es no estar contento ninguno con su suerte, aun la mayor, ni descontento de su ingenio, aunque el
peor.
The vulgar are never really happy with their luck, even when it is best, or unhappy with their intellect, even
when it is worst.
Y aun para el aprender es treta del discípulo contradecir al maestro, que se empeña con más conato en la
declaración y fundamento de la verdad; de suerte que la impugnación moderada da ocasión a la enseñanza
cumplida.
The good student contradicts his teacher and makes him more eager to explain and defend the truth.
Excusar una impertinencia con otra mayor es de casta de mentira, o esta lo es de necedad, que para
sustentarse una necesita de muchas.
One lie leads to another, greater one, and it is the same with folly.
En un descuido puede caer el mayor sabio, pero en dos no; y de paso, que no de asiento.
The greatest of sages can commit one mistake, but not two; he may fall into error, but he doesn’t lie down
and make his home there.
230
Tener la declarativa. Es no sólo desembarazo, pero despejo en el concepto. Algunos conciben bien y paren
mal, que sin la claridad no salen a luz los hijos del alma, los conceptos y decretos.
Express yourself clearly … Some people conceive well but give birth badly
Lo que es la resolución en la voluntad es la explicación en el entendimiento

What resolution is to the will, clarity is to the intellect
Hay algunos que todo lo reducen a guerrilla; bandoleros del trato, cuanto ejecutan querrían que fuese
vencimiento, no saben proceder pacíficamente.
There are some who turn everything into warfare, who … would like to conquer others in everything they do.
They have no idea how to live peaceably.
La sinceridad no dé en el extremo de simplicidad; ni la sagacidad, de astucia.

Don’t let sincerity turn into simplicity
Es fiera la lengua, que si una vez se suelta, es muy dificultosa de poderse volver a encadenar.
The tongue is a wild animal, and once it breaks loose, it is hard to return to its cage.
Saber tomar las cosas. Nunca al repelo, aunque vengan. Todas tienen haz y envés. La mejor y más favorable,
si se toma por el corte, lastima. Al contrario, la más repugnante defiende, si por la empuñadura.
There are two sides to everything. If you grab the blade, the best thing will do you harm; the most harmful
will defend you if you seize it by the hilt.
Hace muy diferentes visos una misma cosa si se mira a diferentes luces: mírese por la de la felicidad.
Things look different when seen in a different light. So look at them in the light of happiness.
Conocer su defecto rey. Ninguno vive sin él, contrapeso de la prenda relevante; y si le favorece la
inclinación, apodérase a lo tirano.
Know you major defect. … If you give in to it, it will govern you like a tyrant.
Los más no hablan ni obran como quien son, sino como les obligan.
The majority neither speak nor act as who they are, but only as they are obliged to.
Gracián, Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia, § 226 (my trans.)
Cuesta a veces muy poco el obligar, y vale mucho.

Pleasing others costs little and is worth much.
Cásanse algunos con la primera información, de suerte que las demás son concubinas, y como se adelanta
siempre la mentira, no queda lugar después para la verdad. Ni la voluntad con el primer objeto, ni el
entendimiento con la primera proposición se han de llenar, que es cortedad de fondo.
Some people marry the first information they receive, and turn what comes later into their concubine. Since
deceit is always first to arrive, there is no room left for truth. Don’t fill up your will with the first goal that
occurs to you, nor your intelligence with the first proposition.
231
Saber repartir su vida a lo discreto: no como se vienen las ocasiones, sino por providencia y delecto.
Parcel out your life wisely, not confusedly in the rush of events, but with foresight and judgment.
Última felicidad, el filosofar.

To philosophize is the highest delight of all.
Nunca permitir a medio hacer las cosas. Gócense en su perfección. Todos los principios son informes, y
queda después la imaginación de aquella deformidad: la memoria de haberlo visto imperfecto no lo deja
lograr acabado. Gozar de un golpe el objeto grande, aunque embaraza el juicio de las partes, de por sí adecua
el gusto. Antes de ser todo es nada, y en el comenzar a ser se está aun muy dentro de su nada.
Never show half-finished things to others. Let them be enjoyed in their perfection. All beginnings are
formless, and what lingers in the image of that deformity. The memory of having seen something imperfect
spoils our enjoyment when it is finished.
Conocer la pieza que le falta. Fueran muchos muy personas si no les faltara un algo, sin el cual nunca llegan
al colmo del perfecto ser. Nótase en algunos que pudieran ser mucho si repararan en bien poco.
Know what piece you are missing. … Some would be much if they paid attention to very little.
No ser reagudo: más importa prudencial. Saber más de lo que conviene es despuntar, porque las sutilezas
comúnmente quiebran. Más segura es la verdad asentada. Bueno es tener entendimiento, pero no bachillería.
El mucho discurrir ramo es de cuestión. Mejor es un buen juicio sustancial que no discurre más de lo que
importa.
Don’t be overly clever. … If you sharpen your wits too much, you will miss the point, or break your point
Saber un poco más, y vivir un poco menos. Otros discurren al contrario. Más vale el buen ocio que el
negocio. No tenemos cosa nuestra sino el tiempo. ¿Dónde vive quien no tiene lugar? Igual infelicidad es
gastar la preciosa vida en tareas mecánicas que en demasía de las sublimes; ni se ha de cargar de
ocupaciones, ni de envidia: es atropellar el vivir y ahogar el ánimo. Algunos lo extienden al saber, pero no se
vive si no se sabe.
The right kind of leisure is better than the wrong kind of work.
Otros todos son ajenos, que la necedad siempre va por demasías, y aquí infeliz: no tienen día, ni aun hora
suya, con tal exceso de ajenos, que alguno fue llamado “el de todos”. Aun en el entendimiento, que para
todos saben y para sí ignoran.
Some people belong entirely to others … They have not a day, not an hour to call their own, so
completely do they give themselves to others. This is true even in matters of understanding. Some
people know everything for others and nothing for themselves.
No proseguir la necedad. Hacen algunos empeño del desacierto, y porque comenzaron a errar, les parece que
es constancia el proseguir.
Don’t persist in folly. Some people commit themselves to their errors. They act mistakenly and consider it
constancy to go on that way.
232
Muchas cosas de gusto no se han de poseer en propiedad. Más se goza de ellas ajenas que propias. El primer
día es lo bueno para su dueño, los demás para los extraños. Gózanse las cosas ajenas con doblada fruición,
esto es, sin el riesgo del daño y con el gusto de la novedad. Sabe todo mejor a privación.
Many pleasant things are better when they belong to someone else. … When things belong to others, we
enjoy them twice as much, without the risk of losing them, and with the pleasure of novelty.
Haga al principio el cuerdo lo que el necio al fin. Lo mismo obra el uno que el otro; sólo se diferencian en los
tiempos: aquél en su sazón y éste sin ella. El que se calzó al principio el entendimiento al revés, en todo lo
demás prosigue de ese modo: lleva entre pies lo que había de poner sobre su cabeza; hace siniestra de la
diestra, y así es tan zurdo en todo su proceder. Sólo hay un buen caer en la cuenta. Hacen por fuerza lo que
pudieran de grado; pero el discreto luego ve lo que se ha de hacer, tarde o temprano, y ejecútalo con gusto y
con reputación.
The wise do sooner what fools do later. Both do the same; all that differs is the when. … There is only one
good way: … as soon as possible. Otherwise, you do out of necessity what you might have done with
pleasure. The wise size up immediately what has to be done, sooner or later, and do it with pleasure
Vender las cosas a precio de cortesía.

Add courtesy to the price of what you’re selling.
Espere poco bueno del de mal gesto, que suelen vengarse de la naturaleza estos, y así como ella los honró
poco a ellos, la honran poco a ella.
Expect little from the person with a nasty face. These people like to avenge themselves on nature, because
she honored them so little.
El varón de ley nunca se olvida de quién es por lo que los otros son.
The honorable man does not forget who he is because of what others are.
Más se estima el tibio sí de un varón singular que todo un aplauso común.

The lukewarm “yes” of the truly singular person is worth more than the applause of the rabble.
Más preciosa es la libertad que la dádiva, porque se pierde.

Freedom is more precious then the gift that makes us lose it.
PIERRE CORNEILLE (1606-1684)

Je suis jeune, il est vrai; mais aux âmes bien nées
La valeur n’attend point le nombre des années.
True, I am young, but for souls nobly born
Valor doesn’t await the passing of years.
Pierre Corneille, Le Cid, Don Rodrigue, act II, scene ii
La perfidie est noble envers la tyrannie.

Treachery is noble when aimed at tyranny.
Pierre Corneille, Cinna, Émilie, act III, scene iv
À raconter ses maux souvent on les soulage.

By speaking of our misfortunes we often relieve them.
Pierre Corneille, Polyeucte, Stratonice, act I, scene iii
233
Ma raison, il est vrai, dompte mes sentiments,
Mais, quelque autorité que sur eux elle ait prise,
Elle n’y règne pas, elle les tyrannise.
My reason, it’s true, controls my feelings,
But whatever its authority,
It doesn’t rule them so much as tyrannize them.
Pierre Corneille, Polyeucte, Pauline, act II, scene ii
À force d’être juste on est souvent coupable.

One is often guilty by being too just.
Pierre Corneille, La Mort de Pompée, Photin, act I, scene 1
Il m’a trop bien servi;

Augmentant mon pouvoir, il me l’a tout ravi:
Il n’est plus mon sujet qu’autant qu’il le veut être.
Et qui me fait régner en effet est mon maître.
He has served me too well;
By increasing my power he has stolen it away:
He is now my subject only so long as he pleases.
He who allows me to rule is in fact my master.
Pierre Corneille, Nicomède, Prusias, act II, scene 1
C’est un crime d’État que d’en pouvoir commettre.

It is a crime against the State to be powerful enough to commit one.
Pierre Corneille, Nicomède, Araspe, act II, scene 1
Chaque instant de la vie est un pas vers la mort.

Each instant of life is a step toward death.
Pierre Corneille, Tite et Bérénice, Tite, act V, scene 1
JOHN MILTON (1608-1674)

Paradise Lost
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.
Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I, lines 254-255
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.

Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I, line 263
Spirits when they please

Can either sex assume, or both.
Who overcomes
By force, hath overcome but half his foe.
234
Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
From heaven; for ev’n in heaven his looks and thoughts
Were always downward bent, admiring more
The riches of heaven’s pavement, trodden gold,
Than aught divine or holy.
Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I, lines 679-683
Surer to prosper than prosperity

Could have assur'd us.
Milton, Paradise Lost, Book II, line 39
Thus Belial with words clothed in reason's garb

Counseled ignoble ease, and peaceful sloth.
Milton, Paradise Lost, Book II, lines 226-227
Paradise Regained
Who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgment equal or superior,
(And what he brings what needs he elsewhere seek?)
Uncertain and unsettled still remains,
Deep versed in books, and shallow in himself.
Milton, Paradise Regained, book IV, Line 322
Lycidas
http://www.bartleby.com/101/317.html
How well could I have spared for thee, young swain,

Enow of such as for their bellies’ sake,
Creep and intrude, and climb into the fold!
Of other care they little reck’ning make,
Then how to scramble at the shearer’s feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheep-hook, or have learn’d aught else the least
That to the faithful Herdman’s art belongs!
What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
And when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw,
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But, swollen with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread.
Milton, Lycidas, lines 113-127
SAMUEL BUTLER (1612-1680)

Silence is not always tact, and it is tact that is golden.
Samuel Butler
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
Samuel Butler, Speech at the Somerville Club, February 27, 1895
235
Conversation is a glass for men to dress their minds and manners by.
Samuel Butler, Prose Observations (Oxford: 1979), p. 3
They who study mathematiks only to fix their minds, and render them the steadyer to apply to all
other things, as there are many who profess to do, are as wise as those who think by rowing boats, to
learn to swim.
Ignorance is never so abhominable as when it pretends to wisdom and learning.

The impertinencies and impostures of learning have outgrown the useful parts of it, as weedes
commonly do corn.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD (1613-1680)

To be born without envy is the surest sign that one possesses great qualities.
La Rochefoucauld
True happiness lies in the possession of that which pleases not others, but ourselves.
La Rochefoucauld cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 64
We arrive complete novices at the difference ages of life, and we often want experience in spite of our
years.
Each age of life is new to us, and we find ourselves hampered by inexperience regardless of our years.
Grace is to the body what reason is to the mind.

La Rochefoucauld, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 121
It is as easy to deceive ourselves without realizing it, as it is hard to avoid detection in our deception of
others.
We are no more masters of the duration of our passions than of the length of our days.
There is an infinity of modes of conduct which appear ridiculous, the secret reasons of which are wise and
sound.
We think highly of some people whose only merit is that they possess those vices which are essential to our
daily existence.
We flatter ourselves that we quit our vices; in reality our vices quit us.
The virtues of some people repel us, yet the vices of others are their greatest charm.
In their first passions women are in love with their lover; in later ones only with love.
236
Most virtuous women are like hidden treasures, secure because no one is seeking them.
Maxims
French: http://books.google.com/books?id=La4UAAAAQAAJ
Les grandes âmes ne sont pas celles qui ont moins de passions et plus de vertus que les âmes communes,
mais celles seulement qui ont de plus grands desseins.
La Rochefoucauld, Maximes, #47
The great souls are not those who have fewer passions and more virtues than common souls, but only those
who have nobler plans.
La Rochefoucauld, Maxim #47 (my translation)
Nos vertus ne sont, le plus souvent, que de vices déguisés.

Our virtues are usually only vices in disguise.
La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, L. Tancock trans., p. 37
L’orgueil a plus de part que la bonté aux remontrances que nous faisons à ceux qui commettent des fautes; et
nous ne les reprenons pas tant pour les en corriger que pour leur persuader que nous en sommes exempts.
Pride plays a greater part than kindness in the reprimands we address to wrongdoers; we reprove them not so
much to reform them as to make them believe that we are free from their faults.
La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, L. Tancock trans., #37
Ceux qui s’appliquent trop aux petites choses deviennent ordinairement incapables des grandes.
People too much taken up with little things usually become incapable of big ones.
L’attachement ou l’indifférence que les philosophes avaient pour la vie n’était qu’un goût de leur amour-
propre, dont on ne doit non plus disputer que du goût de la langue ou du choix des couleurs.
The attachment or indifference the philosophers felt to life was but a matter of taste on the part of their self-
love, and this can no more be argued about then taste for words or choice of colors
Le mépris des richesses était dans les philosophes un désir cache de venger leur mérite de l’injustice de la
fortune par le mépris des mêmes biens dont elle les privait; c’était un secret pour se garantir de l’avilissement
de la pauvreté; c’était un chemin détourné pour aller à la considération qu’ils ne pouvaient avoir par les
richesses.
The scorn for riches displayed by the philosophers was a secret desire to recompense their own merit for the
injustice of Fortune by scorning those very benefits she had denied them; it was a private way of remaining
unsullied by poverty, a devious path towards the high respect they could not command by wealth.
Un habile homme doit régler le rang de ses intérêts et les conduire chacun dans son ordre. Notre avidité le
trouble souvent en nous faisant courir à tant de choses à la fois que, pour désirer trop les moins importantes,
on manque les plus considérables.
A shrewd man has to arrange his interests in order of importance and deal with them one by one; but often
our greed upsets this order and makes us run after so many things at once that through over-anxiety to have
the trivial we miss the most important.
L’amour de la justice n’est en la plupart des hommes que la crainte de souffrir l’injustice.
In most men love of justice is only fear of suffering injustice.
237
Il est plus honteux de se défier de ses amis que d’en être trompé.
It is more shameful to distrust one’s friends than to be deceived by them.
Nous sommes si accoutumés à nous déguiser aux autres qu’enfin nous nous déguisons à nous-mêmes.
We are so used to disguising ourselves from others that we end by disguising ourselves from ourselves.
On n’est jamais si ridicule par les qualités que l’on a que par celles que l’on affecte d’avoir.
We are never so ridiculous through qualities we have as through those we pretend to have.
Comme c’est le caractère des grands esprits de faire entendre en peu de paroles beaucoup de choses, les
petits esprits au contraire ont le don de beaucoup parler, et de ne rien dire.
The stamp of great minds is to suggest much in few words, so, contrariwise, little minds have the gift of
talking a great deal and saying nothing.
Le refus des louanges est un désir d’être loué deux fois.

To refuse to accept praise is to want to be praised twice over.
Il est plus difficile de s’empêcher d’être gouverné que de gouverner les autres.
It is more difficult to avoid being ruled than to rule others.
Il y a des gens dont tout le mérite consiste à dire et à faire des sottises utilement, et qui gâteraient tout s’ils
changeaient de conduite.
There are people whose value consists in saying and doing foolish things that serve a useful purpose, and
who would upset everything if they changed their behavior.
Le monde récompense plus souvent les apparences du mérite que le mérite même.
The world more often rewards outward signs of merit than merit itself.
Pendant que la paresse et la timidité nous retiennent dans notre devoir, notre vertu en a souvent tout
l’honneur.
We are held to our duty by laziness and timidity, but often our virtue gets all the credit.
La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, L. Tancock trans., modified, #169
Il vaut mieux employer notre esprit à supporter les infortunes qui nous arrivent qu’à prévoir celles qui nous
peuvent arriver.
Our minds are better employed in bearing the misfortunes that do befall us than is foreseeing those that may.
Notre repentir n’est pas tant un regret du mal que nous avons fait, qu’une crainte de celui qui nous en peut
arriver.
Repentance is not so much regret for the evil we have done as fear of the evil that may befall us as a
result.
Quand les vices nous quittent, nous nous flattons de la créance que c’est nous qui les quittons.
When the vices give us up we flatter ourselves that we are giving them up.
238
Le désir de paraître habile empêche souvent de le devenir.
Desire to appear clever often prevents our becoming so.
L’hypocrisie est un hommage que le vice rend à la vertu.

Hypocrisy is a tribute vice pays to virtue.
Les gens heureux ne se corrigent guère; ils croient toujours avoir raison quand la fortune soutient leur
mauvaise conduite.
Fortunate people seldom mend their ways, for when good luck crowns their misdeeds with success they
think it is because they are right.
C’est plus souvent par orgueil que par défaut de lumières qu’on s’oppose avec tant d’opiniâtreté aux opinions
les plus suivies: on trouve les premières places prises dans le bon parti, et on ne veut point des dernières.
Those who obstinately oppose the most widely-held opinions more often do so because of pride than lack of
intelligence. They find the best places in the right set already taken, and they do not want back seats.
La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, L. Tancock trans., #234 (cf. Gracián #142)
Nul ne mérite d’être loué de bonté, s’il n’a pas la force d’être méchant: toute autre bonté n’est le plus souvent
qu’une paresse ou une impuissance de la volonté.
Nobody deserves to be praised for goodness unless he is strong enough to be bad, for any other
goodness is usually merely inertia or lack of will-power.
La véritable éloquence consiste à dire tout ce qu’il faut, et à ne dire que ce qu’il faut.
True eloquence consists in saying all that is required and only what is required.
Readiness to believe the worst without adequate examination comes from pride and laziness: we want
to find culprits but cannot be bothered to investigate the crimes.
Il y a des faussetés déguisées qui représentent si bien la vérité que ce serait mal juger que de ne s’y pas
laisser tromper.
Some disguised deceits counterfeit truth so perfectly that not to be taken in thereby would be an error of
judgment
Notre sagesse n’est pas moins à la merci de la fortune que nos biens.
Our wisdom is just as much at the mercy of chance as our property.
La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, L. Tancock trans., #323 (cf. Stoics)
Il est de certaines bonnes qualités comme des sens: ceux qui en sont entièrement privés ne les peuvent
apercevoir ni les comprendre.
Certain good qualities are like the senses; those who lack them can neither appreciate nor understand
them.
L’esprit de la plupart des femmes sert plus à fortifier leur folie que leur raison.
Most women use their wits to bolster up their folly rather than their reason.
La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, L. Tancock trans., #340 (Applies to men too)
239
L’accent du pays où l’on est né demeure dans l’esprit et dans le coeur, comme dans le langage.
The accent of one’s birthplace persists in the mind and heart as much as in speech.
Les esprits médiocres condamnent d’ordinaire tout ce qui passé leur portée.
Commonplace minds usually condemn whatever is beyond their powers.
Le plus grand défaut de la pénétration n’est pas de n’aller point jusqu’au but, c’est de le passer.
The biggest disadvantage of a penetrating intellect is not failure to reach the goal, but going beyond it.
De tous nos défauts, celui dont nous demeurons le plus aisément d’accord, c’est de la paresse; nous nous
persuadons qu’elle tient à toutes les vertus paisibles et que, sans détruire entièrement les autres, elle en
suspend seulement les fonctions.
Of all our shortcomings the one we most willingly own up to is laziness: we persuade ourselves that it is
bound up with all the gentler virtues and that it merely suspends the activity of the others without wholly
destroying them.
Of all our faults we think most leniently of laziness; we deceive ourselves into believing that it embodies all
the more placid virtues, and that, instead of destroying our other qualities, it merely suspends their functions.
La Rochefoucauld, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (1947), p. 208
Il y a une élévation qui ne dépend point de la fortune: c’est un certain air qui nous distingue et qui semble
nous destiner aux grandes choses; c’est un prix que nous nous donnons imperceptiblement à nous-mêmes;
c’est par cette qualité que nous usurpons les déférences des autres hommes, et c’est elle d’ordinaire qui nous
met plus au-dessus d’eux que la naissance, les dignités, et le mérite même.
There is a certain dignity of manner independent of fortune, a certain distinctive air which seems to
mark us out for great things. It is a value we set upon ourselves without realizing it, and by means of
this quality we claim other men’s deference as our due. This does more to set us above them than
birth, honors, and merit itself.
La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, L. Tancock trans., #399 (cf. Nietzsche)
Nous croyons souvent avoir de la constance dans les malheurs, lorsque nous n’avons que de l’abattement, et
nous les souffrons sans oser les regarder comme les poltrons se laissent tuer de peur de se défendre.
La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, #420
Nous essayons de nous faire honneur des défauts que nous ne voulons pas corriger.
We try to make virtues out of the faults we have no wish to correct.
Un esprit droit a moins de peine de se soumettre aux esprits de travers que de les conduire.
It is less trouble for the right-thinking to let the wrong-headed have their way than it is to put them
right.
Le même orgueil qui nous fait blâmer les défauts dont nous nous croyons exempts, nous porte à mépriser les
bonnes qualités que nous n’avons pas.
The very pride that makes us condemn failings from which we think we are exempt leads us to despise
good qualities we do not possess.
The same pride which makes us condemn the faults of which we think ourselves free, impels us to scorn the
virtues we do not possess.
La Rochefoucauld, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (1947), p. 208
240
Il n’y a que les personnes qui ont de la fermeté qui puissant avoir une véritable douceur; celles qui paraissent
douces n’ont d’ordinaire que de la faiblesse, qui se convertit aisément en aigreur.
Only those with real strength of character can have real gentleness; those who look gentle are usually merely
weak
La timidité est un défaut dont il est dangereux de reprendre les personnes qu’on en veut corriger.
Timidity is a fault that it is dangerous to censure in those we want to cure of it.
La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, L. Tancock trans., #480 (cf. Nietzsche’s criticism of socialism)
Il y a des personnes si légères et si frivoles qu’elles sont aussi éloignées d’avoir de véritables défauts que des
qualités solides.
Some people are so shallow and frivolous that they are as far removed from having any real faults as from
having any solid virtues.
We should not take offence when people hide the truth from us, since so often we hide it from ourselves.
La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, L. Tancock trans., Posthumous, p. 105
Philosophers condemn wealth only because of the bad use it has been put to, and it is up to us to
acquire and use it blamelessly, Then, instead of letting it feed and encourage crimes as wood keeps fire
burning, we can dedicate it to all the virtues and thereby make them more beautiful and striking.
Cunning is a poor substitute for sagacity.

Most things are praised or decried because it is fashionable to praise or decry them.
Little is needed to make a wise man happy, but nothing can content a fool.
We go to far less trouble about making ourselves happy than about appearing to be so.
Wisdom is to the soul what health is to the body.

A wise man thinks it more advantageous not to join a battle than to win.
It is more important to study men than books.

The kind of talent that bestows (?) talent for small things is the opposite of the one required for great.
La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, L. Tancock trans., Withdrawn, p. 115
When you cannot find peace in yourself it is useless to look for it elsewhere.
When we give up hoping for reason in others we are at the end of our own.
Nobody hustles others more relentlessly than the lazy man who has indulged his own laziness and now wants
to look busy.
241
Kings turn men into coins to which they assign what value they like, and which others are obliged to
accept at the official rate, and not at their real worth.
The cleverest course for the not so clever is to know when to accept the guidance of others.
Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy those are who already
possess it.
La Rochefoucauld
ABRAHAM COWLEY (1618-1667)

“Of Greatness”
To virgin minds, which yet their native whiteness hold,
Not yet discoloured with the love of gold
(That jaundice of the soul,
Which makes it look so gilded and so foul) ...
Abraham Cowley, “Of Greatness”
And all you men, whom greatness does so please,

Ye feast, I fear, like Damocles.
If you your eyes could upwards move,
(But you, I fear, think nothing is above)
You would perceive by what a little thread
The sword still hangs over your head.
No tide of wine would drown your cares,
No mirth or music over-noise your fears;
The fear of death would you so watchful keep,
As not to admit the image of it, sleep.
The man who, in all wishes he does make,

Does only Nature's counsel take,
That wise and happy man will never fear
The evil aspects of the year.
If of their pleasures and desires no end be found;

God to their cares and fears will set no bound.
What would content you? Who can tell?
Ye fear so much to lose what you have got
As if ye liked it well.
Ye strive for more, as if ye liked it not.
MOLIÈRE a.k.a. JEAN-BAPTISTE POQUELIN (1622-1673)

Rien n’est beau que le vrai; le vrai seul est aimable.
Molière
242
Daphné notre voisine, et son petit époux,
Ne seraient-ils point ceux qui parlent mal de nous?
Ceux de qui la conduite offre le plus à rire,
Sont toujours sur autrui les premiers à médire;
Ils ne manquent jamais de saisir promptement
L’apparente lueur du moindre attachement,
D’en semer la nouvelle avec beaucoup de joie,
Et d’y donner le tour qu’ils veulent qu’on y croie.
Des actions d’autrui, teintes de leurs couleurs,
Ils pensent dans le monde autoriser les leurs,
Et sous le faux espoir de quelque ressemblance,
Aux intrigues qu’ils ont, donner de l’innocence,
Ou faire ailleurs tomber quelques traits partagés
De ce blâme public dont ils sont trop chargés.
Dorine in Molière, Tartuffe
Those who have the greatest cause for guilt and shame
Are quickest to besmirch a neighbor’s name.
When there’s a chance for libel, they’ll never miss is;
When something can be made to seem illicit
They’re off at once to spread the joyous news.
Adding to fact what fantasies they choose.
By talking up their neighbor’s indiscretions
They seek to camouflage their own transgressions,
Hoping that others’ innocent affairs
Will lend of hue of innocence to theirs,
Or that their own black guilt will come to seem
Part of a general shady color-scheme.
Dorine in Molière, Tartuffe, Richard Wilbur, trans. pp. 13-14
L’exemple est admirable, et cette dame est bonne:

Il est vrai qu’elle vit en austère personne;
Mais l’âge, dans son âme, a mis ce zèle ardent,
Et l’on sait qu’elle est prude, à son corps défendant,
Tant qu’elle a pu des cœurs attirer les hommages,
Elle a fort bien joui de tous ses avantages:
Mais voyant de ses yeux tous les brillants baisser,
Au monde, qui la quitte, elle veut renoncer;
Et du voile pompeux d’une haute sagesse,
De ses attraits usés, déguiser la faiblesse.
Ce sont là les retours des coquettes du temps.
Il leur est dur de voir déserter les galants.
Dans un tel abandon, leur sombre inquietude
Ne voit d’autre recours que le métier de prude;
Et la sévérité de ces femmes de bien,
Censure toute chose, et ne pardonne à rien;
Hautement, d’un chacun, elles blâment la vie,
Non point par charité, mais par un trait d’envie
Qui ne saurait souffrir qu’une autre ait les plaisirs,
Dont le penchant de l’âge a sevré leurs désirs.
Dorine in Molière, Tartuffe
243
Oh, yes, she’s strict, devout, and has no taint
Of worldliness; in short, she seems a saint.
But it was time which taught her that disguise;
She’s thus because she can’t be otherwise.
So long as her attractions could enthrall,
She flounced and flirted and enjoyed it all,
But now that they’re no longer what they were
She quits a world which fast is quitting her.
And wears a veil of virtue to conceal
Her bankrupt beauty and lost appeal.
That’s what becomes of old coquettes today:
Distressed when their lovers fall away,
They see no recourse but to play the prude,
And so confer a style on solitude.
Thereafter, they’re severe with everyone,
Condemning all our actions, pardoning none,
And claiming to be pure, austere and zealous
When, if the truth were known, they’re merely jealous
And cannot bear to see another know
The pleasures time has forced them to forego.
Dorine in Molière, Tartuffe, Richard Wilbur, trans. pp. 14-15
Sur quelque préférence une estime se fonde,

Et c’est n’estimer rien qu’estimer tout le monde.
To esteem everything is to esteem nothing.
Molière, Le Misanthrope, Act. 1 Sc. 1
First Doctor:
Most learned bachelor
Whom I esteem and honor,
I would like to ask you the cause and reason why
Opium makes one sleep.
Argan:
The reason is that in opium resides
A dormitive virtue,
Of which it is the nature
To stupefy the senses.
Chorus:
Well, well, well, well has he answered!
Worthy, worthy is he to enter
Into our learned body.
Molière, Le Malade Imaginaire (1673), Act III
BLAISE PASCAL (1623-1662)

Knowledge is like a sphere: the greater its volume, the larger its contact with the unknown.
Pascal
I am very afraid that this so-called nature may itself be no more than an early custom, just as custom is
second-nature.
Pascal, cited in André Gide, Corydon (1950), p. 33
244
We are not satisfied with the life we have in ourselves and our own being; we want to live an imaginary life
in other people’s idea of us. Hence all our efforts are directed to seeming what we are not. We labor
incessantly to preserve and embellish this imaginary being, and neglect that which is really ours.
Pascal, cited in Aldous Huxley, “Variations on a Philosopher,” Themes and Variations (New York: 1943), p. 2
It is not in space that I must seek my human dignity, but in the ordering of my thought. It will do me no good
to own land. Through space the universe grasps me and swallows me like a speck; through thought I grasp it.
Pascal, cited in Zygmunt Bauman, paraphrasing the view of Seneca in The Art of Life (Cambridge: 2008), p. 36
A man lives his life free from boredom by gambling a small sum every day. Give him every morning the
money he might win that day, but on condition he does not gamble, and you will make him unhappy. … He
must have excitement, he must delude himself into imagining that he would be happy to win what he would
not want as a gift if it meant giving up gambling.
Pascal, cited in Zygmunt Bauman, paraphrasing the view of Seneca in The Art of Life (Cambridge: 2008), pp. 36-37
Pensées (1670)
French: http://www.archive.org/stream/pensespublie00pascuoft/pensespublie00pascuoft_djvu.txt
French: http://books.google.com/books?id=2xUZAAAAYAAJ
English: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/18269-0.txt
La vraie éloquence se moque de l’éloquence, la vraie morale se moque de la morale; c’est à dire que la
morale du jugement se moque de la morale de l’esprit –qui est sans règles.
Pascal, Pensées, #4
True eloquence makes light of eloquence, true morality makes light of morality; that is to say, the morality of
the judgment, which has no rules, makes light of the morality of the intellect.
Pascal, Pensées, #4, W. F. Trotter, trans. (New York: 1958)
Se moquer de la philosophie, c’est vraiment philosopher.

To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.
On se forme l’esprit et le sentiment par les conversations. On se gâte l’esprit et le sentiment par les
conversations. Ainsi les bonnes ou les mauvaises le forment ou le gâtent. Il importe donc de tout de les savoir
choisir pour se le former et ne le point gâter; et on ne peut faire ce choix, si on ne l’a déjà formé et point gâté.
Ainsi cela fait un cercle, d’où sont bienheureux ceux qui sortent.
The understanding and the feelings are moulded by intercourse; the understanding and feelings are corrupted
by intercourse. Thus good or bad society improves or corrupts them. It is, then, all-important to know how to
choose in order to improve and not to corrupt them; and we cannot make this choice, if they be not already
improved and not corrupted. Thus a circle is formed, and those are fortunate who escape it.
Spirit and sentiment are formed by conversation. Spirit and sentiment are ruined by conversation. …
It is, then, all-important to know how to choose our society in order to form rather than ruin them;
and one cannot make this choice unless one has already formed them and not ruined them. Thus a
circle is formed, and those are fortunate who escape it.
Pascal, Pensées, #6, my translation
245
Quand on veut reprendre avec utilité, et montrer à un autre qu’il se trompe, il faut observer par quel coté il
envisage la chose, car elle est vraie ordinairement de ce côté-là, et lui avouer cette vérité, mais lui découvrir
le côté par où elle est fausse. Il se contente de cela, car il voit qu’il ne se trompait pas, et qu’il manquait
seulement à voir tous les côtés; or on ne se fâche pas de ne pas tout voir, mais on ne veut pas s’être trompé;
et peut-être que cela vient de ce que naturellement l’homme ne peut tout voir, et de ce que naturellement il ne
se peut tromper dans le côté qu’il envisage; comme les appréhensions des sens sont toujours vraies.
When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he
views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on
which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken, and that he only failed to see
all sides. Now, no one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that
perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the
side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true.
On se persuade mieux, pour l’ordinaire, par les raisons qu’on a soit-même trouvées que par celles qui sont
venues dans l’esprit des autres.
People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered.
Eloquence, which persuades by sweetness, not by authority; as a tyrant, not as a king.

Comme si les mêmes pensées ne formaient pas un autre corps de discours par une disposition différente,
aussi bien que les mêmes mots forment d’autre pensées par leur différente disposition.
If the same thoughts in a different arrangement do not form a different discourse, no more do the same words
in their different arrangement form different thoughts!
Quand on voit le style naturel, on est tout étonné et ravi, car on s’attendait de voir un auteur, et on trouve un
homme.
When we see a natural style, we are astonished and delighted; for we expected to see an author, and we find a
man.
Ces auteurs qui, parlant de leurs ouvrages, disent: «Mon livre, mon commentaire, mon histoire, etc.», qu’ils
sentent leurs bourgeois qui ont pignon sur rue, et toujours un «chez moi» à la bouche. Ils feraient mieux de
dire: «Notre livre, notre commentaire, notre histoire, etc.» vu que d’ordinaire il y a plus en cela du bien
d’autrui que du leur.
Certain authors, speaking of their works, say, “My book,” “My commentary,” “My history,” etc. They
resemble middle-class people who have a house of their own, and always have “My house” on their tongue.
They would do better to say, “Our book,” “Our commentary,” “Our history,” etc., because there is in them
usually more of other people’s than their own.
Trop et trop peu de vin; ne lui en donnez pas, il ne peut trouver la vérité; donnez lui en trop, de même.
Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.
246
D’où vient qu’un boiteux ne nous irrite pas, et un esprit boiteux nous irrite? A cause qu’un boiteux reconnait
que nous allons droit, et qu’un esprit boiteux dit que c’est nous qui boitons; sans cela nous aurions pitié et
non colère.
How comes it that a cripple does not offend us, but that a fool does? Because a cripple recognizes that we
walk straight, whereas a fool declares that it is we who are silly.
L’esprit croit naturellement, et la volonté aime naturellement de sorte qu’à faute de vrais objets il faut qu’ils
s’attachent aux faux.
It is natural for the mind to believe and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must attach
themselves to false.
L’imagination grossit les petits objets jusqu’à en remplir notre âme, par une estimation fantastique; et, par
une insolence téméraire, elle amoindrit les grands jusqu’à sa mesure, comme en parlant de Dieu.
The imagination enlarges little objects so as to fill our souls with a fantastic estimate; and, with rash
insolence, it belittles the great to its own measure.
Ces choses nous tiennent le plus, comme de cacher son peu de bien, ce n’est souvent presque rien. C’est un
néant que notre imagination grossit en montagne. Un autre tour d’imagination nous le fait découvrir sans
peine.
Things which have most hold on us, as the concealment of our few possessions, are often a mere nothing. It
is a nothing which our imagination magnifies into a mountain. Another turn of the imagination would make
us discover this without difficulty.
Il n’y a rien qu’on ne rende naturel; il n’y a naturel qu’on ne fasse perdre.
There is nothing one may not make natural; there is nothing natural he may not lose.
La raison rend les sentiments naturels et les sentiments naturels s’effacent par la raison.
Education produces natural intuitions, and natural intuitions are erased by education.
C’est une chose déplorable de voir tous les hommes ne délibérer que des moyens, et point de la fin.
It is a deplorable thing to see all men deliberating on means alone, and not on the end.
C’est une chose pitoyable, de voir tant de Turcs, d’hérétiques, d’infidèles, suivre le train de leurs pères, par
cette seule raison qu’ils ont été prévenus chacun que c’est le meilleur.
It is a pitiable thing to see so many … follow the way of their fathers for the sole reason that each has been
imbued with the prejudice that it is the best.
247
Il ne saurait empêcher que cet objet qu’il aime ne soit plein de défauts et de misères: il veut être grand, et il
se voit petit; il veut être heureux, et il se voit misérable; il veut être parfait, et il se voit plein d’imperfections;
il veut être l’objet de l’amour et de l’estime des hommes, et il voit que ses défauts ne méritent que leur
aversion et leur mépris. Cet embarras où il se trouve produit en lui la plus injuste et la plus criminelle passion
qu’il soit possible de s’imaginer; car il conçoit une haine mortelle contre cette vérité qui le reprend, et qui le
convainc de ses défauts. Il désirerait de l’anéantir, et, ne pouvant la détruire en elle-même, il la détruit, autant
qu’il peut, dans sa connaissance et dans celle des autres; c.à.d. qu’il met tout son soin à couvrir ses défauts et
aux autres et à soi-même, et qu’il ne peut souffrir qu’on les lui fasse voir, ni qu’on les voie.
He wants to be great, and he sees himself small. He wants to be happy, and he sees himself miserable.
He wants to be perfect, and he sees himself full of imperfections. He wants to be the object of love and
esteem among men, and he sees that his faults merit only their hatred and contempt. This
embarrassment in which he finds himself produces in him the most unrighteous and criminal passion
that can be imagined; for he conceives a mortal enmity against that truth which reproves him and
which convinces him of his faults. He would annihilate it, but, unable to destroy it in its essence, he
destroys it as far as possible in his own knowledge and in that of others; that is to say, he devotes all his
attention to hiding his faults both from others and from himself, and he cannot endure either that
others should point them out to him, or that they should see them.
C’est sans doute un mal que d’être plein de défauts mais c’est encore un plus grand mal que d’en être plein et
de ne les vouloir pas reconnaître, puisque c’est ajouter encore celui d’une illusion volontaire.
It is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize
them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion.
They imagine that, if they obtained such a post, they would then rest with pleasure and are insensible of the
insatiable nature of their desire.
Pascal, Pensées, #139 “Leisure,” W. F. Trotter, trans
They have a secret instinct which impels them to seek amusement and occupation abroad, and which arises
from the sense of their constant unhappiness. They have another secret instinct, a remnant of the greatness of
our original nature, which teaches them that happiness in reality consists only in rest and not in stir.
Pascal, Pensées, #139 “Leisure,” W. F. Trotter, trans
L'homme n'est qu'un roseau, le plus faible de la nature; mais c'est un roseau pensant. Il ne faut pas que
l'univers entier s'arme pour l'écraser: une vapeur, une goutte d'eau, suffit pour le tuer. Mais, quand l'univers
l'écraserait, l'homme serait encore plus noble que ce qui le tue, parce qu'il sait qu'il meurt, et l'avantage que
l'univers a sur lui; l'univers n'en sait rien.
Toute notre dignité consiste donc en la pensée. C'est de là qu'il faut nous relever et non de l'espace et de la
durée, que nous ne saurions remplir. Travaillons donc à bien penser: voilà le principe de la morale.
Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe
need not arm itself to crush him. A vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were
to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies
and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.
All our dignity consists then in thought. By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time
which we cannot fill. Let us endeavor to think well; this is the principle of morality.
248
Ce n'est point de l'espace que je dois chercher ma dignité, mais c'est du règlement de ma pensée. Je n'aurai
pas davantage en possédant des terres: par l'espace, l'univers me comprend et m'engloutit comme un point;
par la pensée, je le comprends.
It is not from space that I must seek my dignity, but from the government of my thought. I shall have
no more if I possess worlds. By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by
thought I comprehend the world.
Man’s greatness comes from knowing he is wretched.

Je voudrais donc porter l’homme à désirer d’en [la vérité] trouver.

I [God’s wisdom] am she who formed you, and who alone can teach you what you are.
On his [man’s] making himself equal to me by the desire of finding his happiness in himself, I [God’s
wisdom] abandoned him to himself.
Jamais on ne fait le mal si pleinement et si gaiement que quand on le fait par conscience.
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it conscientiously.
JOHN BUNYAN (1628-1688)

The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678)
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Pilgrim%27s_Progress
What! said Obstinate, and leave our Friends, and our Comforts behind us! Yes, said Christian, because that
all, which you shall forsake, is not worthy to be compared with a little of that that I am seeking to
enjoy.
John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), § 1.1
JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700)

I am as free as Nature first made man,
Ere the base laws of servitude began,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.
John Dryden, The Conquest of Granada (1670) Part 1, Act I, scene 1
249
The gods are just—-
But how can finite measure infinite?
Reason! alas, it does not know itself!
Yet man, vain man, would, with his short-lin'd plummet,
Fathom the vast abyss of heav’nly justice.
Whatever is, is in its causes just;
Since all things are by fate. But purblind man
Sees but a part o’ th’ chain; the nearest links;
His eyes not carrying to that equal beam
That poises all above.
John Dryden, Tiresias in Oedipus (1679)
Great wits are sure to madness near alli'd.

John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel (1681)
But far more numerous was the herd of such,

Who think too little, and who talk too much.
Nor is the people's judgment always true:

The most may err as grossly as the few.
Leave for a while thy costly country seat;

And, to be great indeed, forget
The nauseous pleasures of the great:
Make haste and come:
Come, and forsake thy cloying store;
Thy turret that surveys, from high,
The smoke, and wealth, and noise of Rome;
And all the busy pageantry
That wise men scorn, and fools adore:
Come, give thy soul a loose, and taste the pleasures of the poor.
John Dryden, Imitation of Horace (1685), 29th Ode, § 3
Sometimes 'tis grateful to the rich to try

A short vicissitude, and fit of poverty:
A savoury dish, a homely treat,
Where all is plain, where all is neat,
Without the stately spacious room,
The Persian carpet, or the Tyrian loom,
Clear up the cloudy foreheads of the great.
Enjoy the present smiling hour;

And put it out of fortune’s power.
250
Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own;
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived today.
Fortune, that, with malicious joy,

Does man her slave oppress,
Proud of her office to destroy,
Is seldom pleased to bless:
Still various, and unconstant still,
But with an inclination to be ill,
Promotes, degrades, delights in strife,
And makes a lottery of life.
I can enjoy her while she's kind;
But when she dances in the wind,
And shakes the wings, and will not stay,
I puff the prostitute away:
The little or the much she gave, is quietly resign'd:
Content with poverty, my soul I arm;
And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.
How happy in his low degree,

How rich in humble poverty, is he,
Who leads a quiet country life;
Discharged of business, void of strife,
And from the griping scrivener free!
Thus, ere the seeds of vice were sown.
Lived men in better ages born,
Who plough'd, with oxen of their own,
Their small paternal field of corn.
Nor trumpets summon him to war,
Nor drums disturb his morning sleep,
Nor knows he merchants' gainful care,
Nor fears the dangers of the deep.
The clamours of contentious law,
And court and state, he wisely shuns,
Nor bribed with hopes, nor dared with awe,
To servile salutations runs.
John Dryden, Imitation of Horace (1685), 2nd Epode
For truth has such a face and such a mien

As to be loved needs only to be seen.
John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther (1687), Pt. I line 33-34
Of all the tyrannies on human kind

The worst is that which persecutes the mind.
John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther (1687), Pt. I line 239-240
Jealousy, the jaundice of the soul …

John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther (1687), Pt. III line 73
251
This heard, the Matron was not slow to find
What sort of malady had seized her mind:
Disdain, with gnawing Envy, fell Despite,
And canker’d Malice, stood in open sight:
Ambition, Interest, Pride without control,
And Jealousy, the jaundice of the soul;
Revenge, the bloody minister of ill,
With all the lean tormentors of the will.
John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther (1687), Pt. III
SPINOZA (1632-1677)
What Spinoza is criticizing here is the Hobbesian view of contracts (covenants) or the transference of one’s
natural right. ... In Spinoza’s view, ... Hobbes violates naturalism here. ... Hobbes never fully rids his account
of the vestiges of the juridical tradition that Spinoza sought to overturn.
Justin Steinberg, “Spinoza’s Political Philosophy,” SEP
http://www.science.uva.nl/~seop/entries/spinoza-political/
I shall understand by good what we know certainly is a means by which we may approach nearer and nearer
to the model of human nature we set before ourselves.
Spinoza
A miracle, whether in contravention to, or beyond, nature, is a mere absurdity; and, therefore, ... what is
meant in Scripture by a miracle can only be a work of nature, which surpasses, or is believed to surpass,
human comprehension.
Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, p. 87, as cited in B. Wiker, Moral Darwinism, p. 195
We may, then, be absolutely certain that every event which it truly described in Scripture necessarily
happened, like everything else, according to natural laws; and if anything is there set down which can be
proved in set terms to contravene the order of nature, or not to be deducible therefrom, we must believe it to
have been foisted into the sacred writings by irreligious hands; for whatsoever is contrary to nature is
contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd, and, ipso facto, to be rejected.
Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, p. 92
In despotic statecraft, the supreme and essential mystery is to hoodwink the subjects, and to mask the fear,
which keeps them down, with the specious garb of religion, so that men may fight as bravely for slavery as
for safety, and count it not shame but highest honor to risk their blood and lives for the vainglory of a tyrant.
Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, Preface, cited in Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza, R. Hurley, trans. (San Francisco: 1988), p. 25
Sane sicut lux se ipsam et tenebras manifestat, sic veritas norma sui et falsi est.
Spinoza
Indeed, just as light defines itself and darkness, so truth sets the standard for itself and falsity.
Spinoza
Fame has the drawback that it compels its votaries to order their lives according to the opinions of their
fellow-men, shunning what others usually shun, and seeking what they usually seek.
Spinoza, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 43
Whether man is led by reason or solely by desire, he does nothing that is not in accordance with the laws and
rules of nature.
Spinoza, Tractatus Politicus, 2.5
252
With regard to political theory, the difference between Hobbes and myself, which is the subject of your
inquiry, consists in this, that I always preserve the natural right in its entirety, and I hold that the sovereign
power in a State has right over a subject only in proportion to the excess of its power over that of a subject.
Spinoza, Epistle 50
If anyone sins, it is against himself, and not against others.

Spinoza, Tractatus Politicus, 2.18
Immense efforts have been made to invest religion, true or false, with such pomp and ceremony that it can
sustain any shock and constantly evoke the deepest reverence in all its worshippers.
Spinoza
And so they will not stop asking for the causes of causes until you take refuge in the will of God, i.e., the
sanctuary of ignorance.
Spinoza (the “God of the Gaps”)
Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia, quam rara sunt.

Spinoza
All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.
Spinoza
Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that is ordinarily encountered in
daily life, and I realised that all the things which were the source and object of my anxiety held nothing of
good or evil in themselves save insofar as the mind was influenced by them, I resolved at length to enquire
whether there existed a true good, one which was capable of communicating itself and could alone affect the
mind to the exclusion of all else, whether, in fact, there was something whose discovery and acquisition
would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity.
I say ‘I resolved at length,’ for at first sight it seemed ill-advised to risk the loss of what was certain in the
hope of something at that time uncertain. I could well see the advantages that derive from honour and wealth,
and that I would be forced to abandon their quest if I were to devote myself to some new and different
objective. … I therefore debated whether it might be possible to arrive at a new guiding principle—or at least
the sure hope of its attainment—without changing the manner and normal routine of my life. This I
frequently attempted, but in vain. For the things which for the most part offer themselves in life, and which,
to judge from their actions, men regard as the highest good, can be reduced to these three headings: riches,
honour, and sensual pleasure. With these three the mind is so distracted that it is quite incapable of thinking
of any other good.
Spinoza, “Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect,” S. Shirley, trans., Complete Works (2002), pp. 3-4
After a little reflection, I first of all realised that if I abandoned the old ways and embarked on a new way of
life, I should be abandoning a good that was by its very nature uncertain—as we can clearly gather from
what has been said—in favour of one that was uncertain not of its own nature (for I was seeking a permanent
good) but only in respect of its attainment.
Spinoza, “Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect,” S. Shirley, trans., Complete Works (2002), p. 4
253
Ethics
Et quoniam omnia, quae hic indicare suscipio, praeiudicia pendent ab hoc uno, quod scilicet communiter
supponant homines, omnes res naturales ut ipsos propter finem agere; imo ipsum Deum omnia ad certum
aliquem finem dirigere, pro certo statuant (dicunt enim, Deum omnia propter hominem fecisse, hominem
autem, ut ipsum coleret): hoc igitur unum prius considerabo, quaerendo scilicet, primo causam, cur plerique
hoc in praeiudicio acquiescant et omnes natura adeo propensi sint ad idem amplectendum, deinde eiusdem
falsitatem ostendam et tandem, quomodo ex hoc orta sint praeiudicia de bono et malo, merito et peccato,
laude et vituperio, ordine et confusione, pulchritudine et deformitate et de aliis huius generis.
All such opinions spring from the notion commonly entertained, that all things in nature act as men
themselves act, namely, with an end in view. … I will, therefore, consider this opinion, asking first why it
obtains general credence, and why all men are naturally so prone to adopt it; secondly, I will point out its
falsity; and, lastly, I will show how it has given rise to prejudices about good and bad, right and wrong,
praise and blame, order and confusion, beauty and ugliness, and the like.
Spinoza, Ethics, Part 1, Appendix (Dover 1955 p. 75), underlining added
Men believe they are free, precisely because they are conscious of their volitions and desires; yet concerning
the causes that have determined them to desire and will they do not think, not even dream about.
Spinoza, Ethics, Part 1, Appendix (Dover 1955 p. 75)
Nam postquam res ut media consideraverunt, credere non potuerunt, easdem se ipsas fecisse; sed ex mediis,
quae sibi ipsi parare solent, concludere debuerunt, dari aliquem vel aliquos naturae rectores humana
praeditos libertate, qui ipsis omnia curaverint et in eorum usum omnia fecerint. Atque horum etiam
ingenium, quandoquidem de eo nunquam quid audiverant, ex suo iudicare debuerunt; atque hinc statuerunt,
deos omnia in hominum usum dirigere, ut homines sibi devinciant et in summo ab iisdem honore habeantur.
Since [men] find within themselves and outside themselves a considerable number of means very convenient
for the pursuit of their own advantage—as, for instance, eyes for seeing, teeth for chewing, cereals and living
creatures for food, the sun for giving light, the sea for breeding fish—the result is that they look on all the
things of nature as means to their own advantage. And realizing that these were found, not produced by them,
they come to believe that there is someone else who produced there means for their use. For looking on
things as means, they could not believe them to be self-created, but on the analogy of the means which
they are accustomed to produce for themselves, they were bound to conclude that there was some
governor or governors of nature, endowed with human freedom, who have attended to all their needs and
made everything for their use. And having no information on the subject, they also had to estimate the
character of these rulers by their own, and so they asserted that the gods direct everything for man’s use
Spinoza, Ethics, Part 1, Appendix (Dover 1955 p. 76), underlining added
Unde factum, ut unusquisque diversos Deum colendi modos ex suo ingenio excogitaverit, ut Deus eos supra
reliquos diligeret et totam naturam in usum caecae illorum cupiditatis et insatiabilis avaritiae dirigeret.
Everyone thought out for himself, according to his abilities, a different way of worshipping God, so that God
might love him more than his fellows, and direct the whole course of nature for the satisfaction of his blind
and insatiable avarice.
Experience day by day protested and showed by infinite examples that good and evil fortunes fall to the lot
of pious and impious alike; still they would not abandon their inveterate prejudice, for it was easier for them
to class such contradictions among the unknown things of whose cause they were ignorant, and thus to retain
their actual and innate condition of ignorance, than to destroy the whole fabric of their reasoning and start
afresh. They therefore laid down as an axiom that God’s judgments far transcend human understanding.
Spinoza, Ethics, Part 1, Appendix (Dover 1955 pp. 76-77)
254
Nec hic praetereundum est, quod huius doctrinae sectatores, qui in assignandis rerum finibus suum ingenium
ostentare voluerunt, ad hanc suam doctrinam probandam novum attulerunt modum argumentandi, reducendo
scilicet non ad impossibile, sed ad ignorantiam.
Followers of this doctrine [that God’s judgments transcend human understanding] have imported a new
method of argument … namely, a reduction, not to the impossible, but to ignorance.
Et sic porro causarum causas rogare non cessabunt, donec ad Dei voluntatem, hoc est, ignorantiae asylum
confugeris.
So they will pursue their questions from cause to cause, till at last you take refuge in the will of God—in
other words, the sanctuary of ignorance.
Atque hinc fit, ut qui miraculorum causas veras quaerit, quique res naturales ut doctus intelligere, non autem
ut stultus admirari studet, passim pro haeretico et impio habeatur et proclametur ab iis, quos vulgus tamquam
naturae deorumque interpretes adorat. Nam sciunt, quod sublata ignorantia stupor, hoc est, unicum
argumentandi, tuendaeque suae auctoritatis medium, quod habent, tollitur.
One who seeks the true causes of miracles, and is eager, like an educated man, to understand natural things,
not to wonder at them, like a fool, is generally considered and denounced as an impious heretic by those
whom the people honor as interpreters of nature and the Gods. For they know that if ignorance is taken away,
then foolish wonder, the only means they have of arguing and defending their authority is also taken away.
Spinoza, Ethics, Part 1, Appendix (Dover 1955 pp. 78-79)
Et consequenter quod substantia cogitans et substantia extensa una eademque est substantia, quae iam sub
hoc, iam sub illo attributo comprehenditur.
Substance thinking and substance extended are one and the same substance, comprehended now through one
attribute, now through the other.
Spinoza, Ethics, Part 2, Prop. 7, Scholium (Dover 1955 p. 86)
Nempe falluntur homines, quod se liberos esse putant; quae opinio in hoc solo consistit, quod suarum
actionum sint conscii et ignari causarum a quibus determinantur. Haec ergo est eorum libertatis idea, quod
suarum actionum nullam cognoscant causam. Nam quod aiunt, humanas actiones a voluntate pendere, verba
sunt, quorum nullam habent ideam.
Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own
actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are conditioned. Their idea of freedom, therefore, is
simply their ignorance of any cause for their actions. As for their saying that human actions depend on the
will, this is a mere phrase without any idea to correspond thereto.
Spinoza, Ethics, Part 2, Prop. 35, Scholium (Dover 1955 pp. 108-109)
Ideae inadaequatae et confusae eadem necessitate consequuntur, ac adaequatae sive clarae ac distinctae
ideae.
Inadequate and confused ideas follow by the same necessity, as adequate or clear and distinct ideas.
Spinoza, Ethics, Part 2, Prop. 36 (Dover 1955 p. 109)
Even as light displays both itself and darkness, so is truth a standard both of itself and falsity.
In mente nulla est absoluta sive libera voluntas, sed mens ad hoc vel illud volendum determinatur a causa,
quae etiam ab alia determinata est, et haec iterum ab alia, et sic in infinitum.
In the mind there is no absolute or free will; but the mind is determined to wish this or that by a cause, which
has also been determined by another cause, and this last by another cause, and so on to infinity.
Spinoza, Ethics, Part 2, Prop. 48 (Dover 1955 p. 119)
255
Unde clare intelligimus, quantum illi a vera virtutis aestimatione aberrant, qui pro virtute et optimis
actionibus, tanquam pro summa servitute, summis praemiis a Deo decorari exspectant, quasi ipsa virtus
Deique servitus non esset ipsa felicitas et summa libertas.
We may thus clearly understand, how far astray from a true estimate of virtue are those who expect to be
decorated by God with high rewards for their virtue, and their best actions, as for having endured the direst
slavery; as if virtue and the service of God were not in itself happiness and perfect freedom.
Nempe utramque fortunae faciem aequo animo exspectare et ferre; nimirum quia omnia ab aeterno Dei
decreto eadem necessitate sequuntur, ac ex essentia trianguli sequitur, quod tres eius anguli sunt aequales
duobus rectis.
We should await and endure fortune’s smiles or frowns with an equal mind, seeing that all things follow
from the eternal decree of God by, the same necessity, as it follows from the essence of a triangle, that the
three angles are equal to two right angles.
Confert haec doctrina ad vitam socialem, quatenus docet neminem odio habere, contemnere, irridere, nemini
irasci, invidere. Praeterea quatenus docet, ut unusquisque suis sit contentus et proximo in auxilium; non ex
muliebri misericordia, partialitate, neque superstitione, sed ex solo rationis ductu, prout scilicet tempus et res
postulat.
This doctrine raises social life, inasmuch as it teaches us to hate no man, neither to despise, to deride, to
envy, or to be angry, with any. Further, as it tells us that each should be content with his own, and helpful to
his neighbor, not from any womanish pity, favor, or superstition, but solely by the guidance of reason,
according as the time and occasion demand
Spinoza, Ethics, Part 2, Prop. 49, Scholium (Dover 1955 pp. 126-127)
Plerique qui de affectibus et hominum vivendi ratione scripserunt, videntur non de rebus naturalibus, quae
communes naturae leges sequuntur, sed de rebus, quae extra naturam sunt, agere. Imo hominem in natura,
veluti imperium in imperio, concipere videntur. Nam hominem naturae ordinem magis perturbare, quam
sequi, ipsumque in suas actiones absolutam habere potentiam, nec aliunde, quam a se ipso determinari
credunt. Humanae deinde impotentiae et inconstantiae causam non communi naturae potentiae, sed nescio
cui naturae humanae vitio tribuunt, quam propterea flent, rident, contemnunt vel quod plerumque fit,
detestantur; et qui humanae mentis impotentiam eloquentius vel argutius carpere novit, veluti divinus
habetur.
Most writers on the emotions and on human conduct seem to be treating rather of matters outside nature than
of natural phenomena following nature’s general laws. They appear to conceive man to be situated in nature
as a kingdom within a kingdom: for they believe that he disturbs rather than follows nature’s order, that he
has absolute control over his actions, and that he is determined solely by himself. They attribute human
infirmities and fickleness, not to the power of nature in general, but to some mysterious flaw in the nature of
man, which accordingly they bemoan, deride, despise, or, as usually happens, abuse: he, who succeeds in
hitting off the weakness of the human mind more eloquently or more acutely than his fellows, is looked upon
as a seer.
Spinoza, Ethics, Part 3, Preface (Dover 1955 p. 128)
[Men] assign the cause of human weakness and frailty not to the power of nature in general, but to some
defect in human nature, which they therefore bemoan, ridicule, despise, or, as in most frequently the case,
abuse.
Spinoza, Ethics, Part 3, Preface (Dover 1955 p. 128)
256
Nam ad illos revertere volo, qui hominum affectus et actiones detestari vel ridere malunt, quam intelligere.
His sine dubio mirum videbitur, quod hominum vitia et ineptias more geometrico tractare aggrediar, et certa
ratione demonstrare velim ea, quae rationi repugnare, quaeque vana, absurda et horrenda esse clamitant. Sed
mea haec est ratio. Nihil in natura fit, quod ipsius vitio possit tribui; est namque natura semper eadem et
ubique una eademque eius virtus et agendi potentia, hoc est, naturae leges et regulae, secundum quas omnia
fiunt et ex unis formis in alias mutantur, sunt ubique et semper eaedem, atque adeo una eademque etiam
debet esse ratio rerum qualiumcumque naturam intelligendi, nempe per leges et regulas naturae universales.
Affectus itaque odii, irae, invidiae etc. in se considerati ex eadem naturae necessitate et virtute consequuntur,
ac reliqua singularia; ac proinde certas causas agnoscunt, per quas intelliguntur, certasque proprietates
habent, cognitione nostra aeque dignas ac proprietates cuiuscumque alterius rei cuius sola contemplatione
delectamur. De affectuum itaque natura et viribus ac mentis in eosdem potentia eadem methodo agam qua
in praecedentibus de Deo et mente egi, et humanas actiones atque appetitus considerabo perinde, ac si
quaestio de lineis, planis aut de corporibus esset.
For the present I wish to revert to those, who would rather abuse or deride human emotions than understand
them. Such persons will, doubtless think it strange that I should attempt to treat of human vice and folly
geometrically, and should wish to set forth with rigid reasoning those matters which they cry out against as
repugnant to reason, frivolous, absurd, and dreadful. However, such is my plan. Nothing comes to pass in
nature, which can be set down to a flaw therein; for nature is always the same, and everywhere one and the
same in her efficacy and power of action; that is, nature’s laws and ordinances, whereby all things come to
pass and change from one form to another, are everywhere and always the same; so that there should be one
and the same method of understanding the nature of all things whatsoever, namely, through nature’s
universal laws and rules. Thus the passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so on, considered in themselves,
follow from this same necessity and efficacy of nature; they answer to certain definite causes, through which
they are understood, and possess certain properties as worthy of being known as the properties of anything
else, whereof the contemplation in itself affords us delight. I shall, therefore, treat of the nature and strength
of the emotions according to the same method, as I employed heretofore in my investigations concerning
God and the mind. I shall consider human actions and desires in exactly the same manner, as though I were
concerned with lines, planes, and solids.
Spinoza, Ethics, Part 3, Preface (Dover 1955 pp. 128-128)
Hinc sequitur mentem eo pluribus passionibus esse obnoxiam, quo plures ideas inadaequatas habet, et contra
eo plura agere, quo plures habet adaequatas.
Hence it follows that the mind is more or less liable to be acted upon, in proportion as it possesses inadequate
ideas, and, contrariwise, is more or less active in proportion as it possesses adequate ideas.
Spinoza, Ethics, Part 3, Prop. 1, Corollary (Dover 1955 p. 128)
Thus, when men say that this or that physical action has its origin in the mind, which latter has dominion
over the body, they are using words without meaning, or are confessing in specious phraseology that they are
ignorant of the cause of the said action, and do not wonder at it.
Spinoza, Ethics, Part 3, Prop. 2, Note (Dover 1955 p. 132)
An infant believes that of its own free will it desires milk.

Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious
of the causes whereby those actions are determined.
A mental condition and a bodily appetite, or determined state, are … one and the same thing, which we call
decision, when it is regarded under and explained through the attribute of thought, and a conditioned state,
when it is regarded under the attribute of extension, and deduced from the laws of motion and rest.
257
Theologico-Political Treatise (1677)
English: http://www.yesselman.com/ttpelws2.htm
Any event happening in nature which contravened nature's universal laws, would necessarily also contravene
the Divine decree, nature, and understanding; or if anyone asserted that God acts in contravention to the laws
of nature, he, ipso facto, would be compelled to assert that God acted against His own nature—an evident
absurdity.
Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise (1677), 6:17
As nothing happens in nature which does not follow from her laws, and as her laws embrace everything
conceived by the Divine intellect, and lastly, as nature preserves a fixed and immutable order; it most clearly
follows that miracles are only intelligible as in relation to human opinions, and merely mean events of which
the natural cause cannot be explained by a reference to any ordinary occurrence, either by us, or at any rate,
by the writer and narrator of the miracle.
Since miracles were wrought according to the understanding of the masses, who are wholly ignorant of the
workings of nature, it is certain that the ancients took for a miracle whatever they could not explain by the
method adopted by the unlearned in such cases, namely, an appeal to the memory, a recalling of something
similar, which is ordinarily regarded without wonder; for most people think they sufficiently understand a
thing when they have ceased to wonder at it. The ancients, then, and indeed most men up to the present day,
had no other criterion for a miracle; hence we cannot doubt that many things are narrated in Scripture as
miracles of which the causes could easily be explained by reference to ascertained workings of nature.
When we know that all things are ordained and ratified by God, that the operations of nature follow from the
essence of God, and that the laws of nature are eternal decrees and volitions of God, we must perforce
conclude that our knowledge of God, and of God's will increases in proportion to our knowledge and clear
understanding of nature.
Plainly, they are but triflers who, when they cannot explain a thing, run back to the will of God; this is, truly,
a ridiculous way of expressing ignorance.
Philosophers who endeavour to understand things by clear conceptions of them, rather than by miracles, have
always found the task extremely easy—at least, such of them as place true happiness solely in virtue and
peace of mind, and who aim at obeying Nature, rather than being obeyed by her.
All the events narrated in Scripture came to pass naturally, and are referred directly to God because
Scripture, as we have shown, does not aim at explaining things by their natural causes, but only at narrating
what appeals to the popular imagination, and doing so in the manner best calculated to excite wonder, and
consequently to impress the minds of the masses with devotion.
Scripture does not explain things by their secondary causes, but only narrates them in the order and the style
which has most power to move men, and especially uneducated men, to devotion; and therefore it speaks
inaccurately of God and of events, seeing that its object is not to convince the reason, but to attract and lay
hold of the imagination. If the Bible were to describe the destruction of an empire in the style of political
historians, the masses would remain unstirred.
258
We may, then, be absolutely certain that every event which is truly described in Scripture necessarily
happened, like everything else, according to natural laws; and if anything is there set down which can be
proved in set terms to contravene the order of nature, or not to be deducible therefrom, we must believe it to
have been foisted into the sacred writings by irreligious hands.
In order to interpret the Scriptural miracles and understand from the narration of them how they really
happened, it is necessary to know the opinions of those who first related them, and have recorded them for us
in writing, and to distinguish such opinions from the actual impression made upon their senses, otherwise we
shall confound opinions and judgments with the actual miracle as it really occurred: nay, further, we shall
confound actual events with symbolical and imaginary ones. For many things are narrated in Scripture as
real, and were believed to be real, which were in fact only symbolical and imaginary.
In order to understand, in the case of miracles, what actually took place, we ought to be familiar with
Jewish phrases and metaphors; anyone who did not make sufficient allowance for these, would be
continually seeing miracles in Scripture where nothing of the kind is intended by the writer; he would
thus miss the knowledge not only of what actually happened, but also of the mind of the writers of the
sacred text.
Scripture makes the general assertion in several passages that nature's course is fixed and unchangeable. In
Ps. 148:6, for instance, and Jer. 31:35. The wise man also, in Eccles. 1:10, distinctly teaches that "there is
nothing new under the sun," and in verses 11, 12, illustrating the same idea, he adds that although something
occasionally happens which seems new, it is not really new, but "hath been already of old time, which was
before us, whereof there is no remembrance, neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to
come with those that come after." Again in chap. 2:11, he says, "God hath made everything beautiful in his
time," and immediately afterwards adds, "I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever; nothing can
be put to it, nor anything taken from it."
Now all these texts teach most distinctly that nature preserves a fixed and unchangeable order, and that God
in all ages, known and unknown, has been the same; further, that the laws of Nature are so perfect, that
nothing can be added thereto nor taken therefrom; and, lastly, that miracles only appear as something new
because of man's ignorance.
Nowhere does Scripture assert that anything happens which contradicts, or cannot follow from the laws of
Nature; and, therefore, we should not attribute to it such a doctrine.
The words of Moses, "God is a fire" and "God is jealous," are perfectly clear so long as we regard merely the
signification of the words, and I therefore reckon them among the clear passages, though in relation to reason
and truth they are most obscure: still, although the literal meaning is repugnant to the natural light of reason,
nevertheless, if it cannot be clearly overruled on grounds and principles derived from its Scriptural "history,"
it, that is, the literal meaning, must be the one retained: and contrariwise if these passages literally interpreted
are found to clash with principles derived from Scripture, though such literal interpretation were in absolute
harmony with reason, they must be interpreted in a different manner, i.e. metaphorically. … In the present
instance, as Moses says in several other passages that God has no likeness to any visible thing, whether in
heaven or in earth, or in the water, either all such passages must be taken metaphorically.
259
JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704)
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)
There are very few lovers of truth, for truth's sake, even amongst those who persuade themselves that they
are so.
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), book IV, chapter 19
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it
John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), § 94
A father would do well, as his son grows up, and is capable of it, to talk familiarly with him; nay, ask his
advice, and consult with him about those things wherein he has any knowledge or understanding. By this, the
father will gain two things, both of great moment. The sooner you treat him as a man, the sooner he will
begin to be one; and if you admit him into serious discourses sometimes with you, you will insensibly raise
his mind above the usual amusements of youth, and those trifling occupations which it is commonly wasted
in. For it is easy to observe, that many young men continue longer in thought and conversation of school-
boys than otherwise they would, because their parents keep them at that distance, and in that low rank, by all
their carriage to them.
One great reason why many children abandon themselves wholly to silly sports, and trifle away all their time
insipidly, is, because they have found their curiosity baulk'd, and their inquiries neglected.
There is frequently more to be learn'd from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men,
who talk in a road, according to the notions they have borrowed, and the prejudices of their education.
Make what you would have them do a recreation to them, and not a business.
GEORGE SAVILE, MARQUESS OF HALIFAX (1633-1695)

Pride is as loud a beggar as want, and a great deal more saucy.
George Savile, Marquess of Halifax, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (1947), p. 209
Everybody has not wit enough to act out of interest, but everybody hath little enough to do it out of vanity.
George Savile, Marquess of Halifax, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (1947), p. 209
Those few who have sense or honesty sneak up and down single, but never go in herds.
George Savile, Marquess of Halifax, cited in Logan Persall Smith, Reperusals and Re-Collections, p. 118
A fool hath no dialog with himself.

George Savile, Marquess of Halifax, cited in Logan Persall Smith, Reperusals and Re-Collections, p. 119
Complete works
http://books.google.com/books?id=4EdnAAAAMAAJ
When the people contend for their liberty they seldom get anything by their victory but new masters.
George Savile, Marquess of Halifax
260
As the plants which shoot up too fast are not of that continuance, as those which take more time for it; so too
swift a progress in pouring out your kindness, is a certain sign that by the course of nature it will not be long
lived.
George Savile, Marquess of Halifax, “Friendships,” Complete Works (Oxford:1912), p. 33
Tho’ the laziness of a slavish subjection, hath its charms for the more gross and earthly part of mankind, yet
to men made of a better sort of clay, all that the world can give without liberty hath no taste; it is true,
nothing is sold so cheap by unthinking men, but that doth no more lessen the real value of it, than a country
fellows ignorance doth that of a diamond, in selling it for a pot of ale.
George Savile, Marquess of Halifax, “The Character,” Complete Works (Oxford:1912), p. 62
He who thinks his place below him, will certainly be below his place.
George Savile, Marquess of Halifax, “Maxims of State,” Complete Works (Oxford:1912), p. 182
The condition of mankind is to be weary of what we do know, and afraid of what we do not.
George Savile, Marquess of Halifax, “Moral Thoughts and Reflections,” Complete Works (Oxford:1912), p. 230
To understand the world, and to like it, are two things not easily to be reconciled.
To be too much troubled is a worse way of overvaluing the world than being too much pleased.
A man that steps aside from the world, and hath leisure to observe it without interest or design, thinks all
mankind as mad as they think him, for not agreeing with them in their mistakes.
The serious folly of wise men in over-valuing the world, is as contemptible as any thing they think fit to
censure.
The first mistake belonging to business is the going into it.

Men make it such a point of honour to be fit for business that they forget to examine whether business
is fit for a man.
It is not a reproach but a compliment to learning, to say, that great scholars are less fit for business;
since the truth is, business is so much a lower thing than learning, that a man used to the last cannot
easily bring his stomach down to the first.
The government of the world is a great thing; but it is a very coarse one too, compared with the fineness of
speculative knowledge.
The dependance of a great man upon a greater, is a subjection that lower men cannot easily comprehend.
Popularity is a crime from the moment it is sought: it is only a virtue when men have it whether they will or
no.
Popularity … is generally an appeal to the people from the sentence given by men of sense against them.
261
The mixture of fool and knave, maketh up the parti-coloured creatures that make all the bustle in the
world.
Knavery is in such perpetual motion, that is hath not always leisure to look to its own steps; ‘tis like sliding
upon skates, no motion so smooth or swift, but none gives so terrible a fall.
When [knaves] complain of one another as if they were honest men, they ought to be laugh’d at as if they
were fools.
He that carries a small crime easily, will carry it on when it grows to be an ox.
The consequence of a half-wit is a half-will, there is not strength enough in the thought to carry it to the end.
A fool will be rude from the moment he is allowed to be familiar; he can make no other use of freedom than
to be unmannerly.
Passive understanding must not pretend to be active.

The grating of a gridiron is not a worse noise, then the jingling of words is to a man of sense.
It is ill-manners to silence a fool, and cruelty to let him go on.

Most men make little other use of the speech than to give evidence against their own understanding.
The great expence of words is laid out in setting ourselves out, or deceiving others; to convince them
requireth but a few.
Many words are always either suspicious or ridiculous.

A fool hath no dialog with himself, the first thought carrieth him without reply of a second.
A fool will admire or like nothing that he understands, a man of sense nothing but what he understands.
There can be no entire disappointment to a wise man, because he maketh it a cause of succeeding another
time. A fool is so unreasonably raised by his hopes, that he is half-dead by a disappointment: his mistaken
fancy draweth him so high, that when he falleth, he is sure to break his bones.
Just anger may be as dangerous as it could be if there was no provocation.

Anger is never without an argument, but seldom with a good one.

262
True wit must come by drops; anger throweth it out in a stream, and then it is not likely to be of the best
kind.
Ill language punisheth anger by drawing a contempt upon it.

When a jealousy of any kind is once raised, it is as often provoked as cured by any arguments, let them be
never so reasonable.
When laziness letteth things alone, it is a disease; but when skill doth it, it is a vertue.
Malice may help a fool to aggravate, but there must be skill to know how to extenuate.
The defending of an ill thing is more criminal than the doing it, because it wanteth the excuse of not being
premeditated.
An advocate for injustice is like a bawd that is worse than her client who commiteth the sin.
A fool’s excuse is always a second fault.

No passion is better heard by our will, than that of envy: no passion is admitted to have audience with less
exception.
Our pride maketh us over-value our stock of thought, so as to trade much beyond what it is able to make
good.
Heraldry is one of those foolish things that may yet be too much despised. The contempt of scutcheons is as
much a disease in this age, as the over-valuing them was in former times.
There is a good use to be made of the most contemptible things, and an ill one of those that are the most
valuable.
They who are of opinion that money will do everything, may very well be suspected to do everything for
money.
A little learning misleadeth, and a great deal often stupifieth the understanding.
A learned coxcomb dyeth his mistakes in so much a deeper colour: a wrong kind of learning serveth only to
embroider his errors.
The reading of the greatest scholars, if put into a Limbeck, might be distilled into a small quantity of essence.
263
The reading of most men, is like a wardrobe of old cloaths that are seldom used.
The company of a fool is dangerous as well as tedious.

It is flattering some men to endure them.

There is more skill necessary to keep a friend, than there is to reclaim an enemy.
Our kindness is greatest to those that will do what we would have them, in which our esteem cannot always
go along.
The Rule of doing as we would be done by, is never less observed than it is in telling others their faults. But
men intend more to shew others that they are free from the fault, than to dissuade them from committing it.
George Savile, Marquess of Halifax, “Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections,” Complete Works (Oxford:1912), p. 244
If a man love to give advice, it is a sure sign that he himself wanteth it.
A weak Man had rather be thought to know, than know, and that maketh him so impatient to be told of a
Mistake.
As soon as men have understanding enough to find a fault, they have enough to see the danger of mending it.
Desiring to have any thing mended, is venturing to have it spoiled : To know when to let things alone, is a
high pitch of good sense. But a fool hath an eagerness, like a monkey in a glass shop, to break every thing in
the handling.
George Savile, Marquess of Halifax, “Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections,” Complete Works (Oxford:1912), pp. 244-245
Men who borrow their opinions can never repay their debts.
He had better trust to his own opinion, than spoil another man’s for want of apprehending it.
A wise man will do with his reason as a miser doth with his money.
A man that should call every thing by its right name, would hardly pass the streets without being knock’d
down as a common enemy.
A man cannot be more in the wrong than to own without distinction the being in the right.
A man’s understanding is easily shoved out of its place by warm thoughts of any kind.
An old man concludeth from his knowing mankind, that they know him too, and that maketh him very wary.
264
The mind, like the body, is subject to be hurt by every thing it taketh for a remedy.
He that will see at too great a distance, will sometimes mistake a bush for a horse: The prospect of a wise
man will be bounded.
Suspicion is rather a virtue than a fault, as long as it doth like a dog that watcheth, and doth not bite.
A wise man will keep his suspicions muzzled, but he will keep them awake.
A weak man hath less suspicion than a wise one, but when he hath it, he is less easily cured.
Complaining is a contempt upon one’s self.

Men generally state their wants by their fancy, and not by their reason.
Not having things, is a more proper expression for a man of sense than his wanting them.
A man of sense can hardly want, but for his friends and children that have none.
A difficulty raiseth the spirits of a great man.

A man’s mind must be very low, if the difficulty doth not make a part of his pleasure.
The pride of compassing may more than compare with the pleasure of enjoying.
Nothing so ridiculous as a false philosopher, and nothing so rare as a true one.

It is a piece of arrogance to dare to be drunk, because a man drunken sheweth himself without a vail.
The knowledge that is got without pains, is kept without pleasure.

There ought to be a great difference between the memory and the stomach; the last is to admit every thing,
the former should have the faculty of rejecting.
The hitting upon [the mean] is oftner the effect of chance than of skill.
There needeth little care to polish the understanding; if true means were used to strengthen it, it will polish
itself.
265
A man in a corrupted age must make a secret of his integrity, or else he will be looked upon as a common
enemy.
As far as keeping distance is a sign of respect, mankind hath a great deal for justice. They make up in
ceremony what they want in good-will to it.
When by habit a man cometh to have a bargaining soul, its wings are cut, so that it can never soar. It
bindeth reason an apprentice to gain, and instead of a director, maketh it a drudge.
Names to men of sense are no more than fig-leaves; to the generality they are thick coverings that hide the
nature of things from them.
A man who is master of patience, is master of everything else.

If men would think more, they would act less.

The greatest part of the business of the world, is the effect of not thinking.
It is a self-flattering contradiction, that wise men despise the opinion of fools, and yet are proud of having
their esteem.
The man who despiseth slander deserveth it.

Misspending time is a kind of self-homicide.

Truth is not only stifled by ignorance, but concealed out of caution or interest.
A man hath too little heat, or wit, or courage, if he hath not sometimes more than he should.
Just enough of a good thing is always too little.

JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE (1645-1696)

La vie est une tragédie pour celui qui sent, et une comédie pour celui qui pense.
La Bruyère
Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.
La Bruyère
Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.
La Bruyère
It is a sad thing when men have neither the wit to speak well, nor the judgment to hold their tongues.
La Bruyère
266
We must live with our enemies as if they might someday become our friends, and live with our friends as if
someday they might become our enemies.
La Bruyère
The same common-sense which makes an author write good things makes him dread they are not good
enough to deserve reading.
La Bruyère
We ought not to be so vain as to imagine that others are anxious to have a look at us, to esteem is, and that
our talents and merits and the topics of their conversations, but we should have so much confidence in
ourselves as not to fancy that when people whisper they speak ill of us.
La Bruyère, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (1947), p. 207, corrected
All men in their hearts covet esteem, but are loath any one should discover their anxiety to be esteemed; for
men wish to be considered virtuous; and men would no longer be thought virtuous but fond of esteem and
praises, and vain, were they to derive any other advantages from virtue than virtue itself.
La Bruyère, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (1947), p. 208
The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth.

La Bruyère
The wise person often shuns society for fear of being bored.
La Bruyère
Those who make the worst use of their time are first to complain of its brevity.
La Bruyère
Caractères (1688)
English: http://books.google.com/books?id=TqBLS9UX2_cC
French: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17980/17980-h/17980-h.htm
Il faut chercher seulement à penser et à parler juste, sans vouloir amener les autres à notre goût et à nos
sentiments; c’est une trop grande entreprise.
La Bruyère
We should only endeavor to think and speak correctly ourselves, without wishing to bring others over to our
taste and opinions; this would be too great an undertaking.
La Bruyère, Characters, H. Van Laun, trans. (London: 1885) “Of Works of the Mind,” #2
What is the reason that we laugh so freely in a theatre but are ashamed to weep? ... It is not thought odd to
hear a whole theatre ring with laughter at some passage of a comedy, but, on the contrary, it implies that it
was funny, and very naturally performed; ... the natural result of lofty tragedy should be to make us all weep
without concealment and publicly.
La gloire ou le mérite de certains hommes est de bien écrire; et de quelques autres, c’est de n’écrire point.
La Bruyère
It is the glory and the merit of some men to write well, and of others not to write at all.
267
Il y a des esprits, si je l’ose dire, inférieurs et subalternes, qui ne semblent faits que pour être le recueil, le
registre, ou le magasin de toutes les productions des autres génies: ils sont plagiaires, traducteurs,
compilateurs; ils ne pensent point, ils disent ce que les auteurs ont pensé; et comme le choix des pensées est
invention, ils l’ont mauvais, peu juste, et qui les détermine plutôt à rapporter beaucoup de choses, que
d’excellentes choses; ils n’ont rien d’original et qui soit à eux; ils ne savent que ce qu’ils ont appris, et ils
n’apprennent que ce que tout le monde veut bien ignorer, une science aride, dénuée d’agrément et d’utilité,
qui ne tombe point dans la conversation, qui est hors de commerce, semblable à une monnaie qui n’a point de
cours: on est tout à la fois étonné de leur lecture et ennuyé de leur entretien ou de leurs ouvrages. Ce sont
ceux que les grands et le vulgaire confondent avec les savants, et que les sages renvoient au pédantisme.
La Bruyère
There are certain inferior or second-rate minds, who seem only fit to become the receptacle, register,
or storehouse of all the productions of other talents; they are plagiarists, translators, compilers; they
never think, but tell you what other authors have thought; and as a selection of thoughts requires some
inventive powers, theirs is ill-made and inaccurate, which induces them rather to make it large than excellent.
They have no originality, and possess nothing of their own; they only know what they have learned,
and only learn what the rest of the world does not wish to know; a useless and dry science, without any
charm or profit, unfit for conversation, nor suitable to intercourse, like a coin which has no currency.
We are astonished when we read them, as well as tired out by their conversation or their works. The nobility
and the common herd mistake them for men of learning, but intelligent men rank them with pedants.
Je conseille à un auteur né copiste, et qui a l’extrême modestie de travailler d’après quelqu’un, de ne se

choisir pour exemplaires que ces sortes d’ouvrages où il entre de l’esprit, de l’imagination, ou même de
l’érudition: s’il n’atteint pas ses originaux, du moins il en approche, et il se fait lire. Il doit au contraire éviter
comme un écueil de vouloir imiter ceux qui écrivent par humeur, que le cœur fait parler, à qui il inspire les
termes et les figures, et qui tirent, pour ainsi dire, de leurs entrailles tout ce qu’ils expriment sur le papier:
dangereux modèles et tout propres à faire tomber dans le froid, dans le bas et dans le ridicule ceux qui
s’ingèrent de les suivre. En effet, je rirais d’un homme qui voudrait sérieusement parler mon ton de voix, ou
me ressembler de visage.
La Bruyère
I would advise an author who can only imitate, and who is modest enough to tread in the footsteps of other
men, to choose for his models writings that are full of intelligence, imagination, or even learning: if he does
not come up to his originals, he may at least come somewhat near them, and be read. He ought, on the
contrary, to avoid, as a rock ahead, the imitation of those authors who have a natural inclination for writing,
employ phrases and figures of speech which spring from the heart, and who draw, if I may say so, from their
inmost feelings all they express on paper. They are dangerous models, and induce those who endeavor to
follow them to adopt a cold, vulgar, and ridiculous style.
Celui qui n’a égard en écrivant qu’au goût de son siècle songe plus à sa personne qu’à ses écrits: il faut
toujours tendre à la perfection, et alors cette justice qui nous est quelquefois refusée par nos contemporains,
la postérité sait nous la rendre.
La Bruyère
He who only writes to suit the taste of the age, considers himself more than his writings. We should
always aim at perfection, and then posterity will do us that justice which sometimes our contemporaries
refuse.
Horace ou Despréaux l’a dit avant vous.—Je le crois sur votre parole; mais je l’ai dit comme mien. Ne puis-
je pas penser après eux une chose vraie, et que d’autres encore penseront après moi?
La Bruyère
“Horace or Boileau have said such a thing before you.”—”I take your word for it, but I have used it as my
own. May I not have the same correct thought after them, as others may have after me?”
268
«Il est propre à tout», disent ses amis, ce qui signifie toujours qu’il n’a pas plus de talent pour une chose que
pour une autre, ou en d’autres termes, qu’il n’est propre à rien.
La Bruyère
“He is fit for anything,” say his friends, which always means that he has no more talent for one thing than for
another, or, in other words, that he is fit for nothing.
La Bruyère, Characters, H. Van Laun, trans. (London: 1885) “Of Personal Merit,” #10
Se faire valoir par des choses qui ne dépendent point des autres, mais de soi seul, ou renoncer à se faire
valoir: maxime inestimable et d’une ressource infinie dans la pratique, utile aux faibles, aux vertueux, à ceux
qui ont de l’esprit, qu’elle rend maîtres de leur fortune ou de leur repos: pernicieuse pour les grands, qui
diminuerait leur cour, ou plutôt le nombre de leurs esclaves, qui ferait tomber leur morgue avec une partie de
leur autorité, et les réduirait presque à leurs entremets et à leurs équipages; qui les priverait du plaisir qu’ils
sentent à se faire prier, presser, solliciter, à faire attendre ou à refuser, à promettre et à ne pas donner; qui les
traverserait dans le goût qu’ils ont quelquefois à mettre les sots en vue et à anéantir le mérite quand il leur
arrive de le discerner; qui bannirait des cours les brigues, les cabales, les mauvais offices, la bassesse, la
flatterie, la fourberie; qui ferait d’une cour orageuse, pleine de mouvements et d’intrigues, comme une pièce
comique ou même tragique, dont les sages ne seraient que les spectateurs; qui remettrait de la dignité dans les
différentes conditions des hommes, de la sérénité, sur leurs visages; qui étendrait leur liberté; qui réveillerait
en eux, avec les talents naturels, l’habitude du travail et de l’exercice; qui les exciterait à l’émulation, au
désir de la gloire, à l’amour de la vertu; qui, au lieu de courtisans vils, inquiets, inutiles, souvent onéreux à la
république, en ferait ou de sages économes, ou d’excellents pères de famille, ou des juges intègres, ou de
bons officiers, ou de grands capitaines, ou des orateurs, ou des philosophes; et qui ne leur attirerait à tous nul
autre inconvénient, que celui peut-être de laisser à leurs héritiers moins de trésors que de bons exemples.
La Bruyère
To make the most of ourselves through things which do not depend on others but on ourselves alone, or to
abandon all ideas of making the most of ourselves, is an inestimable maxim and of infinite advantage when
brought into practice. … It would banish from courts plots, parties, trickery, baseness, flattery, and deceit; it
would make a court, full of agitation, bustle, and intrigue, resemble a comedy, or even a tragedy, where the
wise are only spectators; it would restore dignity to the several conditions of men, serenity to their looks,
enlarge their liberty, and awaken in them their natural talents as well as a habit for work and for exercise; …
and instead of vile, restless, useless courtiers, often burdensome to the commonwealth, would make them
clever administrators, exemplary heads of families, upright judges or good financiers, great commanders,
orators, or philosophers; and all the inconvenience any of them would suffer through this would be, perhaps,
to leave to their heirs less treasures, but excellent examples.
Personne presque n’a assez de mérite pour jouer ce rôle avec dignité, ni assez de fonds pour remplir le vide
du temps, sans ce que le vulgaire appelle des affaires. Il ne manque cependant à l’oisiveté du sage qu’un
meilleur nom, et que méditer, parler, lire, et être tranquille s’appelât travailler.
La Bruyère
Almost no one has merit enough to … pass his leisure hours without what is vulgarly called “business.”
There is, however, nothing wanting to the idleness of a philosopher but a better name, and that
meditation, conversation, and reading should be called “work.”
La modestie est au mérite ce que les ombres sont aux figures dans un tableau: elle lui donne de la force et du
relief.
La Bruyère
Modesty is to merit what shade is to figures in a picture; it gives it strength and makes it stand out.
269
Un extérieur simple est l’habit des hommes vulgaires, il est taillé pour eux et sur leur mesure; mais c’est une
parure pour ceux qui ont rempli leur vie de grandes actions: je les compare à une beauté négligée, mais plus
piquante.
La Bruyère
Outward simplicity befits ordinary men, like a garment made to measure for them; but it serves as an
adornment to those who have filled their lives with great deeds: they might be compared to some beauty
carelessly dressed and thereby all the more attractive.
A plain appearance is to ordinary men their proper garb: it suits them and fits them, but it adorns those
persons whose lives have been distinguished by grand deeds.
S’il est ordinaire d’être vivement touché des choses rares, pourquoi le sommes-nous si peu de la vertu?
La Bruyère
If it be usual to be strongly impressed by things that are scarce, why are we so little impressed by virtue?
S’il est heureux d’avoir de la naissance, il ne l’est pas moins d’être tel qu’on ne s’informe plus si vous en
avez.
La Bruyère
If it be a happiness to be of noble parentage, it is no less so to possess so much merit that nobody inquires
whether we are noble or plebeian.
Il apparaît de temps en temps sur la surface de la terre des hommes rares, exquis, qui brillent par leur vertu,
et dont les qualités éminentes jettent un éclat prodigieux. Semblables à ces étoiles extraordinaires dont on
ignore les causes, et dont on sait encore moins ce qu’elles deviennent après avoir disparu, ils n’ont ni aïeuls,
ni descendants: ils composent seuls toute leur race.
La Bruyère
From time to time have appeared in the world some extraordinary and admirable men, refulgent by their
virtues, and whose eminent qualities have shone with prodigious brilliancy, like those uncommon stars of
which we do not know why they appear, and know still less what becomes of them after they have
disappeared. These men have neither ancestors nor posterity; they alone are their whole race.
Menippus is a bird decked in various feathers which are not his. He neither says nor feels anything, but
repeats the feelings and sayings of others; it is so natural for him to make use of other people’s minds that he
is the first deceived by it, and often believes he speaks his own mind or expresses his own thoughts when he
is but the echo of some man he just parted with.
A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune, and
favor cannot satisfy him. He sees nothing sufficient to engage his affections and to render it deserving of
his cares and his desires. ... The only thing that might tempt him is that kind of honor which should attend a
wholly pure and unaffected virtue; but men but rarely grant it, so he does without it.
It is no more in our power to love always than it was not to love at all.
La Bruyère, Characters, H. Van Laun, trans. (London: 1885) “Of the Affections,” #31
There are some men who turn a deaf ear to reason and good advice, and wilfully go wrong for fear of being
controlled.
270
An intelligent man neither allows himself to be controlled nor attempts to control others; he wishes reason
alone to rule, and that always.
All passions are deceptive; they conceal themselves as much as possible from others and from themselves as
well. No vice exists which does not pretend to be more or less like some virtue, and which does not take
advantage of this assumed resemblance.
Est-ce un si grand mal d’être entendu quand on parle, et de parler comme tout le monde? Une chose vous
manque, Acis, à vous et à vos semblables les diseurs de phoebus; vous ne vous en défiez point, et je vais
vous jeter dans l’étonnement: une chose vous manque, c’est l’esprit. Ce n’est pas tout: il y a en vous une
chose de trop, qui est l’opinion d’en avoir plus que les autres; voilà la source de votre pompeux galimatias,
de vos phrases embrouillées, et de vos grands mots qui ne signifient rien. Vous abordez cet homme, ou vous
entrez dans cette chambre; je vous tire par votre habit, et vous dis à l’oreille: «Ne songez point à avoir de
l’esprit, n’en ayez point, c’est votre rôle; ayez, si vous pouvez, un langage simple, et tel que l’ont ceux en qui
vous ne trouvez aucun esprit peut-être alors croira-t-on que vous en avez.»
La Bruyère
Is it so very wrong to be intelligible in speaking, and to speak as everybody does? There is one thing, Acis,
which you … want very much; you have not the smallest suspicion of it, and I know I am going to surprise
you. Do you know what that thing is? It is wit. But that is not all. There is too much of something else in you,
which is the opinion that you have more intelligence than other men; this is the cause of all your pompous
nonsense, of your mixed-up phraseology, and of all those grand words without any meaning. The next time I
find you addressing anybody, or entering a room, I shall pull your coat-tails and whisper to you: “Do not
pretend to be witty; be natural, that is better suited to you; use, if you can, plain language, such as those
persons speak whom you fancy are without wit; then, perhaps, we may think you have some yourself.”
La Bruyère, Characters, H. Van Laun, trans. (London: 1885) “Of Society and Conversation,” #7
Il y a des gens qui parlent un moment avant que d’avoir pensé. Il y en a d’autres qui ont une fade attention à
ce qu’ils disent, et avec qui l’on souffre dans la conversation de tout le travail de leur esprit; ils sont comme
pétris de phrases et de petits tours d’expression, concertés dans leur geste et dans tout leur maintien; ils sont
puristes, et ne hasardent pas le moindre mot, quand il devrait faire le plus bel effet du monde; rien d’heureux
ne leur échappe, rien ne coule de source et avec liberté: ils parlent proprement et ennuyeusement.
La Bruyère
Some men speak one moment before they think; others tediously study everything they say, and in
conversation bore us as painfully as was the travail of their mind. ... They call themselves “purists,” and do
not venture to say the most trifling word not in use, however expressive it may be. Nothing comes from them
worth remembering, nothing is spontaneous and unrestrained; they speak correctly, but they are very
tiresome.
L’esprit de la conversation consiste bien moins à en montrer beaucoup qu’à en faire trouver aux autres: celui
qui sort de votre entretien content de soi et de son esprit, l’est de vous parfaitement. Les hommes n’aiment
point à vous admirer, ils veulent plaire; ils cherchent moins à être instruits, et même réjouis, qu’à être goûtés
et applaudis; et le plaisir le plus délicat est de faire celui d’autrui.
La Bruyère
The true spirit of conversation consists more in bringing out the cleverness of others than in showing a
great deal of it yourself; he who goes away pleased with himself and his own wit is also greatly pleased
with you. Most men would rather please than admire you; they seek less to be instructed, and even to be
amused, than to be praised and applauded; the most delicate of pleasures is to please another person.
271
C’est une grande misère que de n’avoir pas assez d’esprit pour bien parler, ni assez de jugement pour se taire.
Voilà le principe de toute impertinence.
La Bruyère
It is a sad thing when men have neither enough intelligence to speak well nor enough sense to hold their
tongues.
Il fait qu’on la suit par imitation, et que l’on s’y perfectionne.

La Bruyère
Politeness is acquired and perfected by imitation.
Il me semble que l’esprit de politesse est une certaine attention à faire que par nos paroles et par nos
manières les autres soient contents de nous et d’eux-mêmes.
La Bruyère
The very essence of politeness seems to be to take care that by our words and actions we make other people
pleased with us as well as with themselves.
Ne pouvoir supporter tous les mauvais caractères dont le monde est plein n’est pas un fort bon caractère: il
faut dans le commerce des pièces d’or et de la monnaie.
La Bruyère
Not to be able to bear with all bad-tempered people with whom the world is crowded, shows that a
man has not a good temper himself.
Le sage quelquefois évite le monde, de peur d’être ennuyé.

La Bruyère
Wise men sometimes avoid the world, that they may not be surfeited with it.
À mesure que la faveur et les grands biens se retirent d’un homme, ils laissent voir en lui le ridicule qu’ils
couvraient, et qui y était sans que personne s’en aperçût.
La Bruyère
As favour and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no one
perceived before.
La Bruyère, Characters, H. Van Laun, trans. (London: 1885) “Of The Gifts of Fortune,” #4
N’envions point à une sorte de gens leurs grandes richesses; ils les ont à titre onéreux, et qui ne nous
accommoderait point: ils ont mis leur repos, leur santé, leur honneur et leur conscience pour les avoir; cela
est trop cher, et il n’y a rien à gagner à un tel marché.
La Bruyère
Let us not envy a certain class of men for their enormous riches; they have paid such an equivalent for
them that it would not suit us; they have given for them their peace of mind, their health, their honour,
and their conscience; this is rather too dear, and there is nothing to be made out of such a bargain.
Celui-là est riche, qui reçoit plus qu’il ne consume; celui-là est pauvre, dont la dépense excède la recette.
La Bruyère
A man is rich whose income is larger than his expenses, and he is poor if his expenses are greater than his
income.
272
S’il est vrai que l’on soit riche de tout ce dont on n’a pas besoin, un homme fort riche, c’est un homme qui
est sage.
La Bruyère
If it be true that a man is rich who wants nothing, a wise man is a very rich man.
S’il est vrai que l’on soit pauvre par toutes les choses que l’on désire, l’ambitieux et l’avare languissent dans
une extrême pauvreté.
La Bruyère
If it is true that one is poor on account of all the things one wants, the ambitious and the avaricious languish
in extreme poverty.
La Bruyère, Characters, my translation “Of The Gifts of Fortune,” #49
Du même fonds d’orgueil dont l’on s’élève fièrement au-dessus de ses inférieurs, l’on rampe vilement devant
ceux qui sont au-dessus de soi. C’est le propre de ce vice, qui n’est fondé ni sur le mérite personnel ni sur la
vertu, mais sur les richesses, les postes, le crédit, et sur de vaines sciences, de nous porter également à
mépriser ceux qui ont moins que nous de cette espèce de biens, et à estimer trop ceux qui en ont une mesure
qui excède la nôtre.
La Bruyère
The same pride which makes a man treat haughtily his inferiors, makes him cringe servilely to those above
him. It is the very nature of this vice, which is neither based on personal merit nor on virtue, but on riches,
posts, influence, and useless knowledge, to render a man as supercilious to those who are below him as to
over-value those who are above.
La Bruyère, Characters, H. Van Laun, trans., modified (London: 1885) “Of The Gifts of Fortune,” #57
Il y a des âmes sales, pétries de boue et d’ordure, éprises du gain et de l’intérêt, comme les belles âmes le
sont de la gloire et de la vertu; capables d’une seule volupté, qui est celle d’acquérir ou de ne point perdre.
La Bruyère
There are some sordid minds, formed of slime and filth, to whom interest and gain are what glory and
virtue are to superior souls; they feel no other pleasure but to acquire money.
We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all.
La Bruyère, Characters, H. Van Laun, trans. (London: 1885) “Of the Heart,” #63
Nothing more clearly shows how little God esteems his gift to men of wealth, money, position and other
worldly goods, than the way he distributes these, and the sort of men who are most amply provided with
them.
La Bruyère, Characters, H. Van Laun, trans. (London: 1885) “Of Worldly Goods,” #24
We should keep silent about those in power; to speak well of them almost implies flattery; to speak ill of
them while they are alive is dangerous, and when they are dead is cowardly.
La Bruyère, Characters, H. Van Laun, trans. (London: 1885) “The Great,” #56
THOMAS FULLER (1654-1734)

We do not injure the truth every time we do not speak it.
Thomas Fuller
A constant popping off of proverbs will make thee a byword.

Thomas Fuller
273
JONATHAN SWIFT (1667-1745)
She sits tormenting every guest,
Nor gives her tongue one moment's rest,
In phrases batter'd, stale, and trite,
Which modern ladies call polite.
Jonathan Swift, The Journal of a Modern Lady.
When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in
confederacy against him.
Jonathan Swift
A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.
Jonathan Swift
Gulliver’s Travels (1726)

http://books.google.com/books?id=DzcVAAAAYAAJ
You have made a most admirable panegyric upon your country [England]; you have clearly proved that
ignorance, idleness, and vice, are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator: that laws are best
explained, interpreted, and applied by those whose interest and abilities lies in perverting, confounding, and
eluding them. I observe among you some lines of an institution, which in its original might have been
tolerable, but these half erased, and the rest wholly blurred and blotted by corruptions. It doth not appear
from all you have said, how any one virtue is required towards the procurement of any one station among
you; much less that men are ennobled on account of their virtue, that priests are advanced for their piety or
learning, soldiers for their conduct or valour, judges for their integrity, senators for the love of their country,
or counsellors for their wisdom.
Jonathan Swift, the King of Brobdingnag in Gulliver’s Travels, Part 2, chapter 6, p. 135
But what I chiefly admired, and thought altogether unaccountable, was the strong disposition I observed in
them towards news and politics, perpetually enquiring into public affairs, giving their judgments in matters
of state, and passionately disputing every inch of a party opinion. I have indeed observed the same
disposition among most of the mathematicians I have known in Europe, although I could never discover the
least analogy between the two sciences; unless those people suppose, that because the smallest circle hath as
many degrees as the largest, therefore the regulation and management of the world require no more abilities
than the handling and turning of a globe. But I rather take this quality to spring from a very common
infirmity of human nature, inclining us to be more curious and conceited in matters where we have least
concern, and for which we are least adapted either by study or nature.
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, Part 3, chapter 2
Three kings … showed with great strength of reason, that the royal throne could not be supported without
corruption, because that positive, confident, restive temper, which virtue infused into man, was a perpetual
clog to public business.
I hope I may be pardoned if these discoveries inclined me a little to abate of that profound veneration which I
am naturally apt to pay to persons of high rank, who ought to be treated with the utmost respect due to their
sublime dignity, by us their inferiors.
274
He asked me what were the usual causes or motives that made one country go to war with another. I
answered they were innumerable; but I should only mention a few of the chief. Sometimes the ambition of
princes, who never think they have land or people enough to govern; sometimes the corruption of ministers,
who engage their master in a war in order to stifle or divert the clamour of the subjects against their evil
administration. Difference in opinions hath cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread,
or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine; whether whistling be a vice or a
virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire; what is the best colour for a coat, whether
black, white, red, or gray; and whether it should be long or short, narrow or wide, dirty or clean; with many
more. Neither are any wars so furious and bloody, or of so long continuance, as those occasioned by
difference in opinion, especially if it be in things indifferent.
Although he hated the Yahoos of this country, yet he no more blamed them for their odious qualities, than he
did a gnnayh (a bird of prey) for its cruelty, or a sharp stone for cutting his hoof. But, when a creature
pretending to reason, could be capable of such enormities, he dreaded lest the corruption of that faculty might
be worse than brutality itself. He seemed therefore confident, that instead of reason, we were only possessed
of some quality fitted to increase our natural vices.
It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and
therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice, and the
general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities, to justify the
most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of directing accordingly.
Here my master interposing, said it was a pity, that creatures endowed with such prodigious abilities of mind
as these lawyers, by the description I gave of them, must certainly be, were not rather encouraged to be
instructors of others in wisdom and knowledge. In answer to which, I assured his Honour, that in all points
out of their own trade, they were usually the most ignorant and stupid generation among us, the most
despicable in common conversation, avowed enemies to all knowledge and learning, and equally disposed to
pervert the general reason of mankind in every other subject of discourse, as in that of their own profession.
The many virtues of those excellent quadrupeds placed in opposite view to human corruptions, had so far
opened my eyes and enlarged my understanding, that I began to view the actions and passions of man in a
very different light, and to think the honour of my own kind not worth managing; which, besides, it was
impossible for me to do before a person of so acute a judgment as my master, who daily convinced me of a
thousand faults in myself, whereof I had not the least perception before, and which with us would never be
numbered even among human infirmities. I had likewise learned from his example an utter detestation of all
falsehood or disguise; and truth appeared so amiable to me, that I determined upon sacrificing every thing to
it.
He looked upon us as a sort of animals to whose share, by what accident he could not conjecture, some small
pittance of reason had fallen, whereof we made no other use than by its assistance to aggravate our natural
corruptions, and to acquire new ones, which nature had not given us. That we disarmed ourselves of the few
abilities she had bestowed, had been very successful in multiplying our original wants, and seemed to spend
our whole lives in vain endeavours to supply them
The Yahoos were known to hate one another more than they did any different species of animals; and the
reason usually assigned was, the odiousness of their own shapes, which all could see in the rest, but not in
themselves.
275
For if you throw among five Yahoos as much food as would be sufficient for fifty, they will, instead of eating
peaceably, fall together by the ears, each single one impatient to have all to itself.
In some fields of his country, there are certain shining stones of several colours, whereof the Yahoos are
violently fond, and when part of these stones is fixed in the earth, as it sometimes happeneth, they will dig
with their claws for whole days to get them out, then carry them away, and hide them by heaps in their
kennels; but still looking round with great caution, for fear their comrades should find out their treasure. My
master said, he could never discover the reason of this unnatural appetite, or how these stones could be of
any use to a Yahoo; but now he believed it might proceed from the same principle of avarice which I had
ascribed to mankind.
It was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or
how a point could be disputable; because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain; and
beyond our knowledge we cannot do either. So that controversies, wranglings, disputes, and positiveness in
false or dubious propositions, are evils unknown among the Houyhnhnms. In the like manner when I used to
explain to him our several systems of natural philosophy, he would laugh that a creature pretending to
reason, should value itself upon the knowledge of other people’s conjectures, and in things, where that
knowledge, if it were certain, could be of no use. Wherein he agreed entirely with the sentiments of Socrates,
as Plato delivers them.
Nature is very easily satisfied.

When I thought of my family, my friends, my countrymen, or human race in general, I considered them as
they really were, Yahoos in shape and disposition, perhaps a little more civilized, and qualified with the gift
of speech, but making no other use of reason, than to improve and multiply those vices, whereof their
brethren in this country had only the share that nature allotted them.
A decree of the general assembly in this country is expressed by the word hnhloayn, which signifies an
exhortation, as near as I can render it; for they have no conception how a rational creature can be compelled,
but only advised, or exhorted; because no person can disobey reason, without giving up his claim to be a
rational creature.
A traveller’s chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad as
well as good example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.
“Thoughts on Various Subjects”

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/swift/jonathan/s97th/
We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
Jonathan Swift, “Thoughts on Various Subjects”
Reflect on things past as wars, negotiations, factions, etc. We enter so little into those interests, that we
wonder how men could possibly be so busy and concerned for things so transitory; look on the present times,
we find the same humour, yet wonder not at all.
276
In all well-instituted commonwealths, care has been taken to limit men’s possessions; which is done for
many reasons, and among the rest, for one which perhaps is not often considered: that when bounds are set to
men’s desires, after they have acquired as much as the laws will permit them, their private interest is at an
end, and they have nothing to do but to take care of the public.
The Stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when
we want shoes.
Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with
creeping.
The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter, and a
scarcity of words; for whoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in
speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both; whereas common speakers have only one set of ideas,
and one set of words to clothe them in, and these are always ready at the mouth. So people come faster
out of a church when it is almost empty, than when a crowd is at the door.
To be vain is rather a mark of humility than pride. Vain men delight in telling what honours have been
done them, what great company they have kept, and the like, by which they plainly confess that these
honours were more than their due, and such as their friends would not believe if they had not been
told: whereas a man truly proud thinks the greatest honours below his merit, and consequently scorns
to boast.
Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old.

Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.
GIAMBATTISTA VICO (1668-1744)

That which is metaphysics insofar as it contemplates things in all the forms of their being, is logic insofar as
it considers things in all the forms by which they may be signified.
Giambattista Vico, Sciencia Nuova, 2.1
For as the discovery of general arguments is by nature prior to the judgment about their truth, so the teaching
of topics [topica] must be prior to that of criticism [critica].
Giambattista Vico, De nostre temporis studiorum ratione, cited in Ernesto Grassi, Rhetoric as Philosophy (1980), p. 41
But this order of studies [ratio] brings with it the disadvantage for young people, that in the future they will
neither show intelligence in civil life, not be able to enliven a speech with characteristic colors and warm it
with the fire of emotions.
Giambattista Vico, De studiorum ratione
Providence has well arranged human beings by awakening in the human mind first topics, and then critique,
just as the cognition of things precedes judgment about them. For topic is the faculty which makes minds
“ingenious,” just as critique makes them precise; and in early times the question was, above all, to find those
things that are necessary for human life, and finding is the property of ingenium.
Giambattista Vico, Sciencia Nuova, as cited in Ernesto Grassi, Rhetoric as Philosophy (1980), p. 45
277
ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744)
‘Tis the first virtue, vices to abhor;
And the first wisdom, to be fool no more.
Alexander Pope, “Imitations of Horace”
Wilt thou do nothing for a noble end,

Nothing to make philosophy thy friend?
To stop thy foolish views, thy long desires,
And ease thy heart of all that it admires?
Here wisdom calls: 'Seek virtue first, be bold!
As gold to silver, virtue is to gold.'
There, London's voice, ‘Get money, money still!
And then let Virtue follow, if she will.'
To which shall our applause belong,

This new court jargon, or the good old song?
Did ever Proteus, Merlin, any witch,

Transform themselves so strangely as the rich?
How shall the Muse, from such a Monarch, steal

An hour, and not defraud the Public Weal?
You despise the man to books confined,

Who from his study rails at human kind;
Though what he learns he speaks, and may advance
Some general maxims, or be right by chance.
Alexander Pope
Some people will never learn anything because they understand everything too soon.
Alexander Pope (?)
Humane nature I always thought the most useful object of humane reason, and to make the
consideration of it pleasant and entertaining, I always thought the best employment of humane wit:
other parts of philosophy may perhaps make us wiser, but this not only answers to that end, but makes
us better too. Hence it was that the Oracle pronounced Socrates the wisest of all men living, because he
judiciously made choice of human nature for the object of his thoughts; an enquiry into which as much
exceeds all other learning, as it is of more consequence to adjust the true nature and measures of right
and wrong, than to settle the distance of the planets, and compute the times of their circumvolutions.
Alexander Pope, “On Reason and Passion,” Prose works of Alexander Pope (1936), vol. 1 p. 44
Like bubbles on the sea of matter born ...

Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Man: Epistle III” 19
278
For forms of government let fools contest;
Whate'er is best administer'd is best:
For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.
Thus God and Nature link'd the gen'ral frame,

And bade self-love and social be the same.
An Essay on Criticism (1711)

‘Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
Appear in writing or in judging ill;
But, of the two, less dang’rous is th’ offence
To tire our patience, than mislead our sense.
Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Criticism,” 1-4
‘Tis with our judgments, as our watches, none

Go just alike, yet each believes his own.
In Poets as true Genius is but rare,

True Taste as seldom is the Critic’s share
Authors are partial to their wit, ‘tis true,

But are not Critics to their judgment too?
But, as the slightest sketch, if justly trac’d,

Is by ill-colouring but the more disgrac’d,
So by false learning is good sense defac’d:
Some are bewilder’d in the maze of schools,
And some made coxcombs Nature meant but fools.
In search of wit these lose their common sense,
And then turn Critics in their own defence:
Each burns alike, who can, or cannot write,
Or with a Rival’s, or an Eunuch’s spite.
All fools have still an itching to deride,
And fain would be upon the laughing side.
Be sure yourself and your own reach to know,

How far your genius, taste, and learning go;
Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet,
And mark that point where sense and dulness meet.
One science only will one genius fit;

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.
279
Like Kings we lose the conquests gain’d before,
By vain ambition still to make them more
Those rules of old, discovered not devised

Are Nature still, but Nature methodized
Nature … is but restrain’d

By the same Laws which first herself ordained.
To teach vain Wites a science little known,

T’ admire superior sense, and doubt their own!
What the weak head with strongest bias rules,

Is Pride, the never-failing vice of fools.
Whatever Nature has in worth denied,
She gives in large recruits of needful Pride;
For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find
What wants in blood and spirits, swell’d with wind:
Pride, where Wit fails, steps in to our defence,
And fills up all the mighty void of sense.
If once right reason drives that cloud away,
Truth breaks upon us with resistless day.
Trust not yourself; but your defects to know,
Make use of ev’ry friend—and ev’ry foe.
A little learning is a dang’rous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There, shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fir’d at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind;
But more advanc’d, behold, with strange surprize,
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
And if the means be just, the conduct true,

Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due.
As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit,
T’ avoid great errors, must the less commit.
A perfect judge will read each work of Wit

With the same spirit that its author writ.
280
Some to Conceit alone their taste confine,
And glitt’ring thoughts struck out at ev’ry line;
Pleas’d with a work where nothing’s just or fit;
One glaring Chaos and wild heap of wit.
Poets, like painters, thus, unskill’d to trace
The naked nature, and the living grace,
With gold and jewels cover ev’ry part,
And hide with ornaments their want of art
True Wit is Nature to advantage dress’d;

What oft was thought, but ne’er so well express’d;
Something, whose truth convinc’d at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mind
Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,

Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found
But true Expression, like th’ unchanging Sun,

Clears and improves whate’er it shines upon,
It gilds all objects, but it alters none
A vile conceit in pompous words express’d

Is like a clown in regal purple dress’d
In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;

Alike fantastic, if too new, or old:
Be not the first by whom the new are try’d,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
But most by Numbers judge a Poet’s song,

And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong:
In the bright Muse, tho’ thousand charms conspire,
Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire;
Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear,
Not mend their minds; as some to church repair,
Not for the doctrine, but the music there.
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,

As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.
‘Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an Echo to the sense.
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,

And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar:
281
Let not each gay turn thy rapture move;
For fools admire, but men of sense approve.
Some foreign writers, some our own despise;

The Ancients only, or the Moderns prize.
Thus Wit, like Faith, by each man is apply’d
To one small sect, and all are damn’d beside.
Meanly they seek the blessing to confine,
And force that sun but on a part to shine
Regard not then if Wit be old or new,

But blame the false, and value still the true.
Some ne’er advance a Judgment of their own,

But catch the spreading notion of the Town;
They reason and conclude by precedent,
And own stale nonsense which they ne’er invent.
The Vulgar thus through Imitation err;

As oft the Learn’d by being singular
So much they scorn the crowd, that if the throng
By chance go right, they purposely go wrong:
Some praise at morning what they blame at night;

But always think the last opinion right.
A Muse by these is like a mistress us’d,
This hour she’s idoliz’d, the next abus’d;
While their weak heads, like towns unfortify’d,
‘Twixt sense and nonsense daily change their side.
Men must be taught as if you taught them not

And things unknown proposed as things forgot.
Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Criticism”
The bookful blockhead ignorantly read,

With loads of learned lumber in his head,
With his own tongue still edifies his ears,
And always list’ning to himself appears.
Alexander Pope, “Essay on Criticism,” 612-615
MONTESQUIEU (1689-1755)
Every punishment which does not arise from absolute necessity is tyrannical.
Montesquieu
If we wanted to be happy it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost
always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.
Montesquieu
282
Rica and myself are perhaps the first Persians who have left their native country urged by the thirst for
knowledge; who have abandoned the amenities of a tranquil life for the laborious search after wisdom.
Although born in a prosperous realm, we did not believe that its boundaries should limit our knowledge.
Montesquieu, Persian Letters, Letter 1
To say that there is nothing just or unjust but what positive laws ordain or prohibit is to say that before a
circle was drawn all its radii were not equal.
Montesquieu, Laws p. 4
Three things we observe there, and find constantly mentioned: that our virtues should be touched with a
certain nobleness, our morals with a certain freedom, our manners with a certain politeness. The virtues
exhibited in this society are always less what one owes to others than what one owes to oneself; the are not
so much a response to an appeal from our fellow-citizens as a mark of distinction between us and them.
Montesquieu, describing the code of honor in the Grand Siècle, cited in Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (Chicago: 1964), p. xiii
The state of slavery is in its own nature bad. It is neither useful to the master nor to the slave; not to the slave,
because he can do nothing through a motive of virtue; nor to the master, because by having an unlimited
authority over his slaves he insensibly accustoms himself to the want of all moral virtues, and thence
becomes fierce, hasty, severe, choleric, voluptuous, and cruel.
Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, Book 15, Chapter 1
Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, Book XXIX, Chapter 16
It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures to be men, because, allowing them to be men, a suspicion
would follow that we ourselves are not Christians.
Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws
One must not always so exhaust a subject that one leaves nothing for the reader to do. It is not a question of
making him read but of making him think.
Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, A. Cohler, trans. (Cambridge: 1989), p. 186
LORD CHESTERFIELD, a.k.a. PHILIP STANHOPE (1694-1773)

Style is the dress of thoughts; and let them be ever so just, if your style is homely, coarse, and vulgar, they
will appear to as much disadvantage.
Lord Chesterfield
It is not to be imagined by how many different ways vanity defeats its own purposes.
Lord Chesterfield, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (1947), p. 208
Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise.
Be wiser than other people if you can; but do not tell them so.
A wise man will live as much within his wit as his income.
Our prejudices are our mistresses; reason is at best our wife, very often heard indeed, but seldom minded.
Lord Chesterfield, cited in Logan Pearsall Smith, Reperusals and Re-Collections, p. 128
People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind as surgeons are to their bodily pains.
Lord Chesterfield, cited in Logan Pearsall Smith, Reperusals and Re-Collections, p. 129
283
Letters to his Godson
http://books.google.com/books?id=cHBaAAAAMAAJ
Je sçay bien qu’il n’y a rien que vous craignez tant que de passer pour un ignorant, et en effet il n’y a rien qui
avilisse et dégrade plus un homme que l’ignorance. On méprise un ignorant, on le montre même au doigt, et
avec raison, parcequ’il ne tient qu’à lui de ne l’être pas. Le Savoir ne demande que de l’attention, et je sçay
que vous en aurez beaucoup.
Lord Chesterfield, Letter to his godson, July 9, 1762 (p. 6)
If God gives you wit, which I am not sure that I wish you, unless he gives you at the same time an equal
portion at least of judgement to keep it in good order, wear it like your sword in the scabbard, and do not
brandish it to the terror of the whole company.
Lord Chesterfield, Letter to his godson, December 18, 1765 (p. 180)
Advice to his Son

No man is in any degree fit for either business or conversation, who does not command his attention to the
present object, be it what it will. When I see a man absent in mind, I choose to be absent in body; for it is
almost impossible for me to stay in the room, as I cannot stand inattention and awkwardness.
Lord Chesterfield, “Absence of mind,” Advice to his Son
I would rather be in company with a dead man, than with an absent one; for if the dead man affords me no
pleasure, at least he shews me no contempt; whereas the absent man very plainly, though silently, tells me
that he does not think me worth his attention.
Lord Chesterfield, “Absence of mind,” Advice to his Son
Letters to his Son

Volume 1: http://books.google.com/books?id=-_skAAAAMAAJ
Volume 2:
Volume 3: http://books.google.com/books?id=Vbs8AAAAYAAJ
The greatest fools are the greatest liars. For my own part, I judge of every man’s truth by his degree of
understanding.
Lord Chesterfield, Letter to his Son, September 21, 1747 (p. 176)
The young leading the young, is like the blind leading the blind; “they will both fall into the ditch.”
Lord Chesterfield, Letter to his Son, November 24, 1747
Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always like it the least.
Lord Chesterfield, Letter to his Son, January 29, 1748
Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with. Wear your learning, like your watch, in a
private pocket: and do not pull it out and strike it; merely to show that you have one.
Lord Chesterfield, Letter to his Son, February 22, 1748
Manners must adorn knowledge, and smooth its way through the world. Like a great rough diamond, it may
do very well in a closet by way of curiosity, and also for its intrinsic value.
Lord Chesterfield, Letter to his Son, July 1, 1748
Little minds mistake little objects for great ones, and lavish away upon the former that time and attention
which only the latter deserve. To such mistakes we owe the numerous and frivolous tribe of insect-mongers,
shell-mongers, and pursuers and driers of butterflies, etc. The strong mind distinguishes, not only between
the useful and the useless, but likewise between the useful and the curious.
Lord Chesterfield, Letter to his Son, December 6, 1748
284
The herd of mankind can hardly be said to think; their notions are almost all adoptive; and, in general, I
believe it is better that it should be so; as such common prejudices contribute more to order and quiet, than
their own separate reasonings would do, uncultivated and unimproved as they are.
I attend to the objects of your expenses, but not to the sums.

Lord Chesterfield, Letter to his Son, October 2, 1749
In all systems whatsoever, whether of religion, government, morals, etc. perfection is the object always
proposed, though possibly unattainable; hitherto at least, certainly unattained. However, those who aim
carefully at the mark itself will unquestionably come nearer it, than those who from despair, negligence, or
indolence, leave to chance the work of skill. This maxim holds equally true in common life; those who aim at
perfection will come infinitely nearer it, than those desponding or indolent spirits who foolishly say to
themselves, Nobody is perfect; perfection is unattainable; to attempt it is chimerical; I shall do as well as
others; why then should I give myself trouble to be what I never can, and what, according to the common
course of things, I need not be, perfect.
I am very sure that I need not point out to you the weakness and the folly of this reasoning, if it deserves
the name of reasoning. It would discourage, and put a stop to, the exertion of any one of our faculties. On the
contrary, a man of sense and spirit says to himself, Though the point of perfection may (considering the
imperfection of our nature) be unattainable, my care, my endeavours, my attention, shall not be wanting to
get as near it as I can.
… substituting, as is frequently done, assertion instead of argument.

People will no more advance their civility to a bear, than their money to a bankrupt.
Lord Chesterfield, Letter to his Son, December 25, 1753
Let this be one invariable rule of your conduct—never to show the least symptom of resentment, which you
cannot, to a certain degree, gratify; but always to smile, where you cannot strike.
Lord Chesterfield, Letter to his Son, March 26, 1754
Let it be your maxim through life, to know all you can know, yourself; and never to trust implicitly to the
information of others.
Lord Chesterfield, Letter to his Son, March 16, 1759
Be neither transported nor depressed by the accidents of life.

Lord Chesterfield, Letter to his Son, April 27, 1759
FRANÇOIS MARIE AROUET, AKA VOLTAIRE (1694-1778)

Les méchants n’ont que des complices; les voluptueux ont des compagnons de débauche; les intéressés ont
des associés; les politiques assemblent des factieux; le commun des hommes oisifs a des liaisons; les princes
ont des courtisans; les hommes vertueux ont seuls des amis.
Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique, “Amitié”
The wicked have only accomplices, the voluptuous have only companions in debauchery; self-seekers have
only associates; politicians have only their factions; the generality of idle men has only connections; princes
have only courtiers; virtuous men alone possess friends.
Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique, “Amitié”
Tyrants over souls wish for the men they teach to have unsound minds.
Voltaire
285
Why does the most scrupulous Christian now laugh without remorse at all these gospels and acts which are
no longer in the canon; and why does he not dare to laugh at those adopted by the church? They are nearly
the same takes; but fanaticism adores in one name what appears the height of ridicule in another.
Voltaire, The Important Examination of Long Bolingbroke (1767), pp. 46-47
The only gospel we should read is the grand book of nature, written with God’s own hand, and stamped with
his own seal.
Voltaire, The Important Examination of Long Bolingbroke (1767), p. 60
The ambition of domineering over the mind, is one of the strongest passions. A theologian, a missionary,
or a partisan of any description, is always for conquering like a prince, and there are many more sects than
there are sovereigns in the world. To whose guidance shall I submit my mind? Must I be a Christian, because
I happened to be born in London, or in Madrid? Must I be a Mussulman, because I was born in Turkey? As it
is myself alone that I ought to consult, the choice of a religion is my greatest interest. One man adores God
by Mahomet, another by the Grand Lama, and another by the pope. Weak and foolish men! adore God by
your own reason.
The stupid indolence which takes possession of the generality of men, and sets aside this most important
of all concerns, seems to intimate that they are nothing but stupid machines, endowed with animal functions,
whose instinct never occupies itself beyond the present moment.
Voltaire, The Important Examination of Lord Bolingbroke (1767), p. iii
The best becomes the enemy of the good.

Voltaire, as cited in The Mindfulness Solution (2010), p. 30
We have never intended to enlighten shoemakers and servants—this is up to apostles.

Voltaire, Letter to D’Alembert, September 2, 1768
We rise in thought to the heavenly throne,

But our own nature still remains unknown.
Voltaire, Poème sur le disastre de Lisbon
Men who seek happiness are like drunkards who can never find their house but are sure that they have one.
Voltaire
Aristotle begins by saying that incredulity is the source of wisdom.

Voltaire, “The ignorant philosopher”
Descartes ... believes, or affects to believe, that we are born with metaphysical ideas. I would as soon aver
that Homer was born with The Iliad in his head. It is very true that Homer, at his birth, had a brain so
constructed that, having afterward acquired poetical ideas, sometimes fine, sometimes incoherent, or
sometimes exaggerated, he at length composed the “Iliad.” We bring into the world at our birth the seed of
what afterward displays itself in us; but we have really no more innate ideas than Raphael and Michelangelo
had at their birth pencils and colors.
Voltaire, “The ignorant philosopher”
I regard solemnity as a disease. I had rather a thousand time to be fevered and feeble, as I now am, than to
think lugubriously.
Voltaire, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 68
A person who can get you believe in absurdities can lead you to commit atrocities.
Voltaire
Every sect, as one knows, is a ground of error; there are no sects of geometers, algebraists, arithmeticians,
because all the propositions of geometry, algebra and arithmetic are true. In every other science one may be
deceived.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, “Tolerance”
286
Discord is the great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it.
“I possess a dignity and a power founded on ignorance and credulity; I walk on the heads of the men who lie
prostrate at my feet; if they should rise and look me in the face, I am lost; I must bind them to the ground,
therefore, with iron chains.” Thus have reasoned the men whom centuries of bigotry have made powerful.
They have other powerful men beneath them, and these have still others, who all enrich themselves with the
spoils of the poor, grow fat on their blood, and laugh at their stupidity. They all detest tolerance, as partisans
grown rich at the public expense fear to render their accounts, and as tyrants dread the word liberty. And
then, to crown everything, they hire fanatics to cry at the top of their voices: “Respect my master’s
absurdities, tremble, pay, and keep your mouths shut.”
But it is clearer still that we ought to be tolerant of one another, because we are all weak, inconsistent, liable
to fickleness and error. Shall a reed laid low in the mud by the wind say to a fellow reed fallen in the
opposite direction: “Crawl as I crawl, wretch…
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

Voltaire
Never seek to use authority where there is question only of reason

Voltaire
Love truth but pardon error.

Voltaire
A witty saying proves nothing.

Voltaire
Anything too stupid to be said is sung.

Voltaire
Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

Voltaire
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

Voltaire
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound
of trumpets.
Voltaire
Judge of a man by his questions rather than by his answers.

Voltaire
Regimen is superior to medicine.

Voltaire
Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.
Voltaire
Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need.
Voltaire, Candide, 1759
287
JOHN MASON (1706-1763)
A Treatise on Self-Knowledge (1745)
It has often occurred to my mind in digesting my thoughts on this subject, what a pity it is that this most
useful science should be so generally neglected in the modern methods of education; and that preceptors and
tutors, both in public and private seminaries of learning, should forget that the forming the manners is more
necessary to a finished education than furnishing the minds of youth. Socrates, who made all his philosophy
subservient to morality, was of this sentiment: and took more pains to rectify the tempers than replenish the
understandings of his pupils; and looked upon all knowledge as useless speculation that was not brought to
this end, to make us wiser and better men. And, without doubt, if in the academy the youth has once happily
learned the great art of managing his temper, governing his passions, and guarding his foibles, he will find a
more solid advantage from it in afterlife, than he could expect from the best acquaintance with all the
systems of ancient and modern philosophy.
John Mason, A Treatise on Self-Knowledge (1745)
He who does not improve his temper together with his understanding, is not much the better for it.
Whence is it that moral philosophy, which was so carefully cultivated in the ancient academy, should be
forced in the modern to give place to natural, that was originally designed to be subservient to it? Which is to
exalt the hand-maid into the place of mistress7. This appears not only a preposterous, but a pernicious
method of institution ; for as the mind takes a turn of thought in future life, suitable to the tincture it hath
received in youth, it will naturally conclude that there is no necessity to regard, or at least to lay any stress
upon what was never inculcated upon it as a matter of importance then: and so will grow up in a neglect or
disesteem of those things which are more necessary to make a person a wise and truly understanding man
than all those rudiments of science he brought with him from the school or college.
Thales, the Milesian, is said to be the first author of it; who used to say, that, for a man to know himself, is
the hardest thing in the world. It was afterwards adopted by Chylon the Lacedemonian; and is one of those
three precepts which Pliny affirms to have been consecrated at Delphos in golden letters. It was afterwards
greatly admired, and frequently used by others; till at length it acquired the authority of a divine oracle; and
was supposed to have been given originally by Apollo himself. Of which general opinion Cicero gives us this
reason; "because it hath such a weight of sense and wisdom in it, as appears too great to be attributed to any
man." And this opinion, of its coming originally from Apollo himself, perhaps was the reason that it was
written in golden capitals over the door of his temple at Delphos.
And why this excellent precept should not be held in as high esteem in the Christian world as it was in the
heathen, is hard to conceive. Human nature is the same now as it was then: the heart as deceitful; and the
necessity of watching, knowing, and keeping it, the same.
288
[Scripture], by which, “as in a glass, we may survey ourselves, and know what manner of persons we are,”
(James 1. 23) discovers ourselves to us; pierces into the inmost recesses of the mind; strips off every
disguise; lays open the inward part; makes a strict scrutiny into the very soul and spirit; and critically judges
of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Heb. iv. 12) It shows us with what exactness and care we are to
search and try our spirits, examine ourselves, and watch our ways, and keep our hearts, in order to acquire
this important self-science; which it often calls us to do. “Examine yourselves; prove your own selves; know
you not yourselves? Let a man examine himself.” (1 Cor. xi. 28) Our Saviour upbraids his disciples with
their self-ignorance, in not “knowing what manner of spirits they were of.” (Luke ix. 55) And, saith the
apostle, “If a man (through self-ignorance) thinketh himself to be something, when he is nothing, he
deceiveth himself. But let every man prove his work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself, and not
another.” (Gal. vi. 3, 4) Here we are commanded, instead of judging others, to judge ourselves; and to avoid
the inexcusable rashness of condemning others for the very crimes we ourselves are guilty of, (Rom. ii. 1, 21,
22) which a self-ignorant man is very apt to do; nay, to be more offended at a small blemish in another's
character, than at a greater in his own; which folly, self-ignorance, and hypocrisy, our Saviour, with just
severity, animadverts upon. (Mat. vii. 3-5) And what stress was laid upon this under the Old Testament
dispensation appears sufficiently from those expressions. "Keep thy heart with all diligence." (Prov. iv. 23)
"Commune with your own heart." (Psal. iv. 4) "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my
thoughts." (Psal. cxxxix. 23) "Examine me, O Lord, and prove me; try my reins and my heart." (Psal. xxvi. 2)
"Let us search and try our ways." (Lam. iii. 4) "Recollect, recollect yourselves, O "nation not desired."
(Zeph. ii. 1)
Every one of a common capacity hath the opportunity and ability to attain [self-knowledge], if he will but
recollect his rambling thoughts, turn them in upon himself, watch the motions of his heart.
Other sciences are suited to the various conditions of life: some, more necessary to some; other, to others.
But this [science of self-knowledge] equally concerns every one.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790)

Eat and drink such an exact quantity as the constitution of thy body allows of, in reference to the services of
the mind.
Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac
Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom.

Benjamin Franklin
A good conscience is a continual Christmas.

Benjamin Franklin
An old young man will be a young old man.

Benjamin Franklin
At 20 years of age the Will reigns; at 30 the Wit; at 40 the Judgment.

Benjamin Franklin
If Passion drives, let Reason hold the Reins.

Benjamin Franklin
289
He is a governor that governs his Passions, and he a Servant that serves them.
Benjamin Franklin
Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a
vacuum, it makes one.
Benjamin Franklin
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety.
Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
There is much difference between imitating a good man, and counterfeiting him.
Benjamin Franklin, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (1947), p. 226
The heart of the fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of the wise man is in his heart.
Benjamin Franklin
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of.
Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack, June 1746
Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices.

Benjamin Franklin
He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals.

Benjamin Franklin
Genius without education is like silver in the mine.

Benjamin Franklin
All would live long, but none would be old.

Benjamin Franklin
An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.

Benjamin Franklin
Autobiography
So convenient a thing is it to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for
everything one has a mind to do.
Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography
He wished to please everybody, and having little to give he gave expectations.

Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, describing the mayor of Philadelphia
290
[I retained] the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence, never using when I advance any
thing that may possibly be disputed, the words, certainly, undoubtedly, or any others that give the air of
positiveness to an opinion; but rather I say, I conceive, or I apprehend a thing to be so or so, It appears to me,
or I should think it so for such and such reasons, or I imagine it to be so, or it is so if I am not mistaken. This
habit I believe has been of great advantage to me, when I have had occasion to inculcate my opinions and
persuade men into measures that I have been from time to time engaged in promoting. And as the chief ends
of conversation are to inform, or to be informed, to please or to persuade, I wish well meaning sensible men
would not lessen their power of doing good by a positive assuming manner that seldom fails to disgust, tends
to create opposition, and to defeat every one of those purposes for which speech was given us, to wit, giving
or receiving information, or pleasure: for if you would inform, a positive dogmatical manner in advancing
your sentiments, may provoke contradiction and prevent a candid attention. If you wish information and
improvement from the knowledge of others and yet at the same time express your self as firmly fixed in your
present opinions, modest sensible men, who do not love disputation, will probably leave you undisturbed in
the possession of your error.
Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography
MOSHE CHAIM LUZZATTO (1707-1746)

Mesillat Yesharim (1738)
I have written this work not to teach men what they do not know, but to remind them of what they already
know and is very evident to them, for you will find in most of my words only things which most people
know, and concerning which they entertain no doubts. But to the extent that they are well known and their
truths revealed to all, so is forgetfulness in relation to them extremely prevalent. ... It is possible that the
reader will find that he has learned little after having read it that he did not know before. Its benefit is to be
derived, rather, through review and persistent study, by which one is reminded of those things which, by
nature, he is prone to forget and through which he is caused to take to heart the duty that he tends to
overlook.
Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, Mesillat Yesharim (1738)
There are few, however, who devote thought and study to perfection of Divine service—to love, fear,
communion and all of the other aspects of saintliness. It is not that they consider this knowledge unessential;
if questioned each one will maintain that it is of paramount importance and that one who is not clearly versed
in it cannot be deemed truly wise. Their failure to devote more attention to it stems rather from its being so
manifest and so obvious to them that they see no need for spending much time upon it. Consequently, this
study and the reading of works of this kind have been left to those of a not too sensitive, almost dull
intelligence. These you will see immersed in the study of saintliness, not stirring from it. It has reached the
stage that when one sees another engaging in saintly conduct, he cannot help but suspect him of
dullwittedness.
Though the beginnings and foundations of saintliness are implanted in every person's heart, if he does not
occupy himself with them, he will witness details of saintliness without recognizing them and he will
trespass upon them without feeling or perceiving that he is doing so. For sentiments of saintliness, fear and
love of God, and purity of heart are not so deeply rooted within a person as to obviate the necessity of his
employing certain devices in order to acquire them.
There is also no lack of deterrents which keep saintliness at a distance from a person, but then again there is
no lack of devices by which these deterrents may be held afar.
291
Is it fitting that our intelligence exert itself and labor in speculations which are not binding upon us, in
fruitless argumentation, in laws which have no application to us, while we leave to habit and abandon to
mechanical observance our great debt to our Creator?
If we do not look into and analyze the question of what constitutes true fear of God and what its
ramifications are, how will we acquire it and how will we escape wordly vanity which renders our hearts
forgetful of it? Will it not be forgotten and go lost even though we recognize its necessity? Love of God,
too—if we do not make an effort to implant it in our hearts, utilizing all of the means which direct us towards
it, how will it exist within us?
All of the character traits, which are in such great need of correction and cultivation—who will cultivate and
correct them if we do not give heart to them and subject them to exacting scrutiny?
Saintliness does not hinge upon those things which are put at a premium by the foolishly "saintly," but upon
true perfection and great wisdom.
Man was created for the sole purpose of rejoicing in God and deriving pleasure from the splendor of His
Presence; for this is true joy and the greatest pleasure that can be found.
If man had been created solely for the sake of this world, he would have had no need of being inspired with a
soul so precious and exalted as to be greater than the angels themselves, especially so in that it derives no
satisfaction whatsoever from all of the pleasures of this world. ... "What is this analogous to? To the case of a
city dweller who married a princess. If he brought her all that the world possessed, it would mean nothing to
her, by virtue of her being a king's daughter. So is it with the soul. If it were to be brought all the delights of
the world, they would be as nothing to it."
Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, Mesillat Yesharim (1738), quote is from Koheleth Rabbah
We thus derive that the essence of a man's existence in this world is solely the fulfilling of mitzvoth, the
serving of God and the withstanding of trials, and that the world's pleasures should serve only the purpose of
aiding and assisting him, by way of providing him with the contentment and peace of mind requisite for the
freeing of his heart for the service which devolves upon him. It is indeed fitting that his every inclination be
towards the Creator, may His Name be blessed, and that his every action, great or small, be motivated by no
purpose other than that of drawing near to the Blessed One and breaking all the barriers (all the earthy
elements and their concomitants) that stand between him and his Possessor, until he is pulled towards the
Blessed One just as iron to a magnet. Anything that might possibly be a means to acquiring this closeness, he
should pursue and clutch, and not let go of; and anything which might be considered a deterrent to it, he
should flee as from a fire.
Those with wholeness of understanding will be primarily motivated towards Watchfulness by their coming to
see clearly that only perfection and nothing else is worthy of their desire and that there is no worse evil than
the lack of and removal from perfection. For after this has become clear to them, as well as the fact that the
means to this end are virtuous deeds and traits, they will certainly never permit themselves to diminish these
means; nor will they ever fail to make use of their full potential. For it would already have become clear to
them that if these means were reduced in number or not employed with complete effectiveness, with all of
the energy that they called for, true perfection would not be attained through them, but would be lacked to
the extent that sufficient exertion was lacking in relation to them.
292
Whatever tends to lighten one's burden must be examined carefully. For although such alleviation is
sometimes justified and reasonable, it is most often a deceitful prescription of the evil inclination, and must,
therefore, be subjected to much analysis and investigation.
GEORGE-LOUIS LECLERC, COMTE DE BUFFON (1707-1788)

Bien écrire, c’est à la fois bien sentir, bien penser et bien dire.
Buffon
Le style c’est l’homme même.

Buffon
La génie n’est autre chose qu’une grande aptitude à la patience.

Genius is nothing else than a great aptitude for patience.
Buffon
SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709-1784)

To deny early and inflexibly, is the only art of checking the importunity of desire, and of preserving quiet
and innocence. Innocent gratifications must be sometimes withheld; he that complies with all lawful desires
will certainly lose his empire over himself, and, in time, either submit his reason to his wishes, and think all
his desires lawful, or dismiss his reason as troublesome and intrusive, and resolve to snatch what he may
happen to wish, without inquiring about right and wrong.
Samuel Johnson, The Idler, No. 52, April 14, 1759
He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences that may be easily
impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind.
Samuel Johnson
The diligence of an idler is rapid and impetuous.

Samuel Johnson
But, scarce observ'd, the knowing and the bold

Fall in the gen'ral massacre of gold.
Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes, 21
Wealth heap'd on wealth nor truth nor safety buys,

The dangers gather as the treasures rise.
When statutes glean the refuse of the sword,

How much more safe the vassal than the lord.
Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,

And pause awhile from Letters, to be wise;
There mark what ills the Scholar's life assail,
Toil, envy, Want, the Patron and the Jayl.
The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for
complaint and too numerous for removal.
Samuel Johnson, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 52
293
To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost
care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.
In youth we are apt to be too rigorous in our expectations, and to suppose that the duties of life are to be
performed with unfailing exactness and regularity, but in our progress through life we are forced to abate
much of our demands… These concessions every wise man is more ready to make to others as he knows that
he shall often want them for himself; and when he remembers how often he fails in the observance or
cultivation of his best friends, is willing to suppose that his friends may in their turn neglect him without any
intention to offend him.
Samuel Johnson, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), pp. 52-53
Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

“I wonder what pleasure men can take in making beasts of themselves”

“I wonder, Madam, that you have not penetration enough to see the strong inducement to this excess; for
he who makes a beast of himself, gets rid of the pain of being a man.”
There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow, but where is something in it so like virtue, that he who is
wholly without it cannot be loved.
We love to overlook the boundaries which we do not wish to pass.

Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable,
more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.
Samuel Johnson, quoted in Boswell’s Life of Johnson
Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine,
strike it out.
Samuel Johnson, from Boswell’s Life of Johnson
Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is
original is not good.
Unknown, commonly attributed to Samuel Johnson
A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.

Samuel Johnson (attributed)
When once a man has made celebrity necessary to his happiness, he has put it in the power of the weakest
and most timorous malignity, if not to take away his satisfaction, at least to withhold it. His enemies may
indulge their pride by airy negligence and gratify their malice by quiet neutrality.
Samuel Johnson
People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.

Samuel Johnson
Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

Samuel Johnson
It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
Samuel Johnson
294
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
Samuel Johnson
If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary be not idle.
Samuel Johnson
Do not accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.

Samuel Johnson
Dr. Johnson’s Table Talk

A man cannot with propriety speak of himself, except he relates simple facts.
Samuel Johnson, cited in Dr. Johnson’s Table Talk (London: 1807), p. 2
All censure of a man’s self is oblique praise. It is in order to shew how much he can spare. It has all the
invidiousness of self-praise, and all the reproach of falsehood.
Dr. Johnson … once took occasion to enlarge on the advantages of reading, and combated the idle superficial
notion, that knowledge enough may be acquired in conversation. … “The foundation,” said he, “must be laid
by reading. General principles must be had from books. … In conversation you never get a system.”
Dr. Johnson’s Table Talk (London: 1807), p. 5
Thy love of folly, and thy scorn of fools—Every thing thou dost shews the one, and everything thou say’st
the other.
Sir Joshua having also observed, that the real character of a man was found out by his amusements, Johnson
added, “Yes, Sir; no man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.”
Dr. Johnson’s Table Talk (London: 1807), p. 30
A man should cultivate his mind so as to have that confidence and readiness without wine which wine
gives.
While you are considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy has learnt them
both.
A desire for knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind; and every human being, whose mind is not
debauched, will be willing to give all he has to get knowledge.
It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentional lying that there is so much falsehood in
the world.
I do not deny but there is some original difference in minds; but it is nothing in comparison of what is formed
by education.
Men go to sea before they know the unhappiness of that way of life; and when they have come to know it,
they cannot escape from it, because it is then too late to choose another profession; as indeed is generally the
case with men, when they have once engaged in any particular way of life.
295
A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
The dissipation of thought of which you complain, is nothing more than the vacillation of a mind suspended
between different motives, and changing its direction as any motive gains or loses strength. If you can but
kindle in your mind any strong desire, if you can but keep predominant any wish for some particular
excellence or attainment, the gusts of imagination will break away without any effect upon your conduct.
Samuel Johnson, cited in Dr. Johnson’s Table Talk (London: 1807), pp. 76-77
If a man does not make new acquaintance as he advances through life, he will soon find himself alone.
Do not accustom yourself to enchain your volatility by vows; they will sometime leave a thorn in your mind
which you will, perhaps, never be able to extract or eject.
Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues
impracticable, and others extremely difficult.
B. “I have often blamed myself, Sir, for not feeling for others as sensibly as many say they do.”
J. “Sir, don’t be duped by them anymore. You will find these very feeling people are not very ready to do
you good. They pay you by feeling.”
Boswell, Dr. Johnson’s Table Talk (London: 1807), p. 95
Perfect good breeding, he observed, consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general
elegance of manners.
Speaking of a dull tiresome fellow, whom he chanced to meet, he said, “That fellow seems to me to possess
but one idea, and that is a wrong one.”
The fallacy of that book is, that Mandeville defines neither vices nor benefits. He reckons among vices every
thing that gives pleasure. He takes the narrowest system of morality, monastic morality, which holds pleasure
itself to be a vice; … and he reckons wealth as a public benefit, which is by no means always true.
The Idler
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12050/12050-8.txt
The Idler has no rivals or enemies. The man of business forgets him; the man of enterprise despises him; and
though such as tread the same track of life fall commonly into jealousy and discord, Idlers are always found
to associate in peace; and he who is most famed for doing nothing, is glad to meet another as idle as himself.
Samuel Johnson, The Idler, Issue #1, April 15, 1758
DAVID HUME (1711-1776)

I found a certain Boldness of Temper, growing in me, which was not enclin'd to submit to any Authority in
these Subjects, but led me to seek out some new Medium, by which Truth might be establisht. After much
Study, & Reflection on this, at last, when I was about 18 Years of Age, there seem'd to be open'd up to me a
new Scene of Thought, which transported me beyond Measure, & made me, with an Ardor natural to young
men, throw up every other Pleasure or Business to apply entirely to it.
David Hume, “A kind of history of my life” (1734)
296
He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper, but he is more excellent who can suit his temper to any
circumstances.
David Hume, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 63
Upon reading this book, we find it full of prodigies and miracles. It gives an account of a state of the world
and of human nature entirely different from the present; of our fall from that state; of the age of man
extended to near a thousand years; of the destruction of the world by a deluge; of the arbitrary choice of one
people as the favorites of Heaven, and that people the countrymen of the author; of their deliverance from
bondage by prodigies the most astonishing imaginable. I desire anyone to lay his hand upon his heart and,
after a serious consideration, declare whether he thinks that the falsehood of such a book, supported
by such a testimony, would be more extraordinary and miraculous than the miracles it relates.
David Hume, On Miracles
Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to
serve and obey them.
Hume, Treatise on Human Understanding, II, 3.3, cited in Louis Pojman, The Logic of Subjectivity, p. 34
Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the
easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign
their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is
effected, we shall find, that, as force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to
support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim
extends to the most despotic and military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.
David Hume, “Of the First Principles of Government,” in Essays, Literary, Moral and Political (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987), p. 32
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

The Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed
by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us its veracity: And whoever
is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all
the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom
and experience.
David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, p. 131
Accuracy is, in every case, advantageous to beauty, and just reasoning to delicate sentiment. In vain would
we exalt the one by depreciating the other.
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
It is certain that the easy and obvious philosophy will always, with the generality of mankind, have the
preference above the accurate and abstruse; and by many will be recommended, not only as more agreeable,
but more useful than the other. It enters more into common life; moulds the heart and affections; and, by
touching those principles which actuate men, reforms their conduct, and brings them nearer to that model of
perfection which it describes. On the contrary, the abstruse philosophy, being founded on a turn of mind,
which cannot enter into business and action, vanishes when the philosopher leaves the shade, and comes into
open day; nor can its principles easily retain any influence over our conduct and behaviour. The feelings of
our heart, the agitation of our passions, the vehemence of our affections, dissipate all its conclusions, and
reduce the profound philosopher to a mere plebeian.
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), § 1
297
It is easy for a profound philosopher to commit a mistake in his subtile reasonings; and one mistake is the
necessary parent of another, while he pushes on his consequences, and is not deterred from embracing any
conclusion, by its unusual appearance, or its contradiction to popular opinion. But a philosopher, who
purposes only to represent the common sense of mankind in more beautiful and more engaging colours, if by
accident he falls into error, goes no farther; but renewing his appeal to common sense, and the natural
sentiments of the mind, returns into the right path, and secures himself from any dangerous illusions.
[opposition] David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), § 1
To convince us of this proposition, that where there is no property, there can be no injustice, it is only
necessary to define the terms, and explain injustice to be a violation of property. This proposition is, indeed,
nothing but a more imperfect definition. It is the same case with all those pretended syllogistical reasonings,
which may be found in every other branch of learning, except the sciences of quantity and number; and these
may safely, I think, be pronounced the only proper objects of knowledge and demonstration.
[opposition] David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section 12, Part 3
Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any
experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for
it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
[opposition] David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section 12, Part 3
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals

There is a principle, supposed to prevail among many, which is utterly incompatible with all virtue or moral
sentiment; and as it can proceed from nothing but the most depraved disposition, so in its turn it tends still
further to encourage that depravity. This principle is, that all benevolence is mere hypocrisy, friendship a
cheat, public spirit a farce, fidelity a snare to procure trust and confidence; and that while all of us, at bottom,
pursue only our private interest, we wear these fair disguises, in order to put others off their guard, and
expose them the more to our wiles and machinations.
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), Appendix 2
Superficial reasoners, indeed, observing many false pretences among mankind, and feeling, perhaps, no very
strong restraint in their own disposition, might draw a general and a hasty conclusion that all is equally
corrupted, and that men, different from all other animals, and indeed from all other species of existence,
admit of no degrees of good or bad, but are, in every instance, the same creatures under different disguises
and appearances.
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), Appendix 2
A Treatise of Human Nature

Disputes are multiplied, as if every thing was uncertain; and these disputes are managed with the greatest
warmth, as if every thing was certain. Amidst all this bustle ‘tis not reason, which carries the prize, but
eloquence; and no man needs ever despair of gaining proselytes to the most extravagant hypothesis, who has
art enough to represent it in any favourable colours. The victory is not gained by the men at arms, who
manage the pike and the sword; but by the trumpeters, drummers, and musicians of the army.
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Introduction
298
From hence in my opinion arises that common prejudice against metaphysical reasonings of all kinds, even
amongst those, who profess themselves scholars, and have a just value for every other part of literature. By
metaphysical reasonings, they do not understand those on any particular branch of science, but every kind of
argument, which is any way abstruse, and requires some attention to be comprehended. We have so often lost
our labour in such researches, that we commonly reject them without hesitation, and resolve, if we must for
ever be a prey to errors and delusions, that they shall at least be natural and entertaining. And indeed nothing
but the most determined scepticism, along with a great degree of indolence, can justify this aversion to
metaphysics. For if truth be at all within the reach of human capacity, ‘tis certain it must lie very deep and
abstruse; and to hope we shall arrive at it without pains, while the greatest geniuses have failed with the
utmost pains, must certainly be esteemed sufficiently vain and presumptuous. I pretend to no such advantage
in the philosophy I am going to unfold, and would esteem it a strong presumption against it, were it so very
easy and obvious.
Here then is the only expedient, from which we can hope for success in our philosophical researches, to leave
the tedious lingring method, which we have hitherto followed, and instead of taking now and then a castle or
village on the frontier, to march up directly to the capital or center of these sciences, to human nature itself;
which being once masters of, we may every where else hope for an easy victory. From this station we may
extend our conquests over all those sciences, which more intimately concern human life, and may afterwards
proceed at leisure to discover more fully those, which are the objects of pure curiosity. There is no question
of importance, whose decision is not compriz’d in the science of man; and there is none, which can be
decided with any certainty, before we become acquainted with that science.
ROUSSEAU (1712-1778)
Généralement, les gens qui savant peu parlent beaucoup, et les gens qui savent beaucoup parlent peu.
Rousseau
Die Freiheit des Menschen liegt nicht darin, daß er tun kann, was er will, sondern daß er nicht tun muß, was
er nicht will.
Rousseau
Das Leben ist kurz, weniger wegen der kurzen Zeit, die es dauert, sondern weil uns von dieser kurzen Zeit
fast keine bleibt, es zu genießen.
Rousseau
Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.
Rousseau, The Social Contract, M. Cranston, trans., p. 49
Even though philosophers should be in a position to discover the truth, which of them would take any interest
in it? Each one knows well that his system is not better founded than the others, but he supports it because it
is his. There is not a single one of them who, if he came to know the true and the false, would not prefer the
falsehood that he had found to the truth discovered by another. Where is the philosopher who would not
willingly deceive mankind for his own glory? Where is he who in the secret of his heart does not propose to
himself any other object than to distinguish himself? Provided that he lifts himself above the vulgar, provided
that he outshines the brilliance of his competitors, what does he demand more? The essential thing is to think
differently from others. With believers he is an atheist; with atheists he would be a believer.
Rousseau, Émile, book 4, as cited in Tragic Sense Of Life
A scientific jargon, more despicable than mere ignorance, had usurped the name of knowledge, and opposed
an almost invincible obstacle to its restoration.
Rousseau, A Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences
299
Do not judge and you will never be mistaken.
Rousseau
Christianity preaches nothing but servitude and dependence. Its spirit is so favorable to tyranny that tyranny
always profits from it. True Christians are made to be slaves.
Rousseau
[The legislator] must, in a word, take man’s own forces away from him in order to give him forces which are
foreign to him and which he cannot use without the help of others.
Rousseau, The Social Contract II, 7, cited in The Closing of the American Mind (New York: 1988), p. 189
Social man lives constantly outside himself, and only knows how to live in the opinion of others, so that he
seems to receive the consciousness of his own existence merely from the judgment of others concerning him.
Rousseau
Émile
One must choose between making a man or a citizen, for one cannot make both at the same time.
Rousseau, Emile, Allan Bloom, trans. (New York: 1979), p. 39
Natural man is entirely for himself. He is numerical unity, the absolute whole which is relative only to
itself or its kind. Civil man is only a fractional unity dependent on the denominator; his value is determined
by his relation to the whole, which is the social body. ...
He who in the civil order wants to preserve the primacy of the sentiments of nature does not know what
he wants. Always in contradiction with himself, always floating between his inclinations and his duties, he
will never be either man or citizen. He will be good neither for himself nor for others. He will be one of these
men of our days: a Frenchman, an Englishman, a bourgeois. He will be nothing.
Rousseau, Emile, ed. Bloom (1979), pp. 39-40, cited in The Closing of the American Mind (New York: 1988), pp. 167-168
To be something, to be oneself and always one, a man must act as he speaks; he must always be decisive in
making his choice, make it in a lofty style, and always stick to it.
Rousseau, Emile, Allan Bloom, trans. (New York: 1979), p. 40
The abuse of books kills science. Believing that we know what we have read, we believe that we can
dispense with learning it.
Rousseau, Emile, A. Bloom, trans. (1979), p. 184
I hate books. They only teach one to talk about what one does not know.
Too much reading only serves to produce presumptuous ignoramuses.

Talent at instruction consists in making the disciple enjoy the instruction. But in order for him to enjoy it, his
mind must not remain so passive at everything you tell him that he has absolutely nothing to do in order to
understand you. The master’s amour-propre must always leave some hold for the disciple’s; he must be able
to say to himself, “I conceive, I discern, I act, I learn.”.... One must always make oneself understood, but one
must not always say everything
300
Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1754)
Le premier qui, ayant enclos un terrain, s'avisa de dire: Ceci est à moi, et trouva des gens assez simples pour
le croire, fut le vrai fondateur de la société civile. Que de crimes, de guerres, de meurtres, que de misères et
d'horreurs n'eût point épargnés au genre humain celui qui, arrachant les pieux ou comblant le fossé, eût crié à
ses semblables: Gardez-vous d'écouter cet imposteur; vous êtes perdus, si vous oubliez que les fruits sont à
tous, et que la terre n'est à personne.
Rousseau, Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes
The first man who, having enclosed a piece of land, thought of saying ‘This is mine’ and found people
simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders; how
much misery and horror the human race would have been spared if someone had pulled up the stakes and
filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: ‘Beware of listening to this impostor. You are lost if you
forget that the fruits of the earth belong to everyone and the earth itself belongs to no one!”
Rousseau, A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, M. Cranston trans., p. 109
The savage lives inside himself, while social man lives constantly outside himself, and only knows how to
live in the opinion of others, so that he seems to receive the consciousness of his own existence purely from
the judgment of others concerning him.
Rousseau, A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, G. Cole trans., p. 116
Everything being reduced to appearances, there is but art and mummery even in honor, friendship, virtue,
and often vice itself.
Always asking others what we are, and never daring to ask ourselves, … we have nothing to show for
ourselves but a frivolous and deceitful appearance, honor without virtue, reason without wisdom, and
pleasure without happiness.
We are reduced to asking others what we are. We never dare to ask ourselves.
Rousseau, A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
We have nothing to show for ourselves but a frivolous and deceitful appearance, honor without virtue, reason
without wisdom, and pleasure without happiness.
Confessions (1770, published 1782)

J'adore la liberté; j'abhorre la gêne, la peine, l'assujettissement. Tant que dure l'argent que j'ai dans ma
bourse, il assure mon indépendance; il me dispense de m'intriguer pour en trouver d'autre, nécessité que j'eus
toujours en horreur; mais de peur de le voir finir, je le choie. L'argent qu'on possède est l'instrument de la
liberté; celui qu'on pourchasse est celui de la servitude.
Rousseau, Les Confessions
I worship freedom; I abhor restraint, trouble, dependence. As long as the money in my purse lasts, it assures
my independence; it relieves me of the trouble of finding expedients to replenish it, a necessity which has
always inspired me with dread; but the fear of seeing it exhausted makes me hoard it carefully. The money
which a man possesses is the instrument of freedom.; that which we eagerly pursue is the instrument of
slavery. Therefore I hold fast to that which I have, and desire nothing.
Rousseau, Confessions (Wordsworth: 1996), p. 35
301
I have drawn the great moral lesson, perhaps the only one of any practical value, to avoid those situations of
life which bring our duties into conflict with our interests, and which show us our own advantage in the
misfortune of others; for it is certain that, in such situations, however sincere our love of virtue, we must,
sooner or later, inevitably grow weak without perceiving it, and become unjust and wicked in act, without
having ceased to be just and good in our hearts.
Nothing could be grander or finer than to be free and virtuous, above the considerations of fortune and the
opinion of mankind, and completely independent. Although false shame and fear of public disapproval at
first prevented me from living in accordance with my principles, and from openly insulting the maxims of
my age, from that moment my mind was made up, and I delayed carrying out my intention no longer
The success of my first writings had made me the fashion. The position which I had taken up aroused
curiosity; people were anxious to make the acquaintance of the singular man, who sought no one’s society,
and whose only anxiety was to live free and happy after his own fashion.
Thrown, in spite of myself, into the great world, without possessing its manners, and unable to acquire or
conform to them, I took it into my head to adopt manners of my own, which might enable me to dispense
with them. Being unable to overcome my foolish and disagreeable shyness, which proceeded from the fear of
offending against the rules of polite society, I resolved, in order to give myself courage, to trample them
underfoot. Shame made me cynical and sarcastic. I affected to despise the politeness which I did not know
how to practice. It is true that this rudeness, in harmony with my new principles, became ennobled in my
mind and assumed the form of dauntless virtue; and on this lofty basis, I venture to assert, it supported itself
longer and more successfully than would naturally have been expected from an effort so contrary to my
disposition.
My indolence was not so much that of a confirmed idler as of an independent person, who only cares to work
when he is in the humor for it.
I felt that writing for bread would soon have stifled my genius and destroyed my talents, which were more
those of the heart than of the pen, and arose solely from a proud and elevated manner of thinking, which
alone could support them.
I have always felt that the position of an author is not and cannot be distinguished and respectable, except in
so far as it is not a profession. It is too difficult to think nobly, when one thinks in order to live. In order to be
able and to venture to utter great truths, one must not be dependent on success.
The need of success ... might have made me strive to say what might please the multitude, rather than what
was true and useful, and instead of a distinguished author which I might possibly become, I should have
ended in becoming nothing but a mere scribbler.
DENNIS DIDEROT (1713-1784)

The God of Genesis loved his apples more than he did his children.
Diderot
302
Virtue is praised but hated. People run away from it, for it is ice-cold and in this world you must keep your
feet warm. … For note how often devout people are harsh, touchy, unsociable. The reason is that they have
compelled themselves to do an unnatural thing. They’re in pain, and people in pain make others suffer.
Diderot, Rameau’s Nephew, Jacques Barzun, trans. (Hackett 2001), p. 38
VAUVENARGUES (1715-1747)
On ne corrigera jamais les hommes d'apprendre des choses inutiles!
Vauvenargues
Les passions ont appris aux hommes la raison.

The passions have taught man reason.
Vauvenargues
When thought is too weak to be simply expressed, it is a clear proof that it should be rejected.
Vauvenargues
Contempt for human nature is an error of human reason.

Vauvenargues
La haine des faibles n’est pas si dangereuse que leur amitié.

Hatred of the weak is not as dangerous as friendship with them.
Vauvenargues
La servitude abaisse les hommes jusqu’à s’en faire aimer.

Vauvenargues
La solitude est à l’esprit ce que la diète est au corps, mortelle lorsqu’elle est trop longue, quoique nécessaire.
Vauvenargues
Solitude is to the spirit what dieting is to the body, fatal when it is too long, yet sometimes necessary.
Vauvenargues
Un homme sans passion est un roi sans sujet.

A man without passion is a king without a subject.
Vauvenargues
Il nous est plus facile de nous teindre d’une infinité de connaissances, que d’en bien posséder un petit
nombre.
It is easier for us to be acquainted with an infinity of talents than to truly possess a small number.
Vauvenargues
Ceux qui échappent aux misères de la pauvreté n’échappent pas à celles de l’orgueil.
Vauvenargues
Reflections and Maxims (1746)

Some authors regard morality in the same light as we regard modern architecture. Convenience is the first
thing to be looked for.
Vauvenargues, Reflections and Maxims, E. Lee, trans. (1903), p.166
It is proof of a narrow mind when things worthy of esteem are distinguished from things worthy of love.
Great minds naturally love whatever is worthy of their esteem.
303
La modération des grands hommes ne borne que leurs vices. La modération des faibles est médiocrité.
The moderation of great men only sets a limit to their vices. The moderation of weak men is mediocrity.
Vauvenargues, Reflections and Maxims, E. Lee, trans. (1903), p. 168
If passion sometimes counsels greater boldness than does reflection, it gives more strength to execute
it.
Vauvenargues, Reflections and Maxims, E. Lee, trans. (1903), pp. 170-171
Magnanimity owes no account to prudence of its motives.

Are we surprised if a sick man cannot walk, or keep awake, or stand upright? Would it not be more
surprising if he was the same man as when he was well? If we have a headache, or have slept badly, we are
excused for telling incapable of work, and yet no one suspects us of always being lazy. Shall we deny a
dying man the privilege we grant a man with a headache? And dare we assert that the man who lacks courage
in his last agony never possessed virtue when he was well.
Pour exécuter de grandes choses, il faut vivre comme si on ne devait jamais mourir.
To accomplish great things we must live as though we had never to die.
The thought of death deceives us; for it causes us to neglect to live.

The falsest of all philosophies is that which, under the pretext of delivering men from the embarrassment of
their passions, counsels idleness and the abandonment and neglect of themselves.
No one says in the morning: A day is soon past, let us wait for the night. On the contrary, in the
evening we consider what we shall do the next day. We should be very sorry to spend even one day at
the mercy of time and bores. … Who can be certain of spending an hour without being bored, if he
takes no care to fill even that short period according to his pleasure. Yet what we cannot be certain of
for an hour, we sometimes feel assured of for life, and say: “If death is the end of everything, why give
ourselves so much trouble? We are extremely foolish to make such a pother about the future”—that is
to say, we are extremely foolish not to entrust our destinies to chance, and to provide for the interval which
lies between us and death.
Reason and emotion counsel and supplement each other. Whoever heeds only the one, and puts aside
the other, recklessly deprives himself of a portion of the aid granted us for the regulation of our
conduct.
You people suffer less from their faults than from the prudence of the old.
It is unjust to exact that men shall do out of deference to our advice what they have no desire to do for
themselves.
La clémence vaut mieux que la justice.

Mercy is of greater value than justice.
304
We can love with all our hearts those in whom we recognize great faults. It would be impertinent to believe
that perfection alone has the right to please us; sometimes our weaknesses attach us to each other as much as
our virtues.
If our friends do us a service, we think they owe it to us by their title of friend. We never think that they do
not owe us their friendship.
With kings, nations, and private individuals, the strongest assume to themselves rights over the weakest, and
the same rule is followed by animals, by matter, by the elements, so that everything is performed in the
universe by violence. And that order which we blame with some appearance of justice is the most universal,
most absolute, most unchangeable, and most ancient law of nature.
Those who fear men love the laws.

Qui sait tout souffrir peut tout oser.

He who knows how to suffer everything can dare everything.
It is good to be firm by temperament and pliant by reflection.

It is of no use to possess a lively wit if it is not of the right proportion: the perfection of a clock is not to
go fast, but to be accurate.
Superficial knowledge … is hurtful to those who possess true genius; for it necessarily draws them away
from their main object, wastes their industry over details and subjects foreign to their needs and natural
talent, and lastly does not serve, as they flatter themselves, to prove the breadth of their mind. In all ages
there have been men of very moderate intelligence who knew much, and so on the contrary, men of the
highest intelligence who knew very little. Ignorance is not lack of intelligence, nor knowledge a proof of
genius.
As soon as an opinion becomes common it is sufficient reason for men to abandon it and to uphold the
opposite opinion until that in its turn grows old, and they require to distinguish themselves by other things.
Thus if they attain their goal in some art or science, we must expect them soon to cast it aside to acquire
some fresh fame, and this is partly the reason why the most splendid ages degenerate so quickly, and,
scarcely emerged from barbarism, plunge into it again.
Great men in teaching weak men to reflect have set them on the road to error.
Il est faux que l’égalité soit une loi de la nature. La nature n’a rien fait d’égal; la loi souveraine est la
subordination et la dépendance.
It is not true that equality is a law of nature. nature has made nothing equal, her sovereign law is
subordination and dependence.
The favorites of fortune or of fame topple from their pedestals before our eyes without diverting us from
ambition.
305
La patience est l’art d’espérer.
Patience is the art of hoping.
Neither the gifts nor the blows of fortune equal those of nature.
We are forced to respect the gifts of nature, which study and fortune cannot give.
The generality of men are so bound within the sphere of their circumstances that they have not even the
courage to get out of them through their ideas, and if we see a few whom, in a way, speculation over great
things makes incapable of mean ones, we find still more with whom the practice of small things takes
away the feeling for great ones.
Persons of rank do not talk about such trifles as the common people do; but the common people do not busy
themselves about such frivolous things as do persons of rank.
Men are not to be judged by what they do not know, but by what they know, and by the manner in
which they know it.
We are very wrong to think that some fault or other can exclude virtue, or to consider the alliance of good
and evil as a monstrosity or an enigma.
Is it against justice or reason to love ourselves? And why is self-love always a vice?
As it is natural to believe many things without proof, so, despite all proof, is it natural to disbelieve others.
La foi est la consolation des misérables et la terreur des heureux.

Faith is the consolation of the wretched and the terror of the happy.
Men dissimulate their dearest, most constant, and most virtuous inclination from weakness and a fear of
being condemned.
Men crowd into honorable careers without other vocation than their vanity, or at best their love of
fame.
Children are … encouraged to be imitators, a course to which they are already too much inclined. No
one thinks of making them original, courageous, independent.
306
If children had teachers for judgment and eloquence as they have for languages, if their memory was
exercised less than their energy or their natural genius, if instead of deadening their vivacity of mind we tried
to elevate the free scope and impulses of their souls, what might not result from a fine disposition? As it is,
we forget that courage, or love of truth and glory are the virtues that matter most in youth; and our one
endeavor is to subdue our children’s spirits, in order to teach them that dependence and suppleness are the
first laws of success in life.
It is in our own mind and not in exterior objects that we perceive most things; fools know scarcely anything
because they are empty, and their heart is narrow; but great souls find in themselves a number of exterior
things; they have no need to read or travel or to listen or to work to discover the highest truths; they have
only to delve into themselves and search, if we may say so, their own thoughts.
When we are convinced of some great truths, and feel our convictions keenly, we must not fear to express it,
although others have said it before us. Every thought is new when an author expresses it in a manner peculiar
to himself.
It cannot be a vice in men to be sensible of their strength.

Whatever affection we have for our friends or relations, the happiness of others never suffices for our own.
Great men are sometimes so even in small things.

If a man is endowed with a noble and courageous soul, if he is painstaking, proud, ambitious, without
meanness, of a profound a deep-seated intelligence, I dare assert that he lacks nothing to be neglected by the
great and men in high office, who fear, more than other men, those whom they cannot dominate.
You can purchase the mind of Pascal for a crown. Pleasures even cheaper are sold to those who give
themselves up to them. It is only luxuries and objects of caprice that are rare and difficult to obtain;
unfortunately they are the only things that touch the curiosity and taste of ordinary men.
Some are born to invent, others to embellish; but the gilder attracts more attention than the architect.
There does not exist a man sufficiently intelligent never to be tiresome.

CLAUDE ADRIEN HELVÉTIUS (1715-1771)

By annihilating the desires, you annihilate the mind. Every man without passions has within him no principle
of action, nor motive to act.
Helvétius
Genius is nothing but continued attention.

Helvétius
307
JOHANN WINCKELMANN (1717-1768)
The History of Ancient Art
In a very old ode,—ascribed by an unpublished Scholiast to Simonides or Epicharmus, the first of the four
wishes, of which Plato quotes only three, is to be healthy; the second, beautiful; ... the third, to be rich
honestly; and the fourth, not mentioned by Plato, to be gay and merry with one’s friends.
Johann Winckelmann, The History of Ancient Art, Book 4, Ch. 1, § 7
The thoughts of the whole people rose higher with freedom, just as a noble branch rises from a sound stocky
As the mind of a man accustomed to reflection is usually more elevated in the broad fields, on the public
highway, and on the summit of an edifice, than in an ordinary chamber, or in a confined space, so, also, the
manner of thinking among the free Greeks must have been very different from that of nations living under
more arbitrary forms of government.
The youthful understanding, which, like the tender bark, retains and enlarges the incisions made in it, was not
amused by mere sounds without ideas; nor was the brain—like a waxed tablet, which can contain only a
certain number of words or images—filled with dreams, to the exclusion of truth. To be learned, that is to
say, to know what others have known, was the ambition of a later period. In the best days of Greece, it was
easy to be learned, in the signification of the word at that time; and every one could be wise. For there was
one vanity less in the world at that time than at present, namely, that of being conversant with many books.
A wise man was the most highly honored; he was known in every city, as the richest is among us; just as the
younger Scipio was, who brought the statue of Cybele to Rome. The artist also could attain to this respect.
Socrates, indeed, pronounced the artists the only truly wise, as being actually, not apparently so; it was
probably from this conviction that Aesop constantly associated with sculptors and architects. At a much later
period, Diognetus, the painter, was one of those who taught Marcus Aurelius philosophy. This emperor
acknowledged that he had learned of him to distinguish truth from falsehood.
The reputation and success of artists were not dependent upon the caprice of ignorance and arrogance, nor
were their works fashioned to suit the wretched taste or the incompetent eye of a judge set up by flattery and
fawning.
There is nearly the same relation between beauty and its opposite, as there is between health and disease; we
feel the latter, but not the former.
ADAM SMITH (1723-1790)

All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim
of the masters of mankind.
Adam Smith
Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
Adam Smith
308
The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too are,
perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise
his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses,
therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a
human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him, not only incapable of relishing or bearing a
part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment.
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1778), vol. 2, p. 368
The man scarce lives who is not more credulous than he ought to be. The natural disposition is always to
believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it
enough.
Adam Smith
Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres

When the sentiment of the speaker is expressed in a neat, clear, plain and clever manner, and the passion or
affection he is possessed of and intends, by sympathy, to communicate to his hearer, is plainly and clever hit
off, then and then only the expression has all the force and beauty that language can give it.
Adam Smith, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, as cited in Lisa Herzog, "The Community of Commerce," vol. 46, no. 1 (2013), p. 68
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)

http://books.google.com/books?id=uvovAAAAYAAJ
Approbation heightened by wonder and surprise, constitutes the sentiment which is properly called
admiration, and of which applause is the natural expression.
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), 1.1.32
Virtue is excellence, something uncommonly great and beautiful, which rises far above what is vulgar and
ordinary.
To compare, in this manner, the futile mortifications of a monastery, to the ennobling hardships and hazards
of war; to suppose that one day, or one hour, employed in the former should, in the eye of the great Judge of
the world, have more merit than a whole life spent honourably in the latter, is surely contrary to all our moral
sentiments; to all the principles by which nature has taught us to regulate our contempt or admiration. It is
this spirit, however, which, while it has reserved the celestial regions for monks and friars, or for those
whose conduct and conversation resembled those of monks and friars, has condemned to the infernal
all the heroes, all the statesmen and lawgivers, all the poets and philosophers of former ages; all those
who have invented, improved, or excelled in the arts which contribute to the subsistence, to the
conveniency, or to the ornament of human life; all the great protectors, instructors, and benefactors of
mankind; all those to whom our natural sense of praise-worthiness forces us to ascribe the highest merit and
most exalted virtue. Can we wonder that so strange an application of this most respectable doctrine should
sometimes have exposed it to contempt and derision; with those at least who had themselves, perhaps, no
great taste or turn for the devout and contemplative virtues?
That utility is one of the principal sources of beauty has been observed by every body, who has considered
with any attention what constitutes the nature of beauty. ... That the fitness of any system or machine to
produce the end for which it was intended, bestows a certain propriety and beauty upon the whole, and
renders the very thought and contemplation of it agreeable, is so very obvious that nobody has overlooked it.
... But that this fitness, this happy contrivance of any production of art, should often be more valued, than the
very end for which it was intended; and that the exact adjustment of the means for attaining any conveniency
or pleasure, should frequently be more regarded, than that very conveniency or pleasure, in the attainment of
which their whole merit would seem to consist, has not, so far as I know, been yet taken notice of by any
309
body. That this however is very frequently the case, may be observed in a thousand instances, both in the
most frivolous and in the most important concerns of human life.
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part 4, Chapter 1
The poor man’s son, whom heaven in its anger has visited with ambition, when he begins to look around
him, admires the condition of the rich. He finds the cottage of his father too small for his accommodation,
and fancies he should be lodged more at his ease in a palace. He is displeased with being obliged to walk
afoot, or to endure the fatigue of riding on horseback. He sees his superiors carried about in machines, and
imagines that in one of these he could travel with less inconveniency. He feels himself naturally indolent, and
willing to serve himself with his own hands as little as possible; and judges, that a numerous retinue of
servants would save him from a great deal of trouble. He thinks if he had attained all these, he would sit still
contentedly, and be quiet, enjoying himself in the thought of the happiness and tranquillity of his situation.
He is enchanted with the distant idea of this felicity. It appears in his fancy like the life of some superior rank
of beings, and, in order to arrive at it, he devotes himself for ever to the pursuit of wealth and greatness. To
obtain the conveniencies which these afford, he submits in the first year, nay in the first month of his
application, to more fatigue of body, and more uneasiness of mind, than he could have suffered
through the whole of his life from the want of them. He studies to distinguish himself in some laborious
profession. With the most unrelenting industry he labours night and day to acquire talents superior to all his
competitors. He endeavours next to bring those talents into public view, and with equal assiduity solicits
every opportunity of employment. For this purpose he makes his court to all mankind; he serves those
whom he hates, and is obsequious to those whom he despises. Through the whole of his life he pursues
the idea of a certain artificial and elegant repose which he may never arrive at, for which he sacrifices
a real tranquillity that is at all times in his power, and which, if in the extremity of old age he should at
last attain to it, he will find to be in no respect preferable to that humble security and contentment which he
had abandoned for it. It is then, in the last dregs of life, his body wasted with toil and diseases, his mind
galled and ruffled by the memory of a thousand injuries and disappointments which he imagines he has met
with from the injustice of his enemies, or from the perfidy and ingratitude of his friends, that he begins at last
to find that wealth and greatness are mere trinkets of frivolous utility, no more adapted for procuring ease of
body or tranquillity of mind, than the tweezer-cases of the lover of toys; and like them too, more troublesome
to the person who carries them about with him than all the advantages they can afford him are commodious.
There is no other real difference between them, except that the conveniencies of the one are somewhat more
observable than those of the other. The palaces, the gardens, the equipage, the retinue of the great, are objects
of which the obvious conveniency strikes every body. They do not require that their masters should point out
to us wherein consists their utility. Of our own accord we readily enter into it, and by sympathy enjoy, and
thereby applaud the satisfaction which they are fitted to afford him. But the curiosity of a toothpick, of an
earpicker, of a machine for cutting the nails, or of any other trinket of the same kind, is not so obvious. Their
conveniency may perhaps be equally great, but it is not so striking, and we do not so readily enter into the
satisfaction of the man who possesses them. They are therefore less reasonable subjects of vanity than the
magnificence of wealth and greatness; and in this consists the sole advantage of these last. They more
effectually gratify that love of distinction so natural to man. To one who was to live alone in a desolate island
it might be a matter of doubt, perhaps, whether a palace, or a collection of such small conveniencies as are
commonly contained in a tweezer-case, would contribute most to his happiness and enjoyment. If he is to
live in society, indeed, there can be no comparison, because in this, as in all other cases, we constantly pay
more regard to the sentiments of the spectator, than to those of the person principally concerned, and
consider rather how his situation will appear to other people, than how it will appear to himself. If we
examine, however, why the spectator distinguishes with such admiration the condition of the rich and
the great, we shall find that it is not so much upon account of the superior ease or pleasure which they
are supposed to enjoy, as of the numberless artificial and elegant contrivances for promoting this ease
or pleasure. He does not even imagine that they are really happier than other people: but he imagines that
they possess more means of happiness. And it is the ingenious and artful adjustment of those means to
the end for which they were intended, that is the principal source of his admiration. But in the languor
of disease and the weariness of old age, the pleasures of the vain and empty distinctions of greatness
310
disappear. To one, in this situation, they are no longer capable of recommending those toilsome
pursuits in which they had formerly engaged him. In his heart he curses ambition, and vainly regrets
the ease and the indolence of youth, pleasures which are fled for ever, and which he has foolishly
sacrificed for what, when he has got it, can afford him no real satisfaction. In this miserable aspect does
greatness appear to every man when reduced either by spleen or disease to observe with attention his own
situation, and to consider what it is that is really wanting to his happiness. Power and riches appear then to
be, what they are, enormous and operose machines contrived to produce a few trifling conveniencies to
the body, consisting of springs the most nice and delicate, which must be kept in order with the most
anxious attention, and which, in spite of all our care, are ready every moment to burst into pieces, and
to crush in their ruins their unfortunate possessor. They are immense fabrics, which it requires the
labour of a life to raise, which threaten every moment to overwhelm the person that dwells in them,
and which while they stand, though they may save him from some smaller inconveniencies, can protect
him from none of the severer inclemencies of the season. They keep off the summer shower, not the winter
storm, but leave him always as much, and sometimes more exposed than before, to anxiety, to fear, and to
sorrow; to diseases, to danger, and to death.
But though this splenetic philosophy, which in time of sickness or low spirits is familiar to every
man, thus entirely depreciates those great objects of human desire, when in better health and in better
humour, we never fail to regard them under a more agreeable aspect. Our imagination, which in pain
and sorrow seems to be confined and cooped up within our own persons, in times of ease and
prosperity expands itself to every thing around us. We are then charmed with the beauty of that
accommodation which reigns in the palaces and economy of the great; and admire how every thing is
adapted to promote their ease, to prevent their wants, to gratify their wishes, and to amuse and
entertain their most frivolous desires. If we consider the real satisfaction which all these things are
capable of affording, by itself and separated from the beauty of that arrangement which is fitted to
promote it, it will always appear in the highest degree contemptible and trifling. But we rarely view it
in this abstract and philosophical light. We naturally confound it, in our imagination with the order,
the regular and harmonious movement of the system, the machine or economy by means of which it is
produced. The pleasures of wealth and greatness, when considered in this complex view, strike the
imagination as something grand, and beautiful, and noble, of which the attainment is well worth all the
toil and anxiety which we are so apt to bestow upon it.
And it is well that nature imposes upon us in this manner. It is this deception which rouses and
keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind.
311
The poor man’s son, whom heaven in its anger has visited with ambition, when he begins to look around
him, admires the condition of the rich. ... He is enchanted with the distant idea of this felicity. It appears in
his fancy like the life of some superior rank of beings, and, in order to arrive at it, he devotes himself for ever
to the pursuit of wealth and greatness. To obtain the conveniencies which these afford, he submits in the first
year, nay in the first month of his application, to more fatigue of body, and more uneasiness of mind, than he
could have suffered through the whole of his life from the want of them. ... He solicits every opportunity of
employment. For this purpose he makes his court to all mankind; he serves those whom he hates, and is
obsequious to those whom he despises. Through the whole of his life he pursues the idea of a certain
artificial and elegant repose which he may never arrive at, for which he sacrifices a real tranquillity that is at
all times in his power. ...
If we consider the real satisfaction which all these things are capable of affording, by itself and separated
from the beauty of that arrangement which is fitted to promote it, it will always appear in the highest degree
contemptible and trifling. But we rarely view it in this abstract and philosophical light. We naturally
confound it, in our imagination with the order, the regular and harmonious movement of the system, the
machine or economy by means of which it is produced. The pleasures of wealth and greatness, when
considered in this complex view, strike the imagination as something grand, and beautiful, and noble, of
which the attainment is well worth all the toil and anxiety which we are so apt to bestow upon it.
And it is well that nature imposes upon us in this manner. It is this deception which rouses and keeps in
continual motion the industry of mankind.
The proud and unfeeling landlord views his extensive fields, and without a thought for the wants of his
brethren, in imagination consumes himself the whole harvest that grows upon them. The homely and vulgar
proverb, that the eye is larger than the belly, never was more fully verified than with regard to him. The
capacity of his stomach bears no proportion to the immensity of his desires, and will receive no more than
that of the meanest peasant. The rest he is obliged to distribute among those, who prepare, in the nicest
manner, that little which he himself makes use of, among those who fit up the palace in which this little is to
be consumed, among those who provide and keep in order all the different baubles and trinkets, which are
employed in the economy of greatness; all of whom thus derive from his luxury and caprice, that share of the
necessaries of life, which they would in vain have expected from his humanity or his justice. The produce of
the soil maintains at all times nearly that number of inhabitants which it is capable of maintaining. The rich
only select from the heap what is most precious and agreeable. They consume little more than the poor, and
in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the
sole end which they propose from the labours of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of
their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They
are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have
been made had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants; and thus, without
intending it: without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of
the species. When Providence divided the earth among a few lordly masters, it neither forgot nor abandoned
those who seemed to have been left out in the partition. These last too enjoy their share of all that it produces.
In what constitutes the real happiness of human life, they are in no respect inferior to those who would seem
so much above them.
The qualities most useful to ourselves are, first of all, superior reason and understanding, by which we are
capable of discerning, the remote consequences of all our actions, and of foreseeing the advantage or
detriment which is likely to result from them: and, secondly, self-command, by which we are enabled to
abstain from present pleasure or to endure present pain, in order to obtain a greater pleasure or to avoid a
greater pain in some future time. In the union of those two qualities consists the virtue of prudence, of all the
virtues that which is most useful to the individual.
312
It is in the abstruser sciences, particularly in the higher parts of mathematics, that the greatest and most
admired exertions of human reason have been displayed. But the utility of those sciences, either to the
individual or to the public, is not very obvious, and to prove it requires a discussion which is not always very
easily comprehended. It was not, therefore, their utility which first recommended them to the public
admiration. This quality was but little insisted upon, till it became necessary to make some reply to the
reproaches of those, who, having themselves no taste for such sublime discoveries, endeavoured to
depreciate them as useless.
In the steadiness of his industry and frugality, in his steadily sacrificing the ease and enjoyment of the present
moment for the probable expectation of the still greater ease and enjoyment of a more distant but more
lasting period of time, the prudent man is always both supported and rewarded by the entire approbation of
the impartial spectator, and of the representative of the impartial spectator, the man within the breast.
The administration of the great system of the universe, however, the care of the universal happiness of all
rational and sensible beings, is the business of God and not of man. To man is allotted a much humbler
department, but one much more suitable to the weakness of his powers, and to the narrowness of his
comprehension; the care of his own happiness, of that of his family, his friends, his country: that he is
occupied in contemplating the more sublime, can never be an excuse for his neglecting the more
humble department; and he must not expose himself to the charge which Avidius Cassius is said to have
brought, perhaps unjustly, against Marcus Antoninus; that while he employed himself in philosophical
speculations, and contemplated the prosperity of the universe, he neglected that of the Roman empire. The
most sublime speculation of the contemplative philosopher can scarce compensate the neglect of the smallest
active duty.
His [Plato's] account, it is evident, coincides in every respect with what we have said above concerning the
propriety of conduct.
Stoicism … endeavours to render us altogether indifferent and unconcerned in the success or

miscarriage of every thing which Nature has prescribed to us as the proper business and occupation of
our lives.
Benevolence may, perhaps, be the sole principle of action in the Deity, and there are several, not improbable,
arguments which tend to persuade us that it is so. It is not easy to conceive what other motive an independent
and all-perfect Being, who stands in need of nothing external, and whose happiness is complete in himself,
can act from. But whatever may be the case with the Deity, so imperfect a creature as man, the support of
whose existence requires so many things external to him, must often act from many other motives. The
condition of human nature were peculiarly hard, if those affections, which, by the very nature of our being,
ought frequently to influence our conduct, could upon no occasion appear virtuous, or deserve esteem and
commendation from any body.
IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804)

… die ungesellige Geselligkeit der Menschen …
Kant
… die nicht zu befriedigende Begierde zum Haben oder auch zum Herrschen …
Kant
313
Habe Mut, dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen!
Kant
Was du nicht willst, dass man dir tu, das füg auch keinem andern zu.
Kant
I am responsible only to myself; I must follow none other; I must not forget myself even in my work; I am
alone; I am free; I am lord of myself. Two things fill my mind with ever renewed wonder and awe the more
often and the deeper I dwell on them: the starry vault above me and the moral law within me. I must not look
on them both as veiled in mystery or think that their majesty places them beyond me. I see them before me,
and they are part of the consciousness of my existence. The first arises from my position in the outer world of
the senses, and links me with the immeasurable space in which worlds and worlds and systems and systems,
although in immeasurable time, have their ebbs and flows, their beginnings and ends. The second arises from
my invisible self, my personality, and places me in a world that has true infinity, but which is evident only to
the reason and with which I recognise myself as being bound, not accidentally as in the other case but in a
universal and necessary union. On the one hand, the consciousness of an endless series of worlds destroys
my sense of importance, making me only one of the animal creatures which must return its substance again
to the planet (that, too, being no more than a point in space) from whence it came, after having been in some
unknown way endowed with life for a brief space. The second point of view enhances my importance, makes
me an intelligence, infinite and unconditioned through my personality, the moral law in which separates me
from the animals and from the world of sense, removes me from the limits of time and space, and links me
with infinity.
Kant, as cited in Otto Weininger, Sex and Character (1906), pp. 161-162
It is not open to men to say “every one has his own taste.” This would be equivalent to saying that there is no
such thing as taste
Kant
I must take heed if I wish that the threads which the Fates spin so thin and weak in my case to be spun to any
length
Kant
Der Himmel hat den Menschen als Gegengewicht zu den vielen Mühseligkeiten des Lebens drei Dinge
gegeben: die Hoffnung, den Schlaf und das Lachen.
Immanuel Kant
Was ist Aufklärung? [What is Enlightenment?] (1784)

German: http://books.google.com/books?id=aCMRAAAAMAAJ
Aufklärung ist der Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbstverschuldeten Unmündigkeit. Unmündigkeit ist
das Unvermögen, sich seines Verstandes ohne Leitung eines anderen zu bedienen. Selbstverschuldet ist diese
Unmündigkeit, wenn die Ursache derselben nicht am Mangel des Verstandes, sondern der Entschließung und
des Mutes liegt, sich seiner ohne Leitung eines andern zu bedienen.
Immanuel Kant, Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? (1784)
Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s
understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack
of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another.
Kant, What is Enlightenment?
Sapere aude! Habe Mut, dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen! ist also der Wahlspruch der
Aufklärung.
Sapere Aude! “Have courage to use your own understanding!”—that is the motto of enlightenment.
314
Es ist so bequem, unmündig zu sein. Habe ich ein Buch, das für mich Verstand hat, einen Seelsorger, der für
mich Gewissen hat, einen Arzt, der für mich die Diät beurtheilt u. s. w., so brauche ich mich ja nicht selbst zu
bemühen. Ich habe nicht nöthig zu denken, wenn ich nur bezahlen kann; Andere werden das verdriessliche
Geschäft schon für mich übernehmen. Dass der bei weitem grösste Theil der Menschen, (darunter das ganze
schöne Geschlecht,) den Schritt zur Mündigkeit, ausserdem dass er beschwerlich ist, auch für sehr gefährlich
halte, dafür sorgen schon jene Vormünder, die die Oberaufsicht über sie gütigst auf sich genommen haben.
Nachdem sie ihr Hausvieh zuerst dumm gemacht haben und sorgfältig verhüteten, dass diese ruhigen
Geschöpfe ja keinen Schritt ausser dem Gängelwagen, darin sie sie einsperreten, wagen durften, so zeigen sie
ihnen nachher die Gefahr, die ihnen droht, wenn sie es versuchen allein zu gehen. Nun ist diese Gefahr zwar
eben so gross nicht, denn sie würden durch einigemal Fallen.
It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my
conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need
not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me. The guardians who
have so benevolently taken over the supervision of men have carefully seen to it that the far greatest part of
them (including the entire fair sex) regard taking the step to maturity as very dangerous, not to mention
difficult. Having first made their domestic livestock dumb, and having carefully made sure that these docile
creatures will not take a single step without the go-cart to which they are harnessed, these guardians then
show them the danger that threatens them, should they attempt to walk alone. Now this danger is not actually
so great, for after falling a few times they would in the end certainly learn to walk; but an example of this
kind makes men timid and usually frightens them out of all further attempts.
Rules and formulas, those mechanical aids to the rational use, or rather misuse, of his natural gifts, are the
shackles of a permanent immaturity. Whoever threw them off would still make only an uncertain leap over
the smallest ditch, since he is unaccustomed to this kind of free movement.
Durch eine Revolution wird vielleicht wohl ein Abfall von persönlichem Despotismus und gewinnsüchtiger
oder herrschsüchtiger Bedrückung, aber niemals wahre Reform der Denkungsart zu Stande kommen; sondern
neue Vorurtheile werden, ebensowohl als die alten, zum Leitbande des gedankenlosen grossen Haufens
dienen.
Perhaps a revolution can overthrow autocratic despotism and profiteering or power-grabbing
oppression, but it can never truly reform a manner of thinking; instead, new prejudices, just like the
old ones they replace, will serve as a leash for the great unthinking mass.
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

http://books.google.com/books?id=M3MRAAAAYAAJ
Im Reiche der Zwecke hat alles entweder einen Preis oder eine Würde. Was einen Preis hat, an dessen Stelle
kann auch etwas anderes als Äquivalent gesetzt werden; was dagegen über allen Preis erhaben ist, mithin
kein Äquivalent verstattet, das hat eine Würde.
Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, 434:32
In the kingdom of ends everything has either a price or a dignity. What has a price can be replaced by
something else as its equivalent; what on the other hand is raised above all price and therefore admits of no
equivalent has a dignity.
Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, M. Gregor, trans. (Cambridge: 1998), p. 42
315
Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft [Religion within the
Limits of Reason Alone] (1793)
English: http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/kant_religion05.htm
German: http://books.google.com/books?id=fksOAAAAYAAJ
That religion in which I must know in advance that something is a divine command in order to recognize it
as my duty, is the revealed religion (or the one standing in need of a revelation); in contrast, that religion in
which I must first know that something is my duty before I can accept it as a divine injunction is the natural
religion. … When religion is classified not with reference to its first origin and its inner possibility (here it is
divided into natural and revealed religion) but with respect to its characteristics which make it capable of
being shared widely with others, it can be of two kinds: either the natural religion, of which (once it has
arisen) everyone can be convinced through his own reason, or a learned religion, of which one can convince
others only through the agency of learning (in and through which they must be guided). … A religion,
accordingly, can be natural, and at the same time revealed, when it is so constituted that men could and ought
to have discovered it of themselves merely through the use of their reason, although they would not have
come upon it so early, or over so wide an area, as is required. Hence a revelation thereof at a given time and
in a given place might well be wise and very advantageous to the human race, in that, when once the religion
thus introduced is here, and has been made known publicly, everyone can henceforth by himself and with his
own reason convince himself of its truth. In this event the religion is objectively a natural religion, though
subjectively one that has been revealed.
Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Book IV, Part 1
There is needed, no doubt, a body of servants (ministerium) of the invisible church, but not officials
(officiales), in other words, teachers but not dignitaries, because in the rational religion of every individual
there does not yet exist a church as a universal union (omnitudo collectiva).
Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Book IV, Part 1, Section 1, “The Christian religion as a natural religion”
Let us suppose there was a teacher of whom an historical record (or, at least, a widespread belief which is not
basically disputable) reports that he was the first to expound publicly a pure and searching religion,
comprehensible to the whole world. … Suppose that all he did was done even in the face of a dominant
ecclesiastical faith which was onerous and not conducive to moral ends (a faith whose perfunctory worship
can serve as a type of all the other faiths, at bottom merely statutory, which were current in the world at the
time). Suppose, further, we find that he had made this universal religion of reason the highest and
indispensable condition of every religious faith whatsoever … and this without further adding to this faith
burdensome new ordinances or wishing to transform acts which he had initiated into peculiar holy practices,
required in themselves as being constituent elements of religion. After this description one will not fail to
recognize the person who can be referenced, not indeed as the founder of the religion which, free from every
dogma, is engraved in all men’s hearts (for it does not have its origin in an arbitrary will), but as the founder
of the first true church.
316
He [Jesus] claims that not the observance of outer civil or statutory churchly duties but the pure moral
disposition of the heart alone can make man well-pleasing to God (Matthew V, 20-48); … that injury done
one’s neighbor can be repaired only through satisfaction rendered to the neighbor himself, not through acts of
divine worship (V, 24). Thus, he says, does he intend to do full justice to the Jewish law (V, 17); whence it is
obvious that not scriptural scholarship but the pure religion of reason must be the law’s interpreter, for taken
according to the letter, it allowed the very opposite of all this. Furthermore, he does not leave unnoticed, in
his designations of the strait gate and the narrow way, the misconstruction of the law which men allow
themselves in order to evade their true moral duty, holding themselves immune through having
fulfilled their churchly duty (VII, 13). He further requires of these pure dispositions that they manifest
themselves also in works (VII, 16) and, on the other hand, denies the insidious hope of those who imagine
that, through invocation and praise of the Supreme Lawgiver in the person of His envoy, they will make up
for their lack of good works and ingratiate themselves into favor (VII, 21). Regarding these works he
declares that they ought to be performed publicly, as an example for imitation (V, 16), and in a cheerful
mood, not as actions extorted from slaves (VI, 16); and that thus, from a small beginning in the sharing and
spreading of such dispositions, religion, like a grain of seed in good soil, or a ferment of goodness, would
gradually, through its inner power, grow into a kingdom of God (XIII, 31-33).
Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Book IV, Part 1, Section 1, “The Christian religion as a natural religion,” as translated by Theodore
M. Greene
He [Jesus] combines all duties (1) in one universal rule (which includes within itself both the inner and the
outer moral relations of men), namely: Perform your duty for no motive other than unconditioned esteem for
duty itself, i.e., love God (the Legislator of all duties) above all else; and (2) in a particular rule, that, namely,
which concerns man’s external relation to other men as universal duty: Love every one as yourself, i.e.,
further his welfare from good-will that is immediate and not derived from motives of self-advantage. These
commands are not mere laws of virtue but precepts of holiness which we ought to pursue, and the very
pursuit of them is called virtue. Accordingly he destroys the hope of all who intend to wait upon this moral
goodness quite passively, with their hands in their laps, as though it were a heavenly gift which descends
from on high. He who leaves unused the natural predisposition to goodness which lies in human nature (like
a talent entrusted to him) in lazy confidence that a higher moral influence will no doubt supply the moral
character and completeness which he lacks, is confronted with the threat that even the good which, by virtue
of his natural predisposition, he may have done, will not be allowed to stand him in stead because of this
neglect (XXV, 29).
When the man governed by self-interest, the god of this world, does not renounce it but merely refines it by
the use of reason and extends it beyond the constricting boundary of the present, he is represented (Luke
XVI, 3-9) as one who, in his very person [as servant], defrauds his master [self- interest] and wins from him
sacrifices in behalf of “duty.”
Christianity possesses the great advantage over Judaism of being represented as coming from the
mouth of the first Teacher not as a statutory but as a moral religion, and as thus entering into the
closest relation with reason so that, through reason, it was able of itself, without historical learning, to
be spread at all times and among all peoples with the greatest trustworthiness.
Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Book IV, Part 1, Section 1, “The Christian religion as a learned religion”
Alles, was ausser dem guten Lebenswandel der Mensch noch thun zu können vermeint, um Gott wohlgefällig
zu werden, ist blosser Religionswahn und Afterdienst Gottes.
Kant, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft, 4. Stuck, 2. Teil, § 2
Whatever, over and above good life-conduct, man fancies that he can do to become well-pleasing to God is
mere religious delusion.
Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Book IV, Part 2, Section 2
317
Die Verehrung mächtiger unsichtbarer Wesen, welche dem hülflosen Menschen durch die natürliche, auf
dem Bewusstsein seines Unvermögens gegründete Furcht abgenöthigt wurde, …
The veneration of mighty invisible beings, which was extorted from helpless man through natural fear rooted
in the sense of his impotence …
Von einem tungusischen Schaman, bis zu dem Kirche und Staat zugleich regierenden europäischen Prälaten
… ist zwar ein mächtiger Abstand in der Manier, aber nicht im Prinzip, zu glauben; denn was dieses betrifft,
so gehören sie insgesammt zu einer und derselben Klasse, derer nämlich, die in dem, was an sich keinen
bessern Menschen ausmacht (im Glauben gewisser statutarischer Sätze, oder Begehen gewisser willkürlicher
Observanzen), ihren Gottesdienst setzen. Diejenigen allein, die ihn lediglich in der Gesinnung eines guten
Lebenswandels zu finden gemeint sind, unterscheiden sich von jenen durch den Ueberschritt zu einem ganz
andern und über das erste weit erhabenen Prinzip.
We can indeed recognize a tremendous difference in manner, but not in principle, between a shaman of the
Tunguses and a European prelate: … for, as regards principle, they both belong to one and the same class,
namely, the class of those who let their worship of God consist in what in itself can never make man better
(in faith in certain statutory dogmas or celebration of certain arbitrary observances). Only those who mean to
find the service of God solely in the disposition to good life-conduct distinguish themselves from those
others, by virtue of having passed over to a wholly different principle.
GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING (1729-1781)

Lese jeden Tag etwas, was sonst niemand liest. Denke jeden Tag etwas, was sonst niemand denkt. Tue jeden
Tag etwas, was sonst niemand albern genug wäre, zu tun. Es ist schlecht für den Geist, andauernd Teil der
Einmütigkeit zu sein.
Lessing
Read every day something that otherwise no one would read. Think every day something that otherwise no
one would think. Do every day something that otherwise no one would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the
mind to be continuously part of unanimity.
Lessing
Was ist ein Held ohne Menschenliebe!

What is a hero without love for mankind?
Lessing, Philotas (1759), Act 1, Scene 7
Denn zu einem großen Manne gehört beides: Kleinigkeiten als Kleinigkeiten, und wichtige Dinge als
wichtige Dinge zu behandeln.
It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important.
Lessing, Hamburgische Dramaturgie (1767 - 1769), 34 Stück, August 1767
Accidental historical truths can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason.
Lessing, On the Proof of the Spirit (1777)
Letters
http://books.google.com/books?id=CYcOfkrduWYC
Das Mißliche am Anvisieren der Wahrheit ist, daß man, wenn man sie tatsächlich erreichte, nicht wüsste,
wann man es geschafft hat.
Lessing, Brief an Goeze
The problem with approaching truth is that if one, indeed, were to reach it one would not know when this
would happen.
Lessing, Letter to Goeze
318
Wenn man lange nicht denkt, so kann man am Ende nicht mehr denken. Ist es aber auch wohl gut,
Wahrheiten zu denken, sich ernstlich mit Wahrheiten zu beschäftigen, in deren beständigem Widerspruche
wir nun schon einmal leben, und zu unsrer Ruhe beständig fortleben müssen? Und von dergleichen
Wahrheiten sehe ich in dem Engländer schon manche von weitem.
Wie, auch solche, die ich längst für keine Wahrheiten mehr gehalten. Doch ich besorge es nicht erst seit
gestern, daß, indem ich gewisse Vorurtheile weggeworfen, ich ein wenig zu viel mit weggeworfen habe, was
ich werde wieder holen müssen. Daß ich es zum Theil nicht schon gethan, daran hat mich nur die Furcht
verhindert, nach und nach den ganzen Unrath wieder in das Haus zu schleppen. Es ist unendlich schwer, zu
wissen, wenn und wo man bleiben soll, und Tausenden für einen ist das Ziel ihres Nachdenkens die Stelle,
wo sie des Nachdenkens müde geworden.
Lessing, Brief an Moses Mendelssohn, 9 Januar 1771
It is infinitely difficult to know when and where one should stop, and for all but one in thousands the
goal of their thinking is the point at which they have become tired of thinking.
Lessing, letter to Moses Mendelssohn, January 9, 1771
Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts [The Education of Mankind] (1780)

English: http://books.google.com/books?id=6C0LAAAAIAAJ
German: http://books.google.com/books?id=gf08AAAAcAAJ
Warum wollen wir in allen positiven Religionen nicht lieber weiter nichts, als den Gang erblicken, nach
welchem sich der menschliche Verstand jedes Orts einzig und allein entwickeln können, und noch ferner
entwickeln soll; als über eine derselben entweder lächeln, oder zürnen? Diesen unsern Hohn, diesen unsern
Unwillen, verdiente in der besten Welt nichts: und nur die Religionen sollten ihn verdienen? Gott hätte seine
Hand bey allem im Spiele: nur bey unsern Irrthümern nicht?
Lessing, Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts, Vorbericht
Why shouldn’t we rather see in all positive religions nothing but the way in which human understanding
everywhere could not but develop and shall continue to develop, instead of either smiling at one of them or
getting wroth? This our scorn, this our indignation nothing should deserve in the best world, and only
religions should deserve it? God’s hand should be involved everywhere, only not in our errors?
Lessing, The Education of Mankind, Preface, cited in W. Kaufmann, Hegel (1966), pp. 41-42
Als das Kind unter Schlägen und Liebkosungen aufgewachsen, und nun zu Jahren des Verstandes gekommen
war, stieß es der Vater auf einmal, in die Fremde, und hier kannte es auf einmal das Gute, das es in seines
Vaters Hause gehabt und nicht erkannt hatte.
Lessing, Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts, § 19
The father sent the child into foreign lands, and there he recognized the good which in his father's house he
had possessed, and had not been conscious of.
Lessing, The Education of Mankind, § 19
Eben die Bahn, aus welcher das Geschlecht zu seiner Vollkommenheit gelangt, muß jeder einzelne Mensch
(der früher, der später) erst durchlaufen haben.
Precisely the way on which the species reaches its perfection, every individual human being (one earlier, one
later) must have traversed, too.
Lessing, The Education of Mankind, § 93 cited in W. Kaufmann, Hegel (1966), p. 43
Warum könnte auch Ich nicht hier bereits einmal alle die Schritte zu meiner Vervollkommung gethan haben,
welche blos zeitliche Strafen und Belohnungen den Menschen bringen können.
… those steps of my perfection which bring to man only temporal punishments and rewards
319
Warum sollte ich nicht so oft wiederkommen, als ich neue Kenntnisse, neue Fertigkeiten zu erlangen
geschickt bin? Bringe ich auf Einmal so viel weg, daß es der Mühe wieder zu kommen etwa nicht lohnet?
Why should I not come back as often as I am capable of acquiring fresh knowledge, fresh expertness? Do I
bring away so much from once, that there is nothing to repay the trouble of coming back?
EDUMUND BURKE (1729-1797)

I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to anything which relates to human actions, and human
concerns, on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and
solitude of metaphysical abstraction.
Edmund Burke, Reflections of the Revolution in France
Those who are subjected to wrong under multitudes are deprived of all external consolation: they seem
deserted by mankind, overpowered by a conspiracy of their whole species.
I found that a very great proportion of the assembly ... was composed, not of distinguished magistrates, who
had given pledges to their country of their science, prudence, and integrity; not of leading advocates, the
glory of the bar; not of renowned professors in universities;—but for the far greater part, as it must in such a
number, of the inferior, unlearned, mechanical, merely instrumental members of the profession. ... Whenever
the supreme authority is vested in a body so composed, it must evidently produce the consequences of
supreme authority placed in the hands of men not taught habitually to respect themselves.
The degree of estimation in which any profession is held becomes the standard of the estimation in which the
professors hold themselves.
JOHANN GEORG HAMANN (1730-1788)

http://www.liberley.it/h/hamann_jg.htm
Er liebt das Menschliche Geschlecht wie der Franzmann das Frauenzimmer, zu seinem bloßen Selbstgenuß
und auf Rechnung Ihrer Tugend und Ehre.
Johann Georg Hamann, Brief an Kant, 27 Juli 1759
He [Berens] loves the human race as a Frenchman loves a woman, for his mere personal enjoyment and at
the expense of her virtue and honor.
Johann Georg Hamann, Letter to Kant, July 27, 1759 http://www.korpora.org/Kant/briefe/11.html
Socratic Memorabilia (1759)

http://books.google.com/books?id=o13kQ-X_KFwC&pg=PA5
http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/?id=5&xid=1057&kapitel=2&cHash=713a65685c2
Du führst einen Namen, und brauchst keinen Beweis Deines Daseyns, Du findest Glauben, und thust keine
Zeichen denselben zu verdienen, Du erhältst Ehre, und hast weder Begriff noch Gefühl davon.
Johann Georg Hamann, Sokratische Denkwürdigkeiten (1759), „An das Publicum”, ¶ 1
You wield a name and need no evidence of your existence; you discover faith, and show no sign of having
deserved it; you receive honor, and have neither a concept nor a feeling for it.
Johann Georg Hamann, describing “the public,” Socratic Memorabilia, my translation
320
Wir wissen, daß es keinen Götzen in der Welt giebt. Ein Mensch bist Du auch nicht; doch musst Du ein
menschlich Bild seyn, das der Aberglaube vergöttert hat.
Johann Georg Hamann, Sokratische Denkwürdigkeiten (1759) , „An das Publicum”, ¶ 1
We know that there are no idols in the world. Neither are you a man; you must rather be a human image
which has been idolized by superstition.
Johann Georg Hamann, Socratic Memorabilia, my translation
Weil diese Küchlein nicht gekaut, sondern geschluckt werden müssen, … so sind sie nicht für den
Geschmack gemacht.
Because these pills must not be chewed but swallowed, … they were not made for the palate.
Johann Georg Hamann, describing Kant’s works, Socratic Memorabilia, my translation
Was ihre Wirkungen anbetrift; so lernte bey einem ähnlichen Gefühl derselben Vespasian zuerst das Glück
Deines Namens erkennen, und soll auf einem Stuhl, der nicht sein Thron war, ausgeruffen haben: VTI
PVTO, DEVS FIO!
As far as their effect [the effect of Kant’s works] is concerned, Vespian first became acquainted with the
good fortune of your name when experiencing a similar feeling; he is said to have cried aloud, … “Woe is
me. Methinks I am turning into a god.”
Johann Georg Hamann, describing Kant’s works, Socratic Memorabilia, J. Flaherty, trans. (Baltimore: 1967), p. 141
[The reference is to Bacon’s Essay “Of Death,” lines 43-44, where Vespian’s joke is cited as an example of how men most often remain in character
at the time of their death.]
Ein wenig Schwärmerey und Aberglauben würde hier nicht nur Nachsicht verdienen, sondern etwas von
diesem Sauerteige gehört dazu, um die Seele zu einem philosophischen Heroismus in Gährung zu setzen.
Johann Georg Hamann, Sokratische Denkwürdigkeiten (1759), Einleitung, ¶ 6
A little enthusiasm and superstition here would not only deserve indulgence, but something of this leaven is
necessary in order to put the soul in the ferment required for a philosophical heroism.
Johann Georg Hamann, Socratic Memorabilia, J. Flaherty, trans. (Baltimore: 1967), p. 147
Ein durstiger Ehrgeitz nach Wahrheit und Tugend, und eine Eroberungswuth aller Lügen und Laster, die
nämlich nicht dafür erkannt werden, noch seyn wollen; hierinn besteht der Heldengeist eines Weltweisen.
A thirsty ambition for truth and virtue, and a frenzy to conquer all lies and vices which are not
recognized as such nor desire to be; herein consists the heroic spirit of the philosopher.
Wie die Natur uns gegeben, unsere Augen zu öfnen; so die Geschichte, unsere Ohren.
Just as nature was given to us to open our eyes, so history was given to us to open our ears.
Ein Mensch, der nichts weiß und der nichts hat, sind Zwillinge eines Schicksals. Der Fürwitzige und
Argwöhnische zeichnen und foltern den ersten als einen Betrüger; wie der Gläubiger und Räuber den letzten,
unterdessen der Bauerstolz des reichen Polyhistors beyde verachtet.
Johann Georg Hamann, Sokratische Denkwürdigkeiten (1759), Zweyter Abschnitt, ¶ 3
A man who knows nothing and a man who has nothing are twins of a single destiny. The meddlesome and
the suspicious brand the former as a deceiver, just as the creditor and the robber do the latter, while the
boorish pride of the wealthy historian despises both.
Wir wollen annehmen, daß wir einem Unbekannten ein Kartenspiel anböthen. Wenn dieser uns antwortete:
Ich spiele nicht; so würden wir dies entweder auslegen müssen, daß er das Spiel nicht verstünde, oder eine
Abneigung dagegen hätte, die in ökonomischen, sittlichen oder andern Gründen liegen mag. Gesetzt aber ein
ehrlicher Mann, von dem man wüste, daß er alle mögliche Stärke im Spiel besässe und in den Regeln so
wohl als verbotenen Künsten desselben bewandert wäre, der ein Spiel aber niemals anders als auf den Fuß
321
eines unschuldigen Zeitvertreibes lieben und treiben könnte, würde in einer Gesellschaft von feinen
Betrügern, die für gute Spieler gelten, und denen er von beyden Seiten gewachsen wäre, zu einer Parthey mit
ihnen aufgefordert. Wenn dieser sagte: Ich spiele nicht, so würden wir mit ihm den Leuten ins Gesicht sehen
müssen, mit denen er redet, und seine Worte also ergänzen können: » Ich spiele nicht, nämlich, mit solchen
als ihr seyd, welche die Gesetze des Spiels brechen und das Glück desselben stehlen. Wenn ihr ein Spiel
anbiethet; so ist unser gegenseitiger Vergleich den Eigensinn des Zufalls für unsern Meister zu erkennen, und
ihr nennt die Wissenschaft eurer geschwinden Finger Zufall, und ich muß ihn dafür annehmen, wenn ich
will, oder die Gefahr wagen euch zu beleidigen, oder die Schande wählen euch nachzuahmen. Hättet ihr mir
den Antrag gethan mit einander zu versuchen, wer der beste Taschenspieler von uns in Karten wäre; so hätte
ich anders antworten, und vielleicht mitspielen wollen, um euch zu zeigen, daß ihr so schlecht gelernt habt
Karten machen, als ihr versteht die euch gegeben werden nach der Kunst zu werfen.« In diese rauhe Töne
läßt sich die Meynung des Sokrates auflösen, wenn er den Sophisten, den Gelehrten seiner Zeit, sagte: Ich
weiß nichts. Daher kam es, daß dies Wort ein Dorn in ihren Augen und eine Geissel auf ihren Rücken war.
Johann Georg Hamann, Sokratische Denkwürdigkeiten (1759), Zweyter Abschnitt, ¶ 8
Let us assume that we invited an unknown person to a game of cards. If this person answered us, “I don’t
play,” we would either interpret this to mean that he did not understand the game, or that he had an aversion
to it which arose from economic, ethical, or other reasons. Let us imagine, however, that an honorable man,
who was known to possess every possible skill in the game, and who was well versed in its rules and its
forbidden tricks, but who could like a game and participate in it only when it was an innocent pastime, were
invited into a company of clever swindlers, who were known as good players and to whom he was equal on
both scores, to join them in a game. If he said, “I do not play,” we would have to join him in looking the
people with whom he was talking straight in the face, and would be able to supplement his words as follows:
“I don’t play, that is, with people such as you, who break the rules of the game, and rob it of its pleasure. If
you offer to play a game, our mutual agreement, then, is that we recognize the capriciousness of chance as
our master; and you call the science of your nimble fingers chance, and I must accept it as such, it I will, or
run the risk of insulting you or choose the shame of imitating you.” … The opinion of Socrates can be
summarized in these blunt words, when he said to the Sophists, the leaned men of his time, “I know
nothing.” Therefore these words were a thorn in their eyes and a scourge on their backs.
Johann Georg Hamann, Socratic Memorabilia, J. Flaherty, trans. (Baltimore: 1967), pp. 165-167
JAMES BOSWELL (1740-1795)

You [Johnson] have not patience with folly and absurdity. I believe you would pardon them if there were
time to deprecate your vengeance; but punishment follows so quick after sentence that they cannot escape.
James Boswell, describing Samuel Johnson
DONATIEN ALPHONSE FRANÇOIS, MARQUIS DE SADE (1740-

1814)
The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind.
Marquis de Sade
NICOLAS CHAMFORT (1741-1794)

He who leaves the game wins it.
Nicholas Chamfort
Le bonheur n’est pas chose aisée: il est très difficile de le trouver en nous, et impossible de le trouver
ailleurs.
Nicholas Chamfort
322
The Cynics Breviary
http://books.google.com/books?id=otM-AAAAYAAJ
We must be just before being generous, as we must possess shirts before having lace embroideries.
Nicholas Chamfort, The Cynics Breviary W. Hutchison, trans. (1902), p. 20
Education must have two foundations—morality as a support for virtue, prudence as a defence for self
against the vices of others. By letting the balance incline to the side of morality, you only make dupes or
martyrs; by letting it incline to the other, you make calculating egoists. The one great social principle is to be
just both to yourself and to others. If you must love your neighbour as yourself, it is at least as fair to love
yourself as your neighbour.
Nicholas Chamfort, The Cynics Breviary W. Hutchison, trans. (1902), pp. 20-21
We must needs have the power of uniting contrarieties: love of virtue with indifference to public opinion,
taste for work with indifference to glory, attention to health with indifference to life.
Nicholas Chamfort, The Cynics Breviary W. Hutchison, trans. (1902), p. 22
There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools.
Nicholas Chamfort, The Cynics Breviary W. Hutchison, trans. (1902), p. 37 http://books.google.com/books?id=otM-AAAAYAAJ
Maximes et Pensées
French: http://www.archive.org/stream/maximesetpense00chamuoft/maximesetpense00chamuoft_djvu.txt
La Société n’est pas, comme on le croit d’ordinaire, le développement de la Nature, mais bien sa
décomposition et sa refonte entière. C’est un second édifice, bâti avec les décombres du premier. On en
retrouve les débris, avec un plaisir mêlé de surprise. C’est celui qu’occasionne l’expression naïve d’un
sentiment naturel qui échappe dans la société; il arrive même qu’il plaît davantage, si la personne à laquelle il
échappe est d’un rang plus élevé, c’est- à-dire plus loin de la Nature. Il charme dans un Roi, parce qu’un roi
est dans l’extrémité opposée. C’est un débris d’ancienne architecture dorique ou corinthienne, dans un
édifice grossier et moderne.
Nicolas Chamfort, Maximes et Pensées (Van Bever, Paris: 1923), #8
Society is not, as is commonly supposed, the development of nature, but rather her dismantling and entire
recasting. It is a second building made from the ruins of the first.
Nicolas Chamfort, Reflections
Public opinion reigns in society because stupidity reigns amongst the stupid.
Nicolas Chamfort, Reflections, D. Parmée, trans. (London: 2003) #49
Il y a peu d’hommes qui se permettent un usage vigoureux et intrépide de leur raison, et osent l’appliquer à
tous les objets dans toute sa force. Le tems est venu où il faut l’appliquer ainsi à tous les objets de la Morale,
de la Politique et de la Société, aux rois, aux ministres, aux grands, aux philosophes, aux principes des
Sciences, des Beaux-arts, etc., sans quoi, on restera dans la médiocrité.
Few people are prepared to use their reason without fear or favor, or bold enough to apply it relentlessly to
every moral, political and social issue: to kings and ministers, to men in high places … And if we don’t,
we’re doomed to remain mediocre.
Ne tenir dans la main de personne, être homme de son cœur, de ses principes, de ses sentiments, c’est ce que
j’ai vu de plus rare.
323
L’ambition prend aux petites âmes plus facilement qu’aux grandes, comme le feu prend plus aisément à la
paille, aux chaumières qu’aux palais.
Petty souls are more susceptible to ambition than great ones, just as straw or thatched cottages burn more
easily than palaces.
L’esprit n’est souvent au cœur que ce que la bibliothèque d’un château est à la personne du maître.
Nicolas Chamfort, Maximes et Pensées, #84
Your intelligence often bears the same relation to your heart as the library of a château does to its
owner.
Ce que les poètes, les orateurs, même quelques philosophes nous disent sur l’amour de la Gloire, on nous le
disait au Collège, pour nous encourager à avoir les prix. Ce que l’on dit aux enfants pour les engager à
préférer à une tartelette les louanges de leurs bonnes, c’est ce qu’on répète aux hommes pour leur faire
préférer à un intérêt personnel les éloges de leurs contemporains ou de la postérité.
Poets, orators, even philosophes, say the same things about fame we were told as boys to encourage us to win
prizes. What they tell children to make them prefer being praised to eating jam tarts is the same idea
constantly drummed into us to encourage us to sacrifice our real interests in the hope of being praised by our
contemporaries or by posterity.
Celui-là fait plus, pour un hydropique, qui le guérit de la soif, que celui qui lui donne un tonneau de vin.
Appliquez cela aux richesses.
To help a man suffering from dropsy, it’s far better to cure his thirst than to offer him a barrel of
wine. Apply this principle to the wealthy.
Il y a à parier que toute idée publique, toute convention reçue, est une sottise, car elle a convenu au plus
grand nombre.
It is safe to wager that every public idea and every accepted convention is sheer foolishness, because it has
suited the majority.
Nicolas Chamfort, Maxims and Considerations, E. P. Mathers, trans. (1926), #130
Il y a une sorte de plaisir attaché au courage qui se met au-dessus de la fortune. Mépriser l’argent, c’est
détrôner un Roi. Il y a du ragoût.
Despising money is like toppling a king off his throne.
Men whose only concern is other people’s opinion of them are like actors who put on a poor performance to
win the applause of people of poor taste; some of them would be capable of good acting in front of a good
audience. A decent man plays his part to the best of his ability, regardless of the taste of the gallery.
Stubbornness equals character roughly as lust equals love.

Il y a plus de fous que de sages, et dans le sage même, il y a plus de folie que de sagesse.
There are more fools than wise men, and even in a wise man there is more folly than wisdom.
324
Quand on soutient que les gens les moins sensibles sont, à tout prendre, les plus heureux, je me rappelle le
proverbe indien : «Il vaut mieux être assis que debout, être couché qu’assis; mais il vaut mieux être mort que
tout cela.»
When I hear it contended that the least sensitive are, on the whole, the most happy, I recall the Indian
proverb: “It’s better to sit than to stand, it is better lie down than to sit, but death is best of all.”
Nicolas Chamfort, Maxims and Considerations, E. P. Mathers, trans. (1926), #155 (Parmée 131)
Amour, folie aimable; ambition, sottise sérieuse

Love, a pleasant folly; ambition, a serious stupidity.
L’intérêt d’argent est la grande épreuve des petits caractères, mais ce n’est encore que la plus petite pour les
caractères distingués
Money is the greatest concern for small characters, but is nothing but the smallest for great
characters.
Nicolas Chamfort, Maxims and Considerations, my translation [cf. Reflections, D. Parmée, trans. (London: 2003) #129]
Celui qui veut trop faire dépendre son bonheur de sa raison, qui le soumet à l’examen, qui chicane, pour ainsi
dire, ses jouissances, et n’admet que des plaisirs délicats, finit par n’en plus avoir. C’est un homme qui, à
force de faire carder son matelas, le voit diminuer, et finit par coucher sur la dure.
Anyone who relies too heavily on reason to achieve happiness, who analyses it, who, so to speak, quibbles
over his enjoyment and can accept only refined pleasures, ends up not having any at all. He’s like a man who
wants to get rid of all the lumps in his mattress and eventually ends up sleeping on bare boards.
M... me disait que j’avais un grand malheur: c’était de ne pas me faire à la toute-puissance des sots. Il avait
raison, et j’ai vu qu’en entrant dans le monde, un sot avait de grands avantages, celui de se trouver parmi ses
pairs. C’est comme frère Lourdis dans le temple de la Sottise.
M.… used to warn me that I had one grave disability: I couldn’t suffer fools—and their predominance—
gladly. He was right and I realized that in society a fool had one great advantage: he was among his peers.
Les gens du monde et de la Cour donnent aux hommes et aux choses une valeur conventionnelle dont ils
s’étonnent de se trouver les dupes. Ils ressemblent à des calculateurs, qui, en faisant un compte, donneraient
aux chiffres une valeur variable et arbitraire, et qui, ensuite, dans l’addition, leur rendant leur valeur réelle et
réglée, seraient tout surpris de ne pas trouver leur compte.
Both the court and the general public give a conventional value to men and things, and then are
surprised to find themselves deceived by it. This is as if arithmeticians should give a variable an
arbitrary value to the figures in a sum, and then, after restoring their true and regular value in the
addition, be astonished at the incorrectness of their answer.
Il y a des moments où le monde paraît s’apprécier lui-même ce qu’il vaut. J’ai souvent démêlé qu’il estimait
ceux qui n’en faisaient aucun cas; et il arrive souvent que c’est une recommandation auprès de lui, que de le
mépriser souverainement, pourvu que ce mépris soit vrai, sincère, naïf, sans affectation, sans jactance.
There are moments when society people seem ready to be assessed at their true value. I’ve often noticed that
they appreciate those who show little regard for them, which seems a sort of invitation to express your
contempt openly, providing you do it sincerely, without affectation of ignorance, and from the heart.
325
C’est la plaisanterie qui doit faire justice de tous les travers des hommes et de la Société. C’est par elle qu’on
évite de se compromettre. C’est par elle qu’on met tout en place sans sortir de la sienne. C’est elle qui atteste
notre supériorité sur les choses et sur les personnes dont nous nous moquons, sans que les personnes puissent
s’en offenser, à moins qu’elles ne manquent de gaîté ou de mœurs. La réputation de savoir bien manier cette
arme donne à l’homme d’un rang inférieur, dans le monde et dans la meilleure compagnie, cette sorte de
considération que les militaires ont pour ceux qui manient supérieurement l’épée. J’ai entendu dire à un
homme d’esprit: ôtez à la plaisanterie son empire et je quitte demain la Société. C’est une sorte de duel où il
n’y a pas de sang versé, et qui, comme l’autre, rend les hommes plus mesurés et plus polis.
The best way to put the shortcomings of society, and, indeed, the whole of mankind, in their proper place is
to joke about them. Joking allows you to avoid compromising yourself; it’s a proof of your superiority over
… the things you’re poking fun at, without causing any offense to anyone except people who are surly or
uncouth.
Peu de personnes peuvent aimer un philosophe. C’est presque un ennemi public qu’un homme qui dans les
différentes prétentions des hommes, et dans le mensonge des choses, dit à chaque homme et à chaque chose:
« Je ne te prends que pour ce que tu es, je ne t’apprécie que [pour] ce que tu vaux; » et ce n’est pas une petite
entreprise de se faire aimer et estimer, avec l’annonce de ce ferme propos.
Few people are able to appreciate a philosopher; he’s almost a sort of public enemy. Faced by the various
pretensions of mankind, …he says bluntly: “I’m prepared to take you only at your true value, what you’re
really worth.” It’s not east to get people to appreciate anyone who makes such an uncompromising
declaration.
Un homme d’esprit prétendait, devant des millionnaires, qu’on pouvait être heureux avec deux mille écus de
rente. Ils soutinrent le contraire avec aigreur, et même avec emportement. Au sortir de chez eux, il cherchait
la cause de cette aigreur de la part de gens qui avaient de l’amitié pour lui. Il la trouva enfin. C’est que par là,
il leur faisait entrevoir qu’il n’était pas dans leur dépendance. Tout homme qui a peu de besoins semble
menacer les riches d’être toujours prêt à leur échapper. Les tyrans voient par là qu’ils perdent un esclave. On
peut appliquer cette réflexion à toutes les passions en général. L’homme qui a vaincu le penchant à l’amour,
montre une indifférence toujours odieuse aux femmes. Elles cessent aussitôt de s’intéresser à lui. C’est peut-
être pour cela que personne ne s’intéresse à la fortune d’un philosophe: il n’a pas les passions qui émeuvent
la Société. On voit qu’on ne peut presque rien faire pour son bonheur, et on le laisse là.
Anyone whose needs are small seems threatening to the rich, because he’s always ready to escape their
control.
La Nature ne m’a point dit: ne sois point pauvre; encore moins: sois riche; mais elle me crie: sois
indépendant.
Nature didn’t tell me “Don’t be poor”; and certainly didn’t say: “Get rich”; but she did shout: “Always be
independent!”
[Prudence] replaces [strength] by saving the man who has the misfortune of not possessing it from most
occasions when it’s needed.
326
Les nouveaux amis que nous faisons après un certain âge, et par lesquels nous cherchons à remplacer ceux
que nous avons perdus, sont à nos anciens amis ce que les yeux de verre, les dents postiches et les jambes de
bois sont aux véritables yeux, aux dents naturelles et aux jambes de chair et d’os.
Nicolas Chamfort, Maximes et Pensées (Van Bever, Paris :1923), #303
After a certain age, any new friends we make in our attempt to replace the ones we’ve lost are like glass eyes,
false teeth and wooden legs.
Dans les naïvetés d’un enfant bien né, il y a quelquefois une philosophie bien aimable.
The naïve comments of a well born child sometimes express a very attractive philosophy.
Nicolas Chamfort, Reflections, D. Parmée, trans., modified (London: 2003) #185
Il y a peu de bienfaiteurs qui ne disent comme Satan: Si cadens adoraveris me.

There aren’t many benefactors who don’t say, like Satan: “All these things will I give you if you bow down
and worship me.”
Je n’étudie que ce qui me plaît; je n’occupe mon esprit que des idées qui m’intéressent. Elles seront utiles ou
inutiles, soit à moi, soit aux autres. Le tems amènera ou n’amènera pas les circonstances qui me feront faire
de mes acquisitions un emploi profitable. Dans tous les cas, j’aurai eu l’avantage inestimable de ne me pas
contrarier, et d’avoir obéi à ma pensée et à mon caractère.
I only study the things I like; I apply my mind only to matters that interest me. They’ll be useful—or
useless—to me or to others in due course, I’ll be given—or not given—the opportunity of benefiting
from what I’ve learned. In any case, I’ll have enjoyed the inestimable advantage of doing things I like
doing and following my own inclinations.
J’ai détruit mes passions, à peu près comme un homme violent tue son cheval, ne pouvant le gouverner.
I’ve destroyed my passions, rather like a violent man who, finding he can’t control his horse, kills it.
Nicolas Chamfort, Reflections, D. Parmée, trans. (London: 2003) #199 (cf. Nietzsche)
La Fortune, pour arriver à moi, passera par les conditions que lui impose mon caractère.
En renonçant au monde et à la fortune, j’ai trouvé le bonheur, le calme, la santé, même la richesse; et, en
dépit du proverbe, je m’aperçois que qui quitte la partie la gagne.
Ma vie entière est un tissu de contrastes apparents avec mes principes. Je n’aime point les Princes, et je suis
attaché à une Princesse et à un Prince. On me connaît des maximes républicaines, et plusieurs de mes amis
sont revêtus de décorations monarchiques. J’aime la pauvreté volontaire, et je vis avec des gens riches. Je
fuis les honneurs, et quelques-uns sont venus à moi. Les lettres sont presque ma seule consolation, et je ne
vois point de beaux esprits, et ne vais point à l’Académie. Ajoutez que je crois les illusions nécessaires à
l’homme, et je vis sans illusion; que je crois les passions plus utiles que la raison, et je ne sais plus ce que
c’est que les passions, etc.
My whole life is woven of threads which are in blatant contrast to my principles. … I love self-chosen
poverty, and live among rich people; I avoid all honours, and yet some have come to me. … I believe that
illusions are necessary to man, yet live without illusion; I believe that the passions are more profitable than
reason, and yet no longer know what passion is.
327
L’honnête homme, détrompé de toutes les illusions, est l’homme par excellence. Pour peu qu’il ait d’esprit,
sa société est très aimable. Il ne saurait être pédant, ne mettant d’importance à rien. Il est indulgent, parce
qu’il se souvient qu’il a eu des illusions, comme ceux qui en sont encore occupés. C’est un effet de son
insouciance d’être sûr dans le commerce, de ne se permettre ni redites, ni tracasseries. Si on se les permet à
son égard, il les oublie ou les dédaigne. Il doit être plus gai qu’un autre, parce qu’il est constamment en état
d’épigramme contre son prochain. Il est dans le vrai et rit des faux pas de ceux qui marchent à tâtons dans le
faux. C’est un homme qui, d’un endroit éclairé, voit dans une chambre obscure les gestes ridicules de ceux
qui s’y promènent au hasard. Il brise, en riant, les faux poids et les fausses mesures qu’on applique aux
hommes et aux choses.
An honest fellow stripped of all his illusions is the ideal man. Though he may have little wit, his society is
always pleasant. As nothing matters to him, he cannot be pedantic; yet is he tolerant, remembering that he
too has had the illusions which still beguile his neighbor. He is trustworthy in his dealings, because of his
indifference; he avoids all quarreling and scandal in his own person, and either forgets or passes over such
gossip or bickering as may be directed against himself. He is more entertaining than other people because
he is in a constant state of epigram against his neighbor. He dwells in truth, and smiles at the stumbling of
others who grope in falsehood. He watches from a lighted place the ludicrous antics of those who walk in a
dim room at random. Laughing, he breaks the false weight and measure of men and things.
Les femmes d’un état mitoyen, qui ont l’espérance ou la manie d’être quelque chose dans le monde, n’ont ni
le bonheur de la Nature, ni celui de l’opinion. Ce sont les plus malheureuses créatures que j’aie connues.
Middle-class women who entertain the hope or fancy of being something in the world, lose Nature’s
happiness and miss Society’s. They are the most unfortunate creatures I have known.
Si l’on veut se faire une idée de l’amour-propre des femmes, dans leur jeunesse, qu’on en juge par celui qui
leur reste, après qu’elles ont passé l’âge de plaire.
If you would estimate the extent of a woman’s pride in youth, see how much remains even after she has
passed the age of pleasing.
Il me semble, disait M. de…, à propos des faveurs des femmes, qu’à la vérité, cela se dispute au concours,
mais que cela ne se donne ni au sentiment, ni au mérite.
Speaking of women’s favours, M. de … used to say: It is an auction room business, and neither feeling nor
merit are ever successful bidders.
Une femme d’esprit m’a dit un jour un mot qui pourrait bien être le secret de son sexe: c’est que toute
femme, en prenant un amant, tient plus de compte de la manière dont les autres femmes voient cet homme,
que de la manière dont elle le voit elle-même.
A witty woman once told me something which may well be the genuine secret of her sex: that in choosing a
lover each one of her kind takes more account of how other women regard him than of how she regards him
herself.
328
Sentir fait penser. On en convient assez aisément; on convient moins que penser fasse sentir; mais cela n’est
guère moins vrai.
Feeling creates thought, men willingly agree; but they will not so willingly agree that thought creates feeling,
though this is scarcely less true.
On dit communément: la plus belle femme du monde ne peut donner que ce qu’elle a; ce qui est très faux:
elle donne précisément ce qu’on croit recevoir, puisqu’en ce genre, c’est l’imagination qui fait le prix de ce
qu’on reçoit.
It is a common saying that the most beautiful woman in the world can only give what she has. This is entirely
false. She gives exactly what the recipient thinks he has received; for imagination fixes the value of this sort
of favour.
Le bon goût, le tact et le bon ton, ont plus de rapport que n’affectent de le croire les Gens de Lettres. Le tact,
c’est le bon goût appliqué au maintien et à la conduite; le bon ton, c’est le bon goût appliqué aux discours et
à la conversation.
Good taste, tact, and propriety have more in common than men of letters affect to believe. Tact is good taste
applied to bearing and conduct, and propriety is good taste applied to conversation.
The perfect man … is in a well-lit area watching the foolish antics of people stumbling around in the dark.
He can demolish with a laugh the false standards and judgments which others apply to people and things.
A good number of works owe their success to the mediocrity of their authors’ ideas, which match the
mediocrity of those of the general public.
Les femmes d'un état mitoyen, qui ont l'espérance ou la manie d'être quelque chose dans le monde , n'ont ni
le bonheur de la nature, ni celui de l'opinion : ce sont les plus malheureuses créatures que j'aie connues.
Those women of middle class, who have the hope or the mania of being something in the world, have neither
the happiness of nature nor that of opinion. They are the most unfortunate creatures I have met.
Nicolas Chamfort, Maximes et Pensées,#353, my translation
Il en est un peu des réputations littéraires, et surtout des réputations de théâtre, comme des fortunes qu’on
faisait autrefois dans les Iles. Il suffisait presque autrefois d’y passer, pour parvenir à une grande richesse,
mais ces grandes fortunes mêmes ont nui à celles de la génération suivante: les terres épuisées n’ont plus
rendu si abondamment.
There is something is common between literary, and above all theatrical, reputations and the fortunes which
used of old to be made in the West Indies. In the early days it was almost sufficient to reach those islands to
return with incalculable riches; but the very vastness of the fortunes thus obtained was prejudicial to those of
the following generation, since the exhausted earth could yield no more.
On n’est point un homme d’esprit pour avoir beaucoup d’idées, comme on n’est pas un bon général pour
avoir beaucoup de soldats.
Having lots of ideas doesn’t mean you’re clever, any more than having lots of soldiers means you’re a
good general.
329
On se fâche souvent contre les Gens de Lettres qui se retirent du monde. On veut qu’ils prennent intérêt à la
Société dont ils ne tirent presque point d’avantage. On veut les forcer d’assister éternellement aux tirages
d’une loterie où ils n’ont point de billet.
People are always annoyed by men of letters who retreat from the world; they expect them to continue to
show interest in society even though they gain little benefit from it. They would like to force them be present
when lots are being drawn in a lottery for which they have no tickets.
Nicolas Chamfort, Reflections, my translation
Ce que j’admire dans les anciens philosophes, c’est le désir de conformer leurs mœurs à leurs écrits: c’est ce
que l’on remarque dans Platon, Théophraste et plusieurs autres. La Morale pratique était si bien la partie
essentielle de leur philosophie, que plusieurs furent mis à la tête des écoles, sans avoir rien écrit; tels que
Xénocrate, Polémon, Heusippe, etc. Socrate, sans avoir donné un seul ouvrage et sans avoir étudié aucune
autre science que la morale, n’en fut pas moins le premier philosophe de son siècle.
What I admire in the ancient philosophers is their desire to make their lives conform to their writings, a trait
which we notice in Plato, Theophrastus and many others. Practical morality was so truly their philosophy’s
essence that many, such as Xenocrates, Polemon, and Speusippus, were placed at the head of schools
although they had written nothing at all. Socrates was none the less the foremost philosopher of his age,
although he had not composed a single book or studied any other science than ethics.
Ce qu’on sait le mieux, c’est: 1. ce qu’on a deviné; 2. ce qu’on a appris par l’expérience des hommes et des
choses; 3. ce qu’on a appris, non dans les livres, mais par les livres, c’est-à-dire par les réflexions qu’ils font
faire; 4. ce qu’on a appris dans les livres ou avec des maîtres.
The things you know best are: first, those you know intuitively; second, those you’ve learned from
experience; third, those you’ve learned not from but through books and the ideas they’ve inspired in you; and
finally, those you’ve learned in books and from your teachers.
Les Economistes sont des chirurgiens qui … opérant à merveille sur le mort et martyrisant le vif.
Chamfort, Maximes et Pensées (Van Bever, Paris: 1923), #458
Economists are surgeons …who operate beautifully on the dead and torment the living.
Chamfort, Maxims, #458, my translation
Les ministres ne sont que des gens d’affaires, et ils ne sont si importants que parce que la terre du
gentilhomme, leur maître, est très considérable.
Le public est gouverné comme il raisonne. Son droit est de dire des sottises, comme celui des ministres est
d’en faire.
The public is governed as it reasons; its own prerogative is foolish speech and that of its governors is foolish
action.
Il est malheureux pour les hommes, heureux peut-être pour les tyrans, que les pauvres, les malheureux,
n’aient pas l’instinct ou la fierté de l’éléphant qui ne se reproduit point dans la servitude.
Unfortunately for mankind—and perhaps fortunately for tyrants—the poor and downtrodden lack
the instinct or pride of the elephant, who refuses to breed in captivity.
330
La plupart des institutions sociales paraissent avoir pour objet de maintenir l’homme dans une médiocrité
d’idées et de sentiments qui le rendent plus propre à gouverner ou à être gouverné.
Most social institutions seem to be designed to keep man in a state of intellectual and emotional mediocrity
that makes him more fit to govern or be governed.
Nicolas Chamfort, Maxims and Considerations, my translation, #514
Il avait, par grandeur d’âme, fait quelques pas vers la fortune, et par grandeur d’âme il la méprisa.
His nobility led him to take a few steps in the direction of fortune, and then to despise her.
M..., vieux célibataire, disait plaisamment que le mariage est un état trop parfait pour l’imperfection de
l’homme.
Il y a une modestie d’un mauvais genre, fondée sur l’ignorance, qui nuit quelquefois à certains caractères
supérieurs, qui les retient dans une sorte de médiocrité: ce qui me rappelle le mot que disait à déjeuner à des
gens de la Cour un homme d’un mérite reconnu : « Ah! Messieurs, que je regrette le temps que j’ai perdu à
apprendre combien je valais mieux que vous! »
There is a kind of harmful modesty which … sometimes affects men of superior character to their detriment
by keeping them in a state of mediocrity. I am reminded of the remark that a certain gentleman of
acknowledged eminence once made at luncheon to some persons of the Court, “How bitterly I regret the
time I wasted merely to learn how superior I am to all of you!”
Nicolas Chamfort, Maxims and Considerations, my translation, #556
Il était passionné et se croyait sage; j’étais folle, mais je m’en doutais, et, sous ce point de vue, j’étais plus
près que lui de la Sagesse.
He was passionate and thought he was wise; I was a fool and suspected it; I was nearer to wisdom.
Les sots, les ignorans, les gens malhonnêtes, vont prendre dans les livres des idées, de la raison, des
sentimens nobles et élevés, comme une femme riche va chez un marchand d’étoffes s’assortir pour son
argent.
Foolish, ignorant and vicious persons go to books for their thoughts and judgments, and for all their elevated
and noble sentiments, just as a rich woman goes with her money to a draper.
Les vieillards, dans les capitales, sont plus corrompus que les jeunes gens.
In cities the old are more corrupt than the young.
“I once read that there’s nothing worse for everyone concerned than a reign that’s lasted too long. I’ve also
heard that God is eternal.”
Running a house should be left to innkeepers.

Every day I add to the list of things I refuse to discuss. The wiser the man, the longer the list.
331
Someone was talking about the respect we owe the public. “Yes,” said M…., “It’s a question of prudence.
Nobody has a high opinion of fishwives but who would dare offend them while walking through the fish
market.”
Nicolas Chamfort, Reflections, D. Parmée, trans. (London: 2003) #353, modified
A devout and naïve Christian was admonishing those who questioned the articles of faith. “A true Christian
must never examine the things he’s told to believe, gentlemen,” he said. “It’s like taking a pill: if you chew
it, it’s so bitter you’ll never get it down.”
I asked M.—why he’d turned down the offer of a particular post. “I didn’t want a post where the office is
more important than the holder of it,” he replied.
A man begins every stage of his life as a novice.

A man well-known to be a liar had just told a most improbable story. “Sir, while I believe you,” someone
said, “you must admit that it’s very wrong of truth not to condescend to be more plausible.”
High society is a poor play, a bad, boring opera, made slightly better by its staging, costumes and scenery.
JOHANN KASPAR LAVATER (1741-1801)

He who seldom speaks, and with one calm well-timed word can strike dumb the loquacious, is a genius.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
Aphorisms on Man
He knows not how to speak who cannot be silent.
Johann Kaspar Lavater, Aphorisms on Man, # 22
Loudness is impotence.
The loss of taste for what is right is loss of all right taste.
Have you ever seen a pedant with a warm heart?

Let none turn over books, or roam the stars in quest of God, who sees him not in man.
GEORG CHRISTOF LICHTENBERG (1742-1799)

Indifference is a crime.
Georg Lichtenberg
Of the fame of the most renowned men, part is invariably due to the shortsightedness of their admirers; and I
am convinced that the consciousness in such men that they are seen through by a few who have less
reputation but more genius, must embitter all the fame they enjoy.
Georg Lichtenberg, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), pp. 41-42
332
Sometimes men come upon the name of genius in the same way that certain insects come by the name of
centipede, not because they have a hundred feet, but because most people can’t count above fourteen.
Georg Lichtenberg, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 59
There is in my opinion a great difference between teaching wisdom and being wise. There may be people
who possess anything but common sense and yet theorize excellently on the rules which they have to follow;
just as the physiologist, though he has a thorough knowledge of the body and its construction, may at the
same time be in a very unhealthy state.
The commonest opinions and the things that everybody takes for granted, often the most deserve
examination.
It is with epigrams as with inventions in general: the best are just those which annoy us because we did not
think of them ourselves.
Man kann die Fackel der Wahrheit nicht durch die Menge tragen, ohne dabei jemandem den Bart zu
versengen.
Georg Lichtenberg
The Waste Books

With many a science the endeavor to discover a universal principle is perhaps just as fruitless as would be the
endeavor of a mineralogist to discover a primal universal substance out of which the minerals had arisen.
Nature creates, not genera and species, but individua, and our shortsightedness has to seek out similarities so
as to he able to retain in mind many things as the same time. These conceptions become more and more
inaccurate the larger the families we invent for ourselves are.
Georg Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, R. J. Hollingdale trans. (2000), A3
If we want to draw up a philosophy that will be useful to us in life, or if we want to offer universal rules for a
perpetually contented life, then, to be sure, we have to abstract from that which introduces a much too great
diversity into our contemplations—somewhat as we often do in mathematics when we forget friction and
other similar properties of bodies so that the calculation will not be too difficult, or at least replace such
properties with a single letter. Small misfortunes incontestably introduce a large measure of uncertainty into
these practical rules, so that we have to dismiss them from our mind and turn our attention only to
overcoming the greater misfortunes. This is incontestably the true meaning of certain propositions of the
Stoic philosophy.
One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects
it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.
Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence,
food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible
for the pneumatic pump or a poor one for war.
In order to become really sensible of a piece of good fortune which seems to us a matter of indifference we
must imagine we had lost it and have recovered it again at just this moment.
333
The world is a body common to all men.
Whenever he was required to use his reason he felt like someone who had always used his right hand but was
now required to do something with his left.
Georg Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, R. J. Hollingdale trans. (2000), B1
A kind of state of languor in which the soul perceives as much that is uncommonly small as when in a state
of ardent enthusiasm it does which is uncommonly big
There are two ways of extending life: firstly by moving the two points “born” and “died” farther away from
one another … The other method is to go more slowly and leave the two points wherever God wills
We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings their original state of
innocence, to find our way out of the rubble of things alien to us, to begin to feel for ourselves and to
speak ourselves, and I might almost say to exist ourselves.
What would we think of an observer who published a log in which he recorded: On the 12th I saw the moon,
on the 13th the sun looked very nice, the following night you could see a lot of stars (et cetera)? ... Most of
our writers are moral observers of precisely that caliber, and the expert is as appalled when he reads it as an
expert astronomer would be to read such a log.
Of what use is it to read the authors of antiquity once a man has lost his innocence and sees his own system
of thought wherever he looks?
In the end one sees that the standard for all that is right and beautiful is nature and that we all bear this gauge
within us but so rusted over with prejudices, with words that lack meaning, with false conceptions, that it no
longer serves to gauge anything.
Hour glasses remind us, not only of how time flies, but at the same time of the dust into which we shall one
day decay.
Georg Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, R. J. Hollingdale trans. (2000), C4
Do not commence your exercises in philosophy in those regions where an error can deliver you over to
the executioner.
Georg Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, R. J. Hollingdale trans., C16
The common individual always conforms to the prevailing opinion and the prevailing fashion; he regards the
state in which everything now exists as the only possible one and passively accepts it all. … To the genius it
always occurs to ask: Could this too not be false?
What we have to discover for ourselves leaves behind in our mind a pathway that can also be used on another
occasion.
Which is better: to be plagued by a bad conscience or with a mind at peace to hang from the gallows?
334
Always keep in mind … that whose who avoid the mistakes you make are no better than you, for they make
mistakes you have avoided.
Georg Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, R. J. Hollingdale trans. (2000), D32
May Heaven forfend that I should ever write a book about books.
Just as a good writer does not depart from the common usage of words, so a good citizen must not
straightaway depart from normal usage in the realm of actions, even though he may have much to
object to.
Devised with a maximum of erudition and a minimum of common sense.

Our world will yet grow so subtle that is will be as ludicrous to believe in a god as it is today to believe in
ghosts.
We have the often thoughtless respect accorded ancient law, ancient usages and ancient religion to thank for
all the evil in the world.
When a book and a mind collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?
How often we regard as essentially different from one another things that differ only in the sense of plus or
minus.
Cultivate that kind of knowledge which enables us to discover for ourselves in case of need that which
others have to read or be told of.
To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation.

There is a great difference between still believing something and again believing it.
Georg Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, R. J. Hollingdale trans. (2000), E8
I ceased in the year 1764 to believe that one can convince one’s opponents with arguments printed in books.
It is not to do that, therefore, that I have taken up my pen, but merely so as to annoy them, and to bestow
strength and courage on those on our own side, and to make it known to the others that they have not
convinced us.
Such people speak only of themselves, even if they believe they are speaking of other things.
Truth has a thousand obstacles to overcome before it can get safely down on to paper and from paper back
into a head. The liar is the least of its foes.
If mankind suddenly became virtuous, thousands would die of hunger.

335
If mankind suddenly took to virtue, may thousands would inevitably be reduced to starvation.
A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.
We have no words for speaking wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.
Nature has joined men at the heart, and the professors would like them to be joined at the head.
A good expression is worth as much as a good idea.

Is what man can know necessarily what he ought to know?

People who have read a great deal seldom make great discoveries … invention presupposes an extensive
contemplation of things on one’s own account; one must see for oneself more than let oneself be told.
The utility of systems lies not merely in their making us think about something … according to a particular
scheme but in their making us think about it at all; the latter utility is incontestably greater than the former.
A on his lips and not-A in his heart.

The welfare of many countries is decided by a majority of votes, even though everyone admits there are more
wicked men than good ones.
Georg Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, R. J. Hollingdale trans. (2000), F10
A new species of dangerous rogue would appear if people began to study law in order to steal.
We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him.
Man seeks freedom where it would make him unhappy, in political life, and rejects it where it would make
him happy and adheres blindly to the opinions of others.
Many a many torments himself his whole life long … at unraveling a writer’s meaning … yet it would
require only fifteen minutes of wide-awake common sense to see that the whole thing isn’t worth three
halfpence.
The greatest thinkers I have known have been precisely those who of all the scholars I have known had read
least.
Doubt must be no more than vigilance; otherwise it can become dangerous.

We do not only love ourselves in others, but hate ourselves in others too.
336
With the most rational philosophers an increase in their knowledge is always attended by an increased
conviction of their ignorance.
With our fashionable poets, it is so easy to see how the word has produced the thought; with Milton and
Shakespeare the thought always begets the word.
There is no more important rule of conduct in the world than this: attach yourself as much as you can to
people who are abler than you and yet not so very different that you cannot understand them.
Of that which man ought to be even the best of us know little than can be relied on; of that which he is we
can learn something from everybody.
Of the inspiration that strikes the witty man more than half belongs to the blockhead he has encountered.
That which creates the polymath is often not a knowledge of many things but a happy relationship between
his abilities and his taste by virtue of which the latter always approves of what the former produces.
You have discovered these traits together ten times, but have you also counted the times you have not found
them together?
Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism.

There are few people who do not believe many things which they would, if they subjected them to closer
examination, find they did not understand. They believe merely on the word of many other people … Thus it
is possible for there to be a universal belief in a proposition whose truth no man has yet tested.
It is certainly not a matter of indifference whether I learn something without effort or finally arrive at
it myself through my system of thought. In the latter case everything has roots, in the former it is
merely superficial.
You believe that I run after the strange because I do not know the beautiful; no, it is because you do
not know the beautiful that I seek the strange.
A great genius will seldom make discoveries on paths frequented by others. When he discovers things he
usually also discovers the path to discovery.
Georg Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, R. J. Hollingdale trans. (2000), G31
Popular presentation today is all too often that which puts the mob in a position to talk about
something without understanding it.
Georg Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, R. J. Hollingdale trans. (2000), G32
The greatest discoveries have been made by people who have regarded as merely probable that which other
have propagated as certain, … who maintained a mid-course between the rigorous certainty of the Stoics and
the uncertainty and indifference of the Skeptic.
Georg Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, R. J. Hollingdale trans. (2000), H4
337
We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.
Georg Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, R. J. Hollingdale trans., H4
The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.

He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals.
Georg Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, R. J. Hollingdale trans., H10
Our false philosophy is incorporated in our entire language; we can … not reason without reasoning falsely.
… speaking, regardless of what, is a philosophy… Our whole philosophy is rectification of colloquial
linguistic usage, thus rectification of a philosophy
Honor is infinitely more valuable than positions of honor.

Georg Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, R. J. Hollingdale trans. (2000), J1
With works of nature the zeal and effort involved in their investigation is sustained by the conviction that the
whole is worth investigating and that if one discovers anything it will be something worthy of the effort one
has expended. In the case of the works of man, however, this is not to be expected, for it may be that their
author has gone astray.
Use, use your powers: what now costs you effort will in the end become mechanical.
Georg Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, R. J. Hollingdale trans., J52
It is … strange … to say “The soul … is in the body,” … for we do not say “the roundness is in the
sphere.”
Once we have finally succeeded in understanding it [Kant’s mode of exposition] there is great temptation to
regard it as true … we ought always to remember, however, that the fact that [we have taken great pains to]
understand it is in fact no reason for regarding it as true. … Delight at having understood a very abstract and
obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.
… defend their positions, not because they are convinced of their truth, but because they once asserted they
were true.
Genuine serenity in the enjoyment of life is compatible only with truth.

It is a question of whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a
child makes when he hits the chair he has bumped into.
We know with much greater clarity that our will is free than that everything that happens must have a cause.
Could we therefore not reverse the argument for once, and say: our conception of cause and effect must be
very erroneous because our will could not be free if our idea of cause and effect were correct?
Georg Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, R. J. Hollingdale trans. (2000), J167 (cf. Nietzsche)
I was for long unable to understand why it was that I found it difficult to read the books of many a celebrated
polymath, but finally I hit on the answer: the reason is that these people are so insignificant compared with
men of true greatness that one cannot summon up the desire to know what it is they know.
338
Is the situation so uncommon, then, in which philosophy forbids one to philosophize?
To doubt things that are now believed without any further investigation whatever: that is everywhere
the main thing.
Nothing is more inimical to the progress of science than the belief that we know what we do not yet know.
Even if my philosophy does not extend to discovering anything new, it does nevertheless possess the
courage to regard as questionable what has long been thought true.
Georg Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, R. J. Hollingdale trans. (2000), K12
What is very strange and unusual seldom remains unexplained for long. The inexplicable is usually no longer
strange and unusual and perhaps never has been.
It is certainly better not to have studied a subject at all than to have studied it superficially. For when
the unaided healthy common sense seeks to form an opinion of something it does not go so far wrong
as semi-erudition does.
Doubt everything at least once.

Those who have racked their brains to discover new proofs have perhaps been induced to do so by a
compulsion they could not quite explain to themselves. Instead of giving us their new proofs they
should have explained to us the motivation that constrained them to search for them.
Georg Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, R. J. Hollingdale trans. (2000), L24
THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743-1826)

The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding, and too plain to
need explanation, saw in the mysticism of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial
system, which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order,
and introduce it to profit, power and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus
himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the
Platonisms engrafted on them; and for this obvious reason, that nonsense can never be explained.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, July 5, 1814
I am a Christian in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in
preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence, and believing he never claimed any
other.
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Benjamin Rush, April 21, 1803
I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the
Platonists, who call me infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw
all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said nor saw. They have compounded from
the heathen mysteries a system beyond the comprehension of man, of which the great reformer of the
vicious ethics and deism of the Jews, were he to return on earth, would not recognize one feature.
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Charles Thomson, January 9, 1816
... the consolations of a sound philosophy, equally indifferent to hope and fear.
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Short, October 31, 1819
339
The establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent moralist, and the rescuing it from
the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from artificial systems (e.g. the immaculate conception of
Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible
ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement, regeneration, election,
orders of Hierarchy, etc.), invented by ultra-Christian sects, unauthorized by a single word ever uttered by
him, is a most desirable object.
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Short, October 31, 1819
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, ... it expects what never was and never will be.
Thomas Jefferson
JOHANN GOTTFRIED HERDER (1744-1803)

Our poems are no longer written for shepherds but for city-dwelling Muses, our language is limited to the
language of books.
Herder, Fragments on Recent German Literature (1768)
The stewardly philosopher asked, “Why are there so many useless slaves? They get in each other’s way,” and
he got rid of them, but prescribed to the others their precise function so as not to be idle.
Herder, Fragments on Recent German Literature (1768), M. Foster, ed. (2002), pp. 35-36
Philosophy gives idle synonyms work and determinate posts.

Herder, Fragments on Recent German Literature (1768)
Our language has limited synonyms and strives to collect, instead of slaves, gold and coins. Let me be
allowed to compare the words for abstract ideas with these. Both are struck by willful decision and enter
general circulation through a value fixed by willful decision.
Herder, Fragments on Recent German Literature (1768) ), M. Foster, ed. (2002), p. 36
GOETHE (1749-1832)
Werke, Band 2: http://books.google.com/books?id=DRwoAAAAYAAJ
Was auch als Wahrheit oder Fabel

In tausend Büchern dir erscheint,
Das alles ist ein Turm zu Babel,
Wenn es die Liebe nicht vereint.
Goethe, Was auch als Wahrheit oder Fabel (1805)
Wer die Menschen behandelt wie sie sind, macht sie schlechter. Wer sie aber behandelt wie sie sein könnten,
macht sie besser.
Goethe
Wer fertig ist, dem ist nichts recht zu machen;

Ein Werdender wird immer dankbar sein.
Goethe, Faust I
A mind once formed finds naught made right thereafter;
A growing mind will thank you evermore.
Goethe, Faust I, trans. George Madison Priest
340
Sind nicht den Teufel werth!
Weitmaulichte Lassen
Feilschen und gaffen,
Gaffen und kaufen,
Vestienhaufen!
Kinder und Fratzen,
Affen und Katzen!
Möcht' all das Zeug nicht,
Wenn ich's geschenkt kriegt'!
Goethe, Zigeunerhauptmann in Das Jahrmarkts-Fest
You clods and clouts,

You losels and louts,
The devil wouldn't have you !
You broadmouthed apers,
You hagglers and gapers,
Gape, sell and buy !
Brutes, to your sty !
Babies and flunkeys,
Mummers and monkeys,
No such stuff for me,
Were it given free !
Goethe, Gypsy Captain in The Fair Festival
What from your fathers you received as heir

Acquire, if you would posses it!
Goethe, Faust, 682
O! That I had not returned, misled by a sincere

Inclination to be useful to the fatherland
To this wilderness of saucy state life,
To this desert of refined crime,
To this cesspool of egotism.
Goethe, Die natürliche Tochter, (1803), Act 5, Scene 7
The first and last thing required of genius is the love of truth.
Goethe
Everything has been thought of before. The problem is to think of it again.

Goethe
Uebrigens ist mir alles verhaßt was mich bloß belehrt, ohne meine Thätigkeit zu vermehren, oder unmittelbar
zu beleben.
Goethe, Brief an Schiller, 18. Dezember 1798
I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity.
Goethe, Letter to Schiller, 18 December 1798, as cited in Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditations, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), p. 59
Was immer Du tun kannst oder träumst es zu können, fang damit an.
Goethe
341
O Freiheit süß der Presse!
Nun sind wir endlich froh;
Sie pocht von Messe zu Messe
In dulci jubilo.
Kommt, laßt uns Alles drucken

Und walten für und für;
Nur sollte Keiner mucken,
Der nicht so denkt wie wir.
Was euch die heilige Preßfreiheit

Für Frommen, Vortheil und Früchte beut?
Davon habt ihr gewisse Erscheinung:
Tiefe Verachtung össentlicher Meinung.
Goethe, Zahme Xenien, Werke, Band 2, S. 543
O sweet freedom of the press!

Now we are finally content;
It trounces from fair to fair
In sweet jubilation.
Come now, let us print everything,

And by and by it will avail,
That never shall anyone stir,
Who thinks not as we do.
What offers this heavenly freedom of the press

In the way of benefits, advantages, and fruits?
With it you have a certain appearance
Of deep contempt for public opinion.
Goethe, Zahme Xenien
I have guesses enough of my own; if a man write a book, let him set down what he knows.
Goethe
Piety itself is no aim, but only a means, whereby, through purest inward peace, we may attain to highest
culture.
Goethe, cited in Emerson, “Goethe,” Representative Men, p. 290
Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the
same with their time.
Goethe
The great duty ‘know thyself,’ which sounds so important, has always seemed to me suspect, like a trick of
priests in secret conspiracy who would like to confuse man through unfulfillable demands and lead him away
from his proper activity in the external world to a false interior contemplation. A man knows himself insofar
as he knows the world, which he perceives only within himself, and himself only within it.
Goethe, Bedeutende Fördernis durch ein einziges geistreiches Wort, cited in Karl Löwith, From Hegel to Nietzsche, D. Green, trans. (1964), p. 10
342
Ich singe, wie der Vogel singt,
Der in den Zweigen wohnet
Das Lied, das aus der Kehle dringt
Ist Lohn, der reichlich lohnet.
Goethe
I sing as the bird sings
Which dwells among the branches
The song that rises from the throat
Is reward that recompenses
Goethe
Alternate translation:
I sing as the bird sings
That on the bough alights;
The song that from me springs
Is pay that well requites
Goethe
Even the worst company allows you to feel that you are a human being among human beings.
Goethe, Faust (Mephistopheles)
Even if the world progresses generally, youth will always begin at the beginning.
Goethe
Anecdotes and maxims are rich treasures to the man of the world, for he knows how to introduce the former
at fit place in conversation.
Goethe
All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must
think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.
Goethe
The greatest evil that can befall a man is that he should come to think ill of himself.
Goethe, cited in Nathaniel Branden, Honoring the Self (1983), p. 11
In what does barbarism consist, if not in the failure to appreciate what is excellent?
Goethe, cited in Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (Chicago: 1964), p. xiv
Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795)

English: http://books.google.com/books?id=JKgUAAAAQAAJ
German: http://books.google.com/books?id=v8YMAQAAIAAJ
Whoever is born with a talent for a talent discovers therein his finest existence.
Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, cited in Schopenhauer, Parerga und Paralipomena, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 342
343
Der Vater wiederholt immer, wozu es [das Theater] nur nütze sey? wie man seine Zeit so verderben
könne? —
Ich habe es auch schon von ihm hören müssen, versetzte Wilhelm, und habe ihm vielleicht zu hastig
geantwortet; aber ums Himmels willen, Mutter! ist denn alles unnütz, was uns nicht unmittelbar Geld in den
Beutel bringt, was uns nicht den allernächsten Besitz verschasst? Hatten wir in dem alten Hause nicht Raum
genug? und war es nöthig, ein neues zu bauen? Verwendet der Vater nicht jährlich einen ansehnlichen Theil
seines Handels-Gewinnes zur Verschönerung der Zimmer? Diese seidenen Tapeten, diese englischen
Mobilien, sind sie nicht auch unnütz? Könnten wir uns nicht mit geringeren begnügen? Wenigstens bekenne
ich, daß mir diese gestreiften Wände, die hundertmal wiederholten Blumen, Schnörkel, Körbchen und
Figuren einen durchaus unangenehmen Eindruck machen. Sie kommen mir höchstens vor wie unser
Theatervorhang. Aber wie anders ist's, vor diesem zu sitzen! Wenn man noch so lange warten muß, so weiß
man doch, er wird in die Höhe gehen, und wir werden die mannigfaltigsten Gegenstände sehen, die uns
unterhalten, ausklären und erheben.
Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Teil 1, Buch 1, Kapitel 1
“Your father is ever repeating: What is the use of it [the theater]? How can any one waste his time so?”
“He has already told me this, and perhaps I answered him too hastily: but, for Heaven's sake, mother, is
nothing then of use but what immediately puts money in our purse; but what procures us some property that
we can lay our hands on? Had we not, for instance, room enough in the old house; and was it indispensable
to build a new one? Does not my father every year expend a large part of his profit in ornamenting his
chambers? Are not these silk carpets, this English furniture, likewise of no use? Might we not content
ourselves with worse? For my own part, I confess, these striped walls, these hundred times repeated flowers,
and knots, and baskets, and figures, produce a really disagreeable effect upon me. At best, they but remind
me of the front curtain of our theatre. But what a different thing it is to sit and look at that! There, if you must
wait for a while, you are always sure that it will rise at last, and disclose to you a thousand curious objects, to
entertain, to instruct and to exalt you.”
Goethe, Wilhelm’s mother and Wilhelm in Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, Thomas Carlyle, trans. (1899), Book 1, Chapter 2, p. 38
I wished at once to be among the enchanters and enchanted, at once to have a secret hand in the play, and to
enjoy, as a looker-on, the pleasure of illusion.
Goethe, Wilhelm in Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, Thomas Carlyle, trans. (1899)
I had been set apart for the mercantile life, and placed under the guidance of our neighbour in the
counting-house; yet my spirit at this very time recoiled more forcibly than ever from all that was to bind me
to a low profession. It was to the stage that I aimed at consecrating all my powers; on the stage that I meant
to seek all my happiness and satisfaction.
I recollect a poem, which must be among my papers, where the Muse of tragic art and another female
form, by which I personified Commerce, were made to strive very bravely for my most important self. The
idea is common, and I recollect not that the verses were of any worth; but you shall see it, for the sake of the
fear, the abhorrence, the love and passion, which reign in it. How repulsively did I paint the old housewife,
with the distaff in her girdle, the bunch of keys by her side, the spectacles on her nose; ever toiling, ever
restless, quarrelsome and penurious, pitiful and dissatisfied! How feelingly did I describe the condition of
that poor man who has to cringe beneath her rod, and earn his slavish day's-wages by the sweat of his brow!
And how differently advanced the other! What an apparition for the overclouded mind! Formed as a
queen, in her thoughts and looks she announced herself the child of freedom. The feeling of her own worth
gave her dignity without pride: her apparel became her, it veiled each limb without constraining it; and the
rich folds repeated, like a thousandvoiced echo, the graceful movements of the goddess. What a contrast!
How easy for me to decide!
Goethe, Wilhelm in Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, Thomas Carlyle, trans. (1899), Book I, Chapter 7, p. 22
344
“To finish is not the scholar's care; it is enough if he improves himself by practice.”
“But also completes according to his best ability.”
“And still the question might be asked, Is there not good hope of a youth who, on commencing some
unsuitable affair, soon discovers its unsuitableness, and discontinues his exertions, not choosing to spend toil
and time on what never can be of any value?”
Goethe, Wilhelm and Werner in Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, Thomas Carlyle, trans. (1899), Book 1, Chapter 10, p. 64
“I could not think of any man whose spirit was, or needed to be, more enlarged than the spirit of a genuine
merchant. What a thing it is to see the order which prevails throughout his business! By means of this he can
at any time survey the general whole, without needing to perplex himself in the details. What advantages
does he derive from the system of book-keeping by double entry! It is among the finest inventions of the
human mind; every prudent master of a house should introduce it into his economy.”
“Pardon me,” said Wilhelm, smiling, “you begin by the form, as if it were the matter: you traders
commonly, in your additions and balancings, forget what is the proper net-result of life.”
“My good friend, you do not see how form and matter are in this case one; how neither can exist without
the other. Order and arrangement increase the desire to save and get. A man embarrassed in his
circumstances, and conducting them imprudently, likes best to continue in the dark; he will not gladly reckon
up the debtor entries he is charged with. But on the other hand, there is nothing to a prudent manager more
pleasant than daily to set before himself the sums of his growing fortune. Even a mischance, if it surprise and
vex, will not affright him; for he knows at once what gains he has acquired to cast into the other scale. I am
convinced, my friend, that if you once had a proper taste for our employments, you would grant that many
faculties of the mind are called into full and vigorous play by them. ... You want but to look upon some great
scene of activity to make you ours forever; and when you come back, you will joyfully enroll yourself among
that class of men whose art it is to draw towards themselves a portion of the money, and materials of
enjoyment, which circulate in their appointed courses through the world. Cast a look on the natural and
artificial productions of all the regions of the earth; consider how they have become, one here, another there,
articles of necessity for men. How pleasant and how intellectual a task is it to calculate, at any moment, what
is most required, and yet is wanting, or hard to find ; to procure for each easily and soon what he demands; to
lay-in your stock prudently beforehand, and then to enjoy the profit of every pulse in that mighty circulation.
This, it appears to me, is what no man that has a head can attend to without pleasure. … Do but visit one or
two great trading-towns, one or two sea-ports, and see if you can withstand the impression. When you
observe how many men are busied, whence so many things have come, and whither they are going, you will
feel as if you too could gladly mingle in the business. You will then see the smallest piece of ware in its
connection with the whole mercantile concern; and for that very reason you will reckon nothing paltry,
because everything augments the circulation by which you yourself are supported. … The great ones of the
world have taken this earth of ours to themselves; they live in the midst of splendor and superfluity. The
smallest nook of the land is already a possession, none may touch it or meddle with it; offices and civic
callings bring in little profit; where, then, will you find more honest acquisitions, juster conquests, than those
of trade? If the princes of this world hold the rivers, the highways, the havens in their power, and take a
heavy tribute from everything that passes through them, may not we embrace with joy the opportunity of
levying tax and toll, by our activity, on those commodities which the real or imaginary wants of men have
rendered indispensable ? I can promise you, if you would rightly apply your poetic view, my goddess might
be represented as an invincible, victorious queen, and boldly opposed to yours. It is true, she bears the olive
rather than the sword; dagger or chain she knows not; but she, too, gives crowns to her favorites; which,
without offence to yours be it said, are of true gold from the furnace and the mine, and glance with genuine
pearls, which she brings up from the depths of the ocean, by the hands of her unwearied servants. … And for
you, who take so warm an interest in human concerns, what a sight will it be to behold the fortune which
accompanies bold undertakings distributed to men before your eyes. What is more spirit-stirring than the
aspect of a ship arriving from a lucky voyage, or soon returning with a rich capture? Not alone the relatives,
the acquaintances, and those that share with the adventurers, but every unconcerned spectator also is excited,
when he sees the joy with which the long-imprisoned shipman springs on land before his keel has wholly
reached it, feeling that he is free once more, and now can trust what he has rescued from the false sea to the
345
firm and faithful earth. It is not, my friend, in figures of arithmetic alone that gain presents itself before us;
fortune is the goddess of breathing men; to feel her favors truly, we must live and be men who toil with their
living minds and bodies, and enjoy with them also.”
Goethe, Werner and Wilhelm in Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, T. Carlyle, trans. (1899), Book 1, Chapter 10, pp. 65-68
Nicht vor Irrthum zu bewahren, ist die Pflicht des Menschenerziehers, sondern den Irrenten zu leiten, ja, ihn
seinen Irrthum aus vollen Bechern ausschlürfen zu lassen, das ist Weisheit der Lehrer. Wer seinen Irrthum
nur kostet, hält lange damit Haus, er freuet sich dessen als eines seltenen Glücks; aber wer ihn ganz
erschöpft, der muß ihn kennen lernen, wenn er nicht wahnsinnig ist.
Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Teil 1, Buch 7, Kapitel 9
Not to keep from error, is the duty of the educator of men, but to guide the erring one, even to let him
swill his error out of full cups—that is the wisdom of teachers. Whoever merely tastes of his error, will
keep house with it for a long time, … but whoever drains it completely will have to get to know it.
Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, cited in Walter Kaufmann, Hegel: A Reinterpretation (1966), p. 156
Iphigenie
German: http://books.google.com/books?id=Dh4-xuliTwMC
Wir fassen jed’ Gesetz begierig an, das unsrer Leidenschaft zur Waffe dient. Mir gebietet ein ander Gesetz,
ein älteres, mich dir zu widersetzen.
Goethe, Iphigenie in Iphigenie, 3. Austritt
Maxims and Reflections

Elisabeth Stopp, trans. (Penguin: 1998)
German: http://books.google.com/books?id=XJA6AAAAcAAJ
Der Verständige findet fast alles lächerlich, der Vernünftige fast nichts.
Goethe
Die Leidenschaften sind Mängel oder Tugenden, nur gesteigerte.

Goethe
Passions are faults or virtues, only heightened ones.
Goethe, Maxims and Reflections, Elisabeth Stopp, trans. (Penguin: 1998) #21
Unsere Leidenschaften sind wahre Phönire. Wie der alte verbrennt, steigt der neue sogleich wieder aus der
Asche hervor.
Goethe
Our passions are a genuine phoenix. As the old one burns down, the new one immediately arises out of the
ashes.
Niemand ist mehr Sklave, als der sich für frei hält, ohne es zu sein.
Goethe
No one is more of a slave than he who thinks he is free without being free.
Es darf sich einer nur für frei erklären, so fühlt er sich den Augenblick als bedingt. Wagt er es, sich für
bedingt zu erklären, so fühlt er sich frei.
Goethe
A person only has to say he is free and immediately he feels constrained. If he has the courage to say he is
constrained, then he feels free.
346
Es gibt, sagt man, für den Kammerdiener keinen Helden. Das kommt aber bloß daher, weil der Held nur vom
Helden anerkannt werden kann. Der Kammerdiener wird aber wahrscheinlich seines Gleichen zu schätzen
wissen.
Goethe
A hero can only be recognized and appreciated by another hero.
Es gibt keinen größern Trost für die Mittelmäßigkeit, als daß das Genie nicht unsterblich sei.
Goethe
There is no greater consolation for mediocrity than the fact that genius is not immortal.
Die Kunst an und für sich selbst ist edel; deßhalb fürchtet sich der Künstler nicht vor dem Gemeinen. Ja
indem er es aufnimmt, ist es schon geadelt, und so sehen wir die größten Künstler mit Kühnheit ihr
Majestätsrecht ausüben.
Goethe
Art is in itself noble; that is why the artist has no fear of what is common. This, indeed, is already
ennobled when he takes it up.
In jedem Künstler liegt ein Keim von Verwegenheit, ohne den kein Talent denkbar ist. und dieser wird
besonders rege, wenn man den Fähigen einschränken und zu einseitigen Zwecken dingen und brauchen will.
Goethe
In every artist there is a potential foolhardiness without which talent is inconceivable; this is more
particularly activated when there is an attempt to constrain a gifted man and to hire his services in one-sided
ways.
Ein Irrthum so gut als ein Wahres zur Thätigkeit bewegen und antreiben kann
Goethe
Error as well as truth can move and spur us on to action.
Und doch sehr oft, wenn wir uns von dem Beabsichtigten für ewig getrennt sehen, haben wir schon auf
unserm Wege irgend ein anderes Wünschenswerthe gefunden, etwas uns Gemäßes, mit dem uns zu begnügen
wir eigentlich geboren sind.
Goethe
Very often when we have found ourselves forever separated from what we had intended to achieve, we have
already, on our way, found something else worth desiring.
Ich bedauere die Menschen, welche von der Vergänglichkeit der Dinge viel Wesens machen und sich in
Betrachtung irdischer Nichtigkeit verlieren. Sind wir ja eben deßhalb da, um das Vergängliche unvergänglich
zu machen; das kann ja nur dadurch geschehen, wenn man beides zu schätzen weiß.
Goethe
I’m sorry for people who make a great to-do about the transitory nature of things and get lost in meditations
of earthly nothingness. Surely we are here precisely so as to turn what passes into something that endures;
but this is possible only if you can appreciate both.
Der eigentliche Obskurantismus ist nicht, daß man die Ausbreitung des Wahren, Klaren, Nützlichen hindert,
sondern daß man das Falsche in Curs bringt.
Goethe
Real obscurantism doesn’t operate by blocking the spread of what is true, clear and useful, but by circulating
and validating what is false.
347
Wer meine Fehler überträgt, ist mein Herr, und wenn’s mein Diener wäre.
Goethe
Anyone who points out my faults is my master, even if it should happen to be my servant.
Goethe, Maxims and Reflections, Elisabeth Stopp, trans., modified (Penguin: 1998) #178
Man sagt: „Studire, Künstler, die Natur!” Es ist aber keine Kleinigkeit, aus dem Gemeinen das Edle, aus der
Unform das Schöne zu entwickeln.
Goethe
People say, “Artist, study nature!” But it is no small matter to develop what is noble out of what is common,
beauty out of what lacks form.
Die Welt ist eine Glocke, die einen Riß hat: sie klappert, aber klingt nicht.
Goethe
The world is a bell that is cracked: it clatters, but does not ring out clearly.
Mysteries do not as yet amount to miracles.

Man darf nur alt werden, um milder zu sein; ich sehe keinen Fehler begehen, den ich nicht auch begangen
hätte.
Goethe
You’ve only got to grow old to be more lenient; I see no fault committed of which I too haven’t been guilty.
Der Handelnde ist immer gewissenlos; es hat niemand Gewissen als der Betrachtende.
Goethe
The man of action is always unprincipled; none but the contemplative has a conscience.
Wie man aus Gewohnheit nach einer abgelaufenen Uhr hinsieht, als wenn sie noch ginge, so blickt man auch
wohl einer Schönen in’s Gesicht, als wenn sie noch liebte.
Goethe
Just as, out of habit, one consults a run-down clock as though it were still going, so too one may look at the
face of a beautiful woman as though he still loved her.
Dilettantismus, ernstlich behandelt, und Wissenschaft, mechanisch betrieben, werden Pedanterei.

Goethe
[Both] the dilettante who takes his subject seriously and the scholar who works mechanically turn into
pedants.
Goethe, Maxims and Reflections, Elisabeth Stopp, trans, modified. (Penguin: 1998) #249
Der thörigste von allen Irrthümern ist, wenn junge gute Köpfe glauben, ihre Originalität zu verlieren, indem
sie das Wahre anerkennen, was von andern schon anerkannt worden.
Goethe
It is the most foolish of all errors for young people of good intelligence to imagine that they will forfeit their
originality if they acknowledge truth already acknowledged by others.
Die Gelehrten sind meist gehässig, wenn sie widerlegen; einen Irrenden sehen sie gleich als ihren Todfeind
an.
Goethe
Scholars are usually hostile when they are refuting; someone who is wrong is immediately seen as a deadly
enemy.
348
Man sagt sich oft im Leben, daß man die Vielgeschäftigkeit, Polypragmosyne, vermeiden, besonders, je älter
man wird, sich desto weniger in ein neues Geschäft einlassen solle. Aber man hat gut reden, gut sich und
anderen rathen. Älter werden heißt selbst ein neues Geschäft antreten; alle Verhältnisse verändern sich, und
man muß entweder zu handeln ganz aufhören oder mit Willen und Bewußtsein das neue Rollenfach
übernehmen.
Goethe
One often says to oneself … that one ought to avoid having too many different businesses, to avoid
becoming a jack-of-all-trades, and that the older one gets, the more one ought to avoid entering into
new business. But … the very fact of growing older means taking up a new business; all our
circumstances change, and we must either stop doing anything at all or else willing and consciously
take on the new role we have to play on life’s stage.
Es geht uns mit Büchern wie mit neuen Bekanntschaften. Die erste Zeit sind wir hoch vergnügt. Wir finden
im allgemeinen Übereinstimmung. Wir fühlen uns an irgend einer Hauptseite unserer Existenz freundlich
berührt: bei näherer Bekanntschaft treten alsdann erst die Differenzen hervor. Da ist denn die Hauptsache
eines vernünftigen Betragens folgendes. Man schaudere nicht fogleich zurück. So etwa geschieht es in der
Jugend. Man halte gerade das Übereinstimmende recht fest und kläre sich über die Differenzen vollkommen
auf. Man wolle sich deshalb nicht vereinigen.
Goethe
Books, we find, are like new acquaintances. To begin with, we are highly delighted if we find an area of
general agreement … It is only on closer acquaintance that differences begin to emerge, at which point
the great thing is not immediately to recoil, as may happen at a more youthful age, but to cling very
firmly to the areas of agreement and fully clarify our differences
Die Wahrheit widerspricht unserer Natur, der Irrthum nicht, und zwar aus einem sehr einfachen Grunde: die
Wahrheit fordert, daß wir uns für beschränkt erkennen follen, der Irrthum schmeichelt uns. wir seien auf ein-
oder die andere Weise unbegränzt.
Goethe
Truth is contrary to our nature … truth demands that we should recognize ourselves as limited, error flatters
us that, in one way or another, we are unlimited.
Der Irrthum verhält sich gegen das Wahre wie der Schlaf gegen das Wachen. Ich habe bemerkt, daß man aus
dem Irren sich wie erquickt wieder zu dem Wahren hinwende.
Goethe
Error is related to truth as sleeping is to waking. … When one has been in error, one turns to truth as though
revitalized.
Alles Vortreffliche beschrankt uns für einen Augenblick, indem wir uns demselben nicht gewachsen fühlen;
nur in so fern wir es nachher in unsere Kultur aufnehmen, es unfern Geist- und Gemüthskräften aneignen.
Wirt» es uns lieb und werth.
Goethe
Everything excellent limits us momentarily because we feel unable to match up to it; only insofar as we
subsequently accept it into our own culture, absorb it as belonging to our own mental and temperamental
powers, do we come to love and value it.
349
Davon kommt dem theilnehmenden Jüngling nichts zur Erscheinung; er sieht, genießt, benutzt die Jugend
eines Vorfahren und erbaut sich selbst daran aus dem Innersten heraus, als wenn er schon einmal gewesen
wäre, was er ist.
Goethe
The young man … sees, enjoys, makes use of the youth of a predecessor and in this way edifies himself … as
though he had already at one time been what he now is.
Die Wissenschaft hilft uns vor allem, daß sie das Staunen, wozu wir von Natur berufen find. Die
Wissenschaft hilft uns vor allem, daß sie das Staunen, wozu wir von Natur berufen find.
Goethe
Scientific knowledge helps us mainly because it makes the wonder to which we are called by nature
rather more intelligible.
Theorien sind gewöhnlich Übereilungen eines ungeduldigen Verstandes, der die Phänomene gern los fein
möchte und an ihrer Stelle deßwegen Bilder, Begriffe, ja oft nur Worte einfchiebt. Man ahnet, man sieht auch
Wohl, daß es nur ein Behelf ist; liebt sich nicht aber Leidenschaft und Parteigeist jederzeit Behelfe ? Und mit
Recht, da sie ihrer so sehr bedürfen.
Goethe
Theories usually result from the precipitate reasoning of an impatient mind which would like to be rid of
phenomena and replace them with images, concepts, indeed often with mere words.
If he is not inclined to learn from more highly skilled contemporary or earlier artists what he himself lack in
order to be a true artist, he will lad behind his own potential because of a wrong-headed idea that he is
safeguarding his own originality; for we own not just what we are born with, but also what we can acquire.
Der Aberglaube gehört zum Wesen des Menschen und flüchtet sich, wenn man ihn ganz und gar zu
verdrängen denkt, in die wunderlichsten Ecken und Winkel, von wo er auf einmal, wenn er einigermaßen
sicher zu fein glaubt, wieder hervortritt.
Goethe
Superstition is innate in the human make-up, and when you think you have completely ousted it, it takes
refuge in the strangest nooks and crannies and then suddenly emerges when one thinks one is tolerably safe.
Piety is not an end but a means to attain ... the highest degree of culture. This is why ... those who parade
piety as a purpose and an aim mostly turn into hypocrites.
Goethe, Maxims and Reflections, Elisabeth Stopp, trans. (Penguin: 1998) #519-520
Man braucht nicht alles selbst gesehen noch «riebt zu haben; willst du aber dem andern und seinen
Darstellungen vertrauen, so denke, daß du es nun mit dreien zu thun hast: mit dem Gegenstand und zwei
Subjecten.
Goethe
You don’t have to have seen or experienced everything for yourself; but if you want to trust another person
and his descriptions, remember that you are now dealing with three factors: with the mater itself and two
subjects.
Wenn mancher sich nicht verpflichtet fühlte, das Unwahre zu wiederholen, weil er’s einmal gefügt hat, so
wären es ganz andere Leute geworden.
Goethe
If some people hadn’t felt obliged to repeat what is untrue simply because they had at one point maintained
it, they would have turned into quite different people.
350
Ein jeder Mensch sieht die fertige und geregelte, gebildete, vollkommene Welt doch nur als ein Element
an, woraus er sich eine besondere, ihm angemessene Welt zu erschaffen bemüht ist. Tüchtige Menschen
ergreifen sie ohne Bedenken und suchen damit, wie es gehen will, zu gebühren, andere zaudern an ihr herum,
einige zweifeln sogar an ihrem Dasein.
Wer sich von dieser Grundwahrheit recht durchdrungen fühlte, würde mit niemanden streiten, sondern nur
die Vorftellungsart eines andern wie seine ‘eigene als ein Phänomen ^betrachten. Denn wir erfahren fast
täglich, daß der eine mit Bequemlichkeit denken mag, was dem andern zu denken unmöglich ist, und zwar
nicht etwa in Dingen, die auf Wohl und Wehe nur irgend einen Einfluß hätten, sondern in Dingen, die für uns
völlig gleichgültig sind.
Goethe
Each and every person looks on the world ... as no more than an element out of which he is trying to create a
special world, one suited to his own measure. ... Anyone really penetrated by this basic truth would seek no
quarrel with anyone else, but would only consider another man’s view, as also his own, to be no more than
just a phenomenon.
When you see some evil you proceed to immediate action, you make an immediate attack to cure the
symptom.
Nothing is of value to [mathematics and rhetoric] except form: content is a matter of indifference.
Mathematics may be calculation pennies or guineas, rhetoric defending truth or falsehood, it’s all the same to
both of them.
A mathematician is only perfect insofar as he is a perfect man, sensitive to the beauty of truth.
Goethe, Maxims and Reflections, Elisabeth Stopp, trans. (Penguin: 1998) #609 (underlining added)
The desire to explain what is simple by what is complex, what is easy by what is difficult, is a calamity .
The greatest thing about the ancients, especially the Socratic school, is that they set before us the sources and
guidelines of all life and action, not for the purpose of idle speculation, but as a call to life and deeds.
Goethe, Maxims and Reflections, Elisabeth Stopp, trans. (Penguin: 1998)
Die Leiden des jungen Werthers [The Sorrows of Young Werther] (1774)
German: http://books.google.com/books?id=-dtQYdCYhPwC
German: http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/die-leiden-des-jungen-werther-3636/1
English: http://books.google.com/books?id=zeFEAAAAYAAJ
Oh, was ist der Mensch, daß er über sich klagen darf!—Ich will, lieber Freund, ich verspreche dir's, ich will
mich bessern, will nicht mehr das bißchen Übel, das uns das Schicksal vorlegt, wiederkäuen, wie ich's immer
getan habe; ich will das Gegenwärtige genießen, und das Vergangene soll mir vergangen sein. Gewiß, du
hast recht, Bester, der Schmerzen wären minder unter den Menschen, wenn sie nicht—Gott weiß, warum sie
so gemacht sind—mit soviel Emsigkeit der Einbildungskraft sich beschäftigten, die Erinnerungen des
vergangenen Übels zurückzurufen, eher als eine gleichgültige Gegenwart zu ertragen.
Goethe, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, „Am 4. Mai 1771”
Oh! what is man, that he dares so to accuse himself? My dear friend, I promise you I will improve; I will no
longer, as has ever been my habit, continue to ruminate on every petty vexation which fortune may dispense;
I will enjoy the present, and the past shall be for me the past. No doubt you are right, my best of friends,
there would be far less suffering amongst mankind, if men—and God knows why they are so fashioned—did
not employ their imaginations so assiduously in recalling the memory of past sorrow, instead of bearing their
present lot with equanimity.
Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (Boston: 1884), “May 4, 1771”
351
Ich habe, mein Lieber, wieder bei diesem kleinen Geschäft gefunden, daß Mißverständnisse und Trägheit
vielleicht mehr Irrungen in der Welt machen als List und Bosheit. Wenigstens sind die beiden letztern gewiß
seltener.
I have again observed, my dear friend, in this trifling affair, that misunderstandings and neglect occasion
more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness. At all events, the two latter are of less frequent
occurrence.
Der Garten ist einfach, und man fühlt gleich bei dem Eintritte, daß nicht ein wissenschaftlicher Gärtner,
sondern ein fühlendes Herz den Plan gezeichnet, das seiner selbst hier genießen wollte.
The garden is simple; and it is easy to perceive, even upon }our first entrance, that the plan was not designed
by a scientific gardener, but by a man who wished to give himself up here to the enjoyment of his own
sensitive heart.
Eine wunderbare Heiterkeit hat meine ganze Seele eingenommen, gleich den süßen Frühlingsmorgen, die ich
mit ganzem Herzen genieße. Ich bin allein und freue mich meines Lebens in dieser Gegend, die für solche
Seelen geschaffen ist wie die meine. Ich bin so glücklich, mein Bester, so ganz in dem Gefühle von ruhigem
Dasein versunken. daß meine Kunst darunter leidet. Ich könnte jetzt nicht zeichnen, nicht einen Strich, und
bin nie ein größerer Maler gewesen als in diesen Augenblicken.
Goethe, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, „Am 10. Mai”
I am so happy, my dear friend, so absorbed in the exquisite sense of mere tranquil existence, that I neglect
my talents. I should be incapable of drawing a single stroke at the present moment; and yet I feel that I never
was a greater artist than now.
Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (Boston: 1884), “May 10”
Wenn ich das Wimmeln der kleinen Welt zwischen Halmen, die unzähligen, unergründlichen Gestalten der
Würmchen, der Mückchen näher an meinem Herzen fühle, und fühle die Gegenwart des Allmächtigen, der
uns nach seinem Bilde schuf, das Wehen des Alliebenden, der uns in ewiger Wonne schwebend trägt und
erhält—mein Freund, wenn's dann um meine Augen dämmert und die Welt um mich her und der Himmel
ganz in meiner Seele ruhn wie die Gestalt einer Geliebten; dann sehne ich mich oft und denke: ach, könntest
du das wieder ausdrücken, könntest du dem Papier das einhauchen, was so voll, so warm in dir lebt, daß es
würde der Spiegel deiner Seele, wie deine Seele ist der Spiegel des unendlichen Gottes.—Mein Freund—
aber ich gehe darüber zugrunde, ich erliege unter der Gewalt der Herrlichkeit dieser Erscheinungen.
When I hear the buzz of the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the countless indescribable
forms of the insects and flies, then I feel the presence of the Almighty, who formed us in his own image, and
the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and
then, my friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and
absorb its power, like the form of a beloved mistress,—then I often think with longing, Oh, would I could
describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me, that
it might be the mirror of my soul, as my soul is the mirror of the infinite God! O my friend—but it is too
much for my strength—I sink under the weight of the splendor of these visions!
352
Du fragst, ob du mir meine Bücher schicken sollst?—Lieber, ich bitte dich, um Gottes willen, laß mir sie
vom Halse! Ich will nicht mehr geleitet, ermuntert, angefeuert sein; braust dieses Herz doch genug aus sich
selbst; ich brauche Wiegengesang, und den habe ich in seiner Fülle gefunden in meinem Homer. Wie oft lull
ich mein empörtes Blut zur Ruhe; denn so ungleich, so unstet hast du nichts gesehn als dieses Herz. Lieber!
brauch ich dir das zu sagen, der du so oft die Last getragen hast, mich vom Kummer zur Ausschweifung und
von süßer Melancholie zur verderblichen Leidenschaft übergehn zu sehn? Auch halte ich mein Herzchen wie
ein krankes Kind; jeder Wille wird ihm gestattet. Sage das nicht weiter; es gibt Leute, die mir es verübeln
würden.
You ask if you shall send me books. My dear friend, I beseech you, for the love of God, relieve me from
such a yoke! I need no more to be guided, agitated, heated. My heart ferments sufficiently of itself. I want
strains to lull me, and I find them to perfection in my Homer. Often do I strive to allay the burning fever of
my blood; and you have never witnessed any thing so unsteady, so uncertain, as my heart. But need I confess
this to you, my dear friend, who have so often endured the anguish of witnessing my sudden transitions from
sorrow to immoderate joy, and from sweet melancholy to violent passions? I treat my poor heart like a sick
child, and gratify its even- fancy. Do not mention this again: there are people who would censure me for it.
Die geringen Leute des Ortes kennen mich schon und lieben mich, besonders die Kinder. Eine traurige
Bemerkung hab ich gemacht. Wie ich im Anfange mich zu ihnen gesellte, sie freundschaftlich fragte über
dies und das, glaubten einige, ich wollte ihrer spotten, und fertigten mich wohl gar grob ab. Ich ließ mich das
nicht verdrießen; nur fühlte ich, was ich schon oft bemerkt habe, auf das lebhafteste: Leute von einigem
Stande werden sich immer in kalter Entfernung vom gemeinen Volke halten, als glaubten sie, durch
Annäherung zu verlieren; und dann gibt's Flüchtlinge und üble Spaßvögel, die sich herabzulassen scheinen,
um ihren Übermut dem armen Volke desto empfindlicher zu machen.
The simple folk here already know me and seem to be fond of me, especially the children. At first, when I
made efforts to join them and ask questions about this and that, a few thought I was making fun of them and
were quite rude. But I didn’t let it bother me. I only felt keenly what I have noticed often—that person of
rank tend to keep the cold distance from the common man, as if they feared to lose something by such
intimacy. And them of course, there are those who shrink from all contact with the simple people, and the
tactless jokesters who talk down to them—they succeed only in making the poor souls more sharply aware
then every of their presumption.
Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther, C. Hutter, trans. (1962), “May 15”
Ich weiß wohl, daß wir nicht gleich sind noch sein können; aber ich halte dafür, daß der, der nötig zu haben
glaubt, vom sogenannten Pöbel sich zu entfernen, um den Respekt zu erhalten, ebenso tadelhaft ist als ein
Feiger, der sich vor seinem Feinde verbirgt, weil er zu unterliegen fürchtet.
I know very well that we are not all equal, nor can be so; but it is my opinion that he who deems it
important to keep aloof from the so-called rabble, in order to maintain their respect, is as much to
blame as a coward who hides himself from his enemy because he fears defeat.
Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (Boston: 1884), modified translation, “May 15”
Es ist ein einförmiges Ding um das Menschengeschlecht. Die meisten verarbeiten den größten Teil der Zeit,
um zu leben, und das bisschen, das ihnen von Freiheit übrig bleibt, ängstigt sie so, dass sie alle Mittel
aufsuchen, um es los zu werden. O Bestimmung des Menschen!
Goethe, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, „Den 17. Mai”
The human race is but a monotonous affair. Most of them labor the greater part of their time for mere
subsistence; and the scanty portion of freedom which remains to them so troubles them that they use every
exertion to get rid of it. Oh, the destiny of man!
353
Aber ich habe sie gehabt, ich habe das Herz gefühlt, die große Seele, in deren Gegenwart ich mir schien
mehr zu sein, als ich war, weil ich alles war, was ich sein konnte. Guter Gott! Blieb da eine einzige Kraft
meiner Seele ungenutzt? Konnt ich nicht vor ihr das ganze wunderbare Gefühl entwickeln, mit dem mein
Herz die Natur umfaßt? War unser Umgang nicht ein ewiges Weben von der feinsten Empfindung, dem
schärfsten Witze, dessen Modifikationen bis zur Unart alle mit dem Stempel des Genies bezeichnet waren?
Goethe, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, „Den 17. Mai”
I have possessed that heart, that noble soul, in whose presence I seemed to be more than I really was, because
I was all that I could be. Good heavens! did then a single power of my soul remain unexercised? In her
presence could I not display, to its full extent, that mysterious feeling with which my heart embraces nature?
Was not our intercourse a perpetual web of the finest emotions, of the keenest wit, the varieties of which,
even in their very eccentricity, bore the stamp of genius?
Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (Boston: 1884)
Daß das Leben des Menschen nur ein Traum sei, ist manchem schon so vorgekommen, und auch mit mir
zieht dieses Gefühl immer herum. Wenn ich die Einschränkung ansehe, in welche die tätigen und
forschenden Kräfte des Menschen eingesperrt sind; wenn ich sehe, wie alle Wirksamkeit dahinaus läuft, sich
die Befriedigung von Bedürfnissen zu verschaffen, die wieder keinen Zweck haben, als unsere arme Existenz
zu verlängern, und dann, daß alle Beruhigung über gewisse Punkte des Nachforschens nur eine träumende
Resignation ist, da man sich die Wände, zwischen denen man gefangen sitzt, mit bunten Gestalten und
lichten Aussichten bemalt—das alles, Wilhelm, macht mich stumm. Ich kehre in mich selbst zurück und
finde eine Welt! Wieder mehr in Ahnung und dunkler Begier als in Darstellung und lebendiger Kraft. Und da
schwimmt alles vor meinen Sinnen, und ich lächle dann so träumend weiter in die Welt.
Daß die Kinder nicht wissen, warum sie wollen, darin sind alle hochgelahrte Schul- und Hofmeister einig;
daß aber auch Erwachsene gleich Kindern auf diesem Erdboden herumtaumeln und, wie jene. nicht wissen,
woher sie kommen und wohin sie gehen, ebensowenig nach wahren Zwecken handeln, ebenso durch Biskuit
und Kuchen und Birkenreiser regiert werden: das will niemand gern glauben, und mich dünkt, man kann es
mit Händen greifen.
That the life of man is but a dream, many a man has surmised heretofore; and I, too, am everywhere
pursued by this feeling. When I consider the narrow limits within which our active and inquiring faculties are
confined; when I see how all our energies are wasted in providing for mere necessities, which again have no
further end than to prolong a wretched existence; and then that all our satisfaction concerning certain subjects
of investigation ends in nothing better than a passive resignation, whilst we amuse ourselves painting our
prison-walls with bright figures and brilliant landscapes,—when I consider all this, Wilhelm, I am silent. I
examine my own being, and find there a world, but a world rather of imagination and dim desires, than of
distinctness and living power. Then every thing swims before my senses, and I smile and dream while
pursuing my way through the world.
All learned professors and doctors are agreed that children do not comprehend the cause of their desires:
hut that the grown-up should wander about this earth like children, without knowing whence they come, or
whither they go. influenced as little by fixed motives, but guided like them by biscuits, sugar-plums, and the
rod,—this is what nobody is willing to acknowledge; and yet I think it is palpable.
354
Ich gestehe dir gern, denn ich weiß, was du mir hierauf sagen möchtest, daß diejenigen die Glücklichsten
sind, die gleich den Kindern in den Tag hinein leben, ihre Puppen herumschleppen, aus- und anziehen und
mit großem Respekt um die Schublade umherschleichen, wo Mama das Zuckerbrot hineingeschlossen hat,
und, wenn sie das gewünschte endlich erhaschen, es mit vollen Backen verzehren und rufen: »mehr!« – das
sind glückliche Geschöpfe. Auch denen ist's wohl, die ihren Lumpenbeschäftigungen oder wohl gar ihren
Leidenschaften prächtige Titel geben und sie dem Menschengeschlechte als Riesenoperationen zu dessen
Heil und Wohlfahrt anschreiben. – Wohl dem, der so sein kann! Wer aber in seiner Demut erkennt, wo das
alles hinausläuft, wer da sieht, wie artig jeder Bürger, dem es wohl ist, sein Gärtchen zum Paradiese
zuzustutzen weiß, und wie unverdrossen auch der Unglückliche unter der Bürde seinen Weg fortkeucht, und
alle gleich interessiert sind, das Licht dieser Sonne noch eine Minute länger zu sehn – ja, der ist still und
bildet auch seine Welt aus sich selbst und ist auch glücklich, weil er ein Mensch ist. Und dann, so
eingeschränkt er ist, hält er doch immer im Herzen das süße Gefühl der Freiheit, und daß er diesen Kerker
verlassen kann, wann er will.
I am ready to admit that they are happiest, who, like children, amuse themselves with their playthings, dress
and undress their dolls, and attentively watch the cupboard, where mamma has locked up her sweet things,
and, when at last they get a delicious morsel, eat it greedily, and exclaim, “More!” These are certainly happy
beings; but others also are objects of envy, who dignify their paltry employments, and sometimes even their
passions, with pompous titles, representing them to mankind as gigantic achievements performed for their
welfare and glory. But the man who humbly acknowledges the vanity of all this, who observes with what
pleasure the thriving citizen converts his little garden into a paradise, and how patiently even the poor man
pursues his weary way under his burden, and how all wish equally to behold the light of the sun a little
longer, —yes, such a man is at peace, and creates his own world within himself; and he is also happy,
because he is a man. And then, however limited his sphere, he still preserves in his bosom the sweet feeling
of liberty, and knows that he can quit his prison whenever he likes.
Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (Boston: 1884)
Urfaust
Faust
http://books.google.com/books?id=5R0_AAAAYAAJ
DIRECTOR
Besonders aber laßt genug geschehn!
Man kommt zu schaun, man will am liebsten sehn.
Wird vieles vor den Augen abgesponnen,
So daß die Menge staunend gaffen kann.
Da habt ihr in der Breite gleich gewonnen,
Ihr seid ein vielgeliebter Mann.
Die Masse könnt ihr nur durch Masse zwingen.
Ein jeder sucht sich endlich selbst was aus.
Wer vieles bringt, wird manchem etwas bringen;
Und jeder geht zufrieden aus dem Haus.
Gebt ihr ein Stück, so gebt es gleich in Stücken!
Solch ein Ragout es muß euch glücken;
Leicht ist es vorgelegt, so leicht als ausgedacht.
Was hilft’s, wenn ihr ein Ganzes dargebracht.
Das Publicum wird es euch doch zerpflücken.
DICHTER
355
Ihr fühlet nicht, wie schlecht ein solches Handwerk sei!
Wie wenig das dem echten Künstler zieme!
Der säubern Herren Pfuscherei
Ist, merk’ ich, schon bei euch Maxime.
DIRECTOR
Ein solcher Vorwurf läßt mich ungekränkt:
Ein Mann, der recht zu wirken denkt.
Muß auf das beste Werkzeug halten. no
Bedenkt, ihr habet weiches Holz zu spalten.
Und seht nur hin für wen ihr schreibt!
…
DICHTER
Geh hin und such dir einen andern Knecht!
Der Dichter sollte wohl das höchste Recht,
Das Menschenrecht, das ihm Natur vergönnt.
Um deinetwillen freventlich verscherzen!
Wodurch bewegt er alle Herzen?
Wodurch besiegt er jedes Element?
Ist es der Einklang nicht, der aus dem Busen dringt.
Und in sein Herz die Welt zurücke schlingt?
Wenn die Natur des Fadens ew’ge Länge,
Gleichgültig drehend, auf die Spindel zwingt.
Wenn aller Wesen unharmon’sche Menge
Verdrießlich durch einander klingt;
Wer theilt die fließend immer gleiche Reihe
Belebend ab, daß sie sich rhythmisch regt?
Wer ruft das Einzelne zur allgemeinen Weihe,
Wo es in herrlichen Accorden schlägt?
Wer läßt den Sturm zu Leidenschaften wüthen?
Das Abendroth im ernsten Sinne glühn?
Wer schüttet alle schönen Frühlingsblüthen
Auf der Geliebten Pfade hin?
Wer sticht die unbedeutend grünen Blätter
Zum Ehrenkranz Verdiensten jeder Art?
Wer sichelt den Olymp, vereinet Götter?
Des Menschen Kraft, im Dichter offenbart.
Goethe, Faust, 89-157
Greift nur hinein in’s volle Menschenleben!

Ein jeder lebt’s, nicht vielen ist’s bekannt.
Und wo ihr’s packt, da ist’s interessant.
Goethe, Lustige Person, Faust, 167-169
Reach for the fullness of human life!
We live it all, but few live knowingly;
If you but touch it, it will fascinate.
Goethe, Comedian in Faust, P. Salm, trans., lines 167-169
356
Wie nur dem Kopf nicht alle Hoffnung schwindet.
Der immerfort an schalem Zeuge klebt.
Mit gier’ger Hand nach Schätzen gräbt,
Und froh ist wenn er Regenwürmer findet!
How does the mind sustain some hope and pleasure
That’s stuck forever to the same old terms,
With greedy fingers grubbing after treasure,
And gratified to dig up worms.
Goethe, Faust in Faust, W. Arndt, trans., lines 602-605
Den Göttern gleich’ ich nicht! Zu tief ist es gefühlt;

Dem Wurme gleich’ ich, der den Staub durchwühlt;
Den, wie er sich im Staube nährend lebt,
Des Wandrers Tritt vernichtet und begräbt.
Not like the gods am I—profoundly it is rued!
I’m of the earthworm’s dust-engendered brood,
Which, blindly burrowing, by dust is fed,
And crushed and buried by the wanderer’s tread.
Goethe, Faust in Faust, W. Arndt, trans., lines 652-655
JOSEPH JOUBERT (1754-1824)

Plato … brings brightness with him; he gives light to our eyes, and fills us with a clarity whereby all things
afterwards become luminous,. He teaches us nothing, but he prepares us, shapes us, gets us ready, to learn
everything.
Joseph Joubert, cited in Albert Jay Nock’s Introduction to Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 13
Genius begins beautiful works, but only labor finishes them.

Joseph Joubert, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 58
To mediocre people, the mediocre is the excellent.

That which astonishes, astonishes once; but whatever is admirable becomes more and more admired.
There is in the soul a taste for the good, just as there is in the body a taste for enjoyment.
Politeness is a sort of guard which covers the rough edges of our character, and prevents their wounding
others.
Manners are an art, some commendable, some faulty; but there are none that are of no moment. How comes
it that we have no precepts by which to teach them, or, at least, no rule whereby to judge them, as we judge
sculpture and music? A science of manners would be more important to the virtue and happiness of men than
one would suppose. If virtue leads to good manners, so do they in their turn lead to virtue. Manners are an
essential part of ethics. We should, therefore, adopt on every occasion graceful, simple, suitable manners in
our strivings after sublime wisdom.
Joseph Joubert, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), pp. 151-152
The great drawback of new books is that prevent our reading older ones.
357
Fully to understand a beautiful thought requires, perhaps, as much time as to conceive it.
We should make ourselves loved, for men are only just towards those whom they love.
Joseph Joubert
Writing is closer to thinking than to speaking.

Joseph Joubert
Grace is in garments, in movements, in manners; beauty in the nude, and in forms. This is true of bodies; but
when we speak of feelings, beauty is in their spirituality, and grace in their moderation.
Joseph Joubert
It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.
Joseph Joubert
The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.

Joseph Joubert
Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to
the reader.
Joseph Joubert
Pleasures are always children, pains always have wrinkles.

Joseph Joubert
The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk.

Joseph Joubert
The direction of the mind is more important than its progress.

Joseph Joubert
You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you.
Joseph Joubert
I polish not my phrase but my idea.

Joseph Joubert
WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827)

Suddenly, on the day after visiting the Truchsessian Gallery of pictures, I was again enlightened with the
light I enjoyed in my youth, and which has for exactly twenty years been closed from me as by a door.
William Blake, Poetry and Prose of William Blake 1108
Without minute neatness of execution the sublime cannot exist. Grandeur of ideas is precision of ideas.
Singular and particular detail is the foundation of the sublime.
... calling on God for help, and not ourselves, in whom God dwells
There are states in which all visionary men are accounted mad men.
Natural objects always did and now do weaken, deaden and obliterate Imagination in Me.
William Blake
358
I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man’s.
William Blake, “Creation”
He who binds to himself a joy, does the winged life destroy

William Blake
That the Jews assumed a right exclusively to the benefits of God will be a lasting witness against them and
the same will it be against Christians
Annotations to An Apology for the Bible by R. Watson
When nations grow old, the Arts grow cold,

And Commerce settles on every tree.
William Blake, “On the Foundation of the Royal Academy,” On Art And Artists (1800)
When I tell any truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of
defending those who do.
William Blake, Public address, Blake’s Notebook c. 1810
Active evil is better than passive good.

William Blake, Annotations to Lavater (1788)
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793)

http://www.levity.com/alchemy/blake_ma.html
All Bibles or sacred codes, have been the causes of the following Errors.
1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a Soul.
2. That Energy, call’d Evil, is alone from the Body, & that Reason, call’d Good, is alone from the Soul.
3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.
But the following Contraries to these are True.

1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that call’d Body is a portion of Soul discern’d by the five
Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.
2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
3. Energy is Eternal Delight.
William Blake, “The Voice of the Devil,” The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason
usurps its place & governs the unwilling.
And being restrain’d it by degrees becomes passive till it is only the shadow of desire.
William Blake, “The Voice of the Devil,” The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

William Blake, “Proverbs of Hell,” The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, line 3
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.

If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.

359
The fox condemns the trap, not himself.
Always be ready to speak your mind and a base man will avoid you.
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.

If others had not been foolish, we should be so.

As the catterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.
Exuberance is Beauty.
Man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.
William Blake, “A Memorable Fancy,” The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The worship of God is: Honouring his gifts in other men, each according to his genius, and loving the
greatest men best: those who envy or calumniate great men hate God; for there is no other God.
William Blake, the Devil in “A Memorable Fancy,” The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression.

William Blake, “A Memorable Fancy,” The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
FRIEDRICH SCHILLER (1759-1805)

Meineid ist der Reue fromme Pflicht.
Friedrich Schiller, “Freigeisterei der Leidenschaft”
Perjury is remorse’s solemn duty.
Friedrich Schiller
Have Hope. Though clouds environ now,

And gladness hides her face in scorn,
Put thou the shadow from thy brow, —
No night but hath its morn.
Friedrich Schiller, “Hope, Faith, and Love” (c. 1786), as translated in The Common School Journal Vol. IX (1847) edited by Horace Mann, p. 386
Wouldst thou other men know, look thou within thine own heart.
Friedrich Schiller, Tabulae Votivae (Votive Tablets) (1796), "The Key"; tr. Edgar Alfred Bowring, The Poems of Schiller, Complete (1851)
Happily might I hear that Carlos hates my advice, yet with displeasure detect, that he disdains it.
Friedrich Schiller, Philip in Don Carlos, cited in Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 53
Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain.

Friedrich Schiller, Die Jungfrau von Orleans, Act III, sc. vi
Only through Beauty’s morning gate, dost thou enter the land of Knowledge.
Friedrich Schiller, Die Künstler
360
Es glänzen viele in der Welt,
Sie wissen von allem zu sagen,
Und wo was reizet, und wo was gefällt,
Man kann es bey ihnen erfragen,
Man dächte, hört man sie reden laut,
Sie hätten wirklich erobert die Braut.
Doch gehn sie aus der Welt ganz still,
Ihr Leben war verloren,
Wer etwas Trefliches leisten will,
Hätt’ gerne was Großes gebohren,
Der sammle still, und unerschlafft
Im kleinsten Punkte die höchste Kraft.
Der Stamm erhebt sich in die Luft
Mit üppig prangenden Zweigen,
Die Blätter glänzen und hauchen Duft,
Doch können sie Früchte nicht zeugen,
Der Kern allein im schmalen Raum,
Verbirgt den Stolz des Waldes, den Baum.
Friedrich Schiller, „Breite und Tiefe”
Der Menschheit Würde ist in Eure Hand gegeben, bewahret Sie!

Sie sinkt mit euch! Mit euch wird sie sich heben!
The dignity of mankind is in your hands; protect it!
It sinks with you! With you it will ascend.
Virtue has her heroes too

As well as Fame and Fortune.
Friedrich Schiller, Wallenstein (1798), Act I, sc. vii
Philosophical Letters
English: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6799/6799-h/6799-h.htm
Rarely do we arrive at the summit of truth without running into extremes; we have frequently to
exhaust the part of error, and even of folly, before we work our way up to the noble goal of tranquil
wisdom.
Friedrich Schiller, Philosophical Letters, Preface
Harmony, truth, order, beauty, excellence, give me joy, because they transport me into the active state of
their author, of their possessor, because they betray the presence of a rational and feeling being, and let me
perceive my relationship with that being.
Friedrich Schiller, Philosophical Letters, Letter 4
Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen [The Aesthetic Education of Man]
(1795)
English: http://books.google.com/books?id=FazxVTmxmmkC
English: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/schiller-education.html
German: http://www.kuehnle-online.de/literatur/schiller/werke/phil/aestherzieh/01.htm
It is only through beauty that man makes his was to freedom.

Friedrich Schiller, The Aesthetic Education of Man, Second Letter
Utility is the great idol of the age, to which all powers must do service and all talents swear allegiance.
Friedrich Schiller, The Aesthetic Education of Man, Second Letter
361
People caught up in the process of civilization … must fall away from nature by the abuse of reason before
they can return to her by the use of reason.
Friedrich Schiller, The Aesthetic Education of Man, Sixth Letter
The Greeks … did indeed divide human nature into its several aspects, and project these in magnified form
into the divinities of its glorious pantheon; but not by tearing it to pieces; rather by combining its aspects in
different proportions, for in to single one of their deities was humanity in its entirety ever lacking. How
different with us moderns! With us too the image of the human species is projected in magnified form into
separate individuals—but as fragments, not in different combinations, with the result that one has to go the
rounds from one individual to another in order to piece together a complete image of the species. With us,
one might almost be tempted to assert, the various faculties appear as separate in practice as they are
distinguished by the psychologist in theory, and we see not merely individuals, but whole classes of men,
developing but one part of their potentialities, while of the rest, as in stunted growths, only vestigial traces
remain.
Whence this disadvantage among individuals when the species as a whole is at such an advantage? Why was
the individual Greek qualified to be the representative of his age, and why can no single modern venture as
much? Because it was from all-unifying nature that the former, and from the all-dividing intellect that the
latter, received their respective forms.
Once the increase of empirical knowledge, and more exact modes of thought, made sharper divisions
between the sciences inevitable, and once the increasingly complex machinery of the state necessitated a
more rigorous separation of ranks and occupations, then the inner unity of human nature was severed too.
The polypoid character of the Greek states, in which every individual enjoyed an independent existence but
could, when need arose, grow into the whole organism, now made way for an ingenious clock-work, in
which out of the piecing together of innumerable but lifeless parts, a mechanical kind of collective life
ensued. State and church, laws and customs were now torn asunder; enjoyment was divorced from labor,
the means from the end, the effort from the reward. Everlastingly chained to a single little fragment of
the whole, man himself develops into nothing but a fragment; everlastingly in his ear the monotonous sound
of the wheel that he turns, he never develops the harmony of his being, and instead of putting the stamp of
humanity upon his own nature, he becomes nothing more than the imprint of his occupation or of his
specialized knowledge.
362
Indem der spekulative Geist im Ideenreich nach unverlierbaren Besitzungen strebte, musste er ein Fremdling
in der Sinnenwelt werden und über der Form die Materie verlieren. Der Geschäftsgeist, in einen einförmigen
Kreis von Objekten eingeschlossen und in diesem noch mehr durch Formeln eingeengt, musste das freie
Ganze sich aus den Augen gerückt sehen und zugleich mit seiner Sphäre verarmen. Sowie ersterer versucht
wird, das Wirkliche nach dem Denkbaren zu modeln und die subjektiven Bedingungen seiner
Vorstellungskraft zu konstitutiven Gesetzen für das Dasein der Dinge zu erheben, so stürzte letzterer in das
entgegenstehende Extrem, alle Erfahrung überhaupt nach einem besondern Fragment von Erfahrung zu
schätzen und die Regeln seines Geschäfts jedem Geschäft ohne Unterschied anpassen zu wollen. Der eine
musste einer leeren Subtilität, der andre einer pedantischen Beschränktheit zum Raub werden, weil jener für
das Einzelne zu hoch, dieser zu tief für das Ganze stand.
Friedrich Schiller, Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen, 6. Brief
While the speculative spirit strives after inalienable possessions in the realm of ideas, it must be a stranger in
the world of sense, and relinquish the matter for the form. The spirit of business, confined within a
uniform circle of objects, and in this still more circumscribed by formulas, must lose cognizance of the
independent whole, daily becoming more impoverished in its sphere. Thus while the one attempts to model
the actual according to the speculative, and to elevate its subjective abstract conditions into constitutional
laws for the existence of things, the other hastens in the opposite extreme, to estimate generally all
experience according to a particular fragment of experience, and to apply the rules of its own
occupation to every occupation without distinction. The former must become the prey of an empty
subtlety, the latter of a pedantic narrowness, since the one was too high for the partial, the other too low for
the whole.
Friedrich Schiller, The Aesthetic Education of Man, Sixth Letter, J. Weiss, trans.
Der abstrakte Denker hat daher gar oft ein kaltes Herz, weil er die Eindrücke zergliedert, die doch nur als ein
Ganzes die Seele rühren; der Geschäftsmann hat gar oft ein enges Herz, weil seine Einbildungskraft, in den
einförmigen Kreis seines Berufs eingeschlossen, sich zu fremder Vorstellungsart nicht erweitern kann.
Friedrich Schiller, Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen, 6. Brief
The abstract thinker often has a cold heart because he dissects the impressions which after all stir the soul
only as a whole; the business man has often a narrow heart because his imagination, imprisoned in the
uniform sphere of his occupation, cannot expand to take in other ways of thinking..
Friedrich Schiller, The Aesthetic Education of Man, Sixth Letter, W. Kaufmann, trans.
Nothing, it is true, is more common than for both Science and Art to pay homage to the spirit of the age.
Friedrich Schiller, The Aesthetic Education of Man, Eighth Letter
The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally
itself for a new and sterner struggle with error. Satisfied if they themselves can escape from the hard
labour of thought, they willingly abandon to others the guardianship of their thoughts.
They would need to be already wise, in order to love wisdom.

No doubt the artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple.
Friedrich Schiller, The Aesthetic Education of Man, Ninth Letter
Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he
plays.
Friedrich Schiller, The Aesthetic Education of Man, Fifteenth Letter
JEAN PAUL a.k.a. JOHANN PAUL RICHTER (1763-1825)

Individual rules, without the spirit of education, resemble a dictionary without a grammar of the language.
Jean Paul Richter, Levana
363
Do not, like common cultivators, water the individual branches, but the roots, and they will moisten and
unfold the rest.
The spirit of education, always watching over the whole, is nothing more than an endeavor to liberate, by
means of a free man, the ideal human being which lies concealed in every child.
If we regard all life as an educational institution ...

Jean Paul, Levana, p. 75
A man never describes his own character so clearly as when he describes another.
Jean Paul
A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward.
Jean Paul
Never write on a subject without first having read yourself full on it; and never read on a subject till
you have thought yourself hungry on it.
Jean Paul
It is a part of good breeding that a man should be polite even to himself.

Jean Paul Richter
Criticism often takes from the tree caterpillars and blossoms together.
Jean Paul
With the people of courts the tongue is the artery of their withered life, the spiral spring and flag-feather of
their souls.
Jean Paul
So many thousand joys, is it not black ingratitude to call the world a place of sorrow and torment?
Jean Paul
Misery so little appertains to our nature, and happiness so much so, that we lament over that which
has pained us, but leave unnoticed that which has rejoiced us.
Jean Paul
No man needs money so much as he who despises it.

Jean Paul
Poverty is the only load which is the heavier the more loved ones there are to assist in bearing it
Jean Paul
Charms which, like flowers, lie on the surface and always glitter, easily produce vanity; hence women, wits,
players, soldiers, are vain, owing to their presence, figure, and dress. On the contrary, other excellences,
which lie down deep like gold, and are discovered with difficulty—strength, profoundness of intellect,
morality—leave their possessors modest and proud.
Jean Paul
MADAME DE STAËL (1766-1817)

We must place ourselves above ourselves in order to control ourselves, and above others in order to
expect nothing from them.
Madame de Staël, “On Philosophy,” Major Writings (New York: 1987), p. 165
364
Wit consists in knowing the resemblance of things with differ, and the difference of think which are alike.
Madame de Staël, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (1947), p. 221
If it were not for respect for human opinions, I would not open my window to see the Bay of Naples for the
first time, whilst I would go five hundred leagues to talk with a man of genius
Madame de Staël
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.

Madame de Staël
When we destroy an old prejudice, we have need of a new virtue.

Madame de Staël
The best proof of taste, when there is no genius, would be, not to write at all.
Madame de Staël
Where no interest is taken in science, literature and liberal pursuits, mere facts and insignificant criticisms
necessarily become the themes of discourse; and minds, strangers alike to activity and meditation, become so
limited as to render all intercourse with them at once tasteless and oppressive.
Madame de Staël
Politeness is the art of choosing among your thoughts.

Madame de Staël
AUGUST WILHELM SCHLEGEL (1767-1845)

Several counties boast of having a great many freedoms, which would become wholly superfluous through
the possession of freedom.
August Wilhelm Schlegel, Friedrich Schlegel’s Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) “Athenaeum Fragments,” § 60
Nichts ist kläglicher, als sich dem Teufel umsonst ergeben; zum Beyspiel schlüpfrige Gedichte machen, die
nicht einmal vortrefflich sind.
Friedrich Schlegel, Athenäums-Fragmente, § 128
Nothing is more pitiful than to sell oneself to the devil for nothing.
Ehedem wurde unter uns die Natur, jetzt wird das Ideal ausschliessend gepredigt. Man vergisst zu oft, dass
diese Dinge innig vereinbar sind, dass 25 in der schönen Darstellung die Natur idealisch und das Ideal
natürlich seyn soll.
In former times nature used to be preached among us, now it’s exclusively the ideal. We forget too often that
these two things are profoundly compatible, that in a beautiful description nature should be ideal, and the
ideal natural.
Sie pflegen sich selbst die Kritik zu nennen. Sie schreiben kalt, flach, vornehmthuend und über alle Massen
wässericht. Natur, Gefühl, Adel und Grösse des Geistes sind für sie gar nicht vorhanden, und doch thun sie,
als könnten sie diese Dinge vor ihr Riehterstühlchen laden.
[Critics] write coldly, superficially, pretentiously, and beyond all measure vapidly. Nature, feeling, nobility
and greatness of spirit simply don’t exist for them, and yet they act as if they could summon these things to
appear before their judgment-stools.
365
MARIA EDGEWORTH (1767-1849)
Letters for Literary Ladies (1795)
One power of the mind undoubtedly may be cultivated at the expense of the rest, as we see that one muscle
or limb may acquire excessive strength and an unnatural size, at the expense of the health of the whole body.
Maria Edgeworth, “Letter from a gentleman to his friend, upon the birth of a daughter,” Letters for Literary Ladies (1795)
FRIEDRICH DANIEL ERNST SCHLEIERMACHER (1768-1834)

Athenäums-Fragmente
[Mit Beiträgen von August Wilhelm Schlegel, Friedrich Schleiermacher und Novalis]
http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Schlegel,+Friedrich/Fragmentensammlungen/Fragmente
Jämmerlich ist freilich jene praktische Philosophie der Franzosen und Engländer, von denen man meint, sie
wüßten so gut, was der Mensch sei, unerachtet sie nicht darüber spekulierten, was er sein solle.
Schleiermacher, in Schlegels Athenäums-Fragmente § 355
Pitiful, to be sure, is what the pragmatic philosophy of the French and English is. ... They are considered to
be so well versed in the knowledge of what man is, despite their failure to speculate on what he should
be.
Schleiermacher, in Friedrich Schlegel’s Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), “Athenaeum Fragments,” § 355
Sie haben den Punkt außer der Erde gefunden, den nur ein Mathematiker suchen wollen kann, aber die Erde
selbst verloren. Um zu sagen, was der Mensch soll, muß man einer sein, und es nebenbei auch wissen.
Schleiermacher, in Schlegels Athenäums-Fragmente § 355
They [the English and French practical philosophers] have discovered a point outside the earth that only a
mathematician should try to find, but they’ve lost the earth itself. In order to say what a man should do, one
has to be a man, and know it too.
Schleiermacher, in Friedrich Schlegel’s Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), “Athenaeum Fragments,” § 355
Der christliche Glaube [The Christian Faith]

http://books.google.com/books?id=VQULAAAAYAAJ
The Theology of Schleiermacher (Condensed Version of The Christian Faith)

http://www.archive.org/stream/theologyofschlei00schluoft#page/118/mode/2up
As we actually find ourselves in the world, we experience a double relation, a relation of freedom and a
relation of dependence. ... The feeling of absolute dependence is religion. In religion we feel ourselves
absolutely dependent on God. ... Though the term God is here used, it is not to be understood that religion
avails itself of any idea of God previously obtained by information or theophany. For such an idea of God
would be intellectual and sensuous and would spring from a source outside the religious experience. ... In
saying we are in immediate relation with God, the latter term is used only to designate the Whence of our
spontaneous and receptive life, of which we become aware in our feeling of absolute dependence.
Schleiermacher, Theology of Schleiermacher (1911), pp. 121-122
366
Introduction to the Dialogues of Plato
English: http://books.google.com/books?id=DZux7BwawEQC
German: http://books.google.com/books?id=0Z0-AAAAcAAJ
Daher schon um deswillen die dialogische Form, als nothwendig zur Nachahmung jenes ursprünglichen
gegenseitigen Mittheilens, auch seinen Schriften eben so unentbehrlich und natürlich wurde, als seinem
mündlichen Unterrichte. Indessen erschöpft diese Form keinesweges das Ganze seiner Methode, wie sie denn
gar oft gleichzeitig und später zu philosophischen Zwekken ist angewendet worden ohne eine Spur vom dem
Geiste des Platon und von seinem grossen Verstande in der Art sie zu gebrauchen. Sondern schon in seinem
wirklichen Unterricht, noch mehr aber in der schriftlichen Nachahmung wenn man hinzunimmt, dass Platon
doch auch den noch nicht wissenden Leser wollte zum Wissen bringen, oder wenigstens in Beziehung auf
ihn besonders sich hüten musste, dass er nicht eine leere Einbildung des Wissens veranlasse aus beider
Hinsicht muss dieses ihm die Hauptsache gewesen sein, jede Untersuchung von Anfang an so zu fuhren und
darauf zu berechnen, dass der Leser entweder zur eignen inneren Erzeugung des beabsichtigten Gedankens,
oder dazu gezwungen werde, dass er sich dem Gefühle, nichts gefunden und nichts verstanden zu haben, auf
das allerbestimmteste übergeben muss. Hiezu nun wird erfordert, dass das Ende der Untersuchung nicht
geradezu ausgesprochen und wörtlich niedergelegt werde, welches Vielen, die sich gern beruhigen, wenn sie
nur das Ende haben, gar leicht zum Fallstrik gereichen könnte, dass die Seele aber in die Nothwendigkeit
gesezt Werde, es zu suchen, und auf den Weg geleitet, wo sie es finden kann. Das erste geschieht, indem sie
über ihren Zustand des Nichtwissens zu so klarem Bewusstsein gebracht wird, dass sie unmöglich gutwillig
darin bleiben kann. Das andere, indem entweder aus Widersprüchen ein Räthsel geflochten wird, zu welchem
der beabsichtigte Gedanke die einzig mögliche Lösung ist, und oft auf ganz fremdscheinende zufällige Art
manche Andeutung hingeworfen, die nur derjenige findet und versteht, der wirklich und selbstthätig sucht.
Oder die eigentliche Untersuchung wird mit einer andern, nicht wie mit einem Schleier, sondern wie mit
einer angewachsenen Haut überkleidet, welche dem Unaufmerksamen, aber auch nur diesem, dasjenige
verdekt, was eigentlich soll beobachtet oder gefunden werden, dem Aufmerksamen aber nur noch den Sinn
für den innern Zusammenhang schärft und läutert.
Schleiermacher, Einleitung an die Dialogen des Platons
It must have been the philosopher’s [Plato’s] chief object to conduct every investigation in such a
manner from the beginning onwards, as that he might reckon upon the reader’s either being driven to
an inward and self-originated creation of the thought in view, or submitting to surrender himself most
decisively to the feeling of not having discovered or understood anything. To this end, then, it is
requisite that the final object of the investigation be not directly enunciated and laid down in words, a
process which might very easily serve to entangle many persons who are glad to rest content, provided
only they are in possession of the final result, but that the mind be reduced to the necessity of seeking,
and put into the way by which it may find it. The first is done by the mind’s being brought to so
distinct a consciousness of its own state of ignorance, that it is impossible it should willingly continue
therein. The other is effected either by an enigma being woven out of contradictions, to which the only
possible solution is to be found in the thought in view, and often several hints thrown out in a way
apparently utterly foreign and accidental which can only be found and understood by one who does
really investigate with an activity of his own. Or the real investigation is overdrawn with another, not
like a veil, but, as it were, an adhesive skin, which conceals from the inattentive reader, and from him
alone, the matter which is to be properly considered or discovered.
Schleiermacher, Introduction to the Dialogues of Plato, W. Dobson, trans. (1836), pp. 17-18
367
Über die Religion: Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern [On Religion:
Speeches to its Cultured Despisers] (1799)
German: http://books.google.com/books?id=0nguAAAAYAAJ
English: http://books.google.com/books?id=lH1AAAAAIAAJ
At all times but few have discerned religion itself, while millions, in various ways, have been satisfied to
juggle with its trappings.
Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, J. Oman, trans. (1898), p. 1
I know how well yon have succeeded in making your earthly life so rich and varied, that you no longer stand
in need of an eternity. Having made a universe for yourselves, you are above the need of thinking of the
universe that made you.
Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, J. Oman, trans. (1898), pp. 1-2
On every subject, however small and unimportant, you would most willingly be taught by those who have
devoted to it their lives and their powers. ... How then does it come about that, in matters of religion alone,
you hold every thing the more dubious when it comes from those who are experts?
Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, J. Oman, trans. (1898), p.2
The human soul, as is shown both by its passing actions and its inward characteristics, has its existence
chiefly in two opposing impulses. Following the one impulse, it strives to establish itself as an individual.
For increase, no less than sustenance, it draws what surrounds it to itself, weaving it into its life, and
absorbing it into its own being. The other impulse, again, is the dread fear to stand alone over against the
whole, the longing to surrender oneself and be absorbed in a greater, to be taken hold of and determined. All
you feel and do that bears on your separate existence, all you are accustomed to call enjoyment or possession
works for the first object. The other is wrought for when you are not directed towards the individual life, but
seek and retain for yourselves what is the same in all and for all the same existence, that in which, therefore,
you acknowledge in your thinking and acting, law and order, necessity and connection, right and fitness. Just
as no material thing can exist by only one of the forces of corporeal nature, every soul shares in the two
original tendencies of spiritual nature. At the extremes one impulse may preponderate almost to the exclusion
of the other, but the perfection of the living world consists in this, that between these opposite ends all
combinations are actually present in humanity.
And not only so, but a common band of consciousness embraces them all, so that though the man cannot
be other than he is, he knows every other person as clearly as himself, and comprehends perfectly every
single, manifestation of humanity. Persons, however, at the extremes of this great series, are furthest
removed from such a knowledge of the whole. The endeavour to appropriate, too little influenced by the
opposite endeavour, takes the form of insatiable sensuality that is mindful only of its individual life, and
endeavours only in an earthly way to incorporate into it more and more material and to keep itself active and
strong. Swinging eternally between desire and enjoyment, such persons never get beyond consciousness of
the individual, and being ever busy with mere self-regarding concerns, they are neither able to feel nor know
the common, the whole being and nature of humanity. To persons, on the other hand, too forcibly seized by
the opposite impulse, who, from defective power of grasp, are incapable of acquiring any characteristic,
definite culture, the true life of the world, must just as much remain hidden. It is not granted them to
penetrate with plastic mind and to fashion something of their own, but their activity dissipates itself in a
futile game with empty notions. They never make a living study of anything, but devote their whole zeal to
abstract precepts that degrade everything to means, and leave nothing to be an end. They consume
themselves in mistaken hate against everything that comes before them with prosperous force. How are these
extremes to be brought together, and the long series be made into a closed ring, the symbol of eternity and
completeness?
Persons in whom both tendencies are toned down to an unattractive equilibrium are not rare, but, in truth,
they stand lower than either. For this frequent phenomenon which so many value highly, we are not indebted
to a living union of both impulses, but both are distorted and smoothed away to a dull mediocrity in which no
excess appears, because all fresh life is wanting. This is the position to which a false discretion seeks to bring
368
the younger generation. But were the extremes avoided in no other way, all men would have departed from
the right life and from contemplation of the truth, the higher spirit would have vanished from the world.
I mean, in particular, those who unite those opposing activities, by imprinting in their lives a characteristic
form upon just that common nature of spirit, the shadow of which only appears to most in empty notions, as
an image upon mist. They seek order and connection, right and fitness, and they find just because they do not
lose themselves. Their impulse is not sighed, out in inaudible wishes, but works in them as creative power.
For this power they create and acquire, and not for that degraded animal sensuality. They do not devour
destructively, but, creatively recasting, they breathe into life and life's tools a higher spirit, ordering and
fashioning a world that bears the impress of their mind.
Far more the earthly and sensual require such mediators from whom to learn how much of the highest nature
of humanity is wanting to their own works and ways. They stand in need of such a person to oppose to their
base animal enjoyment another enjoyment, the object of which is not this thing or that, but the One in All,
and All in One, an object that knows no other bounds but the world, that the spirit has learned to
comprehend. He is needed to show to their anxious, restless self-love, another self-love whereby man in this
earthly life and along with it loves the highest and the eternal, and to their restless passionate greed a quiet
and sure possession.
Acknowledge, then, with me, what a priceless gift the appearance of such a person must be when the higher
feeling has risen to inspiration, and can no longer be kept silent, when every pulse-beat of his spiritual life
takes communicable form in word or figure, so that, despite of his indifference to the presence of others, he
almost unwillingly becomes for others the master of some divine art. This is the true priest of the highest, for
he brings it nearer those who are only accustomed to lay hold of the finite and the trivial. The heavenly and
eternal he exhibits as an object of enjoyment and agreement, as the (sole exhaustless source of the things
towards which their whole endeavour is directed/ In this way he strives to awaken the slumbering germ of a
better humanity, to kindle love for higher things, to change the common life into a nobler, to reconcile the
children of earth with the Heaven that hears them, and to counterbalance the deep attachment of the age to
the baser side.
Piety ... helped me as I began to sift the faith of my fathers and to cleanse thought and feeling from the
rubbish of antiquity. When the God and the immortality of my childhood vanished from my doubting eyes it
remained to me. Without design of mine it guided me into active life. It showed me how, with my
endowments and defects, I should keep myself holy in an undivided existence, and through it alone I have
learnt friendship and love.
Those proud Islanders whom many unduly honour, know no watchword but gain and enjoyment. Their zeal
for knowledge is only a sham fight, their worldly wisdom a false jewel, skilfully and deceptively composed,
and their sacred freedom itself too often and too easily serves self-interest. They are never in earnest with
anything that goes beyond palpable utility. All knowledge they have robbed of life and use only as dead
wood to make masts and helms for their life's voyage in pursuit of gain.
See to it, friend, that you have not lighted upon those who merely follow, and collect, and rest satisfied with
what another has furnished ; with them you will never find the spirit of that art:. to the discoverers you must
go, on whom it surely rests.
369
Religion is as far removed, by its whole nature, from all that is systematic as philosophy is naturally disposed
to it.
You need not fear that I shall betake myself in the end to that common device of representing how
necessary religion is for maintaining justice and order in the world. Nor shall I remind you of an all-seeing
eye, nor of the unspeakable short-sightedness of human management, nor of the narrow bounds of human
power to render help. Nor shall I say how religion is a faithful friend and useful stay of morality, how, by its
sacred feelings and glorious prospects, it makes the struggle with self and the perfecting of goodness much
easier for weak man. Those who profess to be the best friends and most zealous defenders do indeed speak in
this way. Which of the two is more degraded in being thus thought of together, I shall not decide, whether
justice and morality which are represented as needing support, or religion which is to support them, or even
whether it be not you to whom such things are said.
Though otherwise this wise counsel might be given you, how could I dare to suppose that you play with
your consciences a sort of fast and loose game, and could be impelled by something you have hitherto had no
cause to respect and love to something else that without it you already honour, and to which you have
already devoted yourselves? Or suppose that these Speeches were merely to suggest what you should do for
the sake of the people! How could you, who are called to educate others and make them like yourselves,
begin by deceiving them, offering them as holy and vitally necessary what is in the highest degree
indifferent to yourselves, and which, in your opinion, they can again reject as soon as they have
attained your level? I, at least, cannot invite you to a course of action in which I perceive the most ruinous
hypocrisy towards the world and towards yourselves. To recommend religion by such means would only
increase the contempt to which it is at present exposed. ... Do not declare to the disgrace of mankind that
your loftiest creation is but a parasitic plant that can only nourish itself from strange sap. ... To wish to
transport religion into another sphere that it may serve and labour is to manifest towards it a great contempt.
It is not so ambitious of conquest as to seek to reign in a foreign kingdom. The power that is its due, being
earned afresh at every moment, satisfies it. Everything is sacred to it, and above all everything holding with it
the same rank in human nature. But it must render a special service; it must have an aim; it must show itself
useful! What degradation! And its defenders should be eager for it!
Religion, however, as I wish to show it, which is to say, in its own original, characteristic form, is not
accustomed to appear openly, but is only seen in secret by those who love it. Not that this applies to religion
alone. Nothing that is essentially characteristic and peculiar can be quite the same as that which openly
exhibits and represents it.
370
You would ascribe with the poet earnestness to life and cheerfulness to art; or, in some other way, you
would contrast them. Separate them you certainly will. For life, duty is the watchword. The moral law shall
order it, and virtue shall show itself the ruling power in it, that the individual may be in harmony with the
universal order of the world, and may nowhere encroach in a manner to disturb and confuse. This life, you
consider, may appear without any discernible trace of art. Rather is it to be attained by rigid rules that have
nothing to do with the free and variable precepts of art. Nay, you look upon it almost as a rule that art should
be somewhat in the background, and non-essential for those who are strictest in the ordering of life. On the
other hand, imagination shall inspire the artist, and genius shall completely sway him. Now imagination and
genius are for you quite different from virtue and morality. ...
How are religion and art related? They can hardly be quite alien, because, from of old, what is greatest in
art has had a religious character. When, therefore, you speak I of an artist as pious, do you still grant him that
relaxation of the strict demands of virtue? Rather he is then subjected, like every other person. But then to
make the cases parallel, you must secure that those who devote themselves to life do not remain quite
without art. ...
Religion then, as a kind of activity, is a mixture of elements. ... Such an accidental shaking together,
leaving both elements unaltered, does not, even though the most accurate equality be attained, make
something specific. But suppose it is otherwise, suppose piety is something which truly fuses both, then it
cannot be formed simply by bringing the two together, but must be an original unity. Take care, however, I
warn you, that you do not make such an admission. Were it the case, morality and genius apart would be only
fragments of the ruins of religion, or its corpse when it is dead.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)

Wem sich meine Musik auftut, der muss frei werden von all dem Elend, womit sich die anderen Menschen
schleppen.
Beethoven
Musik ist die Vermittlung des geistigen Lebens zum sinnlichen.

Beethoven
Music is the intervention of mental life in sensuous life.
Beethoven
Ich habe niemals daran gedacht, für den Ruf und die Ehre zu schreiben: Was ich auf dem Herzen habe, muss
heraus, und darum schreibe ich.
Beethoven
I have never thought about writing for reputation or honor. What I have in my heart must come out.
Beethoven
Echte Kunst ist eigensinnig.

Beethoven
True art is stubborn.
Beethoven
Als ich dieses Stück komponiert habe, war ich mir der Inspirierung vom allmächtigen Gott bewußt. Glauben
Sie, ich kann auf Ihre kümmerliche kleine Geige Rücksicht nehmen, wenn er zu mir spricht?
Ludwig van Beethoven, zu einem Violinisten, der sich über eine seiner Meinung nach unspielbare Passage
beschwerte
How can I worry about your miserable violin when I am speaking to my God?
Beethoven
371
I would have put an end to my life—only art it was that withheld me, ah it seemed impossible to leave the
world until I had produced all that I felt called upon me to produce, and so I endured this wretched
existence—truly wretched, an excitable body which a sudden change can throw from the best into the worst
state.
Beethoven, Letter to his brothers, October 6, 1802
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL (1770-1831)

Werke, Band 1: http://books.google.com/books?id=Fn0PAAAAQAAJ
Werke, Band 16: http://books.google.com/books?printsec=frontcover&id=lysPAQAAIAAJ
Der humesche Skeptizismus, von dem die obige Reflexion vornehmlich ausgeht, ist übrigens vom
griechischen Skeptizismus sehr wohl zu unterscheiden. Der humesche legt die Wahrheit des Empirischen, des
Gefühls, der Anschauung zu Grunde, und bestreitet die allgemeinen Bestimmungen und Gesetze von da aus,
aus dem Grunde, weil sie nicht eine Berechtigung durch die sinnliche Wahrnehmung haben. Der alte
Skepticismus war soweit entfernt, das Gefühl, die Anschauung zum Princip der Wahrheit zu machen, daß er
sich vielmehr zu allererst gegen das Sinnliche kehrte.
Hegel, Encyclopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse (1843), § 39
Humean skepticism should be well distinguished from Greek skepticism. Hume’s assumes as basic the truth
of the empirical, of feeling, of intuition, and from that base contests general determinations and laws—
because they lack justification from sense perception. Ancient skepticism was so far from making feeling and
intuition the principle of truth that, on the contrary, it turned first of all against the senses.
Hegel, Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1827), cited in W. Kaufmann, Hegel (1966), pp. 69-70
Die innere Notwendigkeit, daß das Wissen Wissenschaft sei, liegt in seiner Natur.
Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes
Der Mut der Wahrheit, der Glaube an die Macht des Geistes ist die erste Bedingung der Philosophie.
Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie
To be aware of limitations is already to be beyond them.

Hegel, cited in Walter A. Davis, Inwardness and Existence (1989), p. 18
Even as there is an empty breadth, there is also an empty depth ... an intensity void of content—pure force
without any spread—which is identical with superficiality.
Hegel, in Walter Kauffman, ed., Hegel: Tests and Commentary (1966), p. 18, as cited in Social Amnesia (1975), p. 53
Then philosophy was supposed to be the handmaiden of theology, humbly accepting its achievements, and
asked to bring them into a clean logical order and present them in a plausible, conceptually demonstrable
context. Now, philosophy is supposed to be the handmaiden of the other sciences. ... Its task is to
demonstrate the methods of the sciences.
Hegel, criticizing positivism, Philosophie der Weltgeschichte (1920), pt. 1, pp. 61-62
According to its content, the ethical deed has the aspect of a crime.
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
372
... a much misunderstood phenomenon in the history of philosophy—the refutation of one system by another,
of an earlier by a later. Most commonly the refutation is taken in a purely negative sense to mean that the
system refuted has ceased to count for anything, has been set aside and done for. Were it so, the history of
philosophy would be, of all studies, most saddening, displaying, as it does, the refutation of every system
which time has brought forth. Now although it may be admitted that every philosophy has been refuted, it
must be in an equal degree maintained that no philosophy has been refuted. And that in two ways. For first,
every philosophy that deserves the name always embodies the Idea: and secondly, every system represents
one particular factor or particular stage in the evolution of the Idea. The refutation of a philosophy, therefore,
only means that its barriers are crossed, and its special principle reduced to a factor in the more complete
principle that follows.
Hegel, Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, Part I: The Logic, W. Wallace, trans. (), p. 160
To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great or rational,
either in life or science.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 318
Men are so hungry for certainty that they will readily subordinate consciousness and conscience to it.
Hegel
Jede Philosophie ist in sich vollendet, und hat, wie ein ächtes Kunstwerk, die Totalität in sich. So wenig des
Apelles und Sophokles Werke, wenn Raphael und Shakespeare sie gekannt hätten, diesen als bloße
Vorübungen für sich hätten erscheinen können,—sondern als eine verwandte Kraft des Geistes:—so wenig
kann die Vernunft in früheren Gestaltungen ihrer selbst nur nützliche Vorübungen für sich erblicken. Und
wenn Virgil den Homer für eine solche Vorübung für sich und sein verfeinertes Zeitalter betrachtet hat, so ist
sein Wert dafür eine Nachübung geblieben.
Hegel, Differenz des Fichteschen und Schellingschen Systems, Werke (1832), band 1, s. 172
Every philosophy is complete in itself and, like a genuine work of art, contains the totality. Just as the
works of Apelles and Sophocles, if Raphael and Shakespeare had known them, should not have
appeared to them as mere preliminary exercises for their own work, but rather as a kindred force of
the spirit, so, too reason cannot find in its own earlier forms mere useful preliminary exercises for
itself. And if Virgil did consider Homer such a preliminary exercise for himself and his refined age, his work
has therefore remained a post-liminary exercise [Nachübung].
Hegel, Difference of the Fichtean and Schellingean System of Philosophy, cited in W. Kaufmann, Hegel (1966), p. 49
Fragment on Love (1798)

For a man without the pride of being the center of things the end of his collective whole is supreme, and
being, like all other individuals, so small a part of that, he despises himself.
Hegel, Fragment on Love
This attitude makes matter something absolute in man's eyes; but, of course, if he never existed, then nothing
would exist for him, and what necessity was there for his existence?
Love proper exists only between living beings who are alike in power and thus in one another's eyes living
beings from every point of view; in no respect is either dead for the other.
Genuine love … is not the understanding, whose relations always leave the manifold of related terms as a
manifold and whose unity is always a unity of opposites. It is not reason either, because reason sharply
opposes its determining power to what is determined.
373
The life present in a single feeling dissolves its barriers and drives on till it disperses itself in the manifold of
feelings with a view to finding itself in the entirety of this manifold.
Briefe
http://books.google.com/books?id=x8AwAAAAYAAJ
Ich habe Dir mit einigem, was ich sagte, wehe gethan. Diß schmerzt mich. Ich habe Dir dadurch wehe
gethan, daß ich moralische Ansichten, die ich verwerfen muß, als Grundsätze Deiner Denk- und
Handlungsweise zu verwerfen schien.—Ich sage Dir hierüber jetzt nur diß, daß ich einestheils diese
Ansichten verwerfe, insofern sie den Unterschied zwischen dem, was das Herz mag und was ihm beliebt, und
zwischen der Pflicht aufheben, oder vielmehr die letzte ganz wegnehmen und die Moralität zerstören. Eben
so sehr aber—und diß ist die Hauptsache zwischen uns—bitte ich Dich, mir zu glauben, daß ich jene
Ansichten, insofern sie diese Consequenz haben, nicht Dir, nicht Deinem Selbst zuschreibe, daß ich sie so
ansehe, daß sie nur in Deiner Reflexion liegen, daß Du sie nicht in Ihrer Consequenz denkst und kennst und
übersiehst,—daß sie Dir dienen, andere zu entschuldigen (rechtfertigen ist etwas anderes,—denn was man au
anderen entschuldigen kann, hält man darum nicht sich selbst erlaubt;—was man aber rechtfertigen kann, diß
ist jedem, und auch uns recht.)
In Rücksicht auf mich und die Weise meiner Erklärung vergiß nicht, daß wenn ich Maximen verurtheile,
ich zu leicht die Art und Weise aus dem Gesicht verliere, in der sie in dem bestimmten Individuum—hier in
Dir—wirklich sind, und daß sie mir in ihrer Allgemeinheit, in ihrer Consequenz und ausgedehnten Folgen
und Anwendungen, also zu ernsthaft, vor Augen treten, welche Du nicht denkst,—noch viel weniger, daß sie
für Dich darin enthalten wären. Zugleich weißt Du selbst, daß wenn auch Charakter und Maximen der
Einsicht verschieden sind, es nicht gleichgültig ist, welche Maximen, die Einsicht und Beurtheilung habe;
aber ich weiß eben so gut, daß Maximen, wenn sie dem Charakter widersprechen, den einem weiblichen
Wesen noch gleichgültiger sind, als bei Männern.
Hegel Brief an Marie, Sommer 1811
I confess than when I have to condemn principles, I too early lose sight of the way and manner in which they
are present in a particular individual, in this case in you, and that I am apt to take them too earnestly because
I see in them their universal bearing and consequence, which you do not think of, which, indeed, for you are
not in them at all.
Hegel, Letter to Marie, Summer 1811
Aufsätze aus dem kritischen Journal der Philosophie [Articles from the Critical
Journal of Philosophy]
http://books.google.com/books?id=lysPAQAAIAAJ
Zugleich scheint die philosophische Freiheit, die Erhebung über Autorität und die Selbstständigkeit des
Denkens unter uns so weit gediehen zu seyn, daß es für Schande gehalten würde, sich als Philosophen nach
einer schon vorhandenen Philosophie zu nennen; und das Selbstdenken meint sich allein durch Originalität,
die ein ganz eigenes und neues System erfindet, ankündigen zu müssen.
So nothwendig das innere Leben der Philosophie, wenn es sich zur äußern Gestalt gebiert, ihr von der
Form seiner eigenthümlichen Organisation mitgiebt, so sehr ist das Originelle des Genies verschieden von
der Besonderheit, die sich für Originalität hält und ausgiebt; denn diese Besonderheit, wenn sie näher ins
Auge gefaßt wird, hält sich in Wahrheit innerhalb der allgemeinen Heerstraße der Kultur, und kann sich nicht
einmal rühmen, aus dieser heraus zur reinen Idee der Philosophie gekommen zu seyn; denn wenn sie diese
ergriffen hätte, würde sie dieselbe in anderen philosophischen Systemen erkennen, und eben damit, wenn sie
ihre eigene lebendige Form zwar behalten muß, doch sich nicht den Namen einer eigenen Philosophie
beilegen können.
Hegel, „Ueber. das Wesen der philosophischen Kritik überhaupt, und ihr Verhältniß zum gegenwärtigen Zustand der Philosophie insbesondere,”
Werke (1834), Band 16, s. 39
374
Philosophical freedom and superiority over authority and the independence of thought among us appear to
have grown to such an extent that it would be considered shameful for a philosopher to name himself after an
already existing philosophy; and thinking for oneself supposes that it has to proclaim itself only by means of
the originality which invents an altogether new system of one’s own.
[Just as the inner life of philosophy, when it gives birth to itself in exterior form, necessarily gives to this
form its own idiosyncratic organization, so] what is original in a genius necessarily differs greatly from
that peculiarity which considers and proclaims itself as originality.
Hegel, Introduction to the Critical Journal of Philosophy, cited in W. Kaufmann, Hegel (1966), p. 55, translation modified
Die Philosophie ist ihrer Natur nach etwas Esoterisches, für sich weder für den Pöbel gemacht, noch einer
Zubereitung für den Pöbel fähig.
Werke (1834), Band 16, s. 45
Philosophy is by its nature something esoteric, neither made for the mob nor capable of being
prepared for the mob.
Hegel, Introduction to the Critical Journal of Philosophy, cited in W. Kaufmann, Hegel (1966), p. 56
So muß die Philosophie zwar die Möglichkeit erkennen, daß das Volk sich zu ihr erhebt, aber sie muß sich
nicht zum Volk erniedrigen.
Werke (1834), Band 16, s. 45
Philosophy must indeed recognize the possibility that the people rise to it, but must not lower itself to the
people.
In diesen Zeiten der Freiheit und Gleichheit aber, in welchen sich ein so großes Publikum gebildet hat, das
nichts von sich ausgeschlossen wissen will, sondern sich zu Allem gut, oder Alles für sich gut genug hält, hat
das Schönste und das Beste dem Schicksal nicht entgehen können, daß die Gemeinheit, die sich nicht zu
dem, was sie über sich schweben sieht, zu erheben vermag, es dafür so lange behandelt, bis es gemein genug
ist, um zur Aneignung fähig zu seyn; und das Plattmachen hat sich zu einer Art von anerkannt verdienstlicher
Arbeit emporgeschwungen.
Werke (1834), Band 16, s. 45
In these times of freedom and equality in which such a large public has formed that does not want to be
excluded from anything but considers itself good for everything, and everything good enough for itself, the
most beautiful and the best have not been able to escape the fate [of leveling].
Verhältnis des Skepticismus zur Philosophie

http://books.google.com/books?id=lysPAQAAIAAJ
Die oberflächliche Ansicht der philosophischen Streitigkeiten läßt nur die Differenzen der Systeme
erblicken, aber schon die alte Regel:
Hegel, „Verhältnis des Skepticismus zur Philosophie”
The superficial view of philosophical quarrels reveals only the differences of the systems, but … when
philosophical systems fight with each other, … there is agreement on principles which are superior to all
success and fate and which do not show themselves in what the fight is about and therefore escape the gaping
which always sees the opposite of what is happening before its eyes.
Hegel, “Relation of Skepticism to Philosophy,” cited in W. Kaufmann, Hegel (1966), p. 64
375
The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate (1799)
Theologische Jugendschriften (Nachlass)
http://books.google.com/books?id=qR_XAAAAMAAJ
Das Schicksal des jüdischen Volkes ist das Schicksal Makbeths, der aus der Natur selbst trat, sich an fremde
Wesen hing, und so in ihrem Dienste alles Heilige der menschlichen Natur zertreten und ermorden, von
seinen Göttern (denn es waren Objekte, er war Knecht) endlich verlassen, und an seinem Glauben selbst
zerschmettert werden mußte.
Hegel, Der Geist des Christentums und sein Schicksal, Theologische Jugendschriften (1907), s. 261
The fate of the Jewish people is the fate of Macbeth who stepped out of nature itself, clung to alien
beings, and so in their service had to trample and slay everything holy in human nature.
Hegel, The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate (1799)
Between the Shaman of the Tungus, the European prelate who rules church and state, the Voguls, and the
Puritans, on the one hand, and the man who listens to his own command of duty, on the other, the difference
is not that the former make themselves slaves, while the latter is free, but that the former have their lord
outside themselves, while the latter carries his lord in himself, yet at the same time is his own slave.
Hegel, The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate
What Jesus reveals to them is not that laws disappear but that they must be kept through righteousness of a
new kind, in which there is more than is in the righteousness of the sons of duty and which is more complete
because it supplements the deficiency in the laws. This supplement he goes on to exhibit in several laws.
This expanded content we may call an inclination so to act as the laws may command, i.e., a unification of
inclination with the law whereby the latter loses its form as law. This correspondence with inclination is the
πληρωμα [fulfilment] of the law.
The inclination to act as the laws command, a virtue, is a synthesis in which the law … loses its universality
and the subject its particularity; both lose their opposition, while in the Kantian conception of virtue this
opposition remains, and the universal becomes the master and the particular the mastered.
In the “fulfilment” of both the laws and duty, … the moral disposition ceases to be the universal, opposed to
inclination, and inclination ceases to be particular, opposed to the law, and therefore this correspondence of
law and inclination is life and, as the relation of differents to one another, love.
A command can express no more than an ought or a shall, because it is a universal, but it does not express an
‘is’; and this at once makes plain its deficiency. Against such commands Jesus sets virtue, i.e., a loving
disposition, which makes the content of the command superfluous and destroys its form as a command,
because that form implies an opposition between a commander and something resisting the command.
376
Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts [Elements of the Philosophy of Right]
(1820)
German: http://books.google.com/books?id=dnSONTHtsBQC
English: http://books.google.com/books?id=Yk9WAAAAMAAJ
Das, was die Engländer comfortable nennen, ist etwas durchaus Unerschöpfliches und ins Unendliche
Fortgehendes, denn jede Bequemlichkeit zeigt wieder ihre Unbequemlichkeit, und diese Erfindungen
nehmen kein Ende. Es wird ein Bedürfnis daher, nicht sowohl von denen, welche es auf unmittelbare Weise
haben, als vielmehr durch solche hervorgebracht, welche durch sein Entstehen einen Gewinn suchen.
Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, Zusatz zu § 191
What the English call “comfortable” is something endless and inexhaustible. Every condition of comfort
reveals in turn its discomfort, and these discoveries go on for ever. Hence the new want is not so much a
want of those who have it directly, but is created by those who hope to make profit from it.
Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, S. Dyde, trans. (1896), § 191
Diogenes in seiner ganzen zynischen Gestalt ist eigentlich nur ein Produkt des atheniensischen
gesellschaftlichen Lebens, und was ihn determinierte, war die Meinung, gegen welche seine Weise überhaupt
agierte. Sie ist daher nicht unabhängig, sondern nur durch dieses Gesellschaftliche entstanden, und selbst ein
unartiges Produkt des Luxus. Wo auf der einen Seite derselbe sich auf seiner Höhe befindet, da ist auch die
Not und Verworfenheit auf der anderen Seite ebensogroß, und der Zynismus wird dann durch den Gegensatz
der Verfeinerung hervorgebracht.
Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, Zusatz zu § 195
Diogenes in his completely cynical character is properly only a product of Athenian social life. That which
gave birth to him was the public opinion, against which his behavior was directed. His way of life was
therefore not independent, but occasioned by his social surroundings. It was itself an ungainly product of
luxury. Wherever luxury is extreme, there also prevail distress and depravity, and cynicism is produced in
opposition to over-refinement.
Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, S. Dyde, trans. (1896), Addition to § 195
The entire kynical mode of life adopted by Diogenes was nothing more or less than a product of Athenian
social life, and what determine it was the way of thinking against which his whole manner protested. Hence
it was not independent of social conditions but simply their result.
Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, § 195, cited in Critique of Cynical Reason (1987), p. ix
Lectures on Natural Right and Political Science

English: http://books.google.com/books?id=AyYCcUy2HYgC
German:
The term “natural right” or “natural law” [Naturrecht] ought to be abandoned and replaced by the term
“philosophical doctrine of right” [philosophische Rechtslehre, or (as will also emerge) “doctrine of objective
spirit.” The expression “nature” [Natur] contains the ambiguity that by it we understand the essence [Wesen]
and concept [Begriff] of something, unconscious, immediate nature as such. So by “natural law” has been
understood the supposed legal order valid by virtue of immediate nature; with this is connected the fiction of
a “state of nature” [Naturzustand], in which authentic right or law supposedly exists. This state of nature is
opposed to the state of society and in particular to the [political] state [Staat]. There has also been a prevalent
misconception in this regard, as if society were not something implicitly and explicitly in conformity with the
essence of spirit, and necessary for it, but a kind of artificial evil and misfortune, and as if genuine freedom
were limited in it. Rather is it the case that a state [Zustand] that could be described as a state of nature would
be one wherein there were no such things as right and wrong because spirit had not yet attained to the
thought of its freedom (and it is only with this thought that right and wrong begin); or rather, since the human
being exists essentially as self-consciousness and with the concept of good and evil, the state of nature is a
state of unfreedom and wrong, which must be sublated before freedom and its actuality can be attained.
Hegel, Lectures on Natural Right and Political Science, J. M. Stewart, trans. (1995), § 2
377
Phaenomenologie des Geistes [Phenomenology of Mind] (1807)
German: http://books.google.com/books?id=rL04AAAAYAAJ
English: http://philosophytexts.us/Public%20Domain%20Philosophy/Hegel,%20G.%20W.%20F/Hegel,_G.W.F._-_The_Phenomenology_Of_Mind.pdf
The goal to be reached is the mind’s insight into what knowing is. Impatience asks for the impossible, wants
to reach the goal without the means of getting there. The length of the journey has to be borne with, for every
moment is necessary; and again we must halt at every stage, for each is itself a complete individual form, and
is fully and finally considered only so far as its determinate character is taken and dealt with as a rounded
and concrete whole, or only so far as the whole is looked at in the light of the special and peculiar character
which this determination gives it. Because the substance of individual mind, nay, more, because the universal
mind at work in the world (Weltgeist), has had the patience to go through these forms in the long stretch of
time’s extent, and to take upon itself the prodigious labor of the world’s history, where it bodied forth in each
form the entire content of itself, as each is capable of presenting it; and because by nothing less could that
all-pervading mind ever manage to become conscious of what itself is — for that reason, the individual mind,
in the nature of the case, cannot expect by less toil to grasp what its own substance contains.
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (1807)
Die Wahre Gestalt, in welcher die Wahrheit existiert, kann allein das wissenschaftliche System derselben
sein. Daran mitzuarbeiten, dass die Philosophie der Form der Wissenschaft näher komme,—dem Ziele,
ihren Namen der Liebe zum Wissen ablegen zu können und wirkliches Wissen zu sein,—ist es, was ich
mir vorgesetzt.
Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807), S. vi
So fest der Meinung der Gegensatz des Wahren und des Falschen wird, so pflegt sie auch entweder
Beistimmung oder Widerspruch gegen ein vorhandenes philosophisches System zu erwarten, und in einer
Erklärung über ein solches nur entweder das eine oder das andre zu sehen. Sie begreift die Verschiedenheit
philosophischer Systeme nicht so sehr als die fortschreitende Entwicklung der Wahrheit, als sie in der
Verschiedenheit nur den Widerspruch sieht.
Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, Vorrede
The more conventional opinion gets fixated on the antithesis of truth and falsity, the more it tends to expect a
given philosophical system to be either accepted or contradicted; and hence it finds only acceptance or
rejection. It does not comprehend the diversity of philosophical systems as the progressive unfolding of truth,
but rather sees in it simple disagreements.
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), A. V. Miller, trans. (1977), p. 2
... an attempt to combine the appearance of being in earnest and taking trouble about the subject with an
actual neglect of the subject altogether.
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, J. B. Baillie, trans., Preface, § 1
The real subject-matter is not exhausted in its purpose, but in working the matter out; nor is the mere result
attained the concrete whole itself, but the result along with the process of arriving at it. The purpose of itself
is a lifeless universal, just as the general drift is a mere activity in a certain direction, which is still without its
concrete realization; and the naked result is the corpse of the system which has left its guiding tendency
behind it.
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, J. B. Baillie, trans. (1967), Preface, § 1
378
Weil übrigens in einer Zeit, worin die Allgemeinheit des Geistes so sehr erstarkt und die Einzelnheit, wie
sich gebührt, um so viel gleichgültiger geworden ist, auch jene an ihrem vollen Umfang und gebildeten
Reichtum hält und ihn fordert, der Anteil, der an dem gesammten Werke des Geistes auf die Tätigkeit des
Individuums fällt, nur gering sein kann, so muss dieses, wie es die Natur der Wissenschaft schon mit sich
bringt, sich um so mehr vergessen und zwar werden und tun, was es kann, aber es muss ebenso weniger von
ihm gefordert werden, wie es selbst weniger von sich erwarten und für sich fordern darf.
Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, Vorrede
At a time when the universal nature of spiritual life has become so very much emphasized and strengthened,
and the mere individual aspect has become, as it should be, correspondingly a matter of indifference, when,
too, that universal aspect holds, by the entire range of its substance, the full measure of the wealth it has built
up, and lays claim to it all, the share in the total work of mind that falls to the activity of any particular
individual can only be very small. Because this is so, the individual must all the more forget himself, as in
fact the very nature of science implies and requires that he should.
[opposition] Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, J. B. Baillie, trans. (1967) Preface,, p. 130
Indem die wahre Gestalt der Wahrheit in die Wissenschaftlichkeit gesetzt wird,—order was dasselbe ist,
indem die Wahrheit behauptet wird, an dem Begriffe allein das Element ihrer Existenz zu haben,—so weiß
ich, dass dies im Widerspruch mit einer Verstellung und deren Folgen zu stehen scheint, welche eine so
große Anmaßung als Ausbreitung in der Überzeugung des Zeitalters hat.
Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807)
Die Ungeduld verlangt das Unmögliche, nämlich die Erreichung des Ziels ohne die Mittel.
… Furcht zu irren schon der Irrtum selbst ist.

FRIEDRICH HÖLDERLIN (1770-1843)

Tief im Herzen haß ich den Troß der Despoten und Pfaffen
Aber noch mehr das Genie, macht es gemein sich damit.
Friedrich Hölderlin, „Fünf Epigramme“
Deep down in my heart I hate the gang of despots and clerics; but what I hate still more is genius that joins
forces with them.
Friedrich Hölderlin, „Five Epigrams“ M. Hamburger, trans. Selected Verse (1961), p. 9
O der Menschenkenner! er stellt sich kindisch mit Kindern

Aber der Baum und das Kind suchet, was über ihm ist.
Friedrich Hölderlin, „Falsche Popularität“ „Fünf Epigramme“
O the worldly wise! With children he pretends to be childish; but the tree and the child look for what is above
them.
Heilige Gefäße sind die Dichter,

Worin des Lebens Wein, der Geist
Der Helden sich aufbewahrt.
Friedrich Hölderlin, „Buonaparte“
Poets are holy vessels in which the wine of life, the spirit of heroes is preserved.
Ach! der Menge gefällt, was

auf den Marktplatz taugt.
Friedrich Hölderlin, Menschenbeifall
379
Ach! wär ich nie in eure Schulen gegangen! Die Wissenschaft, der ich in den Schacht hinunter folgte, von
der ich, jugendlich töricht, die Bestätigung meiner reinen Freude erwartete, die hat mir alles verdorben. Ich
bin bei euch so recht vernünftig geworden, habe gründlich mich unterscheiden gelernt von dem, was mich
umgibt, bin nun vereinzelt in der schönen Welt, bin so ausgeworfen aus dem Garten der Natur, wo ich wuchs
und blühte, und vertrockne an der Mittagssonne.
Friedrich Hölderlin, Hyperion 1
Das Schönste ist auch das Heiligste.

Es ist das Zeichen dieser Zeit, dass die alte Heroennatur um Ehre betteln geht, und das lebendige
Menschenherz, wie eine Waise, um einen Tropfen Liebe sich kümmert.
Wo aber Gefahr ist, wächst das Rettende auch.

Friedrich Hölderlin, Patmos
Ich glaube, dass die Ungeduld, mit der man seinem Ziele zueilt, die Klippe ist, an der gerade oft die besten
Menschen scheitern.
Friedrich Hölderlin
The impatience with which everyone rushes toward his goals is the cliff on which even the best men founder.
Friedrich Hölderlin
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850)

The following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain
how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of
poetic pleasure. Readers accustomed to the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers, if they
persist in reading this book to its conclusion, will perhaps frequently have to struggle with feelings of
strangeness and aukwardness: they will look round for poetry, and will be induced to enquire by what species
of courtesy these attempts can be permitted to assume that title. It is desirable that such readers, for their own
sakes, should not suffer the solitary word Poetry, a word of very disputed meaning, to stand in the way of
their gratification; but that, while they are perusing this book, they should ask themselves if it contains a
natural delineation of human passions, human characters, and human incidents; and if the answer be
favourable to the author's wishes, that they should consent to be pleased in spite of that most dreadful enemy
to our pleasures, our own pre-established codes of decision.
William Wordsworth, preface to Lyrical Ballads
380
The Excursion (1814)
http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww398.html
Oh! many are the Poets that are sown

By Nature; men endowed with highest gifts,
The vision and the faculty divine;
Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse,
(Which, in the docile season of their youth,
It was denied them to acquire, through lack
Of culture and the inspiring aid of books,
Or haply by a temper too severe,
Or a nice backwardness afraid of shame)
Nor having e'er, as life advanced, been led
By circumstance to take unto the height
The measure of themselves, these favoured Beings,
All but a scattered few, live out their time,
Husbanding that which they possess within,
And go to the grave, unthought of. Strongest minds
Are often those of whom the noisy world
Hears least.
William Wordsworth, The Excursion
While yet a child, and long before his time,

Had he perceived the presence and the power
Of greatness; and deep feelings had impressed
So vividly great objects that they lay
Upon his mind like substances, whose presence
Perplexed the bodily sense. He had received
A precious gift; for, as he grew in years,
With these impressions would he still compare
All his remembrances, thoughts, shapes, and forms;
And, being still unsatisfied with aught
Of dimmer character, he thence attained
An active power to fasten images
Upon his brain; and on their pictured lines
Intensely brooded, even till they acquired
The liveliness of dreams. Nor did he fail,
While yet a child, with a child's eagerness
Incessantly to turn his ear and eye
On all things which the moving seasons brought
To feed such appetite—nor this alone
Appeased his yearning:—in the after-day
Of boyhood, many an hour in caves forlorn,
And 'mid the hollow depths of naked crags
He sate, and even in their fixed lineaments,
Or from the power of a peculiar eye,
Or by creative feeling overborne,
Or by predominance of thought oppressed,
Even in their fixed and steady lineaments
He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind,
Expression ever varying!
381
Rapt into still communion that transcends
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise,
His mind was a thanksgiving to the power
That made him; it was blessedness and love!
Urged by his Mother, he essayed to teach

A village-school—but wandering thoughts were then
A misery to him; and the Youth resigned
A task he was unable to perform.
Much did he see of men,

Their manners, their enjoyments, and pursuits,
Their passions and their feelings; chiefly those
Essential and eternal in the heart,
That, 'mid the simpler forms of rural life,
Exist more simple in their elements,
And speak a plainer language.
No piteous revolutions had he felt,

No wild varieties of joy and grief.
Unoccupied by sorrow of its own,
His heart lay open; and, by nature tuned
And constant disposition of his thoughts
To sympathy with man, he was alive
To all that was enjoyed where'er he went,
And all that was endured; for, in himself
Happy, and quiet in his cheerfulness,
He had no painful pressure from without
That made him turn aside from wretchedness
With coward fears.
Sometimes his religion seemed to me

Self-taught, as of a dreamer in the woods;
Who to the model of his own pure heart
Shaped his belief.
She was a Woman of a steady mind,

Tender and deep in her excess of love;
Not speaking much, pleased rather with the joy
Of her own thoughts: by some especial care
Her temper had been framed, as if to make
A Being, who by adding love to peace
Might live on earth a life of happiness.
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.

William Wordsworth, The World
382
NOVALIS a.k.a. GEORG FRIEDRICH FREIHERR VON
HARDENBERG (1772-1801)
Morality must be the heart of our existence, if it is to be what it wants to be for us. ... The highest form of
philosophy is ethics. Thus all philosophy begins with “I am.” The highest statement of cognition must be an
expression of that fact which is the means and ground for all cognition, namely, the goal of the I.
Novalis, Fichte Studies § 556
Only the most perfect human being can design the most perfect philosophy.
Novalis, Fichte Studies § 651
To get to know a truth properly, one must polemicize it.

Novalis, cited in The Viking Book of Aphorisms
The seat of the soul is at the point of contact of the inner and outer world.
Novalis, cited in Ludwig Klages, The Science of Character, p. 20
Wahrhafte Anarchie ist das Zeugungselement der Religion. Aus der Vernichtung alles Positiven hebt sie ihr
glorreiches Haupt als neue Weltstifterin empor.
Novalis
Man sollte stolz auf den Schmerz sein—jeder Schmerz ist eine Erinnerung unsres hohen Ranges.
Novalis
A man should be proud of suffering. All suffering is a reminder of our high estate.
Novalis, cited in Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf (1990), pp. 15-16
The best kind of apprenticeship is apprenticeship in the art of living.

Novalis, “Miscellaneous Observations,” Philosophical Writings, M. Stolijar, trans. (Albany: 1997) #4
Every stage of education begins with childhood. That is why the most educated person on earth so
much resembles a child.
Novalis, “Miscellaneous Observations,” Philosophical Writings, M. Stolijar, trans. (Albany: 1997) #48
Philosophy … bears witness to the deepest love of reflection, to absolute delight in wisdom.
Novalis, “Logological Fragments,” Philosophical Writings, M. Stolijar, trans. (Albany: 1997) #12
The poem of the understanding is philosophy.

Novalis, “Logological Fragments,” Philosophical Writings, M. Stolijar, trans. (Albany: 1997) #24
There is but one temple in the universe and that is the body of man.
Novalis
When one speaks merely in order to speak, one gives voice to the most splendid, original truths. But if one
wants to speak about something specific, capricious language makes one say the most ridiculous and mixed-
up things. This is the source of the hate that so many serious people have for language. They notice its
mischievousness, but not the fact that despicable chatter is the infinitely serious side of language. If one
could only make it clear to people that language is like mathematical formulas. Formulas comprise a world
of their own: they play only with themselves, express nothing but their own wondrous nature and are for that
very reason so expressive.
Novalis, “Soliloquy,” J. Schulte-Sasse, trans., Theory as Practice (1997), pp. 145-146
383
Darum ist sie ein so wunderbares und fruchtbares Geheimnis, - daß wenn einer bloß spricht, um zu sprechen,
er gerade das herrlichsten, originellsten Wahrheiten ausspricht. Will er aber von etwas Bestimmten sprechen,
so läßt ihn die launische Sprache das lächerlichste und verkehrteste Zeug sagen. Daraus entsteht auch der
Haß, den so manche ernsthafte Leute gegen die Sprache haben. Sie merken ihren Mutwillen, merken aber
nicht, daß das verächtliche Schwatzen die unendlich ernsthafte Leute gegen die Sprache haben. Wenn man
den Leuten nur begreiflich machen könnte, daß es mit der Sprache wie mit den mathematischen Formeln
sei.—Sie machen eine Welt für sich aus—sie spielen nur mit sich selbst, drücken nichts als ihre wunderbare
Natur aus, und eben darum sind sie so ausdrucksvoll.
Novalis, „Monolog“ (1798)
So it is too with language: whoever has a keen feeling for its application, its rhythm, its musical spirit;
whoever perceives in himself the tender effect of its inner nature and moves tongue or hand accordingly will
be a prophet.
Novalis, “Soliloquy,” J. Schulte-Sasse, trans., Theory as Practice (1997), p. 146
So ist es auch mit der Sprache—wer ein feines Gefühl ihrer Applikatur, ihres Takts, ihres musikalischen
Geistes hat, wer in sich das zarte Wirken ihrer innern Natur vernimmt, und danach seine Zunge oder seine
Hand bewegt, der wird ein Prophet sein.
Novalis, „Monolog“ (1798)
1. Wenn man mit Wenigen, in einer großen, gemischten Gesellschaft etwas heimliches reden will, und
man sitzt nicht neben einander, so muß man in einer besondern Sprache reden. Diese besondre Sprache kann
entweder eine dem Ton nach, oder den Bildern nach fremde Sprache seyn. Dies letztere wird eine Tropen
und Räthselsprache seyn.
2. Viele haben gemeynt, man solle von zarten, mißbrauchbaren Gegenständen, eine gelehrte Sprache
führen, z.B. lateinisch von Dingen der Art schreiben. Es käme auf einen Versuch an, ob man nicht in der
gewöhnlichen Landessprache so sprechen könnte, daß es nur der verstehn könnte, der es verstehn sollte.
Jedes wahre Geheimniß muß die Profanen von selbst ausschließen. Wer es versteht ist von selbst, mit Recht,
Eingeweihter.
Novalis, „Glauben und Liebe oder Der König und die Königin“
http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Novalis/Fragmentensammlung/Glauben+und+Liebe/Glauben+und+Liebe
It is my own peculiarity that I cannot bear ignorance, nor the ignorance of ignoramuses, and even less the
ignorance of the informed. Therefore, I decided long ago to converse with the reader on this matter, and to
construct before his very eyes—and in his face, if necessary—a different, new reader, one constructed
according to my own ideas.
Friedrich Schlegel, “On Incomprehensibility” (1800), J. Schulte-Sasse, trans., Theory as Practice (1997), p. 146
Nun ist es ganz eigen an mir, daß ich den Unverstand durchaus nicht leiden kann, auch den Unverstand der
Unverständigen, noch weniger aber den Unverstand der Verständigen. Daher hatte ich schon vor langer Zeit
den Entschluß gefaßt, mich mit dem Leser in ein Gespräch über diese Materie zu versetzen, und vor seinen
eignen Augen, gleichsam ihm ins Gesicht, einen andern neuen Leser nach meinem Sinne zu konstruieren.
Friedrich Schlegel, „Über Unverständlichkeit“ (1800)
http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Schlegel,+Friedrich/%C3%84sthetische+und+politische+Schriften/%C3%9Cber+die+Unverst%C3%A4ndlichkeit
Ich wollte zeigen, daß die Worte sich selbst oft besser verstehen, als diejenigen von denen sie gebraucht
werden.
Friedrich Schlegel, „Über Unverständlichkeit“ (1800)
http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Schlegel,+Friedrich/%C3%84sthetische+und+politische+Schriften/%C3%9Cber+die+Unverst%C3%A4ndlichkeit
384
Blüthenstaub (1798)
German: http://www.lyrik.ch/lyrik/spur3/novalis/novalis3.htm
Die Bezeichnung durch Töne und Striche ist eine bewundernswürdige Abstrakzion. Vier Buchstaben
bezeichnen mir Gott; einige Striche eine Million Dinge. Wie leicht wird hier die Handhabung des
Universums, wie anschaulich die Konzentrizität der Geisterwelt! Die Sprachlehre ist die Dynamik des
Geisterreichs. Ein Kommandowort bewegt Armeen; das Wort Freyheit Nazionen.
Novalis, Blüthenstaub (1798), § 2
Die Fantasie setzt die künftige Welt entweder in die Höhe, oder in die Tiefe, oder in der Metempsychose zu
uns. Wir träumen von Reisen durch das Weltall: ist denn das Weltall nicht in uns? Die Tiefen unsers Geistes
kennen wir nicht. - Nach Innen geht der geheimnisvolle Weg. In uns, oder nirgends ist die Ewigkeit mit ihren
Welten, die Vergangenheit und Zukunft. Die Außenwelt ist die Schattenwelt, sie wirft ihren Schatten in das
Lichtreich.
Selbstentäußerung ist die Quelle aller Erniedrigung, so wie im Gegentheil der Grund aller ächten Erhebung.
Der erste Schritt wird Blick nach Innen, absondernde Beschauung unsers Selbst. Wer hier stehn bleibt, geräth
nur halb. Der zweyte Schritt muß wirksamer Blick nach Außen, selbstthätige, gehaltne Beobachtung der
Außenwelt seyn.
Jeder geliebte Gegenstand ist der Mittelpunkt eines Paradieses.

Das beste an den Wissenschaften ist ihr philosophisches Ingrediens, wie das Leben am organischen Körper.
Man dephilosophire die Wissenschaften: was bleibt übrig? Erde, Luft und Wasser.
Welten bauen genügt dem tiefer dringenden Sinn nicht. Aber ein liebendes Herz sättigt den strebenden Geist.
Fragmente vermischten Inhalts

German: http://books.google.com/books?id=AJYTAAAAQAAJ
Reine Mathematik ist Religion.

Novalis, Fragmente
Wer ein mathematisches Buch nicht mit Andacht ergreift, und es wie Gottes-Wort liest, der versteht es nicht.
Novalis, Fragmente
KARL WILHELM FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL (1772-1829)

Life is writing. The sole purpose of mankind is to engrave the thoughts of divinity onto the tablets of nature.
F. Schlegel, “On Philosophy: To Dorothea,” in Theory as Practice (1997), p. 420
Expect nothing more from philosophy than a voice, language and grammar of the instinct for Godliness that
lies at its origin, and, essentially, is philosophy itself.
Friedrich Schlegel, “On Philosophy: To Dorothea,” in Theory as Practice (1997), p. 421
Man kann nur Philosoph werden, nicht es sein. So bald man es zu sein glaubt, hört man auf es zu werden.
Friedrich Schlegel, Athenäumsfragmente (1797), § 54
385
Philosophie des Lebens [Philosophy of Life] (1828)
English: http://books.google.com/books?id=jWf83ij_bjQC
German: http://books.google.com/books?id=rz0ZAAAAMAAJ
German: http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Schlegel,+Friedrich/Fragmentensammlungen/Fragmente
Es ist doch unstreitig wenigstens mit die Aufgabe der Philosophie, ein weise Ökonomie, gute Wirtschaft und
geregelten Haushalt, in diese beständig rege und cursirende Gedankenmasse einzuführen, die unser
intellectuelles Vermögen und Eigenthum bildet; was um so nothwendiger ist, bey dem allerdings sehr großen
Gedankenreichthum unserer Zeit, bey diesem höchst raschen und lebendigen Ideen-Verkehr und Umsatz, wo
doch Einnahme und Ausgabe nicht immer gehörig ins Gleichgewicht gesetzt werden, damit nicht eine
leichtsinnige Verschwendung und Verschleuderung der edelsten Geistesgüter einreißt, oder ein bodenloses
falsches Credit-System im Denken, wo es an einem bleibenden und festen Capital von sicher angelegten
Grundgedanken und praktisch ausdauernden Wahrheiten fehlt.
Friedrich Schlegel, Philosophie des Lebens (1828), S. 10
It is among the many problems of philosophy to establish a wise economy and prudent stewardship of that
ever-shifting mass of incoming and outgoing thoughts which make up our intellectual estate and property.
And this is the more necessary, the greater are the treasures of thought possessed by our age.
Friedrich Schlegel, Philosophy of Life, Lecture 1, p. 7
Vorzüglich aber muß ich hier noch bemerken, daß, so wie die Philosophie ganz ihren Gegenstand und
angewiesenen Inhalt darüber verliehet, wenn sie in die Theologie übergeht und sich auflöst, oder wenn sie in
die äußere Politik eingreift: eben so auch ganz ihre wahre Form verfehlt, wenn sie diese in künstlich
berechneter Methode der Mathematik nachmachen will.
Friedrich Schlegel, Philosophie des Lebens (1828)
In the same way as philosophy loses sight of its true object and appropriate matter, when either it
passes into and merges in theology, or meddles with external politics, so also does it mar its proper
form when it attempts to mimic the rigorous method of mathematics.
Friedrich Schlegel, Philosophy of Life, Lecture 1
Whatever in any degree transcends the material impression, or sensuous experience, as well as all possible
knowledge of, and faith therein, not merely in respect to … religion, but whatever is noble, beautiful and
great, whatever can lead the mind to, or can be referred to something suprasensible and divine—all this,
wherever it may be found, whether in life or thought, in history or in nature—aye, even in art itself, it was the
ultimate object of this counterfeit philosophy to decry, to involve in doubt, to attack and to overthrow, and to
bring down to the level of the common and material, or to plunge it into the skeptical abyss of unbelief. The
first step in the process is a subordination of reason to sensation, as a derivative of it—a mere slough which it
throws off in its transformations.
Friedrich Schlegel, Philosophy of Life, Lecture 1, p. 12
Aphorisms from the Lyceum (1797)

Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968)
We should demand genius from everybody, without, however, expecting it.

Friedrich Schlegel, “Selected Aphorisms from the Lyceum (1798)” )”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc,
trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #16
A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.
Friedrich Schlegel, “Selected Aphorisms from the Lyceum (1797)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc,
In order to be able to write well upon a subject, one must have ceased to be interested in it; the thought which
is to be soberly expressed must already be entirely past and no longer be one’s actual concern.
386
We should never invoke the spirit of antiquity as our authority. Spirits are peculiar things; they cannot be
grasped with the hands and be held up before others. Spirits reveal themselves only to spirits. The most direct
and concise method would be, in this case as well, to prove the possession of the only redeeming faith by
good works.
A genuinely free and educated man should be able to tune himself, as one tunes a musical instrument,
absolutely arbitrarily, at his convenience at any time and to any degree, philosophically or philologically,
critically or poetically, historically or rhetorically, in ancient or modern form.
Not art and works of art do make an artist, but sense, enthusiasm and instinct.
In England … everything becomes professional … even the rogues of that island are pedants.
What is lost in the good or excellent translation is precisely the best.

Is it not superfluous to write more than one novel if the writer has not become, say, a new man? Obviously,
all the novels of an author not infrequently belong together and are to a certain degree only one novel.
The ancients are neither the Jews, nor the Christians, nor the Englishmen of poetry. They are not an
arbitrarily chosen artistic people of God; nor do they possess the only redeeming religion of beauty; nor do
they possess a monopoly on poetry.
The following are the universally fundamental laws of literary communication: 1. one must have something
to communicate; 2. one must have someone to whom to communicate it; 3. one must really communicate it,
not merely express it for oneself alone. Otherwise it would be more to the point to remain silent.
Schlegel, “Selected Aphorisms from the Lyceum (1797)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans.
(Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #98
What one usually calls reason is only one kind of the same; namely, the thin and watered-down kind. There
is also a thick fiery reason which makes wit truly wit and lends to the terse style buoyancy and magnetism.
Nothing is more miserable in its origin and more awful in its effect than the fear of being ridiculous.
Poetry can be criticized only through poetry. A critique which itself is not a work of art, either in content as
representation of the necessary impression in the process of creation, or through its beautiful form and in its
liberal tone in the spirit of the old Roman satire, has no right of citizenship in the realm of art.
387
Critical Fragments
German: http://books.google.com/books?id=zF0TAAAAYAAJ
Die Romane sind die sokratischen Dialoge unserer Zeit. In diese liberale Form hat sich die Lebensweisheit
vor der Schulweisheit geflüchtet.
Friedrich Schlegel, „Kritische Fragmente”, Prosaischen Jugendschriften (1882), Bd. 2, S. 186, § 26
Novels are the Socratic dialogs of our time. This free form has become the refuge of common sense in
its flight from pedantry.
Friedrich Schlegel, Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), “Critical Fragments,” § 26
Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from scholasticism into this liberal
form.
Friedrich Schlegel, “Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968)
Wer noch nicht bis zur klaren Einsicht gekommen ist, dass es eine Grösse noch ganz ausserhalb seiner
eigenen Sphäre geben könne, für die ihm der Sinn durchaus fehle; wer nicht wenigstens dunkle
Vermuthungen hat, nach welcher Weltgegend des menschlichen Geistes hin diese Grösse ungefähr gelegen
seyn möge: der ist in seiner eignen Sphäre entweder ohne Genie, oder noch nicht bis zum Klassischen
gebildet.
Whoever hasn’t yet arrived at the clear realization that there might be a greatness existing entirely outside his
own sphere and for which he might have absolutely no feeling; whoever hasn’t at least felt obscure
intimations concerning the approximate location of this greatness in the geography of the human spirit: that
person either has no genius in his own sphere, or else he hasn’t been educated to the level of the classic.
Ein recht freier und gebildeter Mensch müsste sich selbst nach Belieben philosophisch oder philologisch,
kritisch oder poetisch, historisch oder rhetorisch, antik oder modern stimmen können, ganz willkürlich, wie
man ein Instrument stimmt, zu jeder Zeit, und in jedem Grade.
A really free and cultivated person ought to be able to attune himself at will to being philosophical or
philological, critical or poetical, historical or rhetorical, ancient or modern: quite arbitrarily, just as one tunes
an instrument, at any time and to any degree.
Als Maxime ist der Gedanke, der Weise müsse gegen das Schicksal immer en etat d'epigramme sein, schön
und acht zynisch.
The thought that the wise man must confront fate always en état d’épigramme is beautiful and truly cynical.
Friedrich Schlegel, regarding Chamfort, Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), “Critical Fragments,” § 59
Leute die Bücher schreiben, und sich dann einbilden, ihre Leser wären das Publikum, und sie müssten das
Publikum bilden: diese kommen sehr bald dahin, ihr sogenanntes Publikum nicht bloss zu verachten, sondern
zu hassen; welches zu gar nichts fuhren kann.
People who write books and imagine that their readers are the public and that they must educate it soon
arrive at the point not only of despising their so-called public but of hating it. Which leads absolutely
nowhere.
388
Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)
German: http://books.google.com/books?id=sCA9AAAAIAAJ
English: http://www.scribd.com/doc/21598602/Friedrich-Schlegel-Philosophical-Fragments
Über keinen Gegenstand philosophieren sie seltner als über die Philosophie.
About no subject is there less philosophizing than about philosophy.
Friedrich Schlegel, “Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc,
Was gute Gesellschaft genannt wird, ist meistens nur ein Mosaik von geschliffnen Karikaturen. Friedrich
Schlegel, Athenäums-Fragmente, § 5
What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures.
Das sicherste Mittel unverständlich oder vielmehr mißverständlich zu sein, ist, wenn man die Worte in ihrem
ursprünglichen Sinne braucht; besonders Worte aus den alten Sprachen.
The surest method of being incomprehensible or, moreover, to be misunderstood is to use words in their
original sense; especially words from the ancient languages.
Ein vollkommnes Projekt müßte zugleich ganz subjektiv, und ganz objektiv, ein unteilbares und lebendiges
Individuum sein.
A perfect project should simultaneously be entirely subjective and entirely objective.
Witzige Einfälle sind die Sprüchwörter der gebildeten Menschen.

Witty sayings are the proverbs of the educated.
Friedrich Schlegel, “Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, my translation, #29
Prüderie ist Prätension auf Unschuld, ohne Unschuld. Die Frauen müssen wohl prüde bleiben, so lange
Männer sentimental, dumm und schlecht genug sind, ewige Unschuld und Mangel an Bildung von ihnen zu
fordern. Denn Unschuld ist das einzige, was Bildungslosigkeit adeln kann.
Prudishness is pretense of innocence without innocence. Women have to remain prudish as long as men are
sentimental, dense, and evil enough to demand of them eternal innocence and lack of education. For
innocence is the only thing which can ennoble lack of education.
Manche witzige Einfälle sind wie das überraschende Wiedersehen zwei befreundeter Gedanken nach einer
langen Trennung.
Many a witty inspiration is like the surprising reunion of befriended thoughts after a long separation.
389
Die Philosophie geht noch zu sehr gerade aus, ist noch nicht zyklisch genug.
Friedrich Schlegel, Athenäums-Fragmente und andere Schriften (1978), S. 81
Philosophy still moves much too straight ahead, and is not yet cyclical enough.
Es gibt eine eigne Gattung Menschen, bei denen die Begeisterung der Langenweile, die erste Regung der
Philosophie ist.
There is a kind of person for whom an enthusiasm for boredom represents the beginning of philosophy.
Friedrich Schlegel, Philosophical Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) § 52
Man kann nur Philosoph werden, nicht es sein. Sobald man es zu sein glaubt, hört man auf es zu werden.
One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being
one.
Da die Philosophie jetzt alles, was ihr vor vorkömmt kritisiert, so wäre eine Kritik der Philosophie nichts als
eine gerechte Repressalie.
Since philosophy now criticizes everything it comes across, a critique of philosophy would be nothing less
than a just reprisal.
Das Druckenlassen verhält sich zum Denken, wie eine Wochenstube zum erste Kuß.
Publication is to thinking as childbirth is to the first kiss.
Jeder ungebildete Mensch ist die Karikatur von sich selbst.

Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself.
Moderantismus ist Geist der kastrierten Illiberalität.

Moderation is the spirit of castrated narrow-mindedness.
Auch in den Wissenschaften besetzt man erst ein Terrain, und beweist dann hinterdrein sein Recht daran.
Even in the sciences possession is nine-tenths of the law.
Subjektiv betrachtet, fängt die Philosophie doch immer in der Mitte an, wie das epische Gedicht.
Philosophy always begins in the middle, like an epic poem.
390
Es gibt Menschen, deren ganze Tätigkeit darin besieht, immer Nein zu sagen. Es wäre nichts kleines, immer
recht Nein sagen zu können, aber wer weiter nichts kann, kann es gewiß nicht recht. Der Geschmack dieser
Neganten ist eine tüchtige Schere, um die Extremitäten des Genies zu säubern; ihre Aufklärung eine große
Lichtputze für die Flamme des Enthusiasmus; und ihre Vernunft ein gelindes Laxativ gegen unmäßige Lust
und Liebe.
There are people whose whole life consists in always saying no. It would be no small accomplishment to be
able to say no properly, but whoever can do no more, surely cannot do so properly. The taste of these nay-
sayers is like an efficient pair of scissors for pruning the extremities of genius; their enlightenment is like a
great candle-snuffer for the flame of enthusiasm and their reason a mild laxative against immoderate pleasure
and love.
Friedrich Schlegel, Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) § 88
Die Kritik ist das einzige Surrogat der von so manchen Philosophen vergeblich gesuchten und gleich
unmöglichen moralischen Mathematik und Wissenschaft des Schicklichen.
Criticism is the sole surrogate of the moral mathematics and science of propriety which so many
philosophers have sought for in vain because it is impossible to find.
Wer nicht um der Philosophie willen philosophiert, sondern die Philosophie als Mittel braucht, ist ein
Sophist.
Whoever does not philosophize for the sake of philosophy, but rather uses philosophy as a means, is a
sophist.
Als vorübergehender Zustand ist der Skeptizismus logische Insurrektion; als System ist er Anarchie.
As a temporary condition skepticism is logical insurrection; as a system it is anarchy.
Bei den Ausdrücken, „Seine Philosophie”, „Meine Philosophie”, erinnert man sich immer an die Worte im
Nathan: „Wem eignet Gott? Was ist das für ein Gott, der einem Menschen eignet?”
At the words “his philosophy, my philosophy,” one is always reminded of that line in Nathan: ... “What
kind of God is it who belongs to a man?”
Friedrich Schlegel, Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) § 99, reference is to Lessing, Nathan der Weise
Nach dem Schulbegriffe ist nur der ein Kantianer, der glaubt, Kant sei die Wahrheit, und der, wenn die
Königsberger Post einmal verunglückte, leicht einige Wochen ohne Wahrheit sein könnte. Nach dem
veralteten Sokratischen Begriffe, da die, welche sich den Geist des großen Meisters selbständig angeeignet,
und angebildet hatten, seine Schüler hießen, und als Söhne seines Geistes nach ihm genannt wurden, dürfte
es nur wenige Kantianer geben.
According to the school definition, a Kantian is someone who believes that Kant is the truth, and who, if the
mail coach from Königsberg where ever to have an accident, might very well have to go without the truth for
some weeks. According to the outmoded Socratic concept of disciples being those who have independently
made the spirit of the great master their own spirit, have adapted themselves to it, and, as his spiritual sons,
have been named after him, there are probably only a very few Kantians.
Friedrich Schlegel, Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), “Athenaeum Fragments” § 104
391
Sie allein ist unendlich, wie sie allein frey ist, und das als ihr erstes Gesetz anerkennt, dass die Willkühr des
Dichters kein Gesetz über sich leide.
Romantic poetry ... recognizes as its first commandment that the will of the poet can tolerate no law above
itself.
To freely relinquish first one and then another part of one’s being, and then confine oneself entirely to a
third; to seek and find now in this, now in that individual the be-all and end-all of existence, and intentionally
forget everything else: of this only a mind is capable that contains within itself a whole system of persons,
and in whose inner being the universe which, as they say, should germinate in every monad, has grown to
fullness and maturity.
Es giebt eine materiale, enthusiastische Rhetorik die unendlich weit erhaben ist über den sophistischen
Misbrauch der Philosophie, die deklamatorische Stylübung, die angewandte Poesie, die improvisirte Politik,
welche man mit demselben Nahmen zu bezeichnen pflegt. Ihre Bestimmung ist, die Philosophie praktisch zu
realisiren, und die praktische Unphilosophie und Antiphilosophie nicht bloss dialektisch zu besiegen,
sondern real zu vernichten.
There is a material, enthusiastic rhetoric that is infinitely superior to the sophistic abuse of philosophy, the
declamatory stylistic exercise, the applied poetry, the improvised politics, that commonly go by the name.
The aim of this rhetoric is to realize philosophy practically and to defeat practical unphilosophy and
antiphilosophy not just dialectically, but really annihilate it.
Friedrich Schlegel, Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), “Athenaeum Fragments,” § 137
Klassisch zu leben, und das Alterthum praktisch in sich zu realisiren, ist der Gipfel und das Ziel der
Philologie.
To live classically and to realize antiquity practically within oneself is the summit and goal of philology.
Ein Fragment muß gleich einem kleinen Kunstwerke von der umgebenden Welt ganz abgesondert und in sich
selbst vollendet sein wie ein Igel.
An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in
itself like a hedgehog.
Die Menge nicht zu achten, ist sittlich; sie zu ehren, ist rechtlich.
To disrespect the masses is moral; to honor them, lawful.
Barbarisch ist nämlich, was zugleich antiklassisch, und antiprogressiv ist.

Barbarism is defined as what is at once anti-classical and anti-progressive.
392
Die Religion ist meistens nur ein Supplement oder gar ein Surrogat der Bildung, und nichts ist religiös in
strengem Sinne, was nicht ein Produkt der Freiheit ist. Man kann also sagen: Je freier, je religiöser; und je
mehr Bildung, je weniger Religion.
Religion is usually nothing but a supplement to or even a substitute for education, and nothing is religious in
the strict sense which is not a product of freedom. Thus one can say: The freer, the more religious; and the
more education, the less religion.
Fragmente, sagen Sie, wären die eigentliche Form der Universalphilosophie.

Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.
Friedrich Schlegel, “A” in “Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman
Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #259
Gott werden, Mensch sein, sich bilden, sind Ausdrücke, die einerlei bedeuten.
To become God, to be human, to cultivate oneself are all expressions that mean the same thing.
An genialischem Unbewußtsein können die Philosophen, dünkt mich den Dichtern den Rang recht wohl
streitig machen.
With respect to ingenious subconsciousness, I think, philosophers might well rival poets.
Alle Gattungen sind gut, sagt Voltaire, ausgenommen die langweilige Gattung.
All genres are good, says Voltaire, except the one that’s boring.
Das Geliebte zu vergöttern ist die Natur des Liebenden. Aber ein andres ist es, mit gespannter Imaginazion
ein fremdes Bild unterschieben und eine reine Vollkommenheit anstaunen, die uns nur darum als solche
erscheint, weil wir noch nicht gebildet genug sind, um die unendliche Fülle der menschlichen Natur zu
begreifen, und die Harmonie ihrer Widersprüche zu verstehn.
To idolize the object of love is the nature of the lover. But it’s something else to use one’s strained
imagination to substitute a new image and then admire it as absolute perfection.
Friedrich Schlegel, Philosophical Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), “Athenaeum Fragments,” § 363
Du sollst dir kein Ideal machen, weder eines Engels im Himmel, noch eines Helden aus einem Gedicht oder
Roman, noch eines selbstgeträumten oder fantasirten; sondern du sollst einen Mann lieben, wie er ist.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any ideal, neither of an angel in heaven, nor of a hero in a poem or novel, nor
one that is dreamed up or imagined: rather shalt thou love a man as he is.
Ich glaube an die unendliche Menschheit, die da war, ehe sie die Hülle der Männlichkeit und der
Weiblichkeit annahm.
Friedrich Schlegel, „Idee zu einem Katechismus der Vernunft für edle Frauen“ Athenäums-Fragmente, § 364
393
Ich glaube, daß ich nicht lebe, um zu gehorchen oder um mich zu zerstreuen, sondern um zu sein und zu
werden; und ich glaube an die Macht des Willens und der Bildung, mich dem Unendlichen wieder zu nähern,
mich aus den Fesseln der Mißbildung zu erlösen, und mich von den Schranken des Geschlechts unabhängig
zu machen.
Friedrich Schlegel, „Idee zu einem Katechismus der Vernunft für edle Frauen“ Athenäums-Fragmente, § 364
I believe that I do not live to obey commands or to seek diversions, but rather to be and to become; and I
believe in the power of the will and of education to make me draw near once more to the infinite, to deliver
me from the chains of miseducation, and to make me independent of the restraints of sex.
Friedrich Schlegel, “Idea for a catechism of reason for noble ladies,” Philosophical Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), “Athenaeum Fragments,” §
364
Verstand ist mechanischer, Witz ist chemischer, Genie ist organischer Geist.
Reason is mechanical, wit chemical, and genius organic spirit.
trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) # 366
Die Sittlichkeit aber war noch überall im Gedränge, die Nützlichkeit und die Rechtlichkeit missgönnen ihr
sogar die Existenz.
Morality has always had a difficult time of it; utility and legality even begrudge the fact of its existence.
Der platte Mensch beurtheilt alle andre Menschen wie Menschen, behandelt sie aber wie Sachen, und
begreift es durchaus nicht, dass sie andre Menschen sind als er.
The dull person judges all other people like people but treats them like things, and is absolutely incapable of
understanding that they are human beings distinct from himself.
Es gibt rechtliche und angenehme Leute, die den Menschen und das Leben so betrachten und besprechen, als
ob von der besten Schafzucht oder vom Lausen und Verkaufen der Güter die Rede wäre. Es sind die
Ökonomen der Moral, und eigentlich behält wohl alle Moral ohne Philosophie auch bei großer Welt und
hoher Poesie immer einen gewissen illiberalen und ökonomischen Anstrich. Einige Ökonomen bauen gern,
andre flicken lieber, andre müssen immer etwas bringen, andre treiben, andre versuchen alles, und halten sich
überall an, andre legen immer zurecht und machen Fächer, andre sehen zu und machen nach. Alle
Nachahmer in der Poesie und Philosophie sind eigentlich verlaufne Ökonomen. Jeder Mensch hat seinen
ökonomischen Instinkt, der gebildet werden muß, so gut wie auch die Orthographie und die Metrik gelernt zu
werden verdienen. Aber es gibt ökonomische Schwärmer und Pantheisten, die nichts achten als die Notdurft
und sich über nichts freuen als über ihre Nützlichkeit. Wo sie hinkommen, wird alles platt und
handwerksmäßig, selbst die Religion, die Alten und die Poesie, die auf ihrer Drechselbank nichts edler ist als
Flachshecheln.
394
There are law-abiding and agreeable people who think and talk about humanity and life as if they were
discussing the best way of breeding sheep, or buying and selling land. These are the economists of morality,
and really all morality without philosophy, no matter how sophisticated and sublimely poetical, always
retains a certain intolerant and economical hue. Some economists are fond of building, others prefer to patch
things up, or always have to be getting something, or drift as the stream carries them, or make a try at
everything and hold on wherever they can, or put things in order and divide things up neatly, or watch how
it’s done and imitate it. All imitators in poetry and philosophy are actually economists manqués. Every
human being has his economic instinct that needs to be trained quite as much as orthography and metrics
deserve to be learned. But there are economic zealots and pantheists who heed nothing but pressing needs
and are happy about nothing but their usefulness. Wherever they appear, everything becomes dull and
craftsmanlike, and even religion, the ancients, and poetry on their lathe turn into nothing more noble than
flax comb.
Da die Natur und die Menschheit sich so oft und so schneidend widersprechen, darf die Philosophie es
vielleicht nicht vermeiden, dasselbe zu tun.
Since nature and man contradict each other so often and so sharply, philosophy perhaps can’t avoid doing the
same.
Respekt vor der Mathematik, und Appellieren an den gesunden Menschenverstand sind die diagnostischen
Zeichen des halben unechten Skeptizismus.
A respect for mathematics and a falling back to common sense are the diagnostic symptoms of quasi-genuine
skepticism.
To devote oneself exclusively to developing some original instinct is as good and wise as the best and
noblest task a man can choose to make the business of his life.
Giebts so viele Götter als Ideale. Auch ist des Verhältnis des wahren Künstlers und des wahren Menschen zu
seinen Idealen durchaus Religion. Wem dieser innre Gottesdienst Ziel und Geschäft des ganzen Lebens ist,
der ist Priester, und so kann und soll es jeder werden.
There are as many gods as there are ideals. And further, the relation of the true artist and the true human
being to his ideals is absolutely religious. The man for whom this inner divine service is the end and
occupation of all his life is a priest, and this is how everyone can and should become a priest.
Alltäglichkeit, Ökonomie ist das notwendige Supplement aller nicht schlechthin universellen Naturen. Oft
verliert sich das Talent und die Bildung ganz in diesem umgebenden Element.
Triviality—economy—is the necessary supplement of all people who aren’t absolutely universal. Often
talent and education are lost entirely in this surrounding element.
395
Menschen, die so ekzentrisch sind, im vollen Ernst tugendhaft zu sein und zu werden, verstehn sich überall,
finden sich leicht, und bilden eine stille Opposition gegen die herrschende Unsittlichkeit, die eben für
Sittlichkeit gilt.
People who are eccentric enough to be quite seriously virtuous understand each other everywhere,
discover each other easily, and form a silent opposition to the ruling immorality that happens to pass for
morality.
The first impulse of morality is to oppose positive legality and conventional justice.
There are people with whom everything they consider a means turns mysteriously into an end.
Es giebt unvermeidliche Lagen und Verhältnisse, die man nur dadurch liberal behandeln kann, dass man sie
durch einen kühnen Akt der Willkühr verwandelt und durchaus als Poesie betrachtet. Also sollen alle
gebildete Menschen im Nothfalle Poeten seyn können, und daraus lässt sich eben so gut folgern, dass der
Mensch von Natur ein Poet sey, dass es eine Naturpoesie gebe, als umgekehrt.
There are unavoidable situations and relationships that one can tolerate only by transforming them by some
courageous act of the will and seeing them as pure poetry. It follows that all cultivated people should be
capable of being poets if they have to be; and from this we can deduce equally well that man is by nature a
poet.
Der Autor, der die Philosophie und das gesellschaftliche Leben en rapport setzen will, lernen muss, wie man
das Dekorum der Konvenzion zum Anstand der Natur adelt.
A writer ... should learn from society how to raise the decorum of convention to the level of natural
propriety.
Friedrich Schlegel, Philosophical Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), modified, “Athenaeum Fragments,” § 436
Ideas (1799-1800)
Der Sinn versteht etwas nur dadurch, daß er es als Keim in sich aufnimmt, es nährt und wachsen lässt bis zur
Blüthe und Frucht. Also heiligen Samen streuet in den Boden des Geistes, ohne Künsteley und müssige
Ausfüllungen.
Friedrich Schlegel, „Ideen”, Prosaischen Jugendschriften (1882), Bd. 2, S. 289, § 5
The mind understands something only insofar as it absorbs it like a seed into itself, nurtures it, and lets it
grow into blossom and fruit. Therefore scatter holy seeds into the soil of the spirit, without any affectation of
added superfluities.
Friedrich Schlegel, “Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 5
Nur derjenige kann ein Künstler seyn, welcher eine eigne Religion, eine originelle Ansicht des Unendlichen
hat.
Only he who possesses a personal religion, an original view of infinity, can be an artist.
Friedrich Schlegel, “Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania
University Press:1968) #13
396
Künstler ist ein jeder, dem es Ziel und Mitte des Daseyns ist, seinen Sinn zu bilden
An artist is he for whom the goal and center of life is to form his mind.
University Press:1968) # 20
Es ist der Menschheit eigen, dass sie sich über die Menschheit erheben muss.
The need to raise itself above humanity is humanity’s prime characteristic.
Friedrich Schlegel, “Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) § 21
Tugend ist zur Energie gewordne Vernunft.

Virtue is reason which has become energy.
Die wahre Tugend ist Genialität.

Friedrich Schlegel, „Ideen”, Prosaischen Jugendschriften (1882), Bd. 2, § 36
True virtue is genius.
Die Pflicht der Kantianer verhält sich zu dem Gebot der Ehre, der Stimme des Berufs und der Gottheit in uns,
wie die getrocknete Pflanze zur frischen Blume am lebenden Stamme.
The Kantians’ conception of duty relates to the commandment of honor, the voice of God and one’s calling
in us, as the dried plant to the fresh flower on the living stem.
Was die Menschen unter den andern Bildungen der Erde, das sind die Künstler unter den Menschen
What men are among the other formations of the earth, artists are among men.
Ein Mittler ist derjenige, der Göttliches in sich wahrnimmt, und sich selbst vernichtend Preis giebt, um dieses
Göttliche zu verkündigen, mitzutheilen, und darzustellen allen Menschen in Sitten und Thaten, in Worten
und Werken.
A mediator is one who perceives the divinity within himself and who self-destructively sacrifices himself in
order to reveal, communicate, and represent to all mankind this divinity in his conduct and actions, in his
words and works.
Ein Künstler ist, wer sein Centrum in sich selbst hat. Wem es da fehlt, der muss einen bestimmten Führer
und Mittler ausser sich wählen.
An artist is someone who carries his center within himself. Whoever lacks such a center has to choose some
particular leader and mediator outside of himself.
Dem Bunde der Künstler einen bestimmten Zweck geben, das heisst ein dürftiges Institut an die Stelle des
ewigen Vereins setzen; das heisst die Gemeinde der Heiligen zum Staat erniedrigen.
To give the community of artists a particular purpose would mean ... debasing the community of saints
into a state.
397
Der Künstler darf eben so wenig herrschen als dienen wollen. 15 Er kann nur bilden, nichts als bilden, für
den Staat also nur das thun, dass er Herrscher und Diener bilde, dass er Politiker und Oekonomen zu
Künstlern erhebe.
The artist should have as little desire to rule as to serve. He can only create, do nothing but create, and
so help the state only by ... exalting politicians and economists into artists.
Grade die Individualität ist das Ursprüngliche und Ewige im Menschen; an der Personalität ist so viel nicht
gelegen. Die Bildung und Entwicklung dieser Individualität als höchsten Beruf zu treiben, wäre ein göttlicher
Egoismus.
It is individuality which is the original and eternal within man; personality doesn’t matter so much. To
pursue the education and development of this individuality as one’s highest vocation would be a divine
egoism.
Man hat nur so viel Moral, als man Philosophie und Poesie hat.
One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.
Durch die Künstler wird die Menschheit ein Individuum, indem sie Vorwelt und Nachwelt in der Gegenwart
verknüpfen. Sie sind das höhere Seelenorgan, wo die Lebensgeister der ganzen äussern Menschheit
zusammentreffen und in welchem die innere zunächst wirkt.
Through artists mankind becomes an individual, in that they unite the past and the future in the present. They
are the higher organ of the soul, where the life spirits of entire external mankind meet and in which inner
mankind first acts.
University Press:1968) #64 [cf. Heidegger]
Nur durch die Bildung wird der Mensch, der es ganz ist überall menschlich und von Menschheit
durchdrungen.
Only by being cultivated does a human being ... become altogether human and permeated by humanity.
Moralität ohne Sinn für Paradoxie ist gemein.

Morality without sense for paradox is vulgar.
Man lebt nur insofern man nach seinen eignen Ideen lebt. Die Grundsätze sind nur Mittel, der Beruf ist
Zweck an sich.
You live only insofar as you live according to your own ideas.
Du wolltest die Philosophie zerstören, und die Poesie, um Raum zu gewinnen für die Religion und Moral, die
du verkanntest: aber du hast nichts zerstören können als dich selber.
You wanted to destroy philosophy and poetry in order to make room for religion and morality
Friedrich Schlegel, “Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (1968) #90
398
Auf eine ähnliche Weise sollen in der vollkommnen Litteratur alle Bücher nur Ein Buch seyn, und in einem
solchen ewig werdenden Buche wird das Evangelium der Menschheit und der Bildung offenbart werden.
In a perfect literature all books should be only a single book, and in such an eternally developing book, the
gospel of humanity and culture will be revealed.
Denke dir ein Endliches ins Unendliche gebildet, so denkst du einen Menschen.
Think of something finite molded into the infinite, and you think of man.
Wo Politik ist oder Oekonomie, da ist keine Moral.

Where there is politics or economics, there is no morality.
Nicht in die politische Welt verschleudere du Glauben und Liebe, aber in der göttlichen Welt der
Wissenschaft und der Kunst opfre dein Innerstes in den heiligen Feuerstrom ewiger Bildung.
Do not waste your faith and love on the political world, but, in the divine world of science and art, offer up
your inmost being in a fiery stream of eternal creation.
Was sich thun lässt, so lange Philosophie und Poesie getrennt sind, ist gethan und vollendet. Also ist die Zeit
nun da, beyde zu vereinigen.
Whatever can be done while poetry and philosophy are separated has been done and accomplished. So the
time has come to unite the two.
Deute den lieblichen Schein und mache Ernst aus dem Spiel, so wirst du das Centrum fassen und die verehrte
Kunst in höherm Lichte wieder finden.
Take playfulness seriously. and you will apprehend what is at the center and rediscover you revered art in a
more sublime light.
Wie die Senatoren der Römer sind die wahren Künstler ein Volk von Königen.
Like the Roman senators, true artists are a nation of kings.
Nur wer einig ist mit der Welt kann einig seyn mit sich selbst.
Only a man who is at one with the world can be at one with himself.
Worauf bin ich stolz und darf ich stolz seyn als Künstler? Auf den Entschluss, der mich auf ewig von (29)
allem Gemeinen absonderte und isolirte
What am I proud of, and what can I be proud of as an artist? Of the decision that separated and isolated me
forever from everything ordinary.
399
Es giebt keine Selbstkenntniss als die historische. Niemand weiss was er ist, wer nicht weiss was seine
Genossen sind.
There is no self-knowledge except historical self-knowledge. No one knows what he is if he doesn’t know
what his contemporaries are.
Selbst in den äusserlichen Gebräuchen sollte sich die Lebensart der Künstler von der Lebensart der übrigen
Menschen durchaus unterscheiden. Sie sind Braminen, eine höhere Kaste, aber nicht durch Geburt sondern
durch freye Selbsteinweihung geadelt.
The life of the artist should be distinguished from that of all other people, even in external habits. They are
Brahmins, a higher caste, not ennobled by birth, however, but through deliberate self-initiation.
Even in their outward behavior, the lives of artists should differ completely from the lives of other men. They
are Brahmins, a higher caste: ennobled not by birth, but by free self-consecration.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834)

The light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Table Talk, December 18, 1831
A great mind must be androgynous.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Table Talk, September 1, 1832
To sentence a man of true genius, to the drudgery of a school is to put a racehorse on a treadmill.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
I have often been surprised that Mathematics, the quintessence of Truth, should have found admirers so few
and so languid. Frequent consideration and minute scrutiny have at length unravelled the cause: viz. that
though Reason is feasted, Imagination is starved; whilst Reason is luxuriating in its proper Paradise,
Imagination is wearily travelling on a dreary desert.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, letter to his brother (1791)
Great books are not in everybody’s reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them
only here are there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have not the time not means to get more.
He who beings by loving Christianity better than Truth will proceed by loving his own sect or church better
than Christianity, and end by loving himself better than all.
If you would stand well with a great mind, leave him with a favorable impression of yourself; if with a little
mind, leave him with a favorable impression of himself.
I have seen gross intolerance shown in support of tolerance.

Genius cannot be lawless; for it is even that constitutes its genius—the power of acting creatively under laws
of its own origination.
400
Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of
its future conquests.
I am not the creature of nature merely, nor a subject of nature, but I detach myself from her. I oppose myself
as man to nature, and my destination is to conquer and subdue her, to be lord of light and fire and the
elements; and what my mind can comprehend that I will make my eye to see.
Biographia Literaria (1817)

Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (1817), chapter 1
In energetic minds truth soon changes by domestication into power.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (1817), p. 62
Veracity does not consist in saying, but in the intention of communicating, truth; and the philosopher
who cannot utter the whole truth without conveying falsehood, and at the same time, perhaps exciting
the most malignant passions, is constrained to express himself either mythically or equivocally.
Where the spirit of a man is not filled with the consciousness of freedom (were it only from its restlessness,
as of one still struggling in bondage) all spiritual intercourse is interrupted, not only with others, but even
with himself.
No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.
The best part of human language, properly so called, is derived from reflection on the acts of the mind itself.
Aids to Reflection: In The Formation of a Manly Character on the Several

Grounds of Prudence Morality and Religion
1829 Edition: http://books.google.com/books?id=VTdD-TfByTwC
1873 Edition: http://books.google.com/books?id=-DMCAAAAQAAJ
Seldom can philosophic genius be more usefully employed than in thus rescuing admitted truths from the
neglect caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection (1829), Aphorism 1
In philosophy equally as in poetry it is the highest and most useful prerogative of genius to produce the
strongest impressions of novelty, while it rescues admitted truths from the neglect caused by the very
circumstance of their universal admission.
Truths … are too often considered as so true, that they lose all the power of truth, and lie bed-ridden in the
dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors.
As a fruit-tree is more valuable than any one of its fruits singly, or even than all its fruits of a single season,
so the noblest object of reflection is the mind itself.
401
He who teaches men the principles and precepts of spiritual wisdom, before their minds are called off from
foreign objects, and turned inward upon themselves, might as well write his instructions, as the Sybil wrote
her prophecies, on the loose leaves of trees, and commit them to the mercy of the inconstant winds.
Manly energy ... is the proper rendering [for αρετην], and not virtue, at least in the present and
ordinary acceptation of the word.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection (1829), comment to Aphorism 7
“They did not like to retain God in their knowledge” (Rom. 1. 28), and though they could not extinguish “the
Light that lighteth every man,” and which “shone in the darkness;” yet because the darkness could not
comprehend the Light, they refused to bear witness of it, and worshipped, instead, the shaping mist,
which the Light had drawn upward from the ground (i.e., from the mere animal nature and instinct),
and which that Light alone had made visible (i.e., by super-inducing on the animal instinct the
principle of self-consciousness).
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection (1829), footnote to Aphorism 106 part 13
In wonder all philosophy began, in wonder it ends. … But the first wonder is the offspring of
ignorance, the last is the parent of adoration.
As in respect of the first wonder we are all on the same level, how comes it that the philosophic mind should,
in all ages, be the privilege of a few? The most obvious reason is this: The wonder takes place before the
period of reflection, and (with the great mass of mankind) long before the individual is capable of directing
his attention freely and consciously to the feeling, or even to its exciting causes. Surprise (the form and dress
which the wonder of ignorance usually puts on) is worn away, if not precluded, by custom and familiarity.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection (1829), Sequelae to Aphorism 107
CHARLES LAMB (1775-1834)

Damn the age; I will write for Antiquity!
Charles Lamb, Letter to Proctor, January 22, 1829
Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door.
Charles Lamb, Valentine’s Day
Riches are chiefly good because they give us time.

Charles Lamb, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 186
“The Londoner” (1802)

http://essays.quotidiana.org/lamb/londoner/
The endless succession of shops where Fancy miscalled Folly is supplied with perpetual gauds and toys,
excite in me no puritanical aversion. I gladly behold every appetite supplied with its proper food.
Charles Lamb, “The Londoner,” Letter to the editor of The Reflector, 1802
An art of extracting morality from the commonest incidents of a town life is attained by the same well-
natured alchemy with which the Foresters of Arden, in a beautiful country, “Found tongues in trees, books in
the running brooks.”
Charles Lamb, “The Londoner,” Letter to the editor of The Reflector, 1802
402
Last Essays of Elia (1828)
http://www.angelfire.com/nv/mf/elia2/index.html
If peradventure, Reader, it has been thy lot to waste the golden years of thy life—thy shining youth—in the
irksome confinement of an office; to have thy prison days prolonged through middle age down to
decrepitude and silver hairs, without hope of release or respite; to have lived to forget that there are such
things as holidays, or to remember them but as the prerogatives of childhood; then, and then only, will you
be able to appreciate my deliverance.
Charles Lamb, “The superannuated man,” Last Essays of Elia
From a poor man, poor in Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue; I could see no end of my
possessions; I wanted some steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in Time for me.
I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct out of them the hours which I have lived to other
people, and not to myself, and you will find me still a young fellow. For that is the only true time,
which a man can properly call his own, that which he has all to himself; the rest, though in some sense
he may be said to live it, is other people’s time, not his. The remnant of my poor days, long or short, is
at least multiplied for me three-fold. My ten next years, if I stretch so far, will be as long as any
preceding thirty.
Each day used to be individually felt by me in its reference to the foreign post days; in its distance from, or
propinquity to, the next Sunday. I had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday nights’ sensations.
Sunday itself—that unfortunate failure of a holyday as it too often proved, what with my sense of its
fugitiveness, and over-care to get the greatest quantity of pleasure out of it …
A man can never have too much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little son, I would
christen him Nothing-To-Do; he should do nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of his element as long
as he is operative. I am altogether for the life contemplative.
I have done all that I came into this world to do. I have worked task work, and have the rest of the day to
myself.
WALTER S. LANDOR (1775-1864)

Ambition is but avarice on stilts.
Walter S. Landor
If every man’s internal care

Were written on his brow
How many would our pity share
Who raise our envy now?
Walter S. Landor, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 103
403
“Diogenes and Plato”
Imaginary Conversations of Greeks and Romans, vol. 4 (1829)
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Imaginary_Conversations_of_Greeks_and_Romans/Diogenes_and_Plato
Diogenes. Stop! stop! come hither! Why lookest thou so scornfully and askance upon me?
Plato. Let me go! loose me! I am resolved to pass.
Diogenes. Nay, then, by Jupiter and this tub! thou leavest three good ells of Milesian cloth behind thee.
Whither wouldst thou amble?
Plato. I am not obliged in courtesy to tell you.
Diogenes. Upon whose errand? Answer me directly.
Plato. Upon my own.
Diogenes. Oh, then, I will hold thee yet awhile. If it were upon another’s, it might be a hardship to a good
citizen, though not to a good philosopher.
Plato. That can be no impediment to my release: you do not think me one.
Walter S. Landor, “Diogenes and Plato,” Imaginary Conversations of Greeks and Romans, vol. 4 (1829)
Those who speak against the great do not usually speak from morality, but from envy.
Walter S. Landor, “Diogenes and Plato,” (Plato) Imaginary Conversations of Greeks and Romans, vol. 4 (1829)
The bird of wisdom flies low.

Walter S. Landor, “Diogenes and Plato,” (Diogenes) Imaginary Conversations of Greeks and Romans, vol. 4 (1829)
Truth is a point; the subtilest and finest; harder than adamant; never to be broken, worn away, or blunted. Its
only bad quality is, that it is sure to hurt those who touch it; and likely to draw blood, perhaps the life-blood,
of those who press earnestly upon it.
Him I would call the powerful one who controls the storms of his mind.
I will endure your asperity for the sake of your acuteness.

Walter S. Landor, “Diogenes and Plato,” (Plato) Imaginary Conversations of Greeks and Romans, vol. 4 (1829)
Plato. Now, must I speak sincerely?

Diogenes. Dost thou, a philosopher, ask such a question of me, a philosopher? Ay, sincerely or not at all.
Walter S. Landor, “Diogenes and Plato,” Imaginary Conversations of Greeks and Romans, vol. 4 (1829)
The moderate are not usually the most sincere, for the same circumspection which makes them moderate
makes them likewise retentive of what could give offence.
Many laws as certainly make men bad, as bad men make many laws.
404
E. T. A. HOFFMANN (1776-1822)
Der Goldne Topf [The Golden Pot] (1819)
Der Holunderbusch rührte sich und sprach: »Du lagst in meinem Schatten, mein Duft umfloß dich, aber du
verstandest mich nicht. Der Duft ist meine Sprache, wenn ihn die Liebe entzündet.« Der Abendwind strich
vorüber und sprach: »Ich umspielte deine Schläfe, aber du verstandest mich nicht, der Hauch ist meine
Sprache, wenn ihn die Liebe entzündet.« Die Sonnenstrahlen brachen durch das Gewölk, und der Schein
brannte wie in Worten: »Ich umgoß dich mit glühendem Gold, aber du verstandest mich nicht; Glut ist meine
Sprache, wenn sie die Liebe entzündet.«
E. T. A. Hoffmann, Der Goldne Topf (1819), 1. Vigilie
Ein nie gekanntes Gefühl, er wußte selbst nicht, ob Wonne, ob Schmerz, zog krampfhaft seine Brust
zusammen.
Wohl darf ich geradezu dich selbst, günstiger Leser, fragen, ob du in deinem Leben nicht Stunden, ja Tage
und Wochen hattest, in denen dir all dein gewöhnliches Tun und Treiben ein recht quälendes Missbehagen
erregte und in denen dir alles, was dir sonst recht wichtig und wert in Sinn und Gedanken zu tragen vorkam,
nun läppisch und nichtswürdig erschien? Du wusstest dann selbst nicht, was du tun und wohin du dich
wenden solltest; ein dunkles Gefühl, es müsse irgendwo und zu irgendeiner Zeit ein hoher, den Kreis alles
irdischen Genusses überschreitender Wunsch erfüllt werden, den der Geist, wie ein strenggehaltenes
furchtsames Kind, gar nicht auszusprechen wage, erhob deine Brust, und in dieser Sehnsucht nach dem
unbekannten Etwas, das dich überall, wo du gingst und standest, wie ein duftiger Traum mit durchsichtigen,
vor dem schärferen Blick zerfließenden Gestalten umschwebte, verstummtest du für alles, was dich hier
umgab. Du schlichst mit trübem Blick umher wie ein hoffnungslos Liebender, und alles, was du die
Menschen auf allerlei Weise im bunten Gewühl durcheinander treiben sahst, erregte dir keinen Schmerz und
keine Freude, als gehörtest du nicht mehr dieser Welt an. Ist dir, günstiger Leser, jemals so zu Mute gewesen,
so kennst du selbst aus eigner Erfahrung den Zustand, in dem sich der Student Anselmus befand.
HEINRICH VON KLEIST (1777-1811)

Man habe dir in früheren Jahre den Rat gegeben, von nichts zu sprechen, als nur von Dingen, die du bereits
verstehst. Damals aber sprachst du wahrscheinlich mit dem Vorwitz, andere, ich will, dass du aus der
verständigen Absicht sprechest, dich zu belehren, und so könnten, für verschiedene Fälle verschieden, beide
Klugheitsregeln vielleicht gut neben einander bestehen. Der Franzose sagt, l’appétit vient en mangeant, und
dieser Erfahrungssatz bleibt wahr, wenn man ihr parodiert, und sagt, l’idée vient en parlant.
Heinrich von Kleist, “Über die allmähliche Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Reden”
When you were young you were advised only to speak of things you already understood. But in those days,
doubtless, you spoke in the presumption of instructing others. My wish is that you speak in the sensible
intention of instructing yourself. ... The French say, “L’appétit vient en mangeant,” and this maxim is just as
true if we parody it and say, “L’idée vient en parlant.”
Heinrich von Kleist, “On the Gradual Production of Thoughts While Speaking”
WILLIAM HAZLITT (1778-1830)

Political truth is libel; religious truth, blasphemy.
William Hazlitt
405
Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it, but they labor in it because they excel.
William Hazlitt, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 58
The Spirit of the Age

Lord Byron ... is, in a striking degree, the creature of his own will. He holds no communion with his kind,
but stands alone, without mate or fellow—
“As if a man were author of himself,
And owned no other kin.”
He is like a solitary peak, all access to which is cut off not more by elevation than distance.
William Hazlitt, The Spirit of The Age, quote is from Coriolanus, Act V, Scene 3
CHARLES CALEB COLTON (1780-1832)

To cure us of our immoderate love of gain, we should seriously consider how many goods there are that
money will not purchase, and these the best; and how many evils there are that money will not remedy, and
these the worst.
Charles Caleb Colton
Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such
demand upon those who wrote them.
Many speak the truth when they say that they despise riches, but they mean the riches possessed by other
men.
If a cause be good, the most violent attack of its enemies will not injure it so much as an injudicious defense
of it by its friends.
No roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have
just turned saints.
Pedantry crams our heads with learned lumber, and takes out our brains to make room for it.
Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads.
That writer does the most, who gives his reader the most knowledge, and takes from him the least
time.
No company is far preferable to bad, because we are more apt to catch the vices of others rather than
their virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.
Lacon (1851)
http://books.google.com/books?id=4ZyUtKc4OmcC
Discretion has been termed the better part of valour, and it is more certain, that diffidence is the better part of
knowledge.
Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, Preface, p. iv
406
If we can advance any propositions that are both true and new, these are indisputably our own, by
right of discovery; and if we can repeat what is old more briefly and brightly than others, this also
becomes our own, by right of conquest.
Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, Preface, p. vii
We should have a glorious conflagration, if all who cannot put fire into their works would only consent to
put their works into the fire.
Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, Preface, pp. vii-viii
… put on the livery of the best master only to serve the worst.
Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, Preface, p. ix
With books, as with companions, it is of more consequence to know which to avoid, than which to choose;
for good books are as scarce as good companions.
Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, Preface, p. x
His ears, indeed, have had a very easy time of it, but their inactivity has been dearly purchased at the
expense of his tongue.
Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, Preface, p. xii
Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, from which we must first
erase. Ignorance is content to stand still with her back to the truth, but error is more presumptuous, and
proceeds in the same direction.
Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, vol. 1, #1
To cite the examples of history, in order to animate us to virtue, or to arm us with fortitude, is to call up the
illustrious dead, to inspire and to improve the living. But the usage of those civilians, who cite vicious
authorities, for worse purposes, and enforce the most absurd practice, by the oldest precedent, is to bequeath
to us as an heirloom, the errors of our forefathers; to confer a kind of immortality on folly, making the dead
more powerful than time, and more sagacious than experience, by subjecting those that are upon the earth, to
the perpetual mal-government of those that are beneath it.
Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, vol. 1 (1820), #3
… all the sensuality of libertines, without their refinement.

Gibbon, cited in Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, vol. 1 (1820), #4
From the preponderance of talent, we may always infer the soundness and vigour of the commonwealth; but
from the preponderance of riches, its dotage and degeneration.
Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, vol. 1 (1820), # 8
Many a man may thank his talent for his rank, but no man has ever been able to return the compliment by
thanking his rank for his talent.
Instead of exhibiting talent in the hope that the world would forgive their eccentricities, they have exhibited
only their eccentricities, in the hope that the world would give them credit for talent.
Many … begin to make converts from motives of charity, but continue to do so from motives of pride. …
Charity is contented with exhortation and example, but pride is not to be so easily satisfied. … Whenever we
find ourselves more inclined to persecute than persuade, we may then be certain that our zeal has more of
pride in it than of charity.
407
Honour is unstable … She builds a lofty structure on the sandy foundation of the esteem of those, who are of
all beings the most subject to change.
No man can purchase his virtue too dear, for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with
the price it has cost us.
He that sympathizes in all the happiness of others, perhaps himself enjoys the safest happiness.
Pedantry prides herself on being wrong by rules; while common sense is contented to be right, without
them.
Wit may do very well for a mistress, but [I] should prefer reason for a wife.
When you have nothing to say, say nothing; a weak defense strengthens your opponent, and silence is less
injurious than a bad reply.
Imitation is the sincerest from of flattery.

Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.
Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon (1820), vol. 1, # 324
If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; If you would know, and not be known, live
in a city.
Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, vol. I (1820), # 334
We are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and
pomposity for erudition.
Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon (1821), p. 109
WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING (1780-1842)

I call that mind free which protects itself against the usurpations of society, which does not cower to human
opinion, which feels itself accountable to a higher tribunal than man's, which respects itself too much to be
the slave of the many or the few.
William Ellery Channing
The major obligation of parents and educators is to give children an understanding of the divine beginning
that exists within them.
William Ellery Channing, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, January 10
True religion consists in proposing, as our great end, a growing likeness to the Supreme Being. Its noblest
influence consists in making us more and more partakers of the Divinity.
William Ellery Channing, “Likeness to God” (1828)
Religious instruction should aim chiefly to turn men’s aspirations and efforts to that perfection of the soul,
which constitutes it a bright image of God.
William Ellery Channing, “Likeness to God” (1828)
408
I call that mind free, which masters the senses, which protects itself against animal appetites, which
contemns pleasure and pain in comparison to its own energy, which penetrates beneath the body and
recognises its own reality and greatness, which passes life, not in asking what it shall eat or drink, but in
hungering, thirsting, and seeking after righteousness.
I call that mind free, which escapes the bondage of matter, which, instead of stopping at the material
universe and making it a prison wall, passes beyond it to its Author, and finds in the radiant signatures which
everywhere bears of the Infinite Spirit, helps to its own spiritual enlightenment.
I call that mind free, which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master,
which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whencesoever it
may come, which receives new truth as an angel from heaven.
I call that mind free, which sets no bounds to its love, which is not imprisoned in itself or in a sect, which
recognises in all human beings the image of God and the rights of his children, which delights in virtue and
sympathizes with suffering wherever they are seen, which conquers pride, anger, and sloth, and offers itself
up a willing victim to the cause of mankind.
William Ellery Channing, Spiritual Freedom (1830)
All noble enthusiasms pass through a feverish stage, and grow wiser and more serene.
William Ellery Channing, Emancipation (1840)
Undoubtedly some men are more gifted than others, and are marked out for more studious lives. But
the work of such men is not to do others’ thinking for them, but to help them to think more vigorously
and effectually. Great minds are to make others great. Their superiority is to be used not to break the
multitude to intellectual vassalage, not to establish over them a spiritual tyranny, but to rouse them
from lethargy, and to aid them to judge for themselves.
William Ellery Channing, “Lectures On The Elevation Of The Labouring Portion Of The Community”
Of all treasons against humanity, there is no one worse than his, who employs great intellectual force to keep
down the intellect of his less-favoured brother.
William Ellery Channing, “Lectures On The Elevation Of The Labouring Portion Of The Community”
There are times when the assertion of great principles is the best service a man can render society.
William Ellery Channing, Slavery (1835)
“Self-Culture” (1838)
http://www.americanunitarian.org/selfculture.htm
Science and art may invent splendid modes of illuminating the apartments of the opulent; but these are all
poor and worthless compared with the common light which the sun sends into all our windows, which he
pours freely, impartially over hill and valley, which kindles daily the eastern and western sky; and so the
common lights of reason, and conscience, and love, are of more worth and dignity than the rare endowments
which give celebrity to a few.
William Ellery Channing, “Self-Culture” (1838)
He who possesses the divine powers of the soul is a great being, be his place what it may. You may clothe
him with rags, may immure him in a dungeon, may chain him to slavish tasks. But he is still great.
A clear thought, a pure affection, a resolute act of a virtuous will, have a dignity of quite another kind,
and far higher than accumulations of brick and granite and plaster and stucco, however cunningly put
together.
Real greatness has nothing to do with a man’s sphere. It does not lie in the magnitude of his outward agency,
in the extent of the effects which he produces. The greatest men may do comparatively little.
409
Grandeur of character lies wholly in force of soul, that is, in the force of thought, moral principle, and love,
and this may be found in the humblest condition of life.
Many a man, who has gone but a few miles from home, understands human nature better, detects motives
and weighs character more sagaciously, than another who has travelled over the known world, and made a
name by his reports of different countries. It is force of thought which measures intellectual, and so it is
force of principle which measures moral greatness.
The greatest man is he who chooses the right with invincible resolution, who resists the sorest temptations
from within and without, who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully, who is calmest in storms, and most
fearless under menace and frowns, whose reliance on truth, on virtue, on God, is most unfaltering; and is this
a greatness which is apt to make a show, or which is most likely to abound in conspicuous station?
William Ellery Channing, “Self-Culture”
I have chosen for the subject of this lecture Self-culture, or the care which every man owes to himself, to
the unfolding and perfecting of his nature.
We are able to discern not only what we already are, but what we may become, to see in ourselves germs and
promises of a growth to which no bounds can be set, to dart beyond what we have actually gained to the idea
of perfection as the end of our being. It is by this self-comprehending power that we are distinguished from
the brutes, which give no signs of looking into themselves. Without this there would be no self-culture, for
we should not know the work to be done; and one reason why self-culture is so little proposed is, that so
few penetrate into their own nature. To most men, their own spirits are shadowy, unreal, compared
with what is outward. When they happen to cast a glance inward, they see there only a dark, vague chaos.
They distinguish, perhaps, some violent passion, which has driven them to injurious excess; but their highest
powers hardly attract a thought; and thus multitudes live and die as truly strangers to themselves as to
countries of which they have heard the name, but which human foot has never trodden.
Of all the discoveries which men need to make, the most important, at the present moment, is that of the self-
forming power treasured up in themselves. They little suspect its extent, as little as the savage apprehends the
energy which the mind is created to exert on the material world.
Whoever desires that his intellect may grow up to soundness, to healthy vigor, must begin with moral
discipline. Reading and study are not enough to perfect the power of thought. One thing above all is needful,
and that is, the disinterestedness which is the very soul of virtue. To gain truth, which is the great object of
the understanding, I must seek it disinterestedly. Here is the first and grand condition of intellectual progress.
I must choose to receive the truth, no matter how it bears on myself. I must follow it, no matter where it
leads, what interests it opposes, to what persecution or loss it lays me open, from what party it severs me, or
to what party it allies. Without this fairness of mind, which is only another phrase for disinterested love of
truth, great native powers of understanding are perverted and led astray.
Intellectual culture consists, not chiefly, as many are apt to think, in accumulating information, though
this is important, but in building up a force of thought which may be turned at will on any subjects on
which we are called to pass judgment. This force is manifested in the concentration of the attention, in
accurate, penetrating observation, in reducing complex subjects to their elements, in diving beneath
the effect to the cause, in detecting the more subtle differences and resemblances of things, in reading
the future in the present, and especially in rising from particular facts to general laws or universal
truths. This last exertion of the intellect, its rising to broad views and great principles, constitutes what is
410
called the philosophical mind, and is especially worthy of culture. What it means, your own observation must
have taught you. You must have taken note of two classes of men, the one always employed on details, on
particular facts, and the other using these facts as foundations of higher, wider truths. The latter are
philosophers. For example, men had for ages seen pieces of wood, stones, metals falling to the ground.
Newton seized on these particular facts, and rose to the idea that all matter tends, or is attracted, towards all
matter, and then defined the law according to which this attraction or force acts at different distances, thus
giving us a grand principle, which, we have reason to think, extends to and controls the whole outward
creation. One man reads a history, and can tell you all its events, and there stops. Another combines these
events, brings them under one view, and learns the great causes which are at work on this or another nation,
and what are its great tendencies, whether to freedom or despotism, to one or another form of civilization.
So, one man talks continually about the particular actions of this or another neighbor; whilst another
looks beyond the acts to the inward principle from which they spring, and gathers from them larger
views of human nature. In a word, one man sees all things apart and in fragments, whilst another strives to
discover the harmony, connection, unity of all. One of the great evils of society is, that men, occupied
perpetually with petty details, want general truths, want broad and fixed principles. Hence many, not wicked,
are unstable, habitually inconsistent, as if they were overgrown children rather than men. To build up that
strength of mind which apprehends and cleaves to great universal truths, is the highest intellectual self-
culture; and here I wish you to observe how entirely this culture agrees with that of the moral and the
religious principles of our nature, of which I have previously spoken. In each of these, the improvement of
the soul consists in raising it above what is narrow, particular, individual, selfish, to the universal and
unconfined. To improve a man is to liberalize, enlarge him in thought, feeling, and purpose. Narrowness of
intellect and heart, this is the degradation from which all culture aims to rescue the human being.
Self-culture is social, or one of its great offices is to unfold and purify the affections which spring up
instinctively in the human breast, which bind together husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister;
which bind a man to friends and neighbors, to his country, and to the suffering who fall under his eye,
wherever they belong. The culture of these is an important part of our work, and it consists in converting
them from instincts into principles, from natural into spiritual attachments, in giving them a rational, moral,
and holy character. For example, our affection for our children is at first instinctive; and if it continue such, it
rises little above the brute’s attachment to its young. But when a parent infuses into his natural love for his
offspring moral and religious principle; when he comes to regard his child as an intelligent, spiritual,
immortal being, and honors him as such, and desires first of all to make him disinterested, noble, a worthy
child of God and the friend of his race, then the instinct rises into a generous and holy sentiment. It resembles
God’s paternal love for his spiritual family. A like purity and dignity we must aim to give to all our
affections.
There is but a very minute portion of the creation which we can turn into food and clothes, or gratification for
the body; but the whole creation may be used to minister to the sense of beauty.
411
Beauty is an all-pervading presence. It unfolds in the numberless flowers of the spring. It waves in the
branches of the trees and the green blades of grass. It haunts the depths of the earth and sea, and gleams out
in the hues of the shell and the precious stone. And not only these minute objects, but the ocean, the
mountains, the clouds, the heavens, the stars, the rising and setting sun, all overflow with beauty. The
universe is its temple; and those men who are alive to it cannot lift their eyes without feeling themselves
encompassed with it on every side. Now this beauty is so precious, the enjoyments it gives are so refined and
pure, so congenial with our tenderest and noble feelings, and so akin to worship, that it is painful to think of
the multitude of men as living in the midst of it, and living almost as blind to it as if, instead of this fair earth
and glorious sky, they were tenants of a dungeon. An infinite joy is lost to the world by the want of culture of
this spiritual endowment. Suppose that I were to visit a cottage, and to see its walls lined with the choicest
pictures of Raphael, and every spare nook filled with statues of the most exquisite workmanship, and that I
were to learn that neither man, woman, nor child ever cast an eye at these miracles of art, how should I feel
their privation! - how should I want to open their eyes, and to help them to comprehend and feel the
loveliness and grandeur which in vain courted their notice! But every husbandman is living in sight of the
works of a diviner Artist; and how much would his existence be elevated could he see the glory which shines
forth in their forms, hues, proportions, and moral expression!
The greatest truths are wronged if not linked with beauty, and they win their way most surely and deeply into
the soul when arrayed in this their natural and fit attire.
A man has within him capacities of growth which deserve and will reward intense, unrelaxing toil. I do
not look on a human being as a machine, made to be kept in action by a foreign force, to accomplish an
unvarying succession of motions, to do a fixed amount of work, and then to fall to pieces at death, but
as a being of free spiritual powers; and I place little value on any culture but that which aims to bring
out these, and to give them perpetual impulse and expansion. I am aware that this view is far from being
universal. The common notion has been, that the mass of the people need no other culture than is
necessary to fit them for their various trades; and, though this error is passing away, it is far from being
exploded. But the ground of a man’s culture lies in his nature, not in his calling. His powers are to be
unfolded on account of their inherent dignity, not their outward direction. He is to be educated, because
he is a man, not because he is to make shoes, nails, or pins. A trade is plainly not the great end of his being,
for his mind cannot be shut up in it; his force of thought cannot be exhausted on it. He has faculties to which
it gives no action, and deep wants it cannot answer. Poems, and systems of theology and philosophy, which
have made some noise in the world, have been wrought at the work-bench and amidst the toils of the field.
How often, when the arms are mechanically plying a trade, does the mind, lost in reverie or day-dreams,
escape to the ends of the earth! How often does the pious heart of woman mingle the greatest of all thoughts,
that of God, with household drudgery! Undoubtedly a man is to perfect himself in his trade, for by it he is to
earn his bread and to serve the community. But bread or subsistence is not his highest good; for, if it were,
his lot would be harder than that of the inferior animals, for whom nature spreads a table and weaves a
wardrobe, without a care of their own. Nor was he made chiefly to minister to the wants of the community. A
rational, moral being cannot, without infinite wrong, be converted into a mere instrument of others’
gratification. He is necessarily an end, not a means. A mind, in which are sown the seeds of wisdom,
disinterestedness, firmness of purpose, and piety, is worth more than all the outward material interests
of a world. It exists for itself, for its own perfection, and must not be enslaved to its own or others’
animal wants.
412
When I speak of the purpose of self-culture, I mean that it should be sincere. In other words, we must make
self-culture really and truly our end, or choose it for its own sake, and not merely as a means or
instrument of something else. And here I touch a common and very pernicious error. Not a few
persons desire to improve themselves only to get property and to rise in the world; but such do not
properly choose improvement, but something outward and foreign to themselves; and so low an impulse
can produce only a stinted, partial, uncertain growth. A man, as I have said, is to cultivate himself because
he is a man. He is to start with the conviction that there is something greater within him than in the
whole material creation, than in all the worlds which press on the eye and ear; and that inward
improvements have a worth and dignity in themselves quite distinct from the power they give over
outward things. Undoubtedly a man is to labor to better his condition, but first to better himself. If he knows
no higher use of his mind than to invent and drudge for his body, his case is desperate as far as culture is
concerned.
Get wealth if you can by honorable means, and if it do not cost too much. A true cultivation of the mind is
fitted to forward you in your worldly concerns, and you ought to use it for this end. Only, beware lest this
end master you; lest your motives sink as your condition improves; lest you fall victims to the miserable
passion of vying with those around you in show, luxury, and expense. Cherish a true respect for yourselves.
Feel that your nature is worth more than every thing which is foreign to you.
Books are the true levelers. They give to all who will faithfully use them the society, the spiritual presence,
of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am. No matter though the prosperous of my own
time will not enter my obscure dwelling. If the Sacred Writers will enter and take up their abode under my
roof, ... I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man though
excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live.
STENDHAL a. k. a. HENRI MARIE BEYLE (1783-1842)

All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.
Stendhal
In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what
you can hope for in the future.
Stendhal, On Love, ch. 1
The man of genius is he and he alone who finds such joy in his art that he will work at it come hell or high
water.
Stendhal
One can acquire everything in solitude—except character.

Stendhal, Fragments
Prudery is a kind of avarice, the worst of all.

Stendhal, Fragments
In matters of sentiment, the public has very crude ideas; and the most shocking fault of women is that they
make the public the supreme judge of their lives.
Stendhal, Fragments
413
Goethe, or an y other German man of talent, reckons money for what it is worth. If his annual income is less
than six thousand francs he must only think of making his fortune, but once he has made it he must think no
more of it. The foolish man, on his side, does not realize the advantage of feeling and thinking like Goethe;
all his life he only feels through money and thinks of money. It is because they are thus supported from both
sides that the prosaic people of the world seem to get the better of the noble-minded.
Stendhal, On Love, “Miscellaneous Fragments,” #61
The conversation of the true bourgeois about men and life, which is no more than a collection of ugly details,
brings on a profound attack of spleen when I am obliged out of propriety to listen to it for any length of time.
Stendhal, The Life of Henry Brulard, J. Sturrock, trans., p. 223
The Red and the Black

Il n’y a point de droit naturel: ce mot n'est qu’une antique niaiserie... Avant la loi il n’y a de naturel que la
force du lion, ou le besoin de l’être qui a faim, qui a froid, le besoin en un mot.
Stendhal, Le Rouge et le Noir (1830) , Vol. II, ch. XLIV
There is no such thing as “natural law”: this expression is nothing but old nonsense... Prior to laws, what is
natural is only the strength of the lion, or the need of the creature suffering from hunger or cold, in short,
need.
Stendhal, The Red and the Black, Vol. II, ch. XLIV
The Charterhouse of Parma

Les plaisirs et les soins de l'ambition la plus heureuse, même du pouvoir sans bornes, ne sont rien auprès du
bonheur intime que donnent les relations de tendresse et d'amour.
Stendhal, La Chartreuse de Parme (1839), ch. 7
The pleasures and the cares of the luckiest ambition, even of limitless power, are nothing next to the intimate
happiness that tenderness and love give.
Stendhal, The Charterhouse of Parma (1839), ch. 7
Cette religion ôte le courage de penser aux choses inaccoutumées, et défend surtout l'examen personnel,
comme le plus énorme des péchés.
This religion takes away the courage of thinking of unusual things and prohibits self-examination above all
as the most egregious of sins.
Une femme de quarante ans n'est plus quelque chose que pour les hommes qui l'ont aimée dans sa jeunesse!
A forty-year-old woman is only something to men who have loved her in her youth!
Armance
English: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/stendhal/armance/
Ce qui est fort beau est nécessairement toujours vrai.

Stendhal, Armance, ch. 6
I no longer find such pleasure in that preeminently good society, of which I was once so fond. It seems to me
that beneath a cloak of clever talk it proscribes all energy, all originality. If you are not a copy, people accuse
you of being ill-mannered.
414
Good society ... had in the past the privilege of judging what was proper, but now that it supposes itself to be
attacked, it condemns not what is coarse and disagreeable without compensation, but what it thinks harmful
to its interest.
THOMAS DE QUINCEY (1785-1859)

The Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821)
http://books.google.com/books?id=SdVKAAAAMAAJ
I do not readily believe that any man, having once tasted the divine luxuries of opium, will afterwards
descend to the gross and mortal enjoyments of alcohol.
Thomas De Quincey, The Confessions of an English Opium Eater
BYRON (1788-1824)
I want a hero: an uncommon want,
When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
The age discovers he is not the true one.
Byron, Don Juan, Canto I
Virtue will have greater claims

To love, than rank with vice combin'd.
Byron, “To E,” Poetical Works, Volume 1
Not that our heads much eloquence require,

Th' Athenian’s glowing style, or Tully’s fire.
A manner clear or warm is useless, since
We do not try by speaking to convince;
Be other orators of pleasing proud,—
We speak to please ourselves, not move the crowd:
Our gravity prefers the muttering tone,
A proper mixture of the squeak and groan:
No borrow'd grace of action must be seen,
The slightest motion would displease the Dean;
Whilst every staring Graduate would prate,
Against what—he could never imitate.
Byron, “Thoughts suggested by a college examination,” Poetical Works, Volume 1
Dull as the pictures, which adorn their halls,

They think all learning fix'd within their walls.
In manners rude, in foolish forms precise …

Such are the men who learning's treasures guard!

Such is their practice, such is their reward!
This much, at least, we may presume to say—
The reward's scarce equal to the price they pay.
415
What, though we never silence broke, Our eyes a sweeter language spoke; The tongue in flattering
falsehood deals, And tells a tale it never feels: Deceit, the guilty lips impart, And hush the mandates of
the heart; But soul's interpreters, the eyes, Spurn such restraint, and scorn disguise.
Byron, “To a beautiful Quaker,” Poetical Works, Volume 1
When Friendship or Love

Our sympathies move;
When Truth, in a glance, should appear,
The lips may beguile,
With a dimple or smile,
But the test of affection's a Tear.
Too oft is a smile

But the hypocrite's wile,
To mask detestation, or fear;
Give me the soft sigh,
Whilst the soul-telling eye
Is dimm'd, for a time, with a Tear.
Byron, “The Tear” (1806), Poetical Works, Volume 1
Sweet scene of my youth!

Seat of Friendship and Truth,
Where Love chas'd each fast-fleeting year;
Loth to leave thee, I mourn'd,
For a last look I turn'd,
But thy spire was scarce seen through a Tear.
May no marble bestow

The splendour of woe,
Which the children of Vanity rear;
No fiction of fame
Shall blazon my name,
All I ask, all I wish, is a Tear.
There, in apartments small and damp,

The candidate for college prizes,
Sits poring by the midnight lamp;
Goes late to bed, yet early rises.
He surely well deserves to gain them,
With all the honours of his college,
Who, striving hardly to obtain them,
Thus seeks unprofitable knowledge:
Who sacrifices hours of rest,
To scan precisely metres Attic;
Or agitates his anxious breast,
In solving problems mathematic.
Byron, “Granta” (1806), Poetical Works, Volume 1
416
Renouncing every pleasing page,
From authors of historic use;
Preferring to the letter'd sage,
The square of the hypothenuse.
Forgetting that their pride of spirit,

Their exultation in their trial,
Detracts most largely from the merit
Of all their boasted self-denial.
And if I should shun,

Every woman for one,
Whose must fill my whole breast;
Whom I must prefer,
And sigh but for her,
What an insult 'twould be to the rest!
Byron, “To the sighing Strephon,” Poetical Works, Volume 1
Your passion appears most absurd;

Such love as you plead,
Is pure love, indeed,
For it only consists in the word.
Byron, “To the sighing Strephon,” Poetical Works, Volume 1
The great object in life is Sensation—to feel that we exist, even though in pain; it is this "craving void"
which drives us to gaming, to battle, to travel, to intemperate but keenly felt pursuits of every description
whose principal attraction is the agitation inseparable from their accomplishment.
Byron
The thousand paths that slope the way to crime ...

Byron, Lara, Canto 2
That brow in furrow’d lines had fix’d at last

And spake of passions, but of passion past.
I hold virtue, in general, or the virtues severally, to be only in the disposition, each a feeling, not a principle.
Byron, Letter to R. C. Dallas, January 21, 1808
417
There was in him a vital scorn of all:
As if the worst had fallen which could befall,
He stood a stranger in this breathing world,
An erring spirit from another hurl'd;
A thing of dark imaginings, that shaped
By choice the perils he by chance escaped;
But 'scaped in vain, for in their memory yet
His mind would half exult and half regret:
With more capacity for love than earth
Bestows on most of mortal mould and birth,
His early dreams of good outstripp'd the truth,
And troubled manhood follow'd baffled youth;
With thought of years in phantom chase misspent,
And wasted powers for better purpose lent;
And fiery passions that had pour'd their wrath
In hurried desolation o'er his path,
And left the better feelings all at strife
In wild reflection o'er his stormy life;
But haughty still, and loth himself to blame,
He call'd on Nature's self to share the shame,
And charged all faults upon the fleshy form
She gave to clog the soul, and feast the worm;
Till he at last confounded good and ill,
And half mistook for fate the acts of will:
Too high for common selfishness, he could
At times resign his own for others' good,
But not in pity, not because he ought,
But in some strange perversity of thought,
That sway'd him onward with a secret pride
To do what few or none would do beside;
And this same impulse would, in tempting time,
Mislead his spirit equally to crime;
So much he soar'd beyond, or sunk beneath,
The men with whom he felt condemn'd to breathe,
And long'd by good or ill to separate
Himself from all who shared his mortal state;
His mind abhorring this had fix'd her throne
Far from the world, in regions of her own:
Thus coldly passing all that pass'd below,
His blood in temperate seeming now would flow:
Ah! happier if it ne'er with guilt had glow'd,
But ever in that icy smoothness flow'd!
'Tis true, with other men their path he walk'd,
And like the rest in seeming did and talk'd,
Nor outraged Reason's rules by flaw nor start;
His madness was not of the head, but heart,
And rarely wander'd in his speech, or drew
His thoughts so forth as to offend the view.
418
Manfred
http://books.google.com/books?id=BJUVAAAAYAAJ
... From my youth upwards

My Spirit walked not with the souls of men,
Nor looked upon the earth with human eyes;
The thirst of their ambition was not mine,
The aim of their existence was not mine;
My joys—my griefs—my passions—and my powers,
Made me a stranger; though I wore the form,
I had no sympathy with breathing flesh.
Byron, Manfred in Manfred, Act 2, Scene 2, lines 50-58
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER (1788-1860)

Ganz er selbst sein darf jeder nur, solange er allein ist. Wer also nicht die Einsamkeit liebt, der liebt auch
nicht die Freiheit; denn nur wenn man allein ist, ist man frei
Schopenhauer
Genius consists in the working of the free intellect., and as a consequence the productions of genius serve no
useful purpose. The work of genius may be music, philosophy, painting, or poetry; it is nothing for use or
profit. To be useless and unprofitable is one of the characteristics of genius; it is their patent of nobility.
Schopenhauer
Ignorance is degrading only when found in company with riches. The poor man is restrained by poverty and
need: labour occupies his thoughts, and takes the place of knowledge. But rich men who are ignorant live for
their lusts only, and are like the beasts of the field, as may be seen every day; and they can also be
reproached for not having used wealth and leisure for that which gives them their greatest value.
Schopenhauer, “On books and reading,” Religion: a dialogue, and other essays, T.B. Saunders, trans. (1910)
When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. In learning to write the
pupil goes over with his pen what the teacher has outlined in pencil; so in reading, the greater part of the
work of thought is already done for us. This is why it relieves us to take up a book after being occupied with
our own thoughts. And in reading, the mind is, in fact, only the playground of another’s thoughts. So it
comes about that if anyone spends almost the whole day in reading, and by way of relaxation devotes the
intervals to some thoughtless pastime, he gradually loses the capacity for thinking; just as the man who
always rides at last forgets how to walk. This is the case with many learned persons: they have read
themselves stupid. For to occupy every spare moment in reading, and to do nothing but read, is even more
paralysing to the mind than constant manual labour, which at least allows those engaged in it to follow their
own thoughts.
Schopenhauer, “On books and reading,” Religion: a dialogue, and other essays, T.B. Saunders, trans. (1910)
Politeness is a tacit agreement that people’s miserable defects, whether moral or intellectual, shall on either
side be ignored and not be made a subject of reproach.
Schopenhauer, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 153
If one confronts the world as a riddle, viewing it as an enigma, a puzzle to be solved, a mystery to be
uncovered and so forth, then there must be an answer. A question, or riddle, implies an answer. But there is
in fact no logical reason why we should seek to question the world in Schopenhauer’s way. There are many
other attitudes we might adopt: rage, acceptance, despair and so forth. Plato, who was a major influence on
Schopenhauer, famously claimed that ‘Philosophy begins in wonder.’ This wonder is open to two
interpretations: wonder as awe, and wonder as why. Plato seems to have intended the former, but philosophy,
before and since, has emphasized the latter.
Paul Strathern, Schopenhauer in 90 Minutes
419
“The history of philosophy will be concluded.” Philosophers will eventually arrive at the truth, and the riddle
will be solved. Ironically, it was Schopenhauer who was to a considerable extent responsible for the
undermining of this point of view.
In choosing to regard the world as evil rather than good, Schopenhauer had inadvertently undermined the
necessity of his own position. Later philosophers, especially Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, would realize this.
Schopenhauer’s attitude toward the world was contingent, that is, not logically necessary. Philosophy could
adopt any number of attitudes toward the world. Viewing it a riddle was only one of a number of possible
responses, and all were contingent.
All religions promise a reward beyond this life in eternity for excellences of the will or of the heart, but none
for excellences of the head, of the understanding.
Schopenhauer
That one can be serious about philosophy has as a rule not occurred to anyone, least of all to a lecturer on
philosophy, just as no on as a rule believes less in Christianity than does the Pope.
Schopenhauer
It is truly an agony to see a fair and ancient language possessing a classical literature mishandled by
ignoramuses and asses.
Schopenhauer, cited in Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, § 1.11
We should be surprised that a matter that generally plays such an important part in the life of man [love] has
hitherto been almost entirely disregarded by philosophers, and lies before us as raw and untreated material.
Schopenhauer
The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features
are emphasized, is really a tragedy, but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy, for the doing
and worrying, the restless mockeries of the moment, the desires and fears of the week, the mishaps of every
hour are all brought about by chance that is always bent on some mischievous trick. They are nothing but
scenes from a comedy. Thus, as if fate wished to add mockery to the misery of our existence, our life must
contain all the woes of tragedy, and yet we cannot even assert the dignity of tragedy characters, but in the
detail of life, are inevitably the foolish characters in a comedy.
Schopenhauer
Other people’s heads are too wretched a place for happiness to have its seat.
Schopenhauer, cited in Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety, p. 111
We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

Schopenhauer
Im allgemeinen freilich haben die Weisen aller Zeiten immer dasselbe gesagt, und die Toren, d.h. die
unermessliche Majorität aller Zeiten, haben immer dasselbe, nämlich das Gegenteil getan; und so wird es
denn auch ferner bleiben.
Schopenhauer
In general admittedly the Wise of all times have always said the same thing, and the fools, that is to say the
vast majority of all times, have always done the same thing, i.e. the opposite; and so it will remain in the
future.
Schopenhauer
420
It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher.
He must be like Sophocles’ Oedipus, who, seeking enlightenment concerning his terrible fate, pursues
his indefatigable inquiry even though he divines that appalling horror awaits him in the answer. But
most of us carry with us the Jocasta in our hearts, who begs Oedipus, for God’s sake, not to inquire
further.
Schopenhauer, Letter to Goethe (November 1819)
That one can be a great mind without noticing anything of it is an absurdity of which only hopeless
incompetence can persuade itself, in order that it may regard the feeling of its own nothingness as modesty.
… Goethe has said it bluntly: ‘Only good-for-nothings are modest.’ But even more incontestable would be
the assertion that those who so eagerly demand modesty from others … are assuredly good-for-nothings, i.e.
wretches entirely without merit.
Schopenhauer, cited in Karl Kraus, “Self Admiration,” 1908, Helene Scher, trans., No Compromise (New York: 1977), p. 28
It may be said that religion is the chef d’oeuvre of the art of training, because it trains people in the way they
shall think: and, as is well known, you cannot begin the process too early. There is no absurdity so palpable
but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by
constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity. For as in the case of animals, so in that of men, training
is successful only when you begin in early youth.
Schopenhauer, “Psychological Observations”
The superabundant display of vitality, which takes the form of knocking, hammering, and tumbling
things about, has proved a daily torment to me all my life long. There are people, it is true—nay, a great
many people—who smile at such things, because they are not sensitive to noise; but they are just the very
people who are also not sensitive to argument, or thought, or poetry, or art, in a word, to any kind of
intellectual influence. The reason of it is that the tissue of their brains is of a very rough and coarse quality.
On the other hand, noise is a torture to intellectual people. In the biographies of almost all great writers, or
wherever else their personal utterances are recorded, I find complaints about it; in the case of Kant, for
instance, Goethe, Lichtenberg, Jean Paul; and if it should happen that any writer has omitted to express
himself on the matter, it is only for want of an opportunity.
This aversion to noise I should explain as follows: If you cut up a large diamond into little bits, it
will entirely lose the value it had as a whole; and an army divided up into small bodies of soldiers, loses all
its strength. So a great intellect sinks to the level of an ordinary one, as soon as it is interrupted and disturbed,
its attention distracted and drawn off from the matter in hand; for its superiority depends upon its power of
concentration—of bringing all its strength to bear upon one theme, in the same way as a concave mirror
collects into one point all the rays of light that strike upon it. Noisy interruption is a hindrance to this
concentration. That is why distinguished minds have always shown such an extreme dislike to disturbance in
any form, as something that breaks in upon and distracts their thoughts. Above all have they been averse to
that violent interruption that comes from noise. Ordinary people are not much put out by anything of the
sort...
A man’s body and the needs of his body are now everywhere treated with a tender indulgence. Is the
thinking mind then, to be the only thing that is never to obtain the slightest measure of consideration or
protection, to say nothing of respect?
Schopenhauer, “On Noise”
The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which
mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by
prejudice.
Schopenhauer
421
Über Schriftstellerei
Kein größerer Irrthum, als zu glauben, daß das zuletzt gesprochene Wort stets das richtigere, jedes später
Geschriebenen und jede Veränderung ein Fortschritt sei.
Schopenhauer, “Über Schriftstellerei und Stil”
Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1819)

Volume 1, German: http://books.google.com/books?id=jFQuAAAAYAAJ or : file://H:/eBooks/Die_Welt_als_Wille_und_Vorstellung_vol1.pdf
Volume 2, German: http://books.google.com/books?id=25LEL23PeQAC or : file://H:/eBooks/Die_Welt_als_Wille_und_Vorstellung_vol2.pdf
Volume 1, English: http://www.archive.org/details/theworldaswillan01schouoft or : file://H:/eBooks/the_world_as_will_and_idea_01.pdf
Volume 2, English: http://www.archive.org/details/theworldaswill02schouoft or : file://H:/eBooks/the_world_as_will_and_idea_02.pdf
Volume 3, English: http://www.archive.org/details/theworldaswillan03schouoft or : file://H:/eBooks/the_world_as_will_and_idea_03.pdf
Aesthetic pleasure in the beautiful consists, to a large extent, in the fact that, when we enter the state of pure
contemplation, we are raised for the moment above all willing, above all desires and cares; we are, so to
speak, rid of ourselves.
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, 1:390
Wie auf dem tobenden Meere, das, nach allen Seiten unbegränzt, heulend Wellenberge erhebt und senkt, auf
einem Kahn ein Schiffer sitzt, dem schwachen Fahrzeug vertrauend; so sitzt, mitten in einer Welt von
Qualen, ruhig der einzelne Mensch, gestützt und vertrauend auf das principium individuationis, oder die
Weise wie das Individuum die Dinge erkennt, als Erscheinung. Die unbegränzte Welt, voll Leiden überall, in
unendlicher Vergangenheit, in unendlicher Zukunft, ist ihm fremd, ja ist ihm ein Mährchen: seine
verschwindende Person, seine ausdehnungslose Gegenwart, sein augenblickliches Behagen, dies allein hat
Wirklichkeit für ihn: und dies zu erhalten, thut er Alles, solange nicht eine bessere Erkenntnis ihm die Augen
öffnet. Bis dahin lebt bloß in der innersten Tiefe seines Bewußtseyns die ganz dunkle Ahndung, daß ihm
jenes Alles doch wohl eigentlich so fremd nicht ist, sondern einen Zusammenhang mit ihm hat, vor welchem
das principium individuationis ihn nicht schützen kann. Aus dieser Ahndung stammt jenes so unvertilgbare
und allen Menschen (ja vielleicht selbst den klügeren Thieren) gemeinsame Grausen, das sie plötzlich
ergreift, wenn sie, durch irgend einen Zufall, irre werden am principio individuationis.
Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Band. 1, § 4.63, s. 416-417
Just as a sailor sits in a boat trusting to his frail barque in a stormy sea, unbounded in every direction, rising
and falling with the howling mountainous waves; so in the midst of a world of sorrows the individual man
sits quietly, supported by and trusting to the principium individuationis, or the way in which the individual
knows things as phenomena. The boundless world, everywhere full of suffering in the infinite past, in the
infinite future, is strange to him, indeed is to him but a fable; his ephemeral person, his extensionless present,
his momentary satisfaction, this alone has reality for him; and he does all to maintain this, so long as his eyes
are not opened by a better knowledge. Till then, there lives only in the inmost depths of his consciousness a
very obscure presentiment that all that is after all not really so strange to him, but has a connection with him,
from which the principium individuationis cannot protect him. From this presentiment arises that
ineradicable awe common to all men (and indeed perhaps even to the most sensible of the brutes) which
suddenly seizes them if by any chance they become puzzled about the principium individuationis.
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1, Bk. 4, § 63, p. 455
For a German it is even good to have somewhat lengthy words in his mouth, for he thinks slowly, and they
give him time to reflect.
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 2, Ch. 12
If a person is stupid, we excuse him by saying that he cannot help it; but if we attempted to excuse in
precisely the same way the person who is bad, we should be laughed at.
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, E. Payne, trans., vol. 2, p. 230
422
All religions promise a reward for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head or
understanding.
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, E. Payne, trans., vol. 2, p. 230
If we turn from the forms, produced by external circumstances, and go to the root of things, we shall find that
Sakyamuni and Meister Eckhart teach the same thing; only that the former dared to express his ideas plainly
and positively, whereas Eckhart is obliged to clothe them in the garment of the Christian myth, and to adapt
his expressions thereto.
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 2, Ch. 48
Wirklich ist jedes Kind gewissermaßen ein Genie, und jedes Genie gewissermaßen ein Kind.
Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Bd. 2, § 3.31, s. 451
Every child is in a way a genius; and every genius is in a way a child.
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation
Parerga und Paralipomena (1851)

Volume 1, German: http://books.google.com/books?id=jm4VAAAAYAAJ
Volume 2, German: http://books.google.com/books?id=WuUOAAAAIAAJ
Selections from Volume 1, English: T. Saunders, trans.: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10715/10715-8.txt
Selections from Volume 2, English, R. Dricks, trans.: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11945/11945-8.txt
A happy life is impossible: the highest that man can attain to is a heroic one.
Schopenhauer, “Nachträge zur Lehre von der Bejahung und Verneinung des Willens zum Leben,” Parerga and Paralipomena
Skitze einer Geschichte der Lehre vom Idealen und Realen [Sketch for a history of the doctrine of the
ideal and the real]
Descartes is rightly regarded as the father of modern philosophy primarily and generally because he helped
the faculty of reason to stand on its own feet by teaching men to use their brains in place whereof the Bible,
on the one hand, and Aristotle, on the other, had previously served.
Schopenhauer, “Sketch for a history of the doctrine of the ideal and the real,” Parerga and Paralipomena, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 3
To be a philosopher, that is to say, a lover of wisdom (for wisdom is nothing but truth), it is not enough for a
man to love truth, in so far as it is compatible with his own interest, with the will of his superiors, with the
dogmas of the church, or with the prejudices and tastes of his contemporaries; so long as he rests content
with this position, he is only a φίλαυτος, not a φιλόσοφος. For this title of honor is well and wisely conceived
precisely by its stating that one should love the truth earnestly and with one’s whole heart, and thus
unconditionally and unreservedly, above all else, and, if need be, in defiance of all else. Now the reason for
this is the one previously stated that the intellect has become free, and in this state it does not even know or
understand any other interest than that of truth.
Schopenhauer, “Sketch for a history of the doctrine of the ideal and the real,” Parerga and Paralipomena, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 21-22
The auspices for philosophy are bad if, when proceeding ostensibly on the investigation of truth, we start
saying farewell to all uprightness, honestly and sincerity, and are intent only on passing ourselves off for
what we are not. We then assume, like those three sophists [Fichte, Schelling and Hegel], first a false pathos,
then an affected and lofty earnestness, then an air of infinite superiority, in order to impose where we despair
of ever being able to convince.
Schopenhauer, “Sketch for a history of the doctrine of the ideals and the real,” Parerga and Paralipomena, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 22
If, while hurrying ostensibly to the temple of truth, we hand the reins over to our personal interests
which look aside at very different guiding stars, for instance at the tastes and foibles of our
contemporaries, at the established religion, but in particular at the hints and suggestions of those at
the head of affairs, then how shall we ever reach the high, precipitous, bare rock whereon stands the
temple of truth?
Schopenhauer, “Sketch for a history of the doctrine of the ideal and the real,” Parerga and Paralipomena, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 22-23
423
An unbiased reader, on opening one of their [Fichte’s, Schelling’s or Hegel’s] books and then asking himself
whether this is the tone of a thinker wanting to instruct or that of a charlatan wanting to impress, cannot be
five minutes in any doubt. ... The tone of calm investigation, which had characterized all previous
philosophy, is exchanged for that of unshakeable certainty, such as is peculiar to charlatanry of every kind
and at all times. ... From every page and every line, there speaks an endeavor to beguile and deceive the
reader, first by producing an effect to dumbfound him, then by incomprehensible phrases and even sheer
nonsense to stun and stupefy him, and again by audacity of assertion to puzzle him, in short, to throw dust in
his eyes and mystify him as much as possible.
Schopenhauer, “Sketch for a history of the doctrine of the ideal and the real,” Parerga and Paralipomena, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p.23
Fragmente zur Geschichte der Philosophie [Fragments for the history of philosophy]
 (love and strife) are actually present everywhere, and only according to circumstances will
one or the other appear at any time. And so even we ourselves can be instantly friendly or hostile; the
disposition to be either exists and awaits the circumstances. Only prudence bids us stop at the point of
indifference, of unconcern, although this is at the same time the freezing-point. In the same way, a strange
dog, approached by us, is at once ready to adopt a friendly or hostile tone and changes easily from barking
and growling to tail-wagging and vice-versa. What lies at the basis of this universal phenomenon of the
 is, of course ultimately the great primal contrast between the unity of all beings according
to their essence-in-itself and their complete diversity and variety in the phenomenon, which has for its form
the principium individuationis.
Schopenhauer, “Fragments for the history of philosophy,” Parerga and Paralipomena, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, § 2, pp. 34-35
Ueber die Universitäts-Philosophie [On Philosophy in the Universities]
Ueberhaupt aber bin ich allmälig der Meinung geworden, daß der erwähnte Nutzen der Kathederphilosophie
von dem Nachtheil überwogen werde, den die Philosophie als Profession der Philosophie als freier
Wahrheitsforschung, oder die Philosophie im Auftrage der Regierung der Philosophie im Auftrage der Natur
und der Menschheit bringt.
Schopenhauer, „Ueber die Universitäts-Philosophie”, Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 5, s. 151
Chair-philosophy is burdened with the disadvantage which philosophy as a profession imposes on
philosophy as the free investigation of truth, or which philosophy by government order imposes on
philosophy in the name of nature and mankind.
Schopenhauer, “On Philosophy in the Universities,” Parerga and Paralipomena, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 139
Zuvörderst nämlich wird eine Regierung nicht Leute besolden, um Dem, was sie durch tausend von ihr
angestellte Priester, oder Religionslehrer, von allen Kanzeln verkünden läßt, direkt, oder auch nur indirekt,
zu widersprechen. … Daher der Grundsatz improbant secus docentes.
Schopenhauer, „Ueber die Universitäts-Philosophie”, Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 5, s. 152-153
A government will not pay people to contradict directly, or even only indirectly, what it has had promulgated
from all the pulpits by thousands of its appointed priests or religious teachers. … Hence the maxim
improbant secus docentes [We reject and condemn the man who teaches something different].
… deshalb ich diese als die Metaphysik des Volkes bezeichnet habe.
I have described religion as the metaphysics of the people.
Man sieht daraus, daß in der Universitäts-Philosophie die Wahrheit nur eine sekundäre Stelle einnimmt und,
wenn es gefordert wird, aufstehn muß, einer andern Eigenschaft Platz zu machen.
In philosophy at the universities truth occupies only a secondary place and, if called upon, she must get up
and make room for another attribute.
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In Folge hievon wird, so lange die Kirche besteht, auf den Universitäten stets nur eine solche Philosophie
gelehrt werden dürfen, welche, mit durchgängiger Rücksicht auf die Landesreligion abgefaßt, dieser im
Wesentlichen parallel läuft und daher stets,—allenfalls kraus figurirt, seltsam verbrämt und dadurch schwer
verständlich gemacht,—doch im Grunde und in der Hauptsache nichts Anderes, als eine Paraphrase und
Apologie der Landesreligion ist. Den unter diesen Beschränkungen Lehrenden bleibt sonach nichts Anderes
übrig, als nach neuen Wendungen und Formen zu suchen, unter welchen sie den in abstrakte Ausdrücke
verkleideten und dadurch fade gemachten Inhalt der Landesreligion aufstellen, der alsdann Philosophie heißt.
Framed with regard to the established religion, this philosophy runs essentially parallel thereto; and so, being
perhaps intricately composed, curiously trimmed, and thus rendered difficult to understand, it is always at
bottom and in the main nothing but a paraphrase and apology of the established religion. Accordingly, for
those teaching under these restrictions, there is nothing left but to look for new turns of phrase and forms of
speech by which they arrange the contents of the established religion. Distinguished in abstract expressions
and thereby rendered dry and dull, they then go by the name of philosophy.
Inzwischen bleiben die solchermaaßen beschränkten Universitätsphilosophie bei der Sache ganz
wohlgemuth; weil ihr eigentlicher Ernst darin liegt, mit Ehren ein redliches Auskommen für sich, nebst Weib
und Kind, zu erwerben, auch ein gewisses Ansehn vor den Leuten zu genießen; hingegen das tiefbewegte
Gemüth eines wirklichen Philosophen, dessen ganzer und großer Ernst im Aufsuchen eines Schlüssels zu
unserm, so rätselhaften wie mißlichen Daseyn liegt, von ihnen zu den mythologischen Wesen gezählt wird;
wenn nicht etwa» gar der damit Behaftete, sollte er ihnen je vorkommen, ihnen als von Monomanie besessen
erscheint. Denn daß es mit der Philosophie so recht eigentlicher, bitterer Ernst seyn könne, läßt wohl, in der
Regel, kein Mensch sich weniger träumen, als ein Docent derselben; gleichwie der ungläubigste Christ der
Papst zu seyn pflegt. Daher gehört es denn auch zu den seltensten Fällen, daß ein wirklicher Philosoph
zugleich ein Docent der Philosophie gewesen wäre.
University professors, restricted in this way, are quite happy about the matter, for their real concern is to earn
with credit an honest livelihood for themselves and also for their wives and children and moreover to enjoy a
certain prestige in the eyes of the public. On the other hand, the deeply stirred mind of the real philosopher,
whose whole concern is to look for the key to our existence, as mysterious as it is precarious, is regarded by
them as something mythological, if indeed the man so affected does not even appear to them to be obsessed
by a monomania, should he ever be met with among them. For that a man could really be in dead earnest
about philosophy does not as a rule occur to anyone, least of all to a lecturer thereon; just as the most
sceptical Christian is usually the Pope. It has, therefore, been one of the rarest events for a genuine
philosopher to be at the same time a lecturer in philosophy.
Das Bedenkliche bei der Sache ist auch bloß die doch einzuräumende Möglichkeit, daß die letzte dem
Menschen erreichbare Einsicht in die Natur der Dinge, in sein eigenes Wesen und das der Welt nicht gerade
zusammenträfe mit den Lehren, welche theils dem ehemaligen Völkchen der Juden eröffnet worden, theils
vor 1800 Jahren in Jerusalem aufgetreten sind.
The hazardous part of the business is also the mere possibility, still to be admitted, that the ultimate insight
into the nature of things attainable by man, into his very being and that of the world, might not coincide
exactly with the doctrines which were in part made known to the former little race of the Jews and in part
appeared in Jerusalem eighteen hundred years ago.
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Andere wieder, von diesen Wahrheitsforschern, schmelzen Philosophie und Religion zu einem Kentauren
zusammen, den sie Religionsphilosophie nennen; Pflegen auch zu lehren, Religion und Philosophie seien
eigentlich das Selbe;—welcher Sah jedoch nur in dem Sinne wahr zu seyn scheint, in welchem Franz I., in
Beziehung auf Karl V., sehr versöhnlich gesagt haben soll: „was mein Bruder Karl will, das will ich auch,”—
nämlich Mailand, Wieder andere machen nicht so viele Umstände, sondern reden geradezu von einer
Christlichen Philosophie;—welches ungefähr so herauskommt, wie wenn man von einer Christlichen
Arithmetik reden wollte, die fünf gerade seyn ließe. Dergleichen von Glaubenslehren entnommene Epitheta
sind zudem der Philosophie offenbar unanständig, da sie sich für den Versuch der Vernunft giebt, aus
eigenen Mitteln und unabhängig von aller Auktorität das Problem des Daseyns zu lösen.
Others … are in the habit of teaching that religion and philosophy are really the same thing. Such a
statement, however, appears to be true only in the sense in which Francis I is supposed to have said in a very
conciliatory tone with reference to Charles V: ‘what my brother Charles wants is also what I want’, namely
Milan. Others again do not stand on such ceremony, but talk bluntly of a Christian philosophy, which is
much the same as if we were to speak of a Christian arithmetic, and this would be stretching a point.
Moreover, epithets takes from such dogmas are obviously unbecoming of philosophy, for it is devoted to the
attempt of the faculty of reason to solve by its own means and independently of all authority the problem of
existence.
Schopenhauer, “On Philosophy in the Universities,” Parerga and Paralipomena, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 142-143
Man wolle nicht scheinen was man nicht ist. Das Vorgeben unbefangener Wahrheitsforschung, mit dem
Entschluß, die Landesreligion zum Resultat, ja zum Maaßstabe und zur Kontrole derselben zu machen, ist
unerträglich, und eine solche, an die Landesreligion, wie der Kettenhund an die Mauer, gebundene
Philosophie ist nur das ärgerliche Zerrbild der höchsten und edelsten Bestrebung der Menschheit.
We should not pretend to be what we are not. The pretence of the impartial investigation of truth, with the
resolve to make the established religion the result, indeed the measure and control of truth, is intolerable and
such a philosophy, tied to the established religion like a dog to a chain, is only the vexatious caricature of the
highest and noblest endeavor of mankind.
Philosophy of religion … really amounts to … philosophizing on certain favorite assumptions that are not
confirmed at all.
Ja, bisweilen fühlt man sich versucht zu glauben, daß sie ihre ernstlich gemeinten philosophischen
Forschungen schon vor ihrem zwölften Jahre abgethan und bereits damals ihre Ansicht vom Wesen der Welt,
und was dem anhängt, auf immer festgestellt hätten; weil sie, nach allen philosophischen Diskussionen und
halsbrechenden Abwegen, unter verwegenen Führern, doch immer wieder bei Dem anlangen, was uns in
jenem Alter plausibel gemacht zu werden pflegt, und es sogar als Kriterium der Wahrheit zu nehmen
scheinen. Alle die heterodoren philosophischen Lehren, mit welchen sie dazwischen, im Laufe ihres Lebens,
sich haben beschäftigen müssen, scheinen ihnen nur dazu- seyn, um widerlegt zu werben und dadurch jene
ersteren desto fester zu etabliren.
Indeed at times we feel tempted to think that they had finished with their seriously meant philosophical
investigations ever before their twelfth year and that at that age they had for the rest of their lives settled their
view on the nature of the world and on everything pertaining thereto. We feel so tempted because after all the
philosophical discussions and dangerous deviations, … they always come back to what is usually made
plausible to us at that tender age and appear to accept this even as the criterion of truth. All heterodox
philosophical doctrines, with which they must at times be concerned in the course of their lives, appear to
them to exist merely to be refuted and this to establish those others the more firmly.
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Inzwischen verlangt die Billigkeit, daß man die Universitätsphilosophie nicht bloß, wie hier gescheht!, aus
dem Standpunkte des angeblichen, sondern auch aus dem des wahren und eigentlichen Zweckes derselben
beurtheile. Dieser nämlich läuft darauf hinaus, daß die künftigen Referendarien, Advokaten, Aerzte,
Kandidaten und Schulmänner auch im Innersten ihrer Ueberzeugungen diejenige Richtung erhalten, welche
den Absichten, die der Staat und seine Regierung mit ihnen haben, angemessen ist. Dagegen habe ich nichts
einzuwenden, bescheide mich also in dieser Hinsicht. Denn über die Nothwendigkeit, oder Entbehrlichkeit
eines solchen Staatsmittels zu urtheilen, halte ich mich nicht für kompetent; sondern stelle es denen anheim,
welche die schwere Aufgabe haben, Menschen zu regieren, d. h. unter vielen Millionen eines, der großen
Mehrzahl nach, gränzenlos egoistischen, ungerechten, unbilligen, unredlichen, neidischen, boshaften und
dabei sehr beschränkten und querköpfigen Geschlechtes, Gesetz, Ordnung, Ruhe und Friede aufrecht zu
erhalten und die Wenigen, denen irgend ein Besitz zu Theil geworden, zu schützen gegen die Unzahl Derer,
welche nichts, als ihre Körperkräfte haben. Die Aufgabe ist so schwer, daß ich mich wahrlich nicht
vermesse, über die dabei anzuwendenden Mittel mit ihnen zu rechten. Denn „ich danke Gott an jedem
Morgen, daß ich nicht brauch’ für’s Röm’sche Reich zu sorgen,”—ist stets mein Wahlspruch gewesen. Diese
Staatszwecke der Universitätsphilosophie waren es aber, welche der Hegelei eine so beispiellose
Ministergunft verschafften. Denn ihr war der Staat „der absolut vollendete ethische Organismus,” und sie
ließ den ganzen Zweck des menschlichen Daseyns im Staat aufgehn. Konnte es eine bessere Zurichtung für
künftige Referendarien und demnächst Staatsbeamte geben, als diese, in Folge welcher ihr ganzes Wesen
und Seyn, mit Leib und Seele, völlig dem Staat verfiel, wie das der Biene dem Bienenstock, und sie auf
nichts Anderes, weder in dieser, noch in einer andern Welt hinzuarbeiten hatten, als daß sie taugliche Räder
würden, mitzuwirken, um die große Staatsmaschine, diesen ultimus finis bonorum, im Gange zu erhalten?
Der Referendar und der Mensch war danach Eins und das Selbe. Es war eine rechte Apotheose der Philistern.
We should judge university philosophy … by its true and proper aim: … that the junior barristers, solicitors,
doctors, probationers, and pedagogues of the future should maintain, even in their innermost conviction, the
same line of thought in keeping with the aims and intentions that the State and its government have in
common with them. I have no objection to this and so in this respect have nothing to say. For I do not
consider myself competent to judge of the necessity or needlessness of such a State expedient, but rather
leave it to those who have the difficult task of governing men, that is to say, of maintain law and order, …
and of protecting the few who have acquired property from the immense number of those who have nothing
but their physical strength. … I certainly do not presume to argue with them over the means to be employed
in this case; for my motto has always been: “Thank God, each morning, therefore, that you have not the
Roman realm to care for!” [Goethe, Faust] But it was these constitutional aims of university philosophy
which procured for Hegelry such an unprecedented ministerial favor. For it the State was “the absolute
perfect ethical organism,” and it represented as originating in the State the whole aim of human existence.
Could there be for future junior barristers and thus for state officials a better preparation than this, in
consequence whereof their whole substance and being, their body and soul, were entirely forfeited to the
State, like bees in a beehive, and they had nothing else to work for … except to become efficient wheels,
cooperating for the purpose of keeping in motion the great State machine, that ultimus finis bonorum? The
junior barrister and the man were accordingly one and the same. It was a real apotheosis of philistinism.
Als auf die große Masse des Menschengeschlechts berechnet und derselben angemessen, kann bloß
allegorische Wahrheit enthalten, welche sie jedoch als sensu proprio wahr geltend zu machen hat.
Schopenhauer, „Ueber die Universitäts-Philosophie”, Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 5, s.160
Dogma is intended for, and suited to, the great mass of the human race; and as such it can contain merely
allegorical truth that it nevertheless has to pass off as truth sensu proprio.
Dadurch nun aber wird, bei immer weiterer Verbreitung jeder Art historischer, physikalischer, und sogar
philosophischer Kenntnisse, die Anzahl der Menschen, denen sie nicht mehr genügen kann, immer größer,
und diese wird mehr und mehr auf Wahrheit sensu proprio dringen. Was aber kann alsdann, dieser
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Anforderung gegenüber, eine solche nervis alienis mobile Kathederpuppe leisten? Wie weit wird man da
noch reichen, mit der oktroyirten Nockenphilosophie, oder mit hohlen Wortgebäuden, mit nichtssagenden,
oder selbst die gemeinsten und faßlichsten Wahrheiten durch Wortschwall verundeutlichenden Floskeln,
oder gar mit hegelischem absoluten Nonsens?—Und nun noch andrerseits, wenn dann auch wirklich der
redliche Johannes aus der Wüste käme, der, in Felle gekleidet und von Heuschrecken genährt, von all dem
Unwesen unberührt geblieben, unterweilen, mit reinem Herzen und ganzem Ernst, der Forschung nach
Wahrheit obgelegen hätte und deren Früchte jetzt anböte; welchen Empfang hätte er zu gewärtigen von jenen
zu Staatszwecken gedungenen Geschäftsmännern der Katheder, die mit Weib und Kind von der Philosophie
zu leben haben, deren Losung daher ist primum vivere, deinde philosophari, die demgemäß den Markt in
Besitz genommen und schon dafür gesorgt haben, daß hier nichts gelte, als was sie gelten lassen, mithin
Verdienste nur eristiren, sofern es ihnen und ihrer Mittelmäßigkeit beliebt, sie anzuerkennen. Sie haben
nämlich die Aufmerksamkeit des ohnehin kleinen, sich mit Philosophie befassenden Publikums am Leitseil;
da dasselbe auf Sachen, die nicht, wie die poetischen Produttionen, Ergöyung, sondern Belehrung, und zwar
pekuniär unfruchtbare Belehrung, verheißen, seine Zeit, Mühe und Anstrengung wahrlich nicht verwenden
wird, ohne vorher volle Versicherung darüber zu haben, daß solche auch reichlich belohnt werden. Diese nun
erwartet es, seinem angeerbten Glauben, daß wer von einer Sache lebt, es auch sei, der sie versteht, zufolge,
von den Männern des Fachs, welche denn auch, auf Kathedern und in Kompendien, Journalen, und
Litteraturzeitungen sich mit Zuversicht als die eigentlichen Meister der Sache geriren: von diesen demnach
läßt es sich das Beachtenswerthe und sein Gegentheil vorschmecken und aussuchen.—O, wie wird es dir da
ergehn, mein armer Johannes aus der Wüste, wenn, wie zu erwarten steht, was Du bringst nicht der
stillschweigenden Konvention der Herren von der lukrativen Philosophie gemäß abgefaßt ist! Sie werden
dich ansehn als Einen, der den Geist des Spieles nicht gefaßt hat und dadurch es ihnen allen zu verderben
droht; mithin als ihren gemeinsamen Feind und Widersacher. Wäre was du bringst nun auch das größte
Meisterstück des menschlichen Geistes; vor ihren Augen könnte es doch nimmermehr Gnade finden. Denn es
wäre ja nicht ad normam conventionis abgefaßt, folglich nicht der Art, daß sie es zum Gegenstand ihres
Kathedervortrags machen könnten, um nun auch davon zu leben. Einem Philosophieprofessor fällt es gar
nicht ein, ein auftretendes neues System darauf zu prüfen, ob es wahr sei, sondern er prüft es sogleich nur
darauf, ob es mit den Lehren der Landesreligion, den Absichten der Regierung und den herrschenden
Ansichten der Zeit in Einklang zu bringen sei. Danach entscheidet er über dessen Schicksal.
Schopenhauer, „Ueber die Universitäts-Philosophie”, Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 5, s.160-161
If from the wilderness the righteous and honest John were actually to come who, clothed in skins and living
on locusts and untouched by all the terrible mischief, were meanwhile to apply himself with a pure heart and
in all seriousness to the investigation of truth and to offer the fruits thereof, what kind of reception would he
have to expect from those businessmen of the chair, who are hired for State purposes and with wife and
family have to live on philosophy, and whose watchword is, therefore, Primum vivere, deinde philosophari
[first live and then philosophize]? These men have accordingly taken possession of the market and have
already seen to it that here nothing is of value except what they allow; consequently merit exists only in so
far as they and their mediocrity are pleased to acknowledge it. They thus have on a leading rein the attention
of that small public, such as it is, that is concerned with philosophy. For on matters that do not promise, like
the productions of poetry, amusement and entertainment but only instruction, and financially unprofitable
instruction at that, that public will certainly not waste its time, effort, and energy, without first being
thoroughly assured that such efforts will be richly rewarded. Now by virtue of its inherited belief that
whoever lives by a business knows all about it, this public expects an assurance from the professional
men who from professor’s chairs and in compendiums, journals, and literary periodicals, confidently
behave as if they were the real masters of the subject. Accordingly, the public allows them to sample
and select whatever is worth noting and what can be ignored. My poor John from the wilderness, how
will you fare if, as is to be expected, what you bring is not drafted in accordance with the tacit convention of
the gentlemen of the lucrative philosophy? They will regard you as one who has not entered in the spirit of
the game and thus threatens to spoil the fun for all of them; consequently, they will regard you as their
common enemy and antagonist. Now even if what you bring were the greatest masterpiece of the human
mind, it could never find favor in their eyes. For it would not be drawn up ad normam conventionis
[according to the current pattern]; and so it would not be such as to enable them to make it the subject of
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their lectures from the chair in order to make a living from it. It never occurs to a professor of philosophy to
examine a new system that appears to see whether it is true; but he at once tests it merely to see whether it
can be brought into harmony with the doctrines of the established religion, with government plans, and with
the prevailing views of the times.
Wenn es aber dennoch durchdränge, wenn es, als belehrend und Aufschlüsse enthaltend, die
Aufmerksamkeit des Publikums erregte und von diesem des Studiums werth befunden würde; so müsste es ja
in demselben Maaße die kathederfähige Philosophie um eben jene Aufmerksamkeit, ja, um ihren Kredit und,
was noch schlimmer ist, um ihren Absah bringen. Dî meliora! Daher darf dergleichen nicht aufkommen, und
müssen hiegegen Alle für Einen Mann stehn. Die Methode und Taktik hiezu giebt ein glücklicher Instinkt,
wie er jedem Wesen zu feiner Selbsterhaltung verliehen ist, bald an die Hand. Nämlich das Bestreiten und
Widerlegen einer, der norma conventionis zuwiderlaufenden Philosophie ist oft, zumal wo man wohl gar
Verdienste und gewisse, nicht durch das Professordiplom ertheilbare Eigenschaften wittert, eine bedenkliche
Sache, an die man, in letzterem Falle, sich gar nicht wagen darf, indem dadurch die Werke, deren
Unterdrückung indicirt ist, Notorietät erhalten und die Neugierigen hinzulaufen würden, alsdann aber höchst
unangenehme Vergleichungen angestellt werden könnten und der Ausgang mißlich seyn dürfte. Hingegen
einhellig, als Brüder gleichen Sinnes, wie gleichen Vermögens, eine solche ungelegene Leistung als non
avenue betrachten; mit der unbefangensten Miene das Bedeutendeste als ganz unbedeutend, das tief
Durchdachte und für die Jahrhunderte Vorhandene als nicht der Rede werth aufnehmen, um so es zu
ersticken; hämisch die Lippen zusammenbeißen und dazu schweigen, schweigen mit jenem schon vom alten
Seneka denunzirten silentium, quod livor indixerit (ep. 79); und unterweilen nur desto lauter über die
abortiven Geisteskinder und Mißgeburten der Genossenschaft krähen, in dem beruhigenden Bewußtseyn, daß
ja Das, wovon Keiner weiß, so gut wie nicht vorhanden ist, und daß die Sachen in der Welt für Das gelten,
was sie scheinen und heißen, nicht für Das, was sie sind;—Dies ist die sicherste und gefahrloseste Methode
gegen Verdienste, welche ich demnach allen Flachköpfen, die ihren Unterhalt durch Dinge suchen, zu denen
höhere Begabtheit gehört, bestens empfohlen haben wollte, ohne jedoch mich auch für die später« Folgen
derselben zu verbürgen.
Schopenhauer, „Ueber die Universitäts-Philosophie”, Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 5
Aphorismen der Lebensweisheit [Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life]
Compared with genuine personal advantages, such as a great mind or a great heart, all the privileges of rank,
birth, even royal birth, wealth, and so on, are as kings on the stage to kings in real life.
Schopenhauer, “Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life,” Parerga und Paralipomena, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 315
The world in which each lives depends first on his interpretation thereof and therefore proves to be different
to different men. Accordingly, it will result in being poor, shallow, and superficial, or rich, interesting, and
full of meaning. For example, while many envy another man the interesting events that have happened to him
in his life, they should rather envy his gift of interpretation which endowed those events with the significance
they have when he describes them. For the same event that appears to be so interesting in the mind of a man
of intelligence would be only a dull and vapid scene from the commonplace world when conceived in the
shallow mind of an ordinary man. This is seen in the highest degree in many of Goethe’s and Byron’s poems
which are obviously based on real events. Here it is open to the foolish reader to envy the poet the most
delightful event, instead of envying him the mighty imagination that was capable of making something so
great and beautiful from a fairly commonplace occurrence.
429
All the pomp and pleasure that are mirrored in the dull consciousness of a simpleton are very poor when
compared with the consciousness of Cervantes writing Don Quixote in a miserable prison. The objective half
of the present reality is in the hands of fate and is accordingly changeable; we ourselves are the subjective
half that is, therefore, essentially unchangeable. Accordingly, the life of every man bears throughout the
same character in spite of all change from without and is comparable to a series of variations on one theme.
No one can get outside his own individuality. In all the circumstances in which the animal is placed, it
remains confined to the narrow circle, irrevocably drawn for it by nature, so that, for instance, our endeavors
to make a pet happy must always keep within narrow bounds precisely on account of those limits of its true
nature and consciousness. It is the same with man; the measure of his possible happiness is determined
beforehand by his individuality. In particular, the limits of his mental powers have fixed once for all his
capacity for pleasures of a higher order. If those powers are small, all the efforts from without, everything
done for him by mankind or good fortune, will not enable him to rise above the ordinary half-animal human
happiness and comfort. He is left to depend on the pleasures of the senses, on a cosy and cheerful family life,
on low company and vulgar pastimes. Even education, on the whole, cannot do very much, if anything, to
broaden his horizon. For the highest, most varied, and most permanent pleasures depend mainly on intimate
mental powers. Therefore it is clear from this how much our happiness depends on what we are, our
individuality, whereas in most cases we take into account only our fate, only what we have or represent.
Fate, however, can improve; moreover, if we are inwardly wealthy we shall not demand much from it. On
the other hand, a fool remains a fool, a dull blockhead a dull blockhead, till the end of his life, even if he
were surrounded by houris in paradise.
Schopenhauer, “Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life,” Parerga und Paralipomena, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 317-318
Health so far outweighs all external blessings that a healthy beggar is indeed more fortunate than a monarch
in poor health. A quiet and cheerful temperament, resulting from perfect health and a prosperous economy,
an understanding that is clear, lively, penetrating, and sees things correctly, a moderate and gentle will and
hence a good conscience—these are advantages that no rank or wealth can make good or replace. For what a
man is by himself, what accompanies him into solitude, and what no one can give to him or take from
him is obviously more essential to him than everything he possesses, or even what he may be in the
eyes of others. A man of intellect, when entirely alone, has excellent entertainment in his own thoughts
and fancies, whereas the continuous diversity of parties, plays, excursions, and amusements cannot
ward off from the dullard the tortures of boredom. A good, moderate, gentle character can be contented
in needy circumstances, whereas one who is covetous, envious, and malicious is not so, in spite of all his
wealth. Indeed for the man who constantly has the delight of an extraordinary and intellectually eminent
individuality, most of the pleasures that are generally sought after are entirely superfluous; indeed they are
only a bother and a burden.
What wealth can achieve, beyond the satisfaction of the real and natural needs, has little influence on our
happiness proper; on the contrary, this is disturbed by the many inevitable worries that are entailed in the
preservation of much property. Nevertheless, people are a thousand times more concerned to become
wealthy than to acquire mental culture, whereas it is quite certain that what we are contributes much more to
our happiness than what we have. Therefore we see very many work from morning to night as industriously
as ants and in restless activity to increase the wealth they already have. Beyond the narrow horizon of the
means to this end, they know nothing; their minds are a blank and are therefore not susceptible to anything
else. The highest pleasures, those of the mind, are inaccessible to them and they try in vain to replace them
by the fleeting pleasures of the senses in which they indulge at intervals and which cost little time but much
money. If their luck has been good, then as a result they have at the end of their lives a really large amount of
money, which they now leave to their heirs either to increase still further or to squander. Such a life, though
pursued with a very serious air of importance, is therefore just as foolish as is many another that had for its
symbol a fool’s cap.
430
We should open wide the doors to cheerfulness whenever it makes its appearance, for it never comes
inopportunely. Instead of doing this, we often hesitate to let it enter, for we first want to know whether we
have every reason to be contented; or because we are afraid of being disturbed by cheerfulness when we are
involved in serious deliberations and heavy cares. But what we improve through these is very uncertain,
whereas cheerfulness is an immediate gain. It alone is, so to speak, the very coin of happiness and not, like
everything else, merely a cheque on a bank; for only it makes us immediately happy in the present moment.
And so it is the greatest blessing for beings whose reality takes the form of an indivisible present moment.
Schopenhauer, Parerga und Paralipomena, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 324
Nothing contributes less to cheerfulness than wealth and nothing contributes more than health.
Nine-tenths of our happiness depends on health alone. With it everything becomes a source of pleasure,
whereas without it nothing, whatever it may be, can be enjoyed. ... From this it follows that the greatest of all
follies is to sacrifice our health for whatever it may be, for gain, profit, promotion, learning, or fame, not to
mention sensual and other fleeting pleasures; rather should we give first place to health.
Nämlich Stumpfheit des Geistes ist durchgängig im Verein mit Stumpfheit der Empfindung und Mangel an
Reizbarkeit, welche Beschaffenheit für Schmerzen und Betrübnisse jeder Art und Größe weniger
empfänglich macht: aus eben dieser Geistesstumpfheit aber geht andererseits jene, auf zahllosen Gesichtern
ausgeprägte, wie auch durch die beständig rege Aufmerksamkeit auf alle, selbst die kleinsten Vorgänge in
der Außenwelt sich verratende innere Leerheit hervor, welche die wahre Quelle der Langenweile ist und stets
nach äußerer Anregung lechzt, um Geist und Gemüt durch irgend etwas in Bewegung zu bringen. In der
Wahl desselben ist sie daher nicht ekel; wie dies die Erbärmlichkeit der Zeitvertreibe bezeugt, zu denen man
Menschen greifen sieht, im gleichen die Art ihrer Geselligkeit und Konversation, nicht weniger die vielen
Türsteher und Fenstergucker. Hauptsächlich aus dieser inneren Leerheit entspringt die Sucht nach
Gesellschaft, Zerstreuung, Vergnügen und Luxus jeder Art, welche viele zur Verschwendung und dann zum
Elende führt. Vor diesem Elende bewahrt nichts so sicher, als der innere Reichtum, der Reichtum des
Geistes: denn dieser läßt, je mehr er sich der Eminenz nähert, der Langenweile immer weniger Raum. Die
unerschöpfliche Regsamkeit der Gedanken aber, ihr an den mannigfaltigen Erscheinungen der Innen- und
Außenwelt sich stets erneuerndes Spiel, die Kraft und der Trieb zu immer andern Kombinationen derselben,
sehen den eminenten Kopf, die Augenblicke der Abspannung abgerechnet, ganz außer den Bereich der
Langenweile.
Schopenhauer, „Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit,“ Parerga und Paralipomena (Berlin: 1862), Band 1, s. 347-348
The result of this mental dullness is that inner vacuity and emptiness that is stamped on innumerable
faces and also betrays itself in a constant and lively attention to all events in the external world, even
the most trivial. This vacuity is the real source of boredom and always craves for external excitement
in order to set the mind and spirits in motion trough something. Therefore in the choice thereof it is
not fastidious, as is testified by the miserable and wretched pastimes to which people have recourse. ...
The principal result of this inner vacuity is the craze for society, diversion, amusement, and luxury of
every kind which lead many to extravagance and so to misery. Nothing protects us so surely from this
wrong turning as inner wealth, the wealth of the mind, for the more eminent it becomes, the less room
does it leave for boredom. The inexhaustible activity of ideas, their constantly renewed play with the
manifold phenomena of the inner and outer worlds, the power and urge always to make different
combinations of them, all these put the eminent mind, apart from moments of relaxation, quite beyond
the reach of boredom.
The more a man has within himself, the less does he need from without.
431
If the quality of society could be replaced by quantity, it would be worth while to live in the world at large;
but unfortunately a hundred fools in a crowd still do not produce one intelligent man.
As soon as want and privation give a [dull] man breathing-space, he will look for pastime and society at any
price and will readily put up with anything, wishing to escape from nothing so much as from himself. For in
solitude, where everyone is referred back to himself, he then sees what he has in himself.
The fool in purple groans under the burden of his wretched individuality that cannot be thrown off, whereas
the man of great gifts populates and animates with his ideas the most dreary and desolate environment.
A man’s hard-won leisure, by giving him the free enjoyment of his own consciousness and individuality, is
the fruit and produce of his whole existence that is in other respects only toil and effort. But what does the
leisure of most men yield? Boredom and dullness, except when there are sensual pleasures or follies for
filling up the time. How utterly worthless this leisure is, is seen by the way in which such people spend it; it
is precisely Ariosto’s ozio lungo d’uomini ignoranti [the boredom of the ignorant].
Men of limited intelligence are so exposed to boredom and this is due to their intellect’s being absolutely
nothing but the medium of motives for their will. Now if at the moment there are no motives to be taken up,
the will rests and the intellect takes a holiday since the one, like the other, does not become active of its own
accord. The result is a terrible stagnation of all the powers of the entire man, in a word boredom. To ward off
this, men now present the will with trivial motives that are merely temporary and are taken at random in
order to rouse it and thus bring into action the intellect that has to interpret them.
[Of course this is an open invitation for Nietzsche to ask, what are the motives that lead Schopenhauer to move his intellect?]
The happiest destiny on earth is undoubtedly to have a distinguished and rich individuality and in particular a
good endowment of intellect. ...Whoever has been granted this lot through the favour of nature and fate will
be anxious and careful to see that the inner source of his happiness remains accessible to him and for this the
conditions are independence and leisure. And so he will gladly purchase these at the price of moderation and
thrift, the more so as he is not, like others, dependent on external sources of pleasure. Thus he will not be led
by the prospects of office, money, favour, and approbation of the world into surrendering himself in order to
conform to the sordid designs or bad taste of people.
They achieve their welfare at the expense of their leisure; but of what use to me is welfare if for it I have to
give up that which alone makes it desirable, namely my leisure?
It is a great folly to lose the inner man in order to gain the outer, that is, to give up the whole or the greater
part of one’s quiet, leisure, and independence for splendour, rank, pomp, titles and honours.
The life of the masses is passed in dullness since all their thoughts and desires are directed entirely to the
petty interests of personal welfare and thus to wretchedness and misery in all its forms. For this reason,
intolerable boredom befalls them as soon as they are no longer occupied with those aims and they are now
thrown back on themselves.
432
To such a man [the genius] is the undisturbed preoccupation with himself, his ideas and works, an urgent
necessity; solitude is welcome, leisure is the greatest blessing, and everything else is superfluous; in fact,
when it exists it is often only a burden. Thus only of such a man can we say that his centre of gravity is
entirely within himself. We can even explain from this why men of this nature, who are exceedingly rare, do
not show, even with the best character, that intimate and immense interest in friends, family, and the
community at large, of which many others are capable. For in the last resort, they can put up with the loss of
everything else, if only they have themselves. Accordingly, there is in them an element of isolation which is
the more effective, as others never really satisfy them completely. And so they cannot look on these as
entirely their equals; in fact, as the difference of each and all is always making itself felt, they gradually grow
accustomed to moving among men as if they were beings of a different order, and in the thoughts about
people, to making use of the word they instead of we. Our moral virtues benefit mainly other people;
intellectual virtues, on the other hand, benefit primarily ourselves; therefore the former make us
universally popular, the latter unpopular.
Every man’s leisure is as valuable as he is himself.

The possession of leisure is foreign not only to man’s customary fate, but also to his usual nature, for his
natural destiny is to spend his time providing what is necessary for his own and his family’s existence. He is
a son of want and privation, not a free intelligence. Accordingly, leisure soon becomes for him a burden and
indeed ultimately a great affliction, if he is unable to employ his time by means of imaginary and fictitious
aims of all kinds through every form of game, pastime, and hobby.
A measure of intellect that goes far beyond the normal is likewise abnormal and therefore unnatural.
Nevertheless, when once it exists, then for the happiness of the man so gifted just that leisure is needed
which others find wither so burdensome or so pernicious, for without it he will be a Pegasus under the yoke
and consequently unhappy.
… the inability to endure leisure (i.e. free existence itself)

Now I should state the definition of a Philistine so as to cover those who are always most seriously
concerned with a reality that is no reality.
Der Philister … ist demnach ein Mensch ohne geistige Bedürfnisse. Hieraus nun folgt gar mancherlei:
erstlich, in Hinsicht auf ihn selbst, daß er ohne geistige Genüsse bleibt; nach dem schon erwähnten
Grundsatz: il n’est pas de vrais plaisirs qu’avec de vrais besoins.
Schopenhauer, Parerga und Paralipomena (Berlin: 1862), Band 1, s. 363
The Philistine ... is a man without intellectual needs. Now it follows from this that, as regards himself, he is
left without any intellectual pleasures in accordance with the principle, il n’est pas de vrais plaisirs qu’avec
de vrais besoins. [There are no true pleasures without true needs.]
433
Kein Drang nach Erkenntniß und Einsicht, um ihrer selbst Willen, belebt sein [des Philisters] Daseyn, auch
keiner nach eigentlich ästhetischen Genüssen, als welcher dem ersteren durchaus verwandt ist. Was dennoch
von Genüssen solcher Art etwan Mode, oder Auktorität, ihm aufdringt, wird er als eine Art Zwangsarbeit
möglichst kurz abthun.
His [the Philistine’s] existence is not animated by any keen desire for knowledge and insight for their own
sake, or by any desire for really aesthetic pleasures which is so entirely akin to it. If, however, any pleasures
of this kind are forced on him by fashion or authority, he will dispose of them as briefly as possible as a kind
of compulsory labour.
Sich Alles, was zum leiblichen Wohlseyn beiträgt, zu verschaffen, ist der Zweck seines Lebens. Glücklich
genug, wenn dieser ihm viel zu schaffen macht! Denn, sind jene Güter ihm schon zum voraus oktroyirt; so
fällt er unausbleiblich der Langenweile anheim.
The purpose of his [the Philistine’s] life is to procure for himself everything that contributes to bodily
welfare. He is happy enough when this causes him a lot of trouble. For if those good things are heaped on
him in advance, he will inevitably lapse into boredom.
Ball, Theater, Gesellschaft, Kartenspiel, Hasardspiel, Pferde, Weiber, Trinken, Reisen, … reicht dies Alles
gegen die Langeweile nicht aus, wo Mangel an geistigen Bedürfnissen die geistigen Genüsse unmöglich
macht. Daher auch ist dem Philister ein dumpfer, trockener Ernst, der sich dem thierischen nähert, eigen und
charakteristisch.
Dancing, the theatre, society, card-playing, games of chance, horses, women, drinking, traveling, and so on
... are not enough to ward off boredom where intellectual pleasures are rendered impossible by lack of
intellectual needs. Thus a peculiar characteristic of the Philistine is a dull, dry seriousness akin to that of
animals.
From the fundamental nature of the Philistine, it follows that, in regard to others, as he has no intellectual
but only physical needs, he will seek those who are capable of satisfying the latter not the former. And so of
all the demands he makes of others the very smallest will be that of any outstanding intellectual abilities. On
the contrary, when he comes across these they will excite his antipathy and even hatred. For here he has a
hateful feeling of inferiority and also a dull secret envy which he most carefully attempts to conceal even
from himself; but in this way it grows sometimes into a feeling of secret rage and rancour. Therefore it will
never occur to him to assess his own esteem and respect in accordance with such qualities, but they will
remain exclusively reserved for rank and wealth, power and influence, as being in his eyes the only real
advantages to excel in which is also his desire.
A great affliction of all Philistines is that idealities afford them no entertainment, but to escape from
boredom they are always in need of realities.
Epicurus, the great teacher of happiness, has correctly and finely divided human needs into three classes.
First there are the natural and necessary needs which, if they are not satisfied, cause pain. Consequently, they
are only victus et amictus [food and clothing] and are easy to satisfy. Then we have those that are natural yet
not necessary, that is, the needs for sexual satisfaction. ... These needs are more difficult to satisfy. Finally,
there are those that are neither natural nor necessary, the needs for luxury, extravagance, pomp, and
splendour, which are without end and very difficult to satisfy.
434
It is difficult, if not impossible, to define the limit of our reasonable desires in respect of possessions.
Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become.

For the purpose of acquiring gain, everything else is pushed aside or thrown overboard, for example, as is
philosophy by the professors of philosophy.
People are often reproached because their desires are directed mainly to money and they are fonder of it than
of anything else. Yet it is natural and even inevitable for them to love that which, as an untiring Proteus, is
ready at any moment to convert itself into the particular object of our fickle desires and manifold needs. Thus
every other blessing can satisfy only one desire and one need; for instance, food is good only to the hungry,
wine only for the healthy, medicine for the sick, a fur coat for winter, women for youth, and so on.
Consequently, all these are only , this is to say, only relatively good. Money alone is the
absolutely good thing because it meets not merely one need in concreto, but needs generally in abstracto.
Means at our disposal should be regarded as a bulwark against the many evils and misfortunes that can
occur. We should not regard such wealth as a permission or even an obligation to procure for ourselves the
pleasures of the world.
People who originally have no means but are ultimately able to earn a great deal, through whatever
talents they may possess, almost always come to think that these are permanent capital and that what
they gain through them is interest. Accordingly, they do not put aside part of their earnings to form a
permanent capital, but spend their money as fast as they earn it. But they are then often reduced to
poverty because their earnings decrease or come to an end after their talent, which was of a transitory
nature, is exhausted, as happens, for example, in the case of almost all the fine arts; or because it could
be brought to bear only under a particular set of circumstances that has ceased to exist.
With artists and virtuosi of every kind, … what they earn should become their capital, whereas they
recklessly regard it as mere interest and thus end in ruin. On the other hand, those who possess inherited
wealth at least know at once and quite correctly what is capital and what is interest.
Generally we shall find as a rule that those who have already experienced real want and privation are much
less afraid thereof and so are more inclined to extravagance than those who only know poverty from hearsay.
To the man born in a position of wealth, this appears to be something indispensable, the element of the only
possible existence, like air. He therefore guards it as he guards his life and so is usually orderly, tidy,
prudent, and thrifty. On the other hand, to the man born into poverty, this seems to be the natural state; but
wealth, that is subsequently inherited in some way, is regarded as something superfluous, as merely useful to
be enjoyed and squandered.
435
To possess at the outset so much that we can live comfortably, even if only for our own person and without a
family, and can live really independently, that is, without working, is a priceless advantage. For it means
exemption and immunity from the poverty and trouble attaching to the life of man, and thus emancipation
from universal drudgery, the natural lot of earthly mortals. Only under this favour and patronage of fate is a
man born truly free; for only so is he really sui juris, master of his own time and powers, and is able to say
every morning ‘The day is mine’. And for the very same reason, the difference between the man with a
thousand a year and one with a hundred is infinitely less than that between the former and the man who has
nothing. But inherited wealth attains its highest value when it has comes to the man who is endowed with
mental powers of a high order and who pursues activities that are hardly compatible with earning money. For
he is then doubly endowed by fate and can now live for his genius.
The man with inherited wealth ... who does not even open up the possibility at least of advancing some
branch of knowledge by thoroughly studying it, is a mere idler and a contemptible loafer. He will not be
happy, for the exemption from want delivers him into the hands of boredom, the other pole of human misery,
which torments him so much that he would have been much happier if poverty and privation had given him
something to do.
The man who originally has enough to live on will often have an independent turn of mind; he is accustomed
to go about tête levée; he has not learnt all those arts of the beggar.
If it is emphatically exclaimed that honour is dearer than life itself, this really means that existence and well-
being are nothing and the real thing is what others think of us.
Most people attach the highest importance precisely to what others think of them. They are more concerned
about this than about what immediately exists for them, ... in their own consciousness. Accordingly, they
reverse the natural order of things and the opinion of others seems to them to be the real part of their
existence, their own consciousness being merely the ideal part.
The value we attach to the opinions of others and our constant concern in respect thereof exceed almost
every reasonable expectation, so that it can be regarded as a kind of mania. … Without this concern and
craze, there would be hardly a tithe of the luxury that exists.
Pride … shows itself even in the child and then at every age, yet most strongly in old age because when the
capacity of sensual pleasures fails, vanity and pride have only to share their dominion with avarice.
Schopenhauer, “Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life,” Parerga und Paralipomena, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 356-357.
The only way to be rid of this natural folly [the thirst for fame] is … to realize how utterly false, perverse,
erroneous, and absurd most of the opinions usually are in men’s minds, which are, therefore, in themselves
not worth considering.
Pride is the already firm conviction of our own paramount worth in some respect; vanity, on the other hand,
is the desire to awaken in others such a conviction, often accompanied by the secret hope of being able
thereby to make it our own. Accordingly, pride is self-esteem that comes from within and so is direct; vanity,
on the other hand, is the attempt to arrive as such esteem from without and thus indirectly.
Schopenhauer, “Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life,” Parerga und Paralipomena, p. 359
436
The virtue of modesty is, I suppose, a fine invention for fools and knaves; for according to it everyone has to
speak of himself as if he were a fool; and this is a fine levelling down since it then looks as if there were in
the world none but fools and knaves.
The cheapest form of pride is national pride; for the man affected therewith betrays a want of individual
qualities of which he might be proud, since he would not otherwise resort to that which he shares with so
many millions. The man who possesses outstanding personal qualities will rather see most clearly the faults
of his own nation, for he has them constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool, who has nothing in
the world whereof he could be proud, resorts finally to being proud of the very nation to which he belongs.
Pride is an established conviction of one’s own paramount worth in some particular respect, while vanity is
the desire of rousing such a conviction in others, and it is generally accompanied by the secret hope of
ultimately coming to the same conviction oneself. Pride works from within; it is the direct appreciation of
oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without.
Schopenhauer, “Counsels and Maxims,” Parerga und Paralipomena, vol. 1
Joy is like the gold in the Australian mines—found only now and then, as it were, by the caprice of chance,
and according to no rule or law; oftenest in very little grains, and very seldom in heaps.
Schopenhauer, “Counsels and Maxims,” T. Saunders, trans., Parerga und Paralipomena, vol. 1
And so, too, with academies and chairs of philosophy. You have a kind of sign-board hung out to show the
apparent abode of wisdom: but wisdom is another guest who declines the invitation; she is to be found
elsewhere.
Care should be taken not to build the happiness of life upon a broad foundation—not to require a great many
things in order to be happy. For happiness on such a foundation is the most easily undermined. ... The
architecture of happiness follows a plan in this respect just the opposite of that adopted in every other case,
where the broadest foundation offers the greatest security.
We often toil for things which are no longer suited to us when we attain them
We often find something else, nay, something better than what we are looking for... Instead of finding, as we
expected, pleasure, happiness, joy, we get experience, insight, knowledge—a real and permanent blessing,
instead of a fleeting and illusory one.
A man should never try to purchase pleasure at the cost of pain, or even at the risk of incurring it; to do so is
to pay what is positive and real, for what is negative and illusory; while there is a net profit in sacrificing
pleasure for the sake of avoiding pain. In either case it is a matter of indifference whether the pain follows
the pleasure or precedes it.
In moments free from pain, our restless wishes present, as it were in a mirror, the image of a happiness that
has no counterpart in reality, seducing us to follow it; in doing so we bring pain upon ourselves, and that is
something undeniably real.
437
We are apt to forget that every day is an integral, and therefore irreplaceable portion of life, and to look upon
life as though it were a collective idea or name which does not suffer if one of the individuals it covers is
destroyed.
We should be more likely to appreciate and enjoy the present, if, in those good days when we are well and
strong, we did not fail to reflect how, in sickness and sorrow, every past hour that was free from pain and
privation seemed in our memory so infinitely to be envied—as it were, a lost paradise, or some one who was
only then seen to have acted as a friend. But we live through our days of happiness without noticing them; it
is only when evil comes upon us that we wish them back.
Limitations always make for happiness. We are happy in proportion as our range of vision, our sphere of
work, our points of contact with the world, are restricted and circumscribed. We are more likely to feel
worried and anxious if these limits are wide; for it means that our cares, desires and terrors are increased and
intensified. ... To limit the sphere of outward activity is to relieve the will of external stimulus; to limit the
sphere of our intellectual efforts is to relieve the will of internal sources of excitement. ... Simplicity,
therefore, as far as it can be attained, and even monotony, in our manner of life, if it does not mean that we
are bored, will contribute to happiness; just because, under such circumstances, life, and consequently the
burden which is the essential concomitant of life, will be least felt. Our existence will glide on peacefully like
a stream which no waves or whirlpools disturb.
Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims, T. Saunders, trans., § 6
Whether we are in a pleasant or a painful state depends, ultimately, upon the kind of matter that pervades and
engrosses our consciousness. In this respect, purely intellectual occupation, for the mind that is capable of it,
will, as a rule, do much more in the way of happiness than any form of practical life, with its constant
alternations of success and failure, and all the shocks and torments it produces.
Just as a life devoted to outward activity will distract and divert a man from study, and also deprive him of
that quiet concentration of mind which is necessary for such work; so, on the other hand, a long course of
thought will make him more or less unfit for the noisy pursuits of real life. It is advisable, therefore, to
suspend mental work for a while, if circumstances happen which demand any degree of energy in affairs of a
practical nature.
To live at random, in the hurly-burly of business or pleasure, without ever reflecting upon the past,—to go
on, as it were, pulling cotton off the reel of life—is to have no clear idea of what we are about; and a man
who lives in this state will have chaos in his emotions and certain confusion in his thoughts; as is soon
manifest by the abrupt and fragmentary character of his conversation, which becomes a kind of mincemeat.
A man will be all the more exposed to this fate in proportion as he lives a restless life in the world, amid a
crowd of various impressions and with a correspondingly small amount of activity on the part of his own
mind.
Experience of the world may be looked upon as a kind of text, to which reflection and knowledge form the
commentary. Where there is great deal of reflection and intellectual knowledge, and very little experience,
the result is like those books which have on each page two lines of text to forty lines of commentary. A great
deal of experience with little reflection and scant knowledge gives us books ... where there are no notes and
much that is unintelligible.
438
When events and circumstances which have influenced us pass away in the course of time, we are unable to
bring back and renew the particular mood or state of feeling which they aroused in us: but we can remember
what we were led to say and do in regard to them; and thus form, as it were, the result, expression and
measure of those events. We should, therefore, be careful to preserve the memory of our thoughts at
important points in our life; and herein lies the great advantage of keeping a journal.
It is natural for great minds—the true teachers of humanity—to care little about the constant
company of others; just as little as the schoolmaster cares for joining in the gambols of the noisy crowd
of boys which surround him. The mission of these great minds is to guide mankind over the sea of
error to the haven of truth—to draw it forth from the dark abysses of a barbarous vulgarity up into
the light of culture and refinement.
Men of great intellect live in the world without really belonging to it; and so, from their earliest years, they
feel that there is a perceptible difference between them and other people. But it is only gradually, with the
lapse of years, that they come to a clear understanding of their position.
There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness, revelry, high life: for the whole object of it is
to transform our miserable existence into a succession of joys, delights and pleasures,—a process which
cannot fail to result in disappointment and delusion; on a par, in this respect, with its obligato
accompaniment, the interchange of lies.
As our body is concealed by the clothes we wear, so our mind is veiled in lies. The veil is always there, and it
is only through it that we can sometimes guess at what a man really thinks; just as from his clothes we arrive
at the general shape of his body.
All society necessarily involves, as the first condition of its existence, mutual accommodation and restraint
upon the part of its members. This means that the larger it is, the more insipid will be its tone.
Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims, T. B. Saunders, trans., § 9
A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love
freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free. Constraint is always present in society,
like a companion of whom there is no riddance; and in proportion to the greatness of a man’s
individuality, it will be hard for him to bear the sacrifices which all intercourse with others demands.
If he has to see a great deal of other people who are not of like character with himself, they will exercise a
disturbing influence upon him, adverse to his peace of mind; they will rob him, in fact, of himself, and give
him nothing to compensate for the loss.
While Nature sets very wide differences between man and man in respect both of morality and of intellect,
society disregards and effaces them; or, rather, it sets up artificial differences in their stead,—gradations of
rank and position, which are very often diametrically opposed to those which Nature establishes. The result
of this arrangement is to elevate those whom Nature has placed low, and to depress the few who stand high.
These latter, then, usually withdraw from society, where, as soon as it is at all numerous, vulgarity reigns
supreme.
439
So-called good society recognizes every kind of claim but that of intellect, which is a contraband article; and
people are expected to exhibit an unlimited amount of patience towards every form of folly and stupidity,
perversity and dullness; while personal merit has to beg pardon, as it were, for being present, or else conceal
itself altogether. Intellectual superiority offends by its very existence, without any desire to do so.
The worst of what is called good society is not only that it offers us the companionship of people who are
unable to win either our praise or our affection, but that it does not allow us to be that which we naturally are;
it compels us, for the sake of harmony, to shrivel up, or even alter our shape altogether. Intellectual
conversation, whether grave or humorous, is only fit for intellectual society; it is downright abhorrent to
ordinary people, to please whom it is absolutely necessary to be commonplace and dull. This demands an act
of severe self-denial; we have to forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to become like other people. No
doubt their company may be set down against our loss in this respect; but the more a man is worth, the more
he will find that what he gains does not cover what he loses, and that the balance is on the debit side of the
account; for the people with whom he deals are generally bankrupt—that is to say, there is nothing to be got
from their society which can compensate either for its boredom, annoyance and disagreeableness, or for the
self-denial which it renders necessary. Accordingly, most society is so constituted as to offer a good profit to
anyone who will exchange it for solitude.
Nor is this all. By way of providing a substitute for real—I mean intellectual—superiority, which is seldom
to be met with, and intolerable when it is found, society has capriciously adopted a false kind of superiority,
conventional in its character, and resting upon arbitrary principles,—a tradition, as it were, handed down in
the higher circles, and, like a password, subject to alteration; I refer to bon-ton fashion. Whenever this kind
of superiority comes into collision with the real kind, its weakness is manifest. Moreover, the presence of
good tone means the absence of good sense.
The feeling of self-sufficiency! It is that which restrains those whose personal value is in itself great riches,
from such considerable sacrifices as are demanded by intercourse with the world. ... Ordinary people are
sociable and complaisant just from the very opposite feeling;—to bear others’ company is easier for them
than to bear their own.
People are rendered sociable by their inability to endure solitude, that is to say, their own society. They
become sick of themselves. It is this vacuity of soul which drives them to intercourse with others.
Such people, it may be said, possess only a small fraction of humanity in themselves; and it requires a great
many of them put together to make up a fair amount of it,—to attain any degree of consciousness as men. A
man, in the full sense of the word,—a man par excellence—does not represent a fraction, but a whole
number: he is complete in himself.
The love of life is at bottom only the fear of death; and, in the same way, the social impulse does not rest
directly upon the love of society, but upon the fear of solitude; it is not alone the charm of being in others’
company that people seek, it is the dreary oppression of being alone—the monotony of their own
consciousness—that they would avoid.
440
Ordinary society is... very like the kind of music to be obtained from an orchestra composed of Russian
horns. Each horn has only one note... In the monotonous sound of a single horn, you have a precise
illustration of the effect of most people’s minds. How often there seems to be only one thought there! and no
room for any other. It is easy to see why people are so bored; and also why they are sociable, why they like
to go about in crowds—why mankind is so gregarious. It is the monotony of his own nature that makes a
man find solitude intolerable. ... Put a great many men together, and you may get some result—some music
from your horns!
When men of the better class form a society for promoting some noble or ideal aim, the result almost always
is that the innumerable mob of humanity comes crowding in too. ... Some of them will slip into that society,
or push themselves in, and then either soon destroy it altogether, or alter it so much that in the end it comes
to have a purpose the exact opposite of that which it had at first.
As a general rule, it may be said that a man’s sociability stands very nearly in inverse ratio to his intellectual
value: to say that “so and so” is very unsociable, is almost tantamount to saying that he is a man of great
capacity.
The same thing has been said by all whom Prometheus has formed out of better clay. What pleasure could
they find in the company of people with whom their only common ground is just what is lowest and least
noble in their own nature—the part of them that is commonplace, trivial and vulgar? What do they want with
people who cannot rise to a higher level, and for whom nothing remains but to drag others down to theirs?
With few exceptions, the world offers no choice beyond solitude on one side and vulgarity on the other.
When people remain indoors all day, they become physically very sensitive to atmospheric changes, so that
every little draught is enough to make them ill; so with our temper; a long course of seclusion makes it so
sensitive that the most trivial incidents, words, or even looks, are sufficient to disturb or to vex and offend
us—little things which are unnoticed by those who live in the turmoil of life.
When you find human society disagreeable and feel yourself justified in flying to solitude, you can be so
constituted as to be unable to bear ... it for any length of time, which will probably be the case if you are
young. Let me advise you, then, to form the habit of taking some of your solitude with you into society,
to learn to be to some extent alone even though you are in company; not to say at once what you think, and,
on the other hand, not to attach too precise a meaning to what others say; rather, not to expect much of them,
either morally or intellectually, and to strengthen yourself in the feeling of indifference to their opinion,
which is the surest way of always practicing a praiseworthy toleration. If you do that, you will not live so
much with other people, though you may appear to move amongst them: your relation to them will be of a
purely objective character. This precaution will keep you from too close contact with society, and therefore
secure you against being contaminated or even outraged by it. Society is in this respect like a fire—the
wise man warming himself at a proper distance from it; not coming too close, like the fool, who, on
getting scorched, runs away and shivers in solitude, loud in his complaint that the fire burns.
441
Aristocracies are of three kinds: (1) of birth and rank; (2) of wealth; and (3) of intellect. The last is really the
most distinguished of the three, and its claim to occupy the first position comes to be recognized, if it is only
allowed time to work. So eminent a king as Frederick the Great admitted it—les âmes privilégiées rangent a
l’égal des souverains, as he said to his chamberlain, when the latter expressed his surprise that Voltaire
should have a seat at the table reserved for kings and princes, whilst ministers and generals were relegated to
the chamberlain’s. ... The members of one of these aristocracies usually get on very well with those of
another, and there is no call for envy between them, because their several privileges effect an equipoise.
In the case of a misfortune which has already happened and therefore cannot be altered, you should not allow
yourself to think that it might have been otherwise; still less, that it might have been avoided by such and
such means; for reflections of this kind will only add to your distress and make it intolerable, so that you will
become a tormentor to yourself ... However good this advice may be, it is one-sided and partial. In relieving
and quieting us for the moment, it is no doubt effective enough; but when our misfortunes have resulted—as
is usually the case—from our own carelessness or folly, or, at any rate, partly by our own fault, it is a good
thing to consider how they might have been avoided, and to consider it often in spite of its being a tender
subject—a salutary form of self-discipline, which will make us wiser and better men for the future. If we
have made obvious mistakes, we should not try, as we generally do, to gloss them over, or to find something
to excuse or extenuate them; we should admit to ourselves that we have committed faults, and open our eyes
wide to all their enormity, in order that we may firmly resolve to avoid them in time to come.
Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going
to rest and sleep a little death.
This reining-in of the imagination which I am recommending will also forbid us to summon up the memory
of past misfortune, to paint a dark picture of the injustice or harm that has been done us, the losses we have
sustained, the insults, slights and annoyances to which we have been exposed: for to do that is to rouse into
fresh life all those hateful passions long laid asleep—the anger and resentment which disturb and pollute our
nature. In an excellent parable, Proclus, the Neoplatonist, points out how in every town the mob dwells side
by side with those who are rich and distinguished: so, too, in every man, be he never so noble and dignified,
there is, in the depth of his nature, a mob of low and vulgar desires which constitute him an animal. It will
not do to let this mob revolt or even so much as peep forth from its hiding-place; it is hideous of mien, and its
rebel leaders are those flights of imagination which I have been describing.
If you hold small objects close to your eyes, you limit your field of vision and shut out the world. And, in the
same way, the people or the things which stand nearest, even though they are of the very smallest
consequence, are apt to claim an amount of attention much beyond their due, occupying us disagreeably, and
leaving no room for serious thoughts and affairs of importance. We ought to work against this tendency.
A man should accustom himself to view his intellectual capacities in no other light than that of physiological
functions, and to manage them accordingly—nursing or exercising them as the case may be; remembering
that every kind of physical suffering, malady or disorder, in whatever part of the body it occurs, has its effect
upon the mind.
It is no easy matter to be polite; in so far, I mean, as it requires us to show great respect for everybody,
whereas most people deserve none at all
442
If you feel irritated by the absurd remarks of two people whose conversation you happen to overhear,
you should imagine that you are listening to a dialogue of two fools in a comedy.
If you want your judgment to be accepted, express it coolly and without passion. All violence has its seat in
the will; and so, if your judgment is expressed with vehemence, people will consider it an effort of will, and
not the outcome of knowledge, which is in its nature cold and unimpassioned.
[Ideas concerning the intellect generally and in all respects]
The rationalist …really and quite seriously imagines that forty or fifty years ago, namely before his papa in
nightcap had procreated him and his simple mama had safely brought him forth into this world, he was
simply and absolutely nothing and arose out of nothing precisely at that moment. For only thus can he be not
responsible for anything.
Schopenhauer, “Ideas concerning the intellect generally and in all respects,” Parerga und Paralipomena, Vol. 2, § 27
Band 2
Selbstdenken [Thinking for Oneself]
Wie die zahlreichste Bibliothek, wenn ungeordnet, nicht so viel Nutzen schafft, als eine sehr mäßige, aber
wohlgeordnete; eben so ist die größte Menge von Kenntnissen, wenn nicht eigenes Denken sie
durchgearbeitet hat, viel weniger werth, als eine weit geringere, die aber vielfältig durchdacht worden. Denn
erst durch das allseitige Kombiniren Dessen, was man weiß, durch das Vergleichen jeder Wahrheit mit jeder
andern, eignet man sein eigenes Wissen sich vollständig an und bekommt es in seine Gewalt. Durchdenken
kann man nur was man weiß; daher man etwas lernen soll: aber man weiß auch nur, was man durchdacht hat.
Schopenhauer, „Selbstdenken” Parerga und Paralipomena, Band 2, § 257
The largest library in disorder is not so useful as a smaller but orderly one; in the same way the greatest
amount of knowledge, if it has not been worked out in one's own mind, is of less value than a much smaller
amount that has been fully considered. For it is only when a man combines what he knows from all sides,
and compares one truth with another, that he completely realises his own knowledge and gets it into his
power. A man can only think over what he knows, therefore he should learn something; but a man only
knows what he has pondered.
Schopenhauer, “Thinking for Oneself,” H. Dirks, trans.
Nun aber kann man sich zwar willkürlich appliciren auf Lesen und Lernen; auf das Denken hingegen
eigentlich nicht. Dieses nämlich muß, wie das Feuer durch einen Luftzug, angefacht und unterhalten werden
durch irgend ein Interesse am Gegenstande desselben; welches entweder ein rein objektives, oder aber bloß
ein subjektives seyn mag. Das letztere ist allein bei unfern persönlichen Angelegenheiten vorhanden; das
erster aber nur für die von Natur denkenden Köpfe, denen das Denken so natürlich ist, wie das Athmen,
welche aber sehr selten sind. Daher ist es mit den meisten Gelehrten so wenig.
A man can apply himself of his own free will to reading and learning, while he cannot to thinking. Thinking
must be kindled like a fire by a draught and sustained by some kind of interest in the subject. This interest
may be either of a purely objective nature or it may be merely subjective. The latter exists in matters
concerning us personally, but objective interest is only to be found in heads that think by nature, and to
whom thinking is as natural as breathing; but they are very rare. This is why there is so little of it in most
men of learning.
Lesen ist ein bloßes Surrogat des eigenen Denkens.

Reading is a mere makeshift for original thinking.
Schopenhauer, “On Thinking for Oneself,” Parerga und Paralipomena, E. Payne, trans., Vol. 2, § 260
443
Lesen soll man also nur dann wann die Quelle der eigenen Gedanken stockt; was auch beim besten Kopfe oft
genug der Fall sein wird. Hingegen die eigenen urkräftigen Gedanken verscheuchen um ein Buch zur Hand
zu nehmen ist Sünde wider den heiligen Geist Man gleicht alsdann Dem der aus der freien Natur flieht um
ein Herbarium zu besehn.
You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even
to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is
like deserting untrammeled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes.
Schopenhauer, “On Thinking for Oneself,” Parerga und Paralipomena, Vol. 2, § 260
Hingegen klebt die bloß erlernte Wahrheit uns nur an wie ein angesetztes Glied, ein falscher Zahn, eine
wächserne Nase oder höchstens wie eine rhinoplastische aus fremdem Fleische. Die durch eigenes Denken
erworbene Wahrheit aber gleicht dem natürlichen Gliede: sie allein gehört uns wirklich an. Darauf beruht der
Unterschied zwischen dem Denker und dem bloßen Gelehrten. Daher sieht der geistige Erwerb des
Selbstdenkers aus wie ein schönes Gemälde, das lebendig hervortritt mit richtigem Lichte und Schatten,
gehaltenem Ton vollkommener Harmonie der Farben. Hingegen gleicht der geistige Erwerb des bloßen
Gelehrten einer großen Palette, voll bunter Farben, allenfalls systematisch geordnet, aber ohne Harmonie,
Zusammenhang und Bedeutung.
Truth that has been merely learned is like an artificial limb, a false tooth, a waxen nose; at best, like a
nose made out of another’s flesh; it adheres to us only because it is put on. But truth acquired by
thinking of our own is like a natural limb; it alone really belongs to us. This is the fundamental
difference between the thinker and the mere man of learning.
444
Lesen heißt mit einem fremden Kopfe, statt des eigenen, denken. Nun ist aber dem eigenen Denken, aus
welchem allemal ein zusammenhängendes Ganzes, ein, wenn auch nicht streng abgeschlossenes, System sich
zu entwickeln trachtet, nichts nachtheiliger, als ein, vermöge beständigen Lesens, zu starker Zufluß fremder
Gedanken; weil diese, jeder einem andern Geiste entsprossen, einem andern Systeme angehörend, eine
andere Farbe tragend, nie von selbst zu einem Ganzen des Denkens, des Wissens, der Einsicht und
Ueberzeugung zusammenfließen, vielmehr eine leise babylonische Sprachverwirrung im Kopfe anrichten
und dem Geiste, der sich mit ihnen überfüllt hat, nunmehr alle klare Einsicht benehmen und so ihn beinahe
desorganisiren. Dieser Zustand ist an vielen Gelehrten wahrzunehmen und macht, daß sie an gesundem
Verstande, richtigem Urtheil und praktischem Takte vielen Ungelehrten nachstehn, welche die von außen,
durch Erfahrung, Gespräch und wenige Lektüre ihnen zugekommene geringe Kenntniß stets dem eigenen
Denken untergeordnet und einverleibt haben. Eben Dieses nun thut, nach einem größern Maaßstabe, auch der
wissenschaftliche Denker. Obgleich er nämlich viele Kenntnisse nöthig hat und daher viel lesen muß; so ist
doch sein Geist stark genug, dies Alles zu bewältigen, es zu assimiliren, dem Systeme seiner Gedanken
einzuverleiben und es so dem organisch zusammenhängenden Ganzen seiner immer wachsenden,
großartigen Einsicht unterzuordnen; wobei sein eigenes Denken, wie der Grundbaß der Orgel, stets Alles
beherrscht und nie von fremden Tönen übertäubt wird, wie Dies hingegen der Fall ist in den bloß
polyhistorischen Köpfen, in welchen gleichsam Musikfetzen aus allen Tonarten durcheinanderlaufen und der
Grundton gar nicht mehr zu finden ist.
Reading is thinking with some one else's head instead of one's own. But to think for oneself is to
endeavour to develop a coherent whole, a system, even if it is not a strictly complete one. Nothing is more
harmful than, by dint of continual reading, to strengthen the current of other people's thoughts. These
thoughts, springing from different minds, belonging to different systems, bearing different colours, never
flow together of themselves into a unity of thought, knowledge, insight, or conviction, but rather cram the
head with a Babylonian confusion of tongues; consequently the mind becomes overcharged with them and is
deprived of all clear insight and disorganised. This condition of things may often be discerned in many men
of learning, and it makes them inferior in sound understanding, correct judgment, and practical tact to many
illiterate men, who, by the aid of experience, conversation, and a little reading, have acquired a little
knowledge from without, and made it always subordinate to and incorporated it with their own thoughts.
The scientific thinker also does this to a much greater extent. Although he requires much knowledge and
must read a great deal, his mind is nevertheless strong enough to overcome it all, to assimilate it, to
incorporate it with the system of his thoughts, and to subordinate it to the organic relative unity of his insight,
which is vast and ever-growing. By this means his own thought, like the bass in an organ, always takes the
lead in everything, and is never deadened by other sounds, as is the case with purely antiquarian minds;
where all sorts of musical passages, as it were, run into each other, and the fundamental tone is entirely lost.
The intellectual attainments of a man who thinks for himself resemble a fine painting, where the light and
shade are correct, the tone sustained, the color perfectly harmonized; it is true to life. On the other hand, the
intellectual attainments of the mere man of learning are like a large palette, full of all sorts of colors, which at
most are systematically arranged, but devoid of harmony, connection and meaning.
445
Das charakteristische Merkmal der Geister ersten Ranges ist die Unmittelbarkeit aller ihrer Urtheile. Alles
was sie vorbringen ist Resultat ihres selbsteigenen Denkens und kündigt sich, schon durch den Vortrag,
überall als solches an. Sie haben sonach, gleich den Fürsten, eine Reichsunmittelbarkeit, im Reiche der
Geister: die Uebrigen sind alle mediatisirt; welches schon an ihrem Stil, der kein eigenes Gepräge hat, zu
ersehn ist.
Jeder wahre Selbstdenker also gleicht insofern einem Monarchen: er ist unmittelbar und erkennt
niemanden über sich. Seine Urtheile, wie die Beschlüsse eines Monarchen, entspringen aus seiner eigenen
Machtvollkommenheit und gehn unmittelbar von ihm selbst aus. Denn, so wenig wie der Monarch Befehle,
nimmt er Autoritäten an, sondern läßt nichts gelten, als was er selbst bestätigt hat.—Das Vulgus der Köpfe
hingegen, befangen in allerlei geltenden Meinungen, Autoritäten und Vorurtheilen, gleicht dem Volke,
welches dem Gesetze und Befehle schweigend gehorcht.
The characteristic sign of a mind of the highest standard is the directness of its judgment. Everything it
utters is the result of thinking for itself; this is shown everywhere in the way it gives expression to its
thoughts. Therefore it is, like a prince, an imperial director in the realm of intellect. All other minds are
mere delegates, as may be seen by their style, which has no stamp of its own.
Hence every true thinker for himself is so far like a monarch; he is absolute, and recognises nobody
above him. His judgments, like the decrees of a monarch, spring from his own sovereign power and proceed
directly from himself. He takes as little notice of authority as a monarch does of a command; nothing is valid
unless he has himself authorised it. On the other hand, those of vulgar minds, who are swayed by all kinds of
current opinions, authorities, and prejudices, are like the people which in silence obey the law and
commands.
Dabei aber hat doch nur Das wahren Werth, was Einer zunächst bloß für sich selbst gedacht hat. Man kann
nämlich die Denker eintheilen in solche, die zunächst für sich, und solche, die sogleich für Andere denken.
Jene sind die ächten, sind die Selbstdenker, im zwiefachen Sinne des Worts: sie sind die eigentlichen
Philosophen. Denn ihnen allein ist es Ernst mit der Sache. Auch besteht der Genuß und das Glück ihres
Daseyns eben im Denken. Die andern sind die Sophisten: sie wollen scheinen, und suchen ihr Glück in Dem,
was sie dadurch von Andern zu erlangen hoffen: hierin liegt ihr Ernst. Welcher von beiden Klassen Einer
angehöre, läßt sich bald merken, an seiner ganzen Art und Weise. Lichtenberg ist ein Muster der ersten Art:
Herder gehört schon der zweiten an.
It is what a man has thought out directly for himself that alone has true value. Thinkers may be classed as
follows: those who, in the first place, think for themselves, and those who think directly for others. The
former thinkers are the genuine, they think for themselves in both senses of the word; they are the true
philosophers; they alone are in earnest. Moreover, the enjoyment and happiness of their existence consist in
thinking. The others are the sophists; they wish to seem, and seek their happiness in what they hope to get
from other people; their earnestness consists in this. To which of these two classes a man belongs is soon
seen by his whole method and manner.
446
Wenn man wohl erwägt, wie groß und wie nahe liegend das Problem des Daseyns ist, dieses zweideutigen,
gequälten, flüchtigen, traumartigen Daseyns;—so groß und so nahe liegend, daß, sobald man es gewahr wird,
es alle andern Probleme und Zwecke überschattet und verdeckt;—und wenn man nun dabei vor Augen hat,
wie alle Menschen,—einige wenige und seltene ausgenommen,—dieses Problems sich nicht deutlich
bewußt, ja, seiner gar nicht inne zu werden scheinen, sondern um alles Andere eher, als darum, sich
bekümmern, und dahinleben, nur auf den heutigen Tag und die fast nicht längere Spanne ihrer persönlichen
Zukunft bedacht, indem sie jenes Problem entweder ausdrücklich ablehnen, oder hinsichtlich desselben sich
bereitwillig abfinden lassen mit irgend einem Systeme der Volksmetaphysik und damit ausreichen;—wenn
man, sage ich, Das wohl erwägt; so kann man der Meinung werden, daß der Mensch doch nur sehr im
weitern Sinne ein denkendes Wesen heiße, und wird fortan über keinen Zug von Gedankenlosigkeit, oder
Einfalt, sich sonderlich wundern, vielmehr wissen, daß der intellektuelle Gesichtskreis des Normalmenschen
zwar über den des Thieres,—dessen ganzes Daseyn, der Zukunft und Vergangenheit sich nicht bewußt,
gleichsam eine einzige Gegenwart ist,—hinausgeht, aber doch nicht so unberechenbar weit, wie man wohl
anzunehmen pflegt.
When one considers how great and how close to us the problem of existence is,—this equivocal, tormented,
fleeting, dream-like existence—so great and so close that as soon as one perceives it, it overshadows and
conceals all other problems and aims;—and when one sees how all men—with a few and rare exceptions—
are not clearly conscious of the problem, nay, do not even seem to see it, but trouble themselves about
everything else rather than this, and live on taking thought only for the present day and the scarcely longer
span of their own personal future, while they either expressly give the problem up or are ready to agree with
it, by the aid of some system of popular metaphysics, and are satisfied with this;—when one, I say, reflects
upon this, so may one be of the opinion that man is a thinking being only in a very remote sense, and not feel
any special surprise at any trait of thoughtlessness or folly.
Psychologische Bemerkungen [Psychological Observations]
Das Geld ist die menschliche Glücksäligkeit in abstracto; daher, wer nicht mehr fähig ist, sie in concreto zu
genießen, sein ganzes Herz an dasselbe hängt.
Money is human happiness in the abstract: he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness
in the concrete devotes his heart entirely to money.
Schopenhauer, “Psychological Observations,” Parerga und Paralipomena, Vol. 2, § 320
Man is the only being which can lay claim to possess an individual character. But in most men this
individual character comes to very little in reality; and they may be almost all ranged under certain
classes: ce sont des espèces. Their thoughts and desires, like their faces, are those of the species, or, at
any rate, those of the class to which they belong; and accordingly, they are of a trivial, every-day,
common character, and exist by the thousand. You can usually tell beforehand what they are likely to
do and say. They have no special stamp or mark to distinguish them; they are like manufactured
goods, all of a piece.
Schopenhauer, “Psychological Observations,” R. Dircks, trans., Parerga and Paralipomena, vol. 2
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
Schopenhauer, “Psychological Observations,” Parerga and Paralipomena, vol. 2
No one knows what capacities for doing and suffering he has in himself, until something comes to rouse
them to activity.
447
There are many persons who are trained to be strictly honorable in regard to one particular matter, while they
have little honor to boast of in anything else. Many a man, for instance, will not steal your money; but he will
lay hands on everything of yours that he can enjoy without having to pay for it. A man of business will often
deceive you without the slightest scruple, but he will absolutely refuse to commit a theft.
Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must
go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can
remain at rest.
Men need some kind of external activity, because they are inactive within. Contrarily, if they are active
within, they do not care to be dragged out of themselves; it disturbs and impedes their thoughts in a way that
is often most ruinous to them.
Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head

Genuine contempt is just the reverse of true, genuine pride; it keeps quite quiet and gives no sign of its
existence. For if a man shows that he despises you, he signifies at least this much regard for you, that he
wants to let you know how little he appreciates you; and his wish is dictated by hatred, which cannot exist
with real contempt. On the contrary, if it is genuine, it is simply the conviction that the object of it is a man
of no value at all. Contempt is not incompatible with indulgent and kindly treatment, and for the sake of
one’s own peace and safety, this should not be omitted; it will prevent irritation; and there is no one who
cannot do harm if he is roused to it.
Any incident, however trivial, that rouses disagreeable emotion, leaves an after-effect in our mind, which for
the time it lasts, prevents our taking a clear objective view of the things about us, and tinges all our thoughts:
just as a small object held close to the eye limits and distorts our field of vision.
On Education
A man’s knowledge may be said to be mature, in other words, it has reached the most complete state of
perfection to which he, as an individual, is capable of bringing it, when an exact correspondence is
established between the whole of his abstract ideas and the things he has actually perceived for himself. This
will mean that each of his abstract ideas rests, directly or indirectly, upon a basis of observation, which alone
endows it with any real value; and also that he is able to place every observation he makes under the right
abstract idea which belongs to it.
Schopenhauer, “On Education,” Parerga and Paralipomena, vol. 2
In youth there is generally very little agreement or correspondence between our abstract ideas, which are
merely phrases in the mind, and that real knowledge which we have obtained by our own observation. It is
only later on that a gradual approach takes place between these two kinds of knowledge, accompanied by a
mutual correction of error; and knowledge is not mature until this coalition is accomplished. This maturity or
perfection of knowledge is something quite independent of another kind of perfection, which may be of a
high or a low order—the perfection, I mean, to which a man may bring his own individual faculties, which is
measured, not by any correspondence between the two kinds of knowledge, but by the degree of intensity
which each kind attains.
448
For the practical man the most needful thing is to acquire an accurate and profound knowledge of the ways of
the world. ... The study is difficult enough in itself; but the difficulty is doubled by novels, which represent a
state of things in life and the world, such as, in fact, does not exist. Youth is credulous, and accepts these
views of life, which then become part and parcel of the mind; so that, instead of a merely negative condition
of ignorance, you have positive error—a whole tissue of false notions to start with; and at a later date these
actually spoil the schooling of experience, and put a wrong construction on the lessons it teaches. ... This
generally exercises a baneful influence on their whole life. In this respect those whose youth has allowed
them no time or opportunity for reading novels—those who work with their hands and the like—are in a
position of decided advantage.
A man sees a great many things when he looks at the world for himself, and he sees them from many sides;
but this method of learning is not nearly so short or so quick as the method which employs abstract ideas and
makes hasty generalizations about everything. Experience, therefore, will be a long time in correcting
preconceived ideas, or perhaps never bring its task to an end; for wherever a man finds that the aspect of
things seems to contradict the general ideas he has formed, he will begin by rejecting the evidence it offers as
partial and one-sided; nay, he will shut his eyes to it altogether and deny that it stands in any contradiction at
all with his preconceived notions, in order that he may thus preserve them uninjured. So it is that many a man
carries about a burden of wrong notions all his life long—crotchets, whims, fancies, prejudices, which at last
become fixed ideas. The fact is that he has never tried to form his fundamental ideas for himself out of his
own experience of life, his own way of looking at the world, because he has taken over his ideas ready-made
from other people; and this it is that makes him—as it makes how many others!—so shallow and superficial.
No idea should ever be established in a child’s mind otherwise than by what the child can see for itself, or at
any rate it should be verified by the same means; and the result of this would be that the child’s ideas, if few,
would be well-grounded and accurate. It would learn how to measure things by its own standard rather than
by another’s; and so it would escape a thousand strange fancies and prejudices, and not need to have them
eradicated by the lessons it will subsequently be taught in the school of life. ... And, in general, children
should not form their notions of what life is like from the copy before they have learned it from the original,
to whatever aspect of it their attention may be directed. Instead, therefore, of hastening to place books, and
books alone, in their hands, let them be made acquainted, step by step, with things—with the actual
circumstances of human life. And above all let care be taken to bring them to a clear and objective view of
the world as it is, to educate them always to derive their ideas directly from real life, and to shape them in
conformity with it—not to fetch them from other sources, such as books, fairy tales, or what people say—
then to apply them ready-made to real life. For this will mean that their heads are full of wrong notions, and
that they will either see things in a false light or try in vain to remodel the world to suit their views, and so
enter upon false paths; and that, too, whether they are only constructing theories of life or engaged in the
actual business of it. It is incredible how much harm is done when the seeds of wrong notions are laid in the
mind in those early years, later on to bear a crop of prejudice; for the subsequent lessons, which are learned
from real life in the world have to be devoted mainly to their extirpation. “To unlearn the evil” was the
answer, according to Diogenes Laertius, [VI 7] Antisthenes gave, when he was asked what branch of
knowledge was most necessary; and we can see what he meant.
“To unlearn the evil” was the answer, according to Diogenes Laertius,[VI 7] Antisthenes gave, when he was
asked what branch of knowledge was most necessary
449
No child under the age of fifteen should receive instruction in subjects which may possibly be the vehicle of
serious error, such as philosophy, religion, or any other branch of knowledge where it is necessary to take
large views; because wrong notions imbibed early can seldom be rooted out. ... The child should give its
attention either to subjects where no error is possible at all, such as mathematics, or to those in which there is
no particular danger in making a mistake, such as languages, natural science, history and so on. ... The
faculty of judgment, which cannot come into play without mature experience, should be left to itself; and
care should be taken not to anticipate its action by inculcating prejudice, which will paralyze it forever.
Similes, Parables and Fables
In a field of ripening corn I came to a place which had been trampled down by some ruthless foot; and
as I glanced amongst the countless stalks, every one of them alike, standing there so erect and bearing
the full weight of the ear, I saw a multitude of different flowers, red and blue and violet. How pretty
they looked as they grew there so naturally with their little foliage! But, thought I, they are quite
useless; they bear no fruit; they are mere weeds, suffered to remain only because there is no getting rid
of them. And yet, but for these flowers, there would be nothing to charm the eye in that wilderness of
stalks. They are emblematic of poetry and art, which, in civic life—so severe, but still useful and not
without its fruit—play the same part as flowers in the corn.
Schopenhauer, “Similes, Parables and Fables,” Parerga and Paralipomena, vol. 2, § 380A
The man who goes up in a balloon does not feel as though he were ascending; he only sees the earth sinking
deeper under him.
Schopenhauer, “Similes, Parables and Fables,” Parerga and Paralipomena, vol. 2, § 391A
The Cathedral in Mayence is so shut in by the houses that are built round about it, that there is no one spot
from which you can see it as a whole. This is symbolic of everything great or beautiful in the world. It ought
to exist for its own sake alone, but before very long it is misused to serve alien ends. People come from all
directions wanting to find in it support and maintenance for themselves; they stand in the way and spoil its
effect. To be sure, there is nothing surprising in this, for in a world of need and imperfection everything is
seized upon which can be used to satisfy want. Nothing is exempt from this service, no, not even those very
things which arise only when need and want are for a moment lost sight of—the beautiful and the true,
sought for their own sakes.
Schopenhauer, “Similes, Parables and Fables,” Parerga and Paralipomena, vol. 2, § 394
The charlatan takes very different shapes according to circumstances; but at bottom he is a man who cares
nothing about knowledge for its own sake, and only strives to gain the semblance of it that he may use
it for his own personal ends, which are always selfish and material.
A mother gave her children Aesop’s fables to read, in the hope of educating and improving their minds; but
they very soon brought the book back, and the eldest, wise beyond his years, delivered himself as follows:
This is no book for us; it’s much too childish and stupid. You can’t make us believe that foxes and wolves and
ravens are able to talk; we’ve got beyond stories of that kind! In these young hopefuls you have the
enlightened Rationalists of the future.
FRANZ GRILLPARZER (1791-1872)

Feeling and thinking are actually the blind man who carries the lame
Franz Grillparzer
450
Genius resembles a bell; in order to ring it must be suspended into pure air, and when a foreign body
touches it, its joyful tone is silenced.
Franz Grillparzer, Notebooks and Diaries (1809)
A love that dies has never lived.

The first indication of a young person’s growing smarter is that he no longer understands the things which he
used to consider quite intelligible and self-evident.
Let the will embrace the highest ideals freely and with infinite strength, but let action first take hold of what
lies closest.
Franz Grillparzer, “Rule of Life” (1815)
People of talent resemble a musical instrument more closely than they do a musician. Without outside
help, they produce not a single sound, but given even the slightest touch, and a magnificent tune
emanates from them.
Genius differs from talent not by the amount of original thoughts, but by making the latter fertile and by
positioning them properly, in other words, by integrating everything into a whole, whereas talent produces
only fragments, no matter how beautiful.
Even with limited intelligence, knowing oneself is not as difficult as some say, but to act according to what
one has realized about oneself in real life is as difficult as practicing anything else.
It is open to question whether the highly individualized characters we find in Shakespeare are perhaps not
detrimental to the dramatic effect. The human being disappears to the same degree as the individual emerges.
The graceful flowers of innocence are more valuable than the laurel crown of fame.
Franz Grillparzer, Phaon, in Sappho, act 3, sc. 6 (1819)
No shortcomings of other people cause us to be more intolerant than those which are caricatures of
our own.
Why do I love the ancients so much? Aside from everything else, when I read them, the entire past
between them and me unfolds at the same time.
The spirit of poetry combines the profundity of the philosopher and the child’s delight in bright pictures.
The uneducated person perceives only the individual phenomenon, the partly educated person the
rule, and the educated person the exception.
Turning popular opinion upside down does not make an original.

In certain countries, people seem to think that three asses together make one intelligent person. However, that
is completely wrong. Several asses in concreto make the ass in abstracto and that is a most terrifying animal.
451
I am considered a misanthropist now and then, because I do not socialize with many people. But it’s
only my mind that avoids you, my heart is still with you, and seeks the distance so that it can keep on
loving you.
Franz Grillparzer
The present is never poetic as it serves necessity, necessity, however, is prosaic.

The thing that pleases is not always good and, alas, the good thing does not always please.
Franz Grillparzer, Poems (1869)
The course of modern learning leads from humanism via nationalism to bestiality.
Franz Grillparzer, Poems (1849)
Whoever places his trust into a system will soon be without a home. While you are building your third
story, the two lower ones have already been dismantled.
Franz Grillparzer, “Vischer’s Aesthetics”
A book is quite a beautiful thing, even more so learning. Together, however, all they amount to is called
book-learning.
Franz Grillparzer, “Literary Scholars”
Libussa (1872)
I love the pride whose measure is its own eminence and not the insignificance of someone else.
Franz Grillparzer, Libussa (1872)
So ist er auch denn wie die andern alle:

Ein Sklav' des Nutzens; nur der Neigung Herr,
Um etwa mit Gewinn sie zu verhandeln,
Fahr hin o Hoffnung! erste, letzte du.
Franz Grillparzer, Libussa in Libussa (1872)
He is like all the rest: a slave to profit, a master only to his bent for negotiating the best deal.
Franz Grillparzer, Libussa in Libussa (1872)
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792-1822)

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, “A Defence of Poetry”
Language is a perpetual Orphic song

Which rules with Daedal harmony the throng
Of thoughts and forms, which else senseless and shapeless were.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, cited in Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (Chicago: 1948), p. 158
The mind believes that which is least incomprehensible; —it is easier to suppose that the universe has existed
from all eternity than to conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it: if the mind sinks beneath
the weight of one, is it an alleviation to increase the intolerability of the burthen?
God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof: the onus probandi rests on the theist.
452
From the phenomena, which are the objects of our attempt to infer a cause, which we call God, and
gratuitously endow it with all negative and contradictory qualities. From this hypothesis we invent this
general name, to conceal our ignorance of causes and essences. The being called God by no means answers
with the conditions prescribed by Newton; it bears every mark of a veil woven by philosophical conceit, to
hide the ignorance of philosophers even from themselves.
It is only by hearsay (by word of mouth passed down from generation to generation) that whole peoples
adore the God of their fathers and of their priests: authority, confidence, submission and custom with them
take the place of conviction or of proofs
All religious nations are founded solely on authority; all the religions of the world forbid examination and do
not want one to reason; authority wants one to believe in God; this God is himself founded only on the
authority of a few men who pretend to know him, and to come in his name and announce him on earth.
If ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, knowledge of nature is made for their destruction
A God made by man undoubtedly has need of man to make himself known to man.
In a word, man has always respected unknown causes, surprising effects that his ignorance kept him from
unraveling. It was on this debris of nature that man raised the imaginary colossus of the Divinity.
In what respect then do these arguments apply to the Universe, and not apply to God? From
the fitness of the Universe to its end you infer the necessity of an intelligent Creator. But if the fitness
of the Universe, to produce certain effects, be thus conspicuous and evident, how much more exquisite
fitness to his end must exist in the Author of this Universe? If we find great difficulty from its
admirable arrangement in conceiving that the Universe has existed from all eternity, and to resolve
this difficulty suppose a Creator, how much more clearly must we perceive the necessity of this very
Creator’s creation whose perfections comprehend an arrangement far more accurate and just.
The belief of an infinity of creative and created Gods, each more eminently requiring an
intelligent author of his being than the foregoing, is a direct consequence of the premises which you
have stated. The assumption that the Universe is a design, leads to a conclusion that there are [an]
infinity of creative and created Gods, which is absurd. It is impossible indeed to prescribe limits to
learned error, when Philosophy relinquishes experience and feeling for speculation.
Until it is clearly proved that the Universe was created, we may reasonably suppose that it has
endured from all eternity. In a case where two propositions are diametrically opposite, the mind believes that
which is less incomprehensible: it is easier to suppose that the Universe has existed from all eternity, than to
conceive an eternal being capable of creating it. If the mind sinks beneath the weight of one, is it an
alleviation to increase the intolerability of the burthen?
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Eusebes and Theosophus
Julian and Maddalo (1819)

The sense that he was greater than his kind
Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind
By gazing on its own exceeding light.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Julian and Maddalo (1819), line 48
453
The Triumph of Life (1822)
... they who wore
Mitres and helms and crowns, or wreaths of light,
Signs of thought's empire over thought —their lore
Taught them not this, to know themselves; their might
Could not repress the mystery within.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Triumph of Life (1822)
... why God made irreconcilable

Good and the means of good.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Triumph of Life (1822)
THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881)

Qualis artifex pereo.
What an artist dies with me!
Nero's dying words
What is truth? For the majority of people, truth is the majority of counted votes.
Thomas Carlyle, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), November 22
… “Genius” (which means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all).

Thomas Carlyle, Life of Fredrick the Great, Bk. IV, ch. 3
He that works and does some Poem, not he that merely says one, is worthy of the name of Poet.
Thomas Carlyle, Introduction to Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches (1845)
The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-Worship
It is in general more profitable to reckon up our defects than to boast of our attainments.
Thomas Carlyle, Signs of the Times (1829)
On the Choice of Books

http://books.google.com/books?id=e58LAAAAIAAJ
As an author, Necker displays much irregular force of imagination, united with considerable perspicuity and
compass of thought; though his speculations are deformed by an undue attachment to certain leading ideas,
which, harmonizing with his habits of mind, had acquired an excessive preponderance in the course of his
long and uncontroverted meditations. He possessed extensive knowledge, and his works bespeak a
philosophical spirit; but their great and characteristic excellence proceeds from that glow of fresh and
youthful admiration for everything that is amiable or august in the character of man, which, in Necker's heart,
survived all the blighting vicissitudes it had passed through, combining, in a singular union, the fervour of
the stripling with the experience of the sage.
Thomas Carlyle, article on Necker
Here, in the absence of professorial or other office, we live to cultivate literature according to our strength,
and in our own peculiar way.
Thomas Carlyle, describing his retreat to the country, Letter to Goethe
I came hither solely with the design to simplify my way of life, and to secure the independence through
which I could be enabled to remain true to myself. This bit of earth is our own; here we can live, write, and
think, as best pleases ourselves
Thomas Carlyle, describing his retreat to the country, Letter to Goethe
454
A pious, ingenious, altogether human and worthy book; imaging, with graceful honesty and free felicity,
many interesting objects and persons on your life-path, and imaging throughout, what is best of all, a gifted,
gentle, patient, and valiant human soul, as it buffets its way through the billows of the time, and will not
drown though often in danger; cannot be drowned, but conquers and leaves a track of radiance behind it.
Thomas Carlyle, Letter to Hunt, describing Hunt's autobiography, June 17, 1850
I have read your volume—what little of it was known to me before, and the much that was not known—I can
say, with true pleasure. It is written, as few volumes in these days are, with fidelity, with successful care,
with insight and conviction as to matter, with clearness and graceful precision as to manner: in a word, it is
the impress of a mind stored with; elegant accomplishments, gifted with an eye to see, and a heart to
understand; a welcome, altogether recommendable book.
Thomas Carlyle, Letter to David Lester Richardson, December 19, 1837
We are now arrived seemingly pretty near the point when all criticism and proclamation in matters literary
has degenerated into an inane jargon, incredible, unintelligible, inarticulate as the cawing of choughs and
rooks; and many things in that as in other provinces, are in a state of painful and rapid transition. A good
book has no way of recommending itself except slowly and as it were accidentally from hand to hand. The
man that wrote it must abide his time. He needs, as indeed all men do, the faith that this world is built not on
falsehood and jargon but on truth and reason; that no good thing done by any creature of God was, is, or ever
can be lost, but will verily do the service appointed for it, and be found among the general sum-total and all
of things after long times, nay after all time, and through eternity itself. Let him “cast his bread upon the
waters,” therefore, cheerful of heart; “he will find it after many days.”
You feel yourself an exile, in the East; but in the West too it is exile; I know not where under the sun it is not
exile. Here in the Fog-Babylon, amid mud and smoke, in the infinite din of 'vociferous platitude,' and quack
outbellowing quack, with truth and pity on all hands-ground under the wheels, can one call it a home, or a
world? It is a waste chaos, where we have to swim painfully for our life. The utmost a man can do is to swim
there like a man, and hold his peace. For this seems to me a great truth, in any exile or chaos whatsoever, that
sorrow was not given us for sorrow's sake, but always and infallibly as a lesson to us from which we are to
learn somewhat: and which, the somewhat once learned, ceases to be sorrow.
Emerson is perhaps far less notable for what he has spoken or done, than for the many things he has not
spoken and has forborne to do. With uncommon interest I have learned that this, and in such a never-resting,
locomotive country too, is one of those rare men who have withal the invaluable talent of sitting still! That an
educated man, of good gifts and opportunities, after looking at the public arena, and even trying, not with ill
success, what its tasks and its prizes might amount to, should retire for long years into rustic obscurity; and,
amid the all-pervading jingle of dollars and loud chaffering of ambitions and promotions, should quietly,
with cheerful deliberateness, sit down to spend his life not in Mammon-worship, or the hunt for reputation,
influence, place, or any outward advantage whatsoever: this, when we get a notice of it, is a thing really
worth noting.
Thomas Carlyle, Preface to Emerson's Essays
There is a good reason why advice is so seldom followed; this reason namely, that it is so seldom, and can
almost never be, rightly given. No man knows the state of another; it is always to some more or less
imaginary man that the wisest and most honest adviser is speaking.
Thomas Carlyle, Letter, March 13, 1843
455
This old counsel of Johnson's is also good, and universally applicable:— 'Read the book you do honestly feel
a wish and curiosity to read.' The very wish and curiosity indicates that you, then and there, are the person
likely to get good of it. 'Our wishes are presentiments of our capabilities;' that is a noble saying, of deep
encouragement to all true men; applicable to our wishes and efforts in regard to reading as to other things.
Among all the objects that look wonderful or beautiful to you, follow with fresh hope the one which looks
wonderfullest, beautifullest. You will gradually find, by various trials (which trials see that you make honest,
manful ones, not silly, short, fitful ones), what is for you the wonderfullest, beautifullest—what is your true
element and province, and be able to profit by that. True desire, the monition of nature, is much to be
attended to. But here, also, you are to discriminate carefully between true desire and false. The medical men
tell us we should eat what we truly have an appetite for; but what we only falsely have an appetite for we
should resolutely avoid. It is very true; and flimsy, desultory readers, who fly from foolish book to foolish
book, and get good of none, and mischief of all—are not these as foolish, unhealthy eaters, who mistake their
superficial false desire after spiceries and confectioneries for their real appetite, of which even they are not
destitute, though it lies far deeper, far quieter, after solid nutritive food? With these illustrations, I will
recommend Johnson's advice to you.
A man perfects himself by work much more than by reading. They are a growing kind of men that can wisely
combine the two things—wisely, valiantly, can do what is laid to their hand in their present sphere, and
prepare themselves withal for doing other wider things, if such lie before them.
I have had the honour to know Mr. Mazzini for a series of years; and, whatever I may think of his practical
insight and skill in worldly affairs, I can with great freedom testify to all men that he, if I have ever seen one
such, is a man of genius and virtue, a man of sterling veracity, humanity, and nobleness of mind; one of those
rare men, numerable unfortunately but as units in this world, who are worthy to be called martyr-souls; who,
in silence, piously in their daily life, understand and practise what is meant by that.
Thomas Carlyle, Letter, June 18, 1844
Signs of the Times (1829)

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/carlyle/signs1.html
No solitary miscreant, scarcely any solitary maniac, would venture on such actions and imaginations, as large
communities of sane men have, in such circumstances, entertained as sound wisdom.
Were we required to characterise this age of ours by any single epithet, we should be tempted to call it, not
an Heroical, Devotional, Philosophical, or Moral Age, but, above all others, the Mechanical Age. It is the
Age of Machinery, in every outward and inward sense of that word; the age which, with its whole undivided
might, forwards, teaches and practises the great art of adapting means to ends. Nothing is now done directly,
or by hand; all is by rule and calculated contrivance. For the simplest operation, some helps and
accompaniments, some cunning abbreviating process is in readiness. Our old modes of exertion are all
discredited, and thrown aside. On every hand, the living artisan is driven from his workshop, to make room
for a speedier, inanimate one. The shuttle drops from the fingers of the weaver, and falls into iron fingers that
ply it faster.
Not the external and physical alone is now managed by machinery, but the internal and spiritual also.
Here too nothing follows its spontaneous course, nothing is left to be accomplished by old natural
methods. Everything has its cunningly devised implements, its preestablished apparatus; it is not done
by hand, but by machinery.
456
Instruction, that mysterious communing of Wisdom with Ignorance, is no longer an indefinable tentative
process, requiring a study of individual aptitudes, and a perpetual variation of means and methods, to attain
the same end; but a secure, universal, straightforward business, to be conducted in the gross, by proper
mechanism.
Has any man, or any society of men, a truth to speak, a piece of spiritual work to do; they can nowise
proceed at once and with the mere natural organs, but must first call a public meeting, appoint committees,
issue prospectuses, eat a public dinner; in a word, construct or borrow machinery, wherewith to speak it and
do it. Without machinery, they were hopeless, helpless.
These things, which we state lightly enough here, are yet of deep import, and indicate a mighty change in our
whole manner of existence. For the same habit regulates not our modes of action alone, but our modes of
thought and feeling. Men are grown mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand. They have lost faith
in individual endeavour, and in natural force, of any kind. Not for internal perfection, but for external
combinations and arrangements, for institutions, constitutions, for Mechanism of one sort or other, do they
hope and struggle. Their whole efforts, attachments, opinions, turn on mechanism, and are of a mechanical
character.
Consider, for example, the state of Science generally, in Europe, at this period. It is admitted, on all sides,
that the Metaphysical and Moral Sciences are falling into decay, while the Physical are engrossing, every
day, more respect and attention. In most of the European nations there is now no such thing as a Science
of Mind; only more or less advancement in the general science, or the special sciences, of matter.
The science of the age, in short, is physical, chemical, physiological; in all shapes mechanical. Our favourite
Mathematics, the highly prized exponent of all these other sciences, has also become more and more
mechanical. Excellence in what is called its higher departments depends less on natural genius than on
acquired expertness in wielding its machinery. Without undervaluing the wonderful results which a Lagrange
or Laplace educes by means of it, we may remark, that their calculus, differential and integral, is little else
than a more cunningly-constructed arithmetical mill; where the factors, being put in, are, as it were, ground
into the true product, under cover, and without other effort on our part than steady turning of the handle. We
have more Mathematics than ever; but less Mathesis.
We have the greatest admiration for this learned doctor: with what scientific stoicism he walks
through the land of wonders, unwondering; like a wise man through some huge, gaudy, imposing
Vauxhall, whose fire-works, cascades and symphonies, the vulgar may enjoy and believe in,—but
where he finds nothing real but the saltpetre, pasteboard and catgut.
Civil government does by its nature include much that is mechanical, and must be treated accordingly. We
term it indeed, in ordinary language, the Machine of Society, and talk of it as the grand working wheel from
which all private machines must derive, or to which they must adapt, their movements.
457
The Philosopher of this age is not a Socrates, a Plato, a Hooker, or Taylor, who inculcates on men the
necessity and infinite worth of moral goodness, the great truth that our happiness depends on the mind
which is within us, and not on the circumstances which are without us; but a Smith, a De Lolme, a
Bentham, who chiefly inculcates the reverse of this,—that our happiness depends entirely on external
circumstances; nay, that the strength and dignity of the mind within us is itself the creature and consequence
of these. Were the laws, the government, in good order, all were well with us; the rest would care for itself!
Dissentients from this opinion, expressed or implied, are now rarely to be met with; widely and angrily as
men differ in its application, the principle is admitted by all.
It is no longer the moral, religious, spiritual condition of the people that is our concern, but their physical,
practical, economical condition, as regulated by public laws.
There is a science of Dynamics in man's fortunes and nature, as well as of Mechanics. There is a science
which treats of, and practically addresses, the primary, unmodified forces and energies of man, the
mysterious springs of Love, and Fear, and Wonder, of Enthusiasm, Poetry, Religion, all which have a truly
vital and infinite character; as well as a science which practically addresses the finite, modified developments
of these, when they take the shape of immediate “motives,” as hope of reward, or as fear of punishment.
Now it is certain, that in former times the wise men, the enlightened lovers of their kind, who appeared
generally as Moralists, Poets or Priests, did, without neglecting the Mechanical province, deal chiefly with
the Dynamical; applying themselves chiefly to regulate, increase and purify the inward primary powers of
man; and fancying that herein lay the main difficulty, and the best service they could undertake. But a wide
difference is manifest in our age. For the wise men, who now appear as Political Philosophers, deal
exclusively with the Mechanical province; and occupying themselves in counting-up and estimating men's
motives, strive by curious checking and balancing, and other adjustments of Profit and Loss, to guide them to
their true advantage
Consider the great elements of human enjoyment, the attainments and possessions that exalt man's life to its
present height, and see what part of these he owes to institutions, to Mechanism of any kind; and what to the
instinctive, unbounded force, which Nature herself lent him.
Shall we say, for example, that Science and Art are indebted principally to the founders of Schools and
Universities? Did not Science originate rather, and gain advancement, in the obscure closets of the Roger
Bacons, Keplers, Newtons; in the workshops of the Fausts and the Watts; wherever, and in what guise soever
Nature, from the first times downwards, had sent a gifted spirit upon the earth? Again, were Homer and
Shakspeare members of any beneficed guild, or made Poets by means of it? Were Painting and Sculpture
created by forethought, brought into the world by institutions for that end? No; Science and Art have, from
first to last, been the free gift of Nature; an unsolicited, unexpected gift; often even a fatal one.
If we read History with any degree of thoughtfulness, we shall find that checks and balances of Profit and
Loss have never been the grand agents with men, that they have never been roused into deep, thorough, all-
pervading efforts by any computable prospect of Profit and Loss, for any visible, finite object; but always for
some invisible and infinite one.
Man is not the creature and product of Mechanism; but, in a far truer sense, its creator and producer: it is the
noble People that makes the noble Government; rather than conversely.
458
Undue cultivation of the inward or Dynamical province leads to idle, visionary, impracticable courses, and,
especially in rude eras, to Superstition and Fanaticism, with their long train of baleful and well-known evils.
Undue cultivation of the outward, again, though less immediately prejudicial, and even for the time
productive of many palpable benefits, must, in the long-run, by destroying Moral Force, which is the parent
of all other Force, prove not less certainly, and perhaps still more hopelessly, pernicious. This, we take it, is
the grand characteristic of our age. By our skill in Mechanism, it has come to pass, that in the
management of external things we excel all other ages; while in whatever respects the pure moral
nature, in true dignity of soul and character, we are perhaps inferior to most civilised ages.
The infinite, absolute character of Virtue has passed into a finite, conditional one; it is no longer a worship of
the Beautiful and Good; but a calculation of the Profitable.
Our true Deity is Mechanism. It has subdued external Nature for us, and we think it will do all other things.
We are Giants in physical power: in a deeper than metaphorical sense, we are Titans, that strive, by heaping
mountain on mountain, to conquer Heaven also.
We are no longer instinctively driven to apprehend, and lay to heart, what is Good and Lovely, but rather to
inquire, as onlookers, how it is produced, whence it comes, whither it goes. Our favourite Philosophers have
no love and no hatred; they stand among us not to do, nor to create anything, but as a sort of Logic mills, to
grind out the true causes and effects of all that is done and created.
An intellectual dapperling of these times boasts chiefly of his irresistible perspicacity, his “dwelling in the
daylight of truth,” and so forth; which, on examination, turns out to be a dwelling in the rush-light of “closet
logic,” and a deep unconsciousness that there is any other light to dwell in or any other objects to survey with
it.
Wonder, indeed, is, on all hands, dying out: it is the sign of uncultivation to wonder.
Speak to any small man of a high, majestic Reformation, of a high majestic Luther; and forthwith he sets
about “accounting” for it; how the “circumstances of the time” called for such a character, and found him, we
suppose, standing girt and road-ready, to do its errand; how the “circumstances of the time” created,
fashioned, floated him quietly along into the result; how, in short, this small man, had he been there, could
have per formed the like himself! For it is the “force of circumstances” that does everything; the force of one
man can do nothing. Now all this is grounded on little more than a metaphor. We figure Society as a
“Machine,” and that mind is opposed to mind, as body is to body; whereby two, or at most ten, little minds
must be stronger than one great mind. Notable absurdity! For the plain truth, very plain, we think is, that
minds are opposed to minds in quite a different way; and one man that has a higher Wisdom, a hitherto
unknown spiritual Truth in him, is stronger, not than ten men that have it not, or than ten thousand, but than
all men that have it not; and stands among them with a quite ethereal, angelic power, as with a sword out of
Heaven's own armory, sky-tempered, which no buckler, and no tower of brass, will finally withstand.
Our “Theories of Taste,” as they are called, wherein the deep, infinite, unspeakable Love of Wisdom and
Beauty, which dwells in all men, is “explained,” made mechanically visible, from “Association” and the like,
...
459
Religion in most countries, more or less in every country, is no longer what it was, and should be,—a
thousand-voiced psalm from the heart of Man to his invisible Father, the fountain of all Goodness, Beauty,
Truth, and revealed in every revelation of these; but for the most part, a wise prudential feeling grounded on
mere calculation; a matter, as all others now are, of Expediency and Utility; whereby some smaller quantum
of earthly enjoyment may be exchanged for a far larger quantum of celestial enjoyment. Thus Religion too is
Profit, a working for wages; not Reverence, but vulgar Hope or Fear.
The true Church of England, at this moment, lies in the Editors of its Newspapers. These preach to the people
daily, weekly; admonishing kings themselves; advising peace or war, with an authority which only the first
Reformers, and a long-past class of Popes, were possessed of; inflicting moral censure; imparting moral
encouragement, consolation, edification; in all ways diligently “administering the Discipline of the Church.”
Critical and Miscellaneous Essays

The great law of culture is: Let each become all that he was created capable of being.
Thomas Carlyle, “Richter,” Critical and Miscellaneous Essays
He who would write heroic poems should make his whole life a heroic poem.
Thomas Carlyle, “Life of Schiller,” Critical and Miscellaneous Essays
I came hither [Craigenputtoch] solely with the design to simplify my way of life and to secure the
independence through which I could be enabled to remain true to myself.
Thomas Carlyle, Letter to Goethe, (1828)
With what scientific stoicism he walks through the land of wonders, unwondering.
Thomas Carlyle, “Signs of the Times,” Critical and Miscellaneous Essays
The eye of the intellect sees in all objects what it brought with it: the means of seeing.
Thomas Carlyle, “Varnhagen von Ense’s Memoirs,” Critical and Miscellaneous Essays
Sartor Resartus (1834)

That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy.
Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, Bk. III, ch. 4
Inaugural Address at Edinburgh

http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/Text/Carlyle’s_Address.html
I can only hope that, with you, too, it may endure to the end,—this noble desire to honour those whom you
think worthy of honour; and that you will come to be more and more select and discriminate in the choice of
the object of it.
Thomas Carlyle, “Inaugural Address at Edinburgh”
Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether
If you will believe me, you who are young, yours is the golden season of life. As you have heard it called, so
it verily is, the seed-time of life; in which, if you do not sow, or if you sow tares instead of wheat, you cannot
expect to reap well afterwards, and you will arrive at little.
460
Pursue your studies in the way your conscience can name honest. More and more endeavour to do that. Keep,
I should say for one thing, an accurate separation between what you have really come to know in your minds
and what is still unknown. Leave all that latter on the hypothetical side of the barrier, as things afterwards to
be acquired, if acquired at all; and be careful not to admit a thing as known when you do not yet know it.
Count a thing known only when it is imprinted clearly on your mind, and has become transparent to you, so
that you may survey it on all sides with intelligence. There is such a thing as a man endeavouring to persuade
himself, and endeavouring to persuade others, that he knows things, when he does not know more than the
outside skin of them; and yet he goes flourishing about with them. There is also a process called cramming,
in some Universities,—that is, getting-up such points of things as the examiner is likely to put questions
about. Avoid all that, as entirely unworthy of an honourable mind.
On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (1841)

http://books.google.com/books?id=_ikZAAAAYAAJ
You remember that fancy of Plato’s, of a man who had grown to maturity in some dark distance, and was
brought on a sudden into the upper air to see the sun rise. What would his wonder be, his rapt astonishment at
the sight we daily witness with indifference! With the free open sense of a child, yet with the ripe faculty of a
man, his whole heart would be kindled by that sight, he would discern it well to be Godlike, his soul would
fall down in worship before it. Now, just such a childlike greatness was in the primitive nations. The first
Pagan Thinker among rude men, the first man that began to think, was precisely this child-man of Plato’s.
Simple, open as a child, yet with the depth and strength of a man. Nature had as yet no name to him ; he had
not yet united under a name the infinite variety of sights, sounds, shapes and motions, which we now
collectively name Universe, Nature, or the like,—and so with a name dismiss it from us. To the wild
deephearted man all was yet new, not veiled under names or formulas; it stood naked, flashing-in on him
there, beautiful, awful, unspeakable. Nature was to this man, what to the Thinker and Prophet it forever is
preternatural. This green flowery rock-built earth, the trees, the mountains, rivers, manysounding seas;—that
great deep sea of azure that swims overhead; the winds sweeping through it; the black cloud fashioning itself
together, now pouring out fire, now hail and rain; what is it? Ay, what? At bottom we do not yet know; we
can never know at all. It is not by our superior insight that we escape the difficulty; it is by our superior
levity, out inattention, our want of insight. It is by not thinking that we cease to wonder at it. Hardened round
us, encasing wholly every notion we form, is a wrappage of traditions, hearsays, mere words. We call that
fire of the black thunder-cloud ‘electricity,’ and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass
and silk: but what is it? What made it? Whence comes it? Whither goes it? Science has done much for us; but
it is a poor science that would hide from us the great deep sacred infinitude of Nescience, whither we can
never penetrate, on which all science swims as a mere superficial film. This world, after all our science and
sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.
Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (1907), pp. 9-10
Atheistic science babbles poorly of it, with scientific nomenclatures, experiments and what-not, as if it were
a poor dead thing, to be bottled-up in Leyden jars and sold over counters: but the natural sense of man, in all
times, if he will honestly apply his sense, proclaims it to be a living thing,—ah, an unspeakable, godlike
thing; towards which the best attitude for us, after never so much science, is awe, devout prostration and
humility of soul; worship if not in words, then in silence.
Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (1907), p. 11
461
What in such a time as ours it requires a Prophet or Poet to teach us, namely, the stripping-off of those poor
undevout wrappages, nomenclatures and scientific hearsays,—this, the ancient earnest soul, as yet,
unencumbered with these things, did for itself. The world, which is now divine only to the gifted, was then
divine to whosoever would turn his eye upon it. He stood bare before it face to face. ‘All was Godlike or
God:’—Jean Paul still finds it so; the giant Jean Paul, who has power to escape I out of hearsays: but there
then were no hearsays. … To these primeval men, all things and everything they saw exist beside them were
an emblem of the Godlike, of some God.
I am well aware that in these days Hero-worship, the thing I call Hero-worship, professes to have gone out,
and finally ceased. This, for reasons which it will be worth while some time to inquire into, is an age that as
it were denies the existence of great men; denies the desirableness of great men. Show our critics a great
man, a Luther for example, they begin to what they call ‘account’ for him; not to worship him, but take the
dimensions of him,—and bring him out to be a little kind of man! He was the ‘creature of the Time,’ they
say; the Time called him forth, the Time did everything, he nothing—but what we the little critic could have
done too! This seems to me but melancholy work. The Time call forth? Alas, we have known Times call
loudly enough for their great man ; but not find him when they called!
The unbelieving French believe in their Voltaire; and burst-out round him into very curious Hero-worship.
... No people ever were so little prone to admire at all as those French of Voltaire. Persiflage was the
character of their whole mind; adoration had nowhere a place in it. Yet see! The old man of Ferney [Voltaire]
comes up to Paris; an old, tottering, infirm man of eighty-four years. They feel that he too is a kind of Hero;
that he has spent his life in opposing error and injustice, delivering Calases, unmasking hypocrites in high
places;—in short that he too, though in a strange way, has fought like a valiant man. They feel withal that, if
persiflage be the great thing, there never was such a persifleur. He is the realised ideal of every one of them;
the thing they are all wanting to be.
The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History
The root of all other imaginable sins … consists in the heart and soul of the man never having been open to
Truth;—”living in a vain show.” Such a man not only utters and produces falsehoods, but is himself a
falsehood.
Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History
All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.
What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us.
For one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.
HEINRICH HEINE (1797-1856)

Mark this well, you proud men of action: You are nothing but the unwitting agents of the men of
thought who often, in quiet self-effacement, mark out most exactly all your doings in advance.
Heinrich Heine, History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany, Vol. III (1834)
462
When an individual endeavors to lift himself above his fellows, he is dragged down by the mass, either by
means of ridicule or of calumny. No one shall be more virtuous or more intellectually gifted than others.
Whoever, by the irresistible force of genius, rises above the common herd is certain to be ostracized by
society, which will pursue him with such merciless derision and detraction that at last he will be compelled to
retreat into the solitude of his thoughts.
Heinrich Heine, Heinrich Heine: His Wit, Wisdom, Poetry (1892), p. 26
Man erlebt nicht das, was man erlebt, sondern, wie man es erlebt.
Heinrich Heine
Christ rode on an ass, but now asses ride on Christ.

Heinrich Heine
Ich wollt’, meine Schmerzen ergössen

Sich all’ in ein einziges Wort,
Das gäb’ ich den lustigen Winden,
Die trügen es lustig fort.
Sie tragen zu dir, Geliebte,

Das schmerzerfüllte Wort;
Du hörst es zu jeder Stunde,
Du hörst es an jedem Ort.
Und hast du zum nächtlichen Schlummer

Geschlossen die Augen kaum,
So wird dich mein Auge verfolgen
Bis in den tiefsten Traum.
Heinrich Heine, Buch der Lieder (1827) #61
Gedanken und Einfälle [Thoughts and Fancies]

German: http://books.google.com/books?id=iRhKAAAAIAAJ
Bediente, die keinen Herrn haben, sind darum doch keine freie Menschen — die Dienstbarkeit ist in ihrer
Seele.
Heinrich Heine, „Gedanken und Einfälle,“ Sämmtliche Werke (1887), Band 12, S. 202
Servants that are without a master are not on that account free men: servility is in their soul.
Heinrich Heine, “Thoughts and Fancies,” Wit Wisdom and Pathos of Heinrich Heine, J. Snodgrass, trans. (1888), p. 289
Der Deutsche gleicht dem Sklaven, der seinem Herrn gehorcht, ohne Fessel, ohne Peitsche, durch das bloße
Wort, ja durch einen Blick. Die Knechtschaft ist in ihm selbst, in seiner Seele; schlimmer als die materielle
Sklaverei ist die spiritualisierte. Man muss die Deutschen von innen befreien, von außen hilft Nichts.
Heinrich Heine, „Gedanken und Einfälle,“ Sämmtliche Werke (1887), Band 12, S. 202
The German is like a slave who obeys his lord without chains or the lash, at mere command, aye, even at a
sign. Slavery is in the man himself, in his soul. Spiritual is worse than material slavery. The Germans must
be freed from within; from without there is no help for them.
Heinrich Heine, “Thoughts and Fancies,” Wit Wisdom and Pathos of Heinrich Heine, J. Snodgrass, trans. (1888), p. 289
463
Die Romantische Schule [The Romantic School]
German: http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/367/3
Although the Protestant Church is accused of much disastrous bigotry, one claim to immortal fame must be
granted it: by permitting freedom of inquiry in the Christian faith and by liberating the minds of men from
the yoke of authority, it enabled freedom of inquiry in general to take root in Germany, and made it possible
for science to develop independently. German philosophy, though it now puts itself on an equal basis with
the Protestant Church or even above it, is nonetheless only its daughter; as such it always owes the mother a
forbearing reverence.
Heinrich Heine, “The Romantic School,” The Romantic School and Other Essays, J. Hermand, ed. (1985), P. 24
Religion and Philosophy in Germany

In after ages, when humanity will have regained robust health, when peace will have been once more
established between body and soul, and they again live together in primal harmony, it will scarcely be
possible for men to comprehend the unnatural enmity Christianity has set between them. Happier and fairer
generations, born of free unions, and nurtured in a religion of joy, will smile with pity at their poor ancestors,
who passed their lives in melancholy abstinence from all the enjoyments of this beautiful world, and who
mortified the warm, rosy-hued flesh till they became mere pale cold ghosts.
Heinrich Heine, Religion and Philosophy in Germany, see Heine’s Wit, Wisdom and Pathos (1888), pp. 97-98
Luther ... could lose himself entirely in pure spirituality. And yet he was fully aware of the glories of this
present world. ... He was a complete man, I might say, an absolute man, in whom there was no discord
between matter and spirit.
Heinrich Heine, Religion and Philosophy in Germany, see Heine’s Wit, Wisdom and Pathos (1888), pp. 104-105
The dwarf standing on the shoulders of the giant can indeed see further than his supporter, especially if he
puts on spectacles; but to such a lofty survey is wanted the elevated feeling, the giant-heart, to which we
cannot lay claim.
Heinrich Heine, Religion and Philosophy in Germany, see Heine’s Wit, Wisdom and Pathos (1888), p. 106
John Bull is a born materialist, and his Christian spiritualism is for the most part traditional hypocrisy, or
mere material dullness; his flesh resigns itself because the spirit does not come to its aid.
Heinrich Heine, Religion and Philosophy in Germany, see Heine’s Wit, Wisdom and Pathos (1888), p. 116
HONORÉ DE BALZAC (1799-1850)

The world belongs to me because I understand it.
Balzac, cited in The Closing of the American Mind (New York: 1988), p. 16
A virtuous woman has in her heart one fibre more or one fibre less than other women. Either she is stupid or
sublime.
Balzac, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (1947), p. 222
We must learn to deal firmly with the sorrows that make us ill, for love does not linger by a sick-bed.
Melancholy, at first, no doubt, lends an attractive grace, but it ends by dragging the features and blighting the
loveliest face.
Balzac, in The Wisdom of Balzac (New York: 1923), p. 7
Not knowing that the mainspring of happiness is in ourselves, some demand it of the circumstances of
life.
Balzac, in The Wisdom of Balzac (New York: 1923), p. 9
464
Joy can express itself only among equals.
Balzac, The Vendetta in The Wisdom of Balzac (New York: 1923), p. 11
Are not all young men ready to trust the promise of a pretty face and to infer beauty of soul from
beauty of feature? An indefinable impulse leads them to believe that moral perfection must co-exist
with physical perfection.
Balzac, A Second Home in The Wisdom of Balzac (New York: 1923), p. 14
Is it not an offence to the weakest creature that can think at all to be compelled to do, by the will of another,
anything that he would otherwise have done simply of his own accord? Of all forms of tyranny, the most
odious is that which constantly robs the soul of the merit of its thoughts and actions. It has to abdicate
without having reigned. The soft words we are readiest to speak, the kind feelings we most love to express,
die when we are commanded to utter them.
Balzac, A Second Home in The Wisdom of Balzac (New York: 1923), p. 14
A hobby is a happy medium between a passion and a monomania.

Balzac, La Grande Bretêche in The Wisdom of Balzac (New York: 1923), p. 24
Ought we not to bear in mind the evanescent nature of passion? Is it not simple prudence to make provision
beforehand against the calamities incident to a change of feelings?
Balzac, Letters of Two Brides in The Wisdom of Balzac (New York: 1923), p. 27
It is the mark of the great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and
touching, childlike and of the race of giants.
Our happiness depends on certain social hypocrisies to which you will never stoop.
The good we do to others is spoilt unless we efface ourselves so completely that those we help have no
sense of inferiority.
Love is a vast business, and they who would succeed in it should have no other.
Balzac, Letters of Two Brides in The Wisdom of Balzac (New York: 1923), p. 31, corrected
The passion of love belongs rightly to a state of nature, and has only been purloined by civilization.
By substitution a lasting sentiment for the mere passing frenzy of nature, society has succeeded in creating
the greatest of all human inventions—the family. … To the accomplishment of this end, it has sacrificed the
individual.
Even the madness of gifted people is not that of fools.

People are apt to attribute kindness to an easy temper, and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a
generous nature; while, one the other hand, the ill-natured get credit for all the evil they refrain from.
Balzac, Letters of Two Brides in The Wisdom of Balzac (New York: 1923), p. 34 [modified]
Society … will allow none to be rich at once in its regard and in indulgence of passion.
To understand Dante is to be as great as he.

Balzac
465
L’homme qui peut empreindre perpétuellement la pensée dans le fait est un homme de génie.
Balzac
The man whose action habitually bears the stamp of his mind is a man of genius.
Balzac, Une Fille d’Ève
La province est la province: elle est ridicule quand elle veut singer Paris.
Balzac
The provinces are provinces; they are only ridiculous when they mimic Paris.
Balzac, Pierrette
Les petits esprits ont besoin de despotisme pour le jeu de leurs nerfs, comme les grandes âmes ont soif
d’égalité pour l’action du cœur. Or les êtres étroits s’étendent aussi bien par la persécution que par la
bienfaisance; ils peuvent s’attester leur puissance par un empire ou cruel ou charitable sur autrui, mais ils
vont du côté où les pousse leur tempérament. Ajoutez le véhicule de l’intérêt, et vous aurez l’énigme de la
plupart des choses sociales.
Balzac
Little minds need despotism to relieve their nerves, just as great souls thirst for equality to exercise their
hearts. Narrow natures expand by persecuting as much as others through beneficence; they prove their power
over their fellows by cruel tyranny as others do by loving kindness; they simply go the way their
temperaments drive them. Add to this the propulsion of self-interest and you have the solution to the enigma
of most social matters.
Balzac, Pierrette
La Peau de chagrin (1831)

La pensée est la clef de tous les trésors, elle procure les joies de l’avare sans donner ses soucis. Aussi ai-je
plané sur le monde, où mes plaisirs ont toujours été des jouissances intellectuelles.
Balzac, La Peau de chagrin (1831)
Thought is a key to all treasures; the miser’s gains are ours without his cares. Thus I have soared
above this world, where my enjoyments have been intellectual joys.
Le calme et le silence nécessaires au savant ont je ne sais quoi de doux, d’enivrant comme l’amour.
L’exercice de la pensée, la recherche des idées, les contemplations tranquilles de la science nous prodiguent
d’ineffables délices, indescriptibles comme tout ce qui participe de l’intelligence, dont les phénomènes sont
invisibles à nos sens extérieurs.
The tranquility and peace that a scholar needs is something as sweet and exhilarating as love. Unspeakable
joys are showered on us by the exertion of our mental faculties; the quest of ideas, and the tranquil
contemplation of knowledge; delights indescribable, because purely intellectual and impalpable to our
senses.
L’étude prête une sorte de magie à tout ce qui nous environne.

Study lends a kind of enchantment to everything that surrounds us.
Balzac, La Peau de chagrin
Les gens sans esprit ressemblent aux mauvaises herbes qui se plaisent dans les bons terrains, et ils aiment
d’autant plus être amusés qu’ils s’ennuient eux-mêmes.
Persons without minds are like bad weeds that delight in good earth; they want to be amused by others, all
the more because they are dull within.
Balzac, La Peau de chagrin
466
La Fille aux yeux d'or [The Girl with the Golden Eyes] (1833)
Thus we are brought to the third circle of this hell, which, perhaps, will some day find its Dante. In this third
social circle, a sort of Parisian belly, in which the interests of the town are digested, and where they are
condensed into the form known as business, there moves and agitates, as by some acrid and bitter intestinal
process, the crowd of lawyers, doctors, notaries, councillors, business men, bankers, big merchants,
speculators, and magistrates. … Time is their tyrant: it fails them, it escapes them; they can neither expand it
nor cut it short. What soul can remain great, pure, moral, and generous, and, consequently, what face retain
its beauty in this depraving practice of a calling which compels one to bear the weight of the public sorrows,
to analyze them, to weigh them, estimate them, and mark them out by rule? Where do these folk put aside
their hearts? I do not know; but they leave them somewhere or other, when they have any, before they
descend each morning into the abyss of the misery which puts families on the rack. For them there is no such
thing as mystery; they see the reverse side of society, whose confessors they are, and despise it. Then,
whatever they do, owing to their contact with corruption, they either are horrified at it and grow gloomy, or
else, out of lassitude, or some secret compromise, espouse it. In fine, they necessarily become callous to
every sentiment, since man, his laws and his institutions, make them steal, like jackals, from corpses that are
still warm. At all hours the financier is trampling on the living, the attorney on the dead, the pleader on the
conscience. Forced to be speaking without a rest, they all substitute words for ideas, phrases for feelings, and
their soul becomes a larynx. Neither the great merchant, nor the judge, nor the pleader preserves his sense of
right; they feel no more, they apply set rules that leave cases out of count.
Balzac, The Girl with the Golden Eyes (1833), E. Marriage, trans.
They know their profession, but they ignore anything unconnected with their profession. So, to protect their
self-esteem, they call everything into question, criticize right and left; seem skeptical but are actually
gullible, and drown their minds in interminable discussions. Almost all of them adopt convenient social,
literary, or political prejudices so as to dispense with having to form an opinion of their own, just as
they place their conscience in the shelter of common law, or of the commercial court. Having left home
early in order to become remarkable men, they become mediocre, and crawl along the heights of
society. Accordingly, their faces present us with this sour pallor; these false complexions, these dull,
lined eyes, these talkative and sensual mouths where the observer recognizes the symptoms of the
degeneration of thought and its turning round and round in the dull circle of specialization that kills
the generative faculties of the brain, the gift of seeing the big picture, of generalizing and deducing.
Balzac, The Girl with the Golden Eyes (1833)
Their genuine stupidity lies hid beneath their specialism. They know their business, but are ignorant of
everything which is outside it. So that to preserve their self-conceit they question everything, are crudely and
crookedly critical. They appear to be sceptics and are in reality simpletons; they swamp their wits in
interminable arguments. Almost all conveniently adopt social, literary, or political prejudices, to do away
with the need of having opinions, just as they adapt their conscience to the standard of the Code or the
Tribunal of Commerce. Having started early to become men of note, they turn into mediocrities, and crawl
over the high places of the world. So, too, their faces present the harsh pallor, the deceitful coloring, those
dull, tarnished eyes, and garrulous, sensual mouths, in which the observer recognizes the symptoms of the
degeneracy of the thought and its rotation in the circle of a special idea which destroys the creative faculties
of the brain and the gift of seeing in large, of generalizing and deducing. No man who has allowed himself to
be caught in the revolutions of the gear of these huge machines can ever become great.
… people crushed with business, who, if they attain their end, are literally killed in its attainment
467
From the lowest gutters, where its stream commences, from the little shops where it is stopped by puny
coffer-dams, from the heart of the counting-houses and great workshops, where its volume is that of ingots—
gold, in the shape of dowries and inheritances, guided by the hands of young girls or the bony fingers of age,
courses towards the aristocracy, where it will become a blazing, expansive stream.
The wealthy obtain in Paris ready-made wit and science—formulated opinions which save them the
need of having wit, science, or opinion of their own.
If a few men of character indulge in witticism, at once subtle and refined, they are misunderstood; soon, tired
of giving without receiving, they remain at home, and leave fools to reign over their territory. This hollow
life, this perpetual expectation of a pleasure which never comes, this permanent ennui and emptiness of soul,
heart, and mind, the lassitude of the upper Parisian world, is reproduced on its features, and stamps its
parchment faces, its premature wrinkles, that physiognomy of the wealthy upon which impotence has set its
grimace, in which gold is mirrored, and whence intelligence has fled.
The exorbitant movement of the proletariat, the corrupting influence of the interests which consume the two
middle classes, the cruelties of the artist's thought, and the excessive pleasure which is sought for incessantly
by the great, explain the normal ugliness of the Parisian physiognomy. It is only in the Orient that the human
race presents a magnificent figure, but that is an effect of the constant calm affected by those profound
philosophers with their long pipes, their short legs, their square contour, who despise and hold activity in
horror, whilst in Paris the little and the great and the mediocre run and leap and drive, whipped on by an
inexorable goddess, Necessity—the necessity for money, glory, and amusement.
Père Goriot (1835)

Notre cœur est un trésor, videz-le d’un coup, vous êtes ruinés. Nous ne pardonnons pas plus à un sentiment
de s’être montré tout entier qu’à un homme de ne pas avoir un sou à lui.
Balzac, Père Goriot (1835)
Our heart is a treasury; if you pour out all its wealth at once, you are bankrupt. We show no more mercy to
the affection that reveals its utmost extent than we do to another kind of prodigal who has not a penny left.
L’homme est imparfait. Il est parfois plus ou moins hypocrite, et les niais disent alors qu’il a ou n’a pas de
mœurs.
Man is imperfect. He is at some times more or less hypocritical than at others, and then simpletons say
that his morality is high or low.
Balzac, Père Goriot, my translation
VICTOR HUGO (1802-1885)

Unglück macht Menschen. Wohlstand macht Ungeheuer.
Victor Hugo
As the purse is emptied, the heart is filled.

Victor Hugo
God is behind all things, but all things hide God.

Victor Hugo
468
On résiste à l'invasion des armées; on ne résiste pas à l'invasion des idées.
One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas.
Victor Hugo, Histoire d'un Crime, written 1852, published 1877, ch. X.
There are thoughts which are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the posture of the body, the soul is
on its knees.
Victor Hugo
L’Homme qui rit [The Man Who Laughs] (1869)

They had done him the honor to take him for a madman, but had set him free on discovering that he was only
a poet.
Victor Hugo, The Man Who Laughs (1869)
Any one who has lived a solitary life knows how deeply seated monologue is in one's nature. Speech
imprisoned frets to find a vent. To harangue space is an outlet. To speak out aloud when alone is as it were to
have a dialogue with the divinity which is within
Fortunately Ursus had never gone into the Low Countries; there they would certainly have weighed him, to
ascertain whether he was of the normal weight, above or below which a man is a sorcerer. In Holland this
weight was sagely fixed by law. Nothing was simpler or more ingenious. It was a clear test. They put you in
a scale, and the evidence was conclusive if you broke the equilibrium. Too heavy, you were hanged; too
light, you were burned. To this day the scales in which sorcerers were weighed may be seen at Oudewater,
but they are now used for weighing cheeses; how religion has degenerated!
Ursus had communicated to Homo a portion of his talents: such as to stand upright, to restrain his rage into
sulkiness, to growl instead of howling, etc.; and on his part, the wolf had taught the man what he knew—to
do without a roof, without bread and fire, to prefer hunger in the woods to slavery in a palace.
By friction gold loses every year a fourteen hundredth part of its bulk. This is what is called the Wear. Hence
it follows that on fourteen hundred millions of gold in circulation throughout the world, one million is lost
annually. This million dissolves into dust, flies away, floats about, is reduced to atoms, charges, drugs,
weighs down consciences, amalgamates with the souls of the rich whom it renders proud, and with those of
the poor whom it renders brutish.
He did not smile, as we have already said, but he used to laugh; sometimes, indeed frequently, a bitter laugh.
There is consent in a smile, while a laugh is often a refusal.
Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland and Countess of Southampton, had a marmoset for a page. Frances Sutton,
Baroness Dudley, eighth peeress in the bench of barons, had tea served by a baboon clad in cold brocade,
which her ladyship called My Black. Catherine Sedley, Countess of Dorchester, used to go and take her seat
in Parliament in a coach with armorial bearings, behind which stood, their muzzles stuck up in the air, three
Cape monkeys in grand livery. A Duchess of Medina-Celi, whose toilet Cardinal Pole witnessed, had her
stockings put on by an orang-outang. These monkeys raised in the scale were a counterpoise to men
brutalized and bestialized.
469
It is very fortunate that kings cannot err. Hence their contradictions never perplex us.
Not only did the Comprachicos take away his face from the child, they also took away his memory. At least
they took away all they could of it; the child had no consciousness of the mutilation to which he had been
subjected. This frightful surgery left its traces on his countenance, but not on his mind.
Sometimes the king went so far as to avow his complicity. These are audacities of monarchical terrorism.
The disfigured one was marked with the fleur-de-lis; they took from him the mark of God; they put on him
the mark of the king.
The laws against vagabonds have always been very rigorous in England. England, in her Gothic legislation,
seemed to be inspired with this principle, Homo errans fera errante pejor. One of the special statutes
classifies the man without a home as "more dangerous than the asp, dragon, lynx, or basilisk."
Freedom which exists in the wanderer terrified the law.

It was an immemorial custom in England to tar smugglers. They were hanged on the seaboard, coated over
with pitch and left swinging. Examples must be made in public, and tarred examples last longest. The tar was
mercy: by renewing it they were spared making too many fresh examples. They placed gibbets from point to
point along the coast, as nowadays they do beacons. The hanged man did duty as a lantern. After his fashion,
he guided his comrades, the smugglers. The smugglers from far out at sea perceived the gibbets. There is
one, first warning; another, second warning. It did not stop smuggling; but public order is made up of such
things. The fashion lasted in England up to the beginning of this century. In 1822 three men were still to be
seen hanging in front of Dover Castle. But, for that matter, the preserving process was employed not only
with smugglers. England turned robbers, incendiaries, and murderers to the same account. Jack Painter, who
set fire to the government storehouses at Portsmouth, was hanged and tarred in 1776. L'Abbé Coyer, who
describes him as Jean le Peintre, saw him again in 1777. Jack Painter was hanging above the ruin he had
made, and was re-tarred from time to time. His corpse lasted—I had almost said lived—nearly fourteen
years. It was still doing good service in 1788; in 1790, however, they were obliged to replace it by another.
The Egyptians used to value the mummy of the king; a plebeian mummy can also, it appears, be of service.
A child is protected by the limit of feebleness against emotions which are too complex. He sees the fact, and
little else beside. The difficulty of being satisfied by half-ideas does not exist for him. It is not until later that
experience comes, with its brief, to conduct the lawsuit of life. Then he confronts groups of facts which have
crossed his path; the understanding, cultivated and enlarged, draws comparisons; the memories of youth
reappear under the passions, like the traces of a palimpsest under the erasure; these memories form the bases
of logic, and that which was a vision in the child's brain becomes a syllogism in the man's.
The child felt the coldness of men more terribly than the coldness of night. The coldness of men is
intentional. He felt a tightening on his sinking heart which he had not known on the open plains. Now he had
entered into the midst of life, and remained alone. This was the summit of misery. The pitiless desert he had
understood; the unrelenting town was too much to bear.
470
At intervals, that we should not become too discouraged, that we may have the stupidity to consent to bear
our being, and not profit by the magnificent opportunities to hang ourselves which cords and nails afford,
nature puts on an air of taking a little care of man—not to-night, though. The rogue causes the wheat to
spring up, ripens the grape, gives her song to the nightingale. From time to time a ray of morning or a glass
of gin, and that is what we call happiness! It is a narrow border of good round a huge winding-sheet of evil.
We have a destiny of which the devil has woven the stuff and God has sewn the hem.
The true virtue is common sense—what falls ought to fall, what succeeds ought to succeed. Providence
acts advisedly, it crowns him who deserves the crown; do you pretend to know better than
Providence? When matters are settled—when one rule has replaced another—when success is the
scale in which truth and falsehood are weighed, in one side the catastrophe, in the other the triumph;
then doubt is no longer possible, the honest man rallies to the winning side, and although it may happen
to serve his fortune and his family, he does not allow himself to be influenced by that consideration, but
thinking only of the public weal, holds out his hand heartily to the conqueror. What would become of the
state if no one consented to serve it? Would not everything come to a standstill? To keep his place is the duty
of a good citizen. Learn to sacrifice your secret preferences. Appointments must be filled, and some one must
necessarily sacrifice himself. To be faithful to public functions is true fidelity. The retirement of public
officials would paralyse the state. What! banish yourself!—how weak! As an example?—what vanity! As a
defiance?—what audacity! What do you set yourself up to be, I wonder? Learn that we are just as good as
you. If we chose we too could be intractable and untameable and do worse things than you; but we prefer to
be sensible people. Because I am a Trimalcion, you think that I could not be a Cato! What nonsense!
Les Misérables (1862)

One can no more prevent thought from recurring to an idea than one can the sea from returning to the shore:
the sailor calls it the tide; the guilty man calls it remorse; God upheaves the soul as he does the ocean.
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, I. Hapgood, trans.
Let us contemplate the inexplicable wonder that is the human soul, a marvel as unconscious of its majesty as
the ocean is of its depths. For just as the ocean swells and storms against the shore, so too does a man’s soul
constantly swell and storm within him. A storm which even the most cruel or callous can neither contain nor
ignore.
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, BBC Serial, Episode 1
Could it be that the most profound decisions which we are asked to make in the evolution of our souls
may be no more than the difference between letting things be and taking action?
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, BBC Serial, Episode 4, 7:08
HERMANN FRIEDRICH KOHLBRÜGGE (1803-1875)

Sermons on the First Epistle of Peter
Compared with the rest of mankind, these believers were small in number and in power; here, might be but a
single individual, there, two or three; here, might be found ten persons, and there some seventy or a hundred.
In their manner of life and of thought, as well as in their worship, they were too different from other men to
admit of their uniting with them, or walking after their ways. And because they could not walk as others
walked, they were constantly misunderstood, and were exposed to all manner of suffering.
Hermann Friedrich Kohlbrügge, Sermons on the First Epistle of Peter (1855), pp. 1-2
471
Let each of us hear this letter with the conviction that it is addressed especially to him; let him say in his
heart, All this is for me.
Hermann Friedrich Kohlbrügge, Sermons on the First Epistle of Peter (1855), p. 3
His walk and conversation will then be very different from his former course of life, when he willingly
served sin and Satan, indulged his evil desires, and walked after the course of this world.
They are separated from the mass, set apart that they may be a peculiar people to the Lord.
We are chosen “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father,-through sanctification of the Spirit;” and
this sanctification, it is a comfort to know, is a sanctification we may safely confide in; because it is widely
different from the self-sanctification, the fleshly holiness, or wilful separation, to which “he that runneth,”
and “he that willeth,” addicts himself, in order that the idol self may be magnified and worshipped.
The world and the devil fight against us believers, because we will not wear their mask of hypocrisy, under
which gross wickedness may be committed.
We reject the pharisaical sanctity, which is but a covering of shame, under which sin has free play.
Every thing that is around us strives to draw us away from the true faith.
In their enmity to the truth, they set up another religion, an idol-worship, wherein the creature, with its works
and its fleshly righteousness, has something to boast of. This they do in order to render vain the work of
Christ, and to destroy the work of the Spirit. They do it also that they may have a wide mantle under which to
cloak their crimes.
We should not give ear to the doctrine taught by the world, which is a doctrine of self-righteousness, and that
we should keep ourselves altogether “unspotted from the world,” in our daily walk and conversation, and that
we join not with the world in any thing that denies God and Christ, be it what it may.
Hermann Friedrich Kohlbrügge, Sermons on the First Epistle of Peter (1855), p. 11 (quote from James 1:27)
472
RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882)
The epochs of our life are not in the visible facts of our choice of a calling; our marriage, our acquisition of
an office and the life, but … in a thought which reverses our entire manner of life.
Emerson, as cited in Robert D. Richardson, Emerson: The Mind on Fire (1995), p. 317
Every mind must know the whole lesson for itself, must go over the whole ground. What it does not see,
what it does not live, it will not know.
Emerson, as cited in Robert D. Richardson, Emerson: The Mind on Fire (1995), p. 322
When we consider what is our thought of God we find that it is our own soul stripped of all inferiority and
carried out to perfection.
Emerson, Sermon 86 (1830), The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume 2 (1990), p. 243
Manifestly the most pure and elevated conception that my mind is capable of forming. It is the individual’s
own soul carried out to perfection.
Emerson, marginal notes on Sermon 86, The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume 2 (1990), p. 395
Prayer is the effort of the soul to apply itself in all its length and breadth to this sovereign object, that is, it is
the attempt to carry up our mind to a greater mind and converse with it as we converse with men. … What
can be more salutary to the mind than this habitual contemplation of perfect purity and wisdom?
Emerson, Sermon 86 (1830), The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume 2 (), p. 243
Let us have worse cotton and better men.

Emerson
We, as we read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner, must fasten
these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall see nothing, learn nothing, keep nothing.
Emerson, “History”
It is not, believe me, the chief end of man that he should make a fortune and beget children whose end is
likewise to make fortunes, but it is, in few words, that he should explore himself — an inexhaustible mine —
and external nature is but the candle to illuminate in turn the innumerable and profound obscurities of the
soul.
Emerson, “Address on Education”
When a thought of Plato becomes a thought to me, when a truth that fired the soul of St. John, fires mine,
time is no more.
Emerson, “History”
In following the strong bent of his genius, he was self assured that he should 'create the taste by which he is
to be enjoyed.
Emerson
Though love repine and reason chafe,

There came a voice without reply,
“'Tis man's perdition to be safe,
When for the truth he ought to die.”
Emerson, Quatrains, Sacrifice
473
Let the glory of the world go where it will, the mind has its own glory. what it doth, endures. No man can
serve many masters. And often the choice is not given you between greatness in the world and greatness of
soul which you will choose, but both advantages are not compatible. The night is fine; the stars shed down
their severe influences upon me and I feel a joy in my solitude that the merriment of vulgar society can never
communicate. There is a pleasure in the thought that the particular tone of my mind at this moment may be
new in the Universe; that the emotions of this hour may be peculiar and unexampled in the whole eternity of
moral being. I lead a new life. I occupy new ground in the world of spirits, untenanted before. I commerce a
career of thought and action which is expanding before me into a distant and dazzling infinity. Strange
thoughts start up like angels in my way and beckon me onward. I doubt not I tread on the highway that leads
to the Divinity. And why shall I not be content with these thoughts and this being which give a majesty
to my nature and forego the ambition to shine in the frivolous assemblies of men where the genuine
objects of my ambition are not revered or known?
Emerson, Journal entry, January 1827
Looking at God instantly reduces our disposition to dissent from our brother. A man may die by a fever as
well as by consumption, and religion is as effectually destroyed by bigotry as by indifference.
Emerson
Every Sunday ever since they were born this congregation have heard tell of salvation, and of going to the
door of Heaven and knocking, and being answered from within, "Depart, I never knew you," and of being
sent away to eternal ruin. What hinders that, instead of this parable, the naked fact be stated to them? namely
that as long [as] they offend against their conscience they will seek to be happy, but they shall not be able,
they shall not come to any true knowledge of God, they shall be avoided by good and wise men, they shall
become worse and worse.
Emerson, Journal Entry, October 10, 1833
An impulse as irresistible as is the acorn to germinate is in the soul of the prophet to speak.
By going much alone a man will get more of a noble courage in thought and word than from all the wisdom
that is in books. He will come to hear God speak as audibly through his own lips as ever He did by the mouth
of Moses or Isaiah or Milton.
I found when I had finished my new lecture that it was a very good house, only the architect had
unfortunately omitted the stairs.
Emerson, Journal Entry, December 18, 1850
It seems to me that the perspective of time, as it sets everything in the right point of view, does the same by
Christianity. We learn to look at it now as a part of the history of the world, to see how it rests in the broad
basis of man's moral nature, and is not itself that basis. I cannot but think that Jesus Christ will be better
loved by being less adored. He has had an unnatural, an artificial place for ages in human opinions — a place
too high for love. There is a recoil of the affections from all authority and force. To the barbarous state of
society it was thought to add to the dignity of Christ to make him king, to make him God. Now that the
scriptures are read with purged eyes, it is seen that he is only to be loved for so much goodness and wisdom
as was in him, which are the only things for which a sound human mind can love any person. As the world
waxes wiser, he will be more truly venerated for the splendor of the contrast of his character to the opinions
and practices of his age, he will attract the unfeigned love of all to whom moral nature is dear because
he planted himself in the face of the world upon that sole ground, showing that noble confidence in the
reality and superiority of spiritual truths, that simplicity and at the same time enthusiasm in declaring
them which is itself one of the highest merits and gives confidence to all thinkers that come after.
474
Bacon said man is the minister and interpreter of nature: he is so in more respects than one. He is not only to
explain the sense of each passage, but the scope and argument of the whole book.
Emerson, Journal Entry, November 1, 1833
The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. The
death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the
aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of
infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style
of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.
Emerson, “Compensation”
Nature herself was in a hurry with these hasters and never finished one.
Emerson, describing the American, Journal entry, June 27, 1847
If the single man plants himself indomitably upon his instincts, and there abides, the huge world will come
round to him.
Emerson, quoted in Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason
Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him.
Emerson
Let us treat the men and women well; treat them as if they were real; perhaps they are.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 102
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Emerson
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.

Emerson
The only way to have a friend is to be one.

Emerson
The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, seems to be an honest or well intended halfness; a non performance
of that which is pretended to be performed, at the same time that one is giving loud pledges of performance.
The balking of the intellect, is comedy and it announces itself in the pleasant spasms we call laughter.
Emerson
The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy
quotation than in the poem.
Emerson
Be not the slave of your own past.

Emerson
Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
Emerson
Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.
Emerson
As we grow old … the beauty steals inward.

Emerson
475
It is one of the felicities of literary history, the tie which inseparably couples these two names [Montaigne
and Plutarch] across fourteen centuries. Montaigne, whilst he grasps Étienne de la Boétie with one hand,
reaches back the other to Plutarch. These distant friendships charm us, and honor all the parties, and make
the best example of the universal citizenship and fraternity of the human mind.
Emerson, Introduction to Plutarch’s Moralia
The plain-speaking of Plutarch, as of the ancient writers generally, coming from the habit of writing for one
sex only, has a great gain for brevity, and, in our new tendencies of civilization, may tend to correct a false
delicacy.
Emerson, Introduction to Plutarch’s Moralia
If Homer is that man he is taken for, he has not yet done his office when he has educated the learned of
Europe for a thousand years. He is now to approve himself a master of delight to me also. If he cannot do
that, all his fame shall avail him nothing.
Emerson, The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1964), Volume 2, p. 260
I have reached the middle age of man; yet I believe I am not less glad or sanguine at the meeting of scholars,
than when, a boy, I first saw the graduates of my own College assembled at their anniversary. Neither years
nor books have yet availed to extirpate a prejudice then rooted in me, that a scholar is the favorite of Heaven
and earth, the excellency of his country, the happiest of men. His duties lead him directly into the holy
ground where other men's aspirations only point.
Emerson, “Literary Ethics”
Things must take my scale, not I theirs.

The resources of the scholar are co-extensive with nature and truth, yet can never be his, unless claimed by
him with an equal greatness of mind. He cannot know them until he has beheld with awe the infinitude and
impersonality of the intellectual power. When he has seen, that it is not his, nor any man's, but that it is the
soul which made the world, and that it is all accessible to him, he will know that he, as its minister, may
rightfully hold all things subordinate and answerable to it.
The whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my self-trust, by demonstrating what man can be and
do.
Plotinus too, and Spinoza, and the immortal bards of philosophy, — that which they have written out with
patient courage, makes me bold. No more will I dismiss, with haste, the visions which flash and sparkle
across my sky; but observe them, approach them, domesticate them, brood on them, and draw out of the past,
genuine life for the present hour.
Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.

The vision of genius comes by renouncing the too officious activity of the understanding, and giving leave
and amplest privilege to the spontaneous sentiment. Out of this must all that is alive and genial in thought go.
Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they
desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, all flock to
their aid.
476
Talks with Ralph Waldo Emerson (1890)
http://books.google.com/books?id=SEFIAAAAIAAJ
I know I was made for another office, a professor of the Joyous Science.
Emerson, Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1820-1872, p. 567
The moment you putty and plaster your expressions to make them hang together, you have begun a
weakening process. Take it for granted the truths will harmonize; and as for the falsities and mistakes, they
will speedily die of themselves.
Emerson in conversation, as reported by Charles J. Woodbury, Talks with Ralph Waldo Emerson (1890), p. 23
You must know about ownership in facts. What another sees and tells you is not yours, but his.
There is a great secret in knowing what to keep out of the mind as well as what to put in.
You cannot make too much of yourself. It is all there is of you. How many do you know who are made up
mainly of fragments of others? But follow your own star, and it will lead you to that which none other can
attain. Imitation is suicide. You must take yourself for better or for worse as your portion. A man can only
get an extemporized half-possession of another's gift; and what came wholly natural from him has, in
spite of the best grace and skill, an impertinent air from the borrower.
I commiserate any one who is subject to the misery of being overplaced. What he is stands over him and
thunders, and denies what he says.
Yield not one inch to all the forces which conspire to make you an echo. That is the sin of dogmatism and
creeds. Avoid them; they build a fence about the intellect .
A sure proportion of rogue and dunce finds its way into every school and requires a cruel share of time, and
the gentle teacher, who wished to be a Providence to youth, is grown a martinet, sore with suspicions; knows
as much vice as the judge of a police court, and his love of learning is lost in the routine of grammars and
books of elements.
Emerson, “Education”
Our modes of Education aim ... to do for masses what cannot be done for masses, what must be done
reverently, one by one.
Emerson, “Education”
Journals
Volume 3: http://books.google.com/books?id=2EsMAAAAYAAJ
Volume 4: http://books.google.com/books?id=nJdaAAAAMAAJ
Volume 5: http://books.google.com/books?id=6CkAAAAAYAAJ
Volume 6: http://books.google.com/books?id=nJdaAAAAMAAJ
Volume 7: http://books.google.com/books?id=54kMAAAAYAAJ
Volume 8: http://books.google.com/books?id=ADNQBCGQxloC
I can find Greece and Palestine and Italy and England and the Islands, the genius and creative principle of
each and of all eras, in my own mind.
Emerson, Journals, April 1, 1839, Volume 5, p. 184
He is a poor writer who does not teach courage of treatment.

Emerson, Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks., Volume 1, p. 376
477
When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its
hands and purity of its heart.
Emerson, Journals, 1824
See in the merchant’s compting room for his peddling of cotton and indigo, the value that comes to be
attached to any blotting book or ledger; and if your aims and deeds are superior, how can any record of yours
… not have a value proportionately superior? It converts the heights you have reached in table land.
Emerson, Journal entry, April 15-16, 1839
Our people are timid, desponding, recreant whimperers. If they fail in their first enterprises they lose all
heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at the Cambridge Divinity
College, and is not ordained within a year afterwards in Boston, or New York, it seems to his friend and
himself that he is justified in being disheartened and in complaining for the rest of his life. A sturdy New
Hampshire man or Vermonter who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a
school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat
falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these Boston dolls. My brave Henry here who is content to live now,
and feels no shame in not studying any profession, for he does not postpone his life but lives already—pours
contempt on these crybabies of routine and Boston. He has not one chance but a hundred chances.
Emerson, Journal entry, May 27, 1839
You can only live for yourself: Your action is good only whilst it is alive—whilst it is in you. The awkward
imitation of it by your child or your disciple, is not a repetition of it, is not the same thing but another thing.
The new individual must work out the whole problem of science, letters, and theology for himself, can owe
his fathers nothing.
Emerson, Journal entry May 28, 1839
The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party, but they say nothing,
and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.
When I see my friend after a long time, my first question is, Has anything become clear to you?
At the Opera I think I see the fine gates open which are at all times closed, and that to-morrow I shall find
free and varied expression. But to-morrow I am mute as yesterday.
Expression is all we want: not knowledge, but vent: we know enough; but have not leaves and lungs enough
for a healthy perspiration and growth.
Our virtues, too, are in conspiracy against grandeur, and are narrowing.
In Carlyle, as in Byron, one is more struck with the rhetoric than with the matter. He has manly superiority
rather than intellectuality, and so makes good hard hits all the time. There is more character than intellect in
every sentence, herein strongly resembling Samuel Johnson.
My only secret was that all men were my masters; I never saw one who was not my superior, and I would so
gladly have been his apprentice if his craft had been communicable.
478
Eager, solicitous, hungry, rabid, busy-bodied America attempting many things, vain, ambitious to feel thy
own existence, and convince others of thy talent, by attempting and hastily accomplishing much; yes, catch
thy breath and correct thyself, and failing here, prosper out there; speed and fever are never greatness; but
reliance and serenity and waiting.
It seems often as if rejection, sturdy rejection were for us: choose well your part, stand fast by your task, and
let all else go to ruin if it will. Then instantly the malicious world changes itself into one wide snare or
temptation,—escape it who can.
Worship of the dollar. ... Channing proposed that there should be a magnified dollar, say as big as a barrel-
head, made of silver or gold, in each village
I cannot live as you do. It is only by a most exact husbandry of my resources that I am anybody.
You shall not tell me that your house is of importance in the commercial world. You shall not tell me that
you have learned to know men. You shall make me feel that. Else your saying so unsays it.
Emerson, Journal
You shall not tell me what books you have read by naming their titles, but only through showing me
your better information and richer thought.
Emerson, Journal
Conformity is the ape of harmony.

Emerson, Journal Entry, May 10, 1840
You must never lose sight of the purpose of helping a particular person in every word you say.
Emerson, Journal entry dated December 28, 1834 (ISBN 1408607255, p. 420)
A critic pronounced that Wordsworth was a good man, but no poet. “Ah!” said one present, “you know not
how much poetry there is in goodness!”
Emerson, Journal entry dated December 29, 1834 (ISBN 1408607255, p. 421)
Every man's Reason is sufficient for his guidance, if used.

Emerson, Journal entry December 8, 1834, Journals (1911), Volume 3, p. 389
Because God has made you capable of Reason, therefore must I hear and accept all your selfish railing, your
proven falsehoods, your unconsidered guesses as truth? No; I appeal from you to your Reason, which, with
me, condemns you. ... It amounts to this: “Every man's Reason can show him what is right. Therefore every
man says what is right, whether he use his Reason or no.” I hate this fallacy the more that it is, beside being
dire nonsense, a profanation of the dearest truths.
Emerson, Journal entry December 8, 1834, Journals (1911), Volume 3, pp. 389-390, ellipsis in original
Democracy, Freedom, has its root in the sacred truth that every man hath in him the divine Reason, or that,
though few men since the creation of the world live according to the dictates of Reason, yet all men are
created capable of so doing. That is the equality and the only equality of all men.
Whosoever therefore apprehends the infinite,—and every man can,—brings all worth and significance into
that spot of space where he stands, though it be a ditch, a potato-field, a work-bench. ... And therefore also is
it that every good sentence seems to imply all truth.
Emerson, Journal entry December 22, 1834, Journals (1911), Volume 3, pp. 402-403
479
Once read, he is but half read.
Emerson, describing reading Carlyle, Journal entry dated March 19, 1837, Journals (1911), Volume 4, p. 193
You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.
Emerson, Journals (1911), Volume 4, p.282
It takes a great deal of elevation of thought to produce a very little elevation of life.
Emerson, Journal Entry, May 5, 1838, Journals (1910), vol. 4, p. 441
We do not see that what we call Church, State, School, are only ideas embodied which have succeeded to
other ideas and must give place hereafter to new.
Emerson, Journal entry November 17, 1839, Journals (1911), Volume 5, p. 333
Temperance.—Who argues so sourly for beef and mutton against the man of herbs and grains? The fat and
ruddy eater who hath just wiped his lips from feeding on a sirloin, whose blood is spouting in his veins, and
whose strength kindles that evil fire in his eye. It is not then the voice of man that I hear, but it is the beef
and brandy that roar and rail for beef and brandy. But shall these play the judge in their own cause?
People imagine that the place which the Bible holds in the world, it owes to miracles. It owes it simply to the
fact that it came out of a profounder depth of thought than any other book.
Women see better than men. Men see lazily, if they do not expect to act. Women see quite without any wish
to act. Men of genius are said to partake of the masculine and feminine traits.
It is the necessity of my nature to shed all influences.

My thoughts are too short, as they say my sentences are. I step along from stone to stone over the Lethe
which gurgles around my path, but the odds are that my companion encounters me just as I leave one stone
and before my foot has well reached the other, and down I tumble into Lethe water.
In my dream I saw a man reading in the Library at Cambridge, and one who stood by said, “He readeth
advertisements,” meaning that he read for the market only, and not for truth. Then I said, Do I read
advertisements?
If we have seen that under our ridiculous routine of selfish trade and government bloomed unhurt the life of
God, and found ever and anon vent in our consciousness and in our action, that we have not set ourselves
systematically and invariably to stifle it, and so kill ourselves, but in sane moments have opened it a passage
into the laws and institutions, have let our private bark follow the course of the river, and be blown in the
path of the monsoon, have not selected for honour the mean and the dead in whom no virtue lived, and such
therefore as honour could not cleanse or great aims enliven, but have let our votes follow Ideas, and our
elections express our character and aspiration, so that the highest sentiment cheered us in the assembly of the
people, and the ballot was a voice of truth and veneration,—then the State will stand, then the Laws will be
memorable and beautiful for long thousands of years,— will shine by intrinsic light as easily through many
as through a few ages. Should not a man be ennobled by his vote? Is it not a prayer? Now he and his
candidate are both degraded.
Emerson, Journal entry December 2, 1839, Journals (1911), Volume 5, p. 357 (cf. , “Politics,” The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Harvard:
1972), p. 245)
480
Economy must be poetical, inventive, alive: that is its essence, and therein is it distinguished from mere
parsimony.
Love is only the reflection of a man's own worthiness from other men.
We are to write on this topic not by black art of any kind, not by trick, or journey work, or direction; not
stimulated by strong waters, or by fashion, or by praise, or money, but feeling the power of the Past Ages
laid on our hand. We are to stand all-related, all accomplished, having covenanted with truth that we will
bear witness for it, though by our silence.
The whole world travails to ripen and bear the sufficiency of one man.
The wise man … needs no bribe or feast or palace to draw friends to him. He is supremely fair. He angles
with himself and with no other bait.
Emerson, Journal entry December 26, 1839, Journals (1911), Volume 5, p. 360-361, also in “Politics,” The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Harvard: 1972), p. 243
He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is himself a prophet; no statute
book, for he hath the Lawgiver; no money, for he is value itself; no road, for he is at home where he is.
People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.
If I made laws for Shakers or a school, I should gazette every Saturday all the words they were wont to
use in reporting religious experience, as “spiritual life,” “God,” “soul,” “cross,” etc., and if they could
not find new ones next week, they might remain silent.
Emerson, Journal entry June 15, 1844, Journals (1911), Volume 6, p. 526
Beauty belongs to the sentiment and is always departing from those who depart out of that.
Emerson, Journal entry dated May 3, 1845, Journals (1911), Volume 7, p. 42
The hero … will brave all mankind just as readily as a single enemy at the call of that private and perfect
Right of Beauty in which he lives.
The solitude of the body is the populousness of the soul.

… to hide now, that we may draw the more admiration anon

You are to have a self-support which maintains you not only against all others, but against your own
skepticism.
It is easy to live for others; everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves.
Happy is he who looks only into his work to know if it will succeed, never into the times or the public
opinion; and who writes from the love of imparting certain thoughts and not from the necessity of sale—who
writes always to the unknown friend.
Emerson, Journal entry dated April 19, 1848, Journals (1911), Volume 7, p. 440
481
Many times the reading of a book has made the fortune of the reader,—has decided his way of life. The
reading of voyages and travels has waked the boys ambition and curiosity, and made him a sailor and an
explorer of new countries all his life, a powerful merchant, a good soldier, a pure patriot, a successful student
of science.
Emerson, The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson: 1854-1861 (1978), Volume 14, p. 118
Life is wasted in the necessary preparation of finding what is the true way, and we die just as we enter it.
Emerson, Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks, W. Gilman, ed., vol. 2, p. 219
… withered people with gold-filled teeth, ghastly, and with minds in the same dilapidated condition, drugged
with books for want of wisdom
Emerson, Journal entry July 21, 1850, Journals (1912), Volume 8, p. 120
Men as naturally make a state as caterpillars a web.

Emerson, Journal entry July 21, 1850, Journals (1912), Volume 8, p. 120
Letters
When I took my book to the woods I found nature not half poetical, not half visionary, enough. ... I found
that I had only transplanted into the new place my entire personal identity, and was grievously disappointed.
Emerson, Letter dated June 8, 1823
It happens to us once or twice in a lifetime to be drunk with some book which probably has some
extraordinary relative power to intoxicate us and none other; and having exhausted that cup of enchantment
we go groping in libraries all our years afterwards in the hope of being in Paradise again.
Emerson, Letter to Sam Ward, The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, E. Tilton, ed. (1990), Volume 7, p. 393
Finish every day and be done with it. For manners and for wise living, it is a vice to remember. You have
done what you could: some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can.
Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it well and serenely, and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with
your old nonsense. This day for all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste
a, moment on the rotten yesterdays.
Emerson, Letter to his daughter, cited in Poems and Essays, G. Browne, ed. (1897), p. 74, footnote
They are bent on popular actions. I am, in all my theory, ethics, and politics, a poet; and of no more use in
their New York than a rainbow or a firefly.
Emerson, describing Horace Greeley and Albert Brisbane Letter to his daughter Lidian, March 1, 1842, cited in J. Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo
Emerson (1887), vol. 2, pp. 489-490
They fasten me in their thought to “Transcendentalism,” whereof you know I am wholly guiltless, and
which is spoken of as a known and fixed element, like salt or meal. So that I have to begin by endless
disclaimers and explanations: “I am not the man you take me for.”
Emerson, Letter to his daughter Lidian, March 1, 1842, cited in J. Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1887), vol. 2, p. 490
One of these days shall we not have new laws forbidding solitude, and severe penalties on all
separatists and unsocial thinkers?
Emerson, Letter to his daughter Lidian, March 1, 1842, cited in J. Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1887), vol. 2, p. 490
482
Early Lectures
http://www.rwe.org/
“The Head”
For practical rules for the culture of the intellect perhaps none can be given that are good for all but there
are two expedients that may do such good service to very many young men that I will venture to name them.
One is, sit alone. In your arrangements for your residence see that you have a chamber to yourself, though
you sell your coat and wear a blanket.
The other is, keep a journal. Pay so much honor to the visits of Truth to your mind as to record those
thoughts that have shone therein. I suppose every lover of truth would find his account in it if he never had
two related thoughts without putting them down. It is not for what is recorded, though that may be the
agreeable entertainment of later years, and the pleasant remembrances of what we were, but for the habit of
rendering account to yourself of yourself in some more rigorous manner and at more certain intervals than
mere conversation or casual reverie of solitude require.
The simple habit of sitting alone occasionally to explore what facts of moment lie in the memory may
have the effect in some more favored hour to open to the student the kingdom of spiritual nature.
Emerson, “The Head,” The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Politics”
The appearance of character rebukes the state. It makes the state unnecessary. It leaves the ambitious
statesmen far below. The wise man is the state.
Emerson, “Politics,” The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Harvard: 1972), p. 243
He needs no library, for he has not done thinking—he gets thought where the bookmaker got it; no church,
for he is himself a prophet; no statute book, for he hath the Lawgiver; no money, for he is value itself; no
road, for he is at home where he is.
It is plain that where a good man is set to do a public act he should occupy himself only with the measure,
not with the opinion of the people. By directing all his understanding and affection on the fact, and not
allowing the people or their enemies to arrest it, he is able to make his hands meet to come at his end. But
when the eye of the political agent veers too frequently from the measure to the opinion of the people, and in
course of time fastens on opinion mainly,—he must lose just so much steadiness of conduct and therewith so
much success.
In this country there is no measure attempted for itself by legislatures, but the opinion of the people is
courted in the first place, and the measures are perfunctorily carried through as secondary. Instead of
character there is a studious exclusion of character.
We see that Mr. A will deliver an oration of the Fourth of July and Mr. B before the Merchants or the
Farmers and we do not go because we know that these gentleman will not communicate their own character
and being to the audience. A speech ought to be a man:—the heart and soul of the speaker made manifest:—
but our speeches are screens and escapades, and not communications. The people are feared and flattered.
They are not reprimanded. The country is governed in bar-rooms and in the mind of bar-rooms. The low can
best win the low and each aspirant vies with the other which can stoop lowest, depart widest from himself.
483
It is the privilege of this Idea of the all-sufficiency of private character that it is never absent, that it is never
reduced to wait for means. Its kingdom begins with the perception of it. It needs no crusade against the state
but the simple abstinence from participating in its wrong deed.
Nature (1836)
Complete Works (1883), Volume 1
http://books.google.com/books?id=wWI4AAAAYAAJ
What we are, that only can we see.

Emerson, Nature, Complete Works (1883), Volume 1, p. 79
Addresses and Lectures

http://books.google.com/books?id=wWI4AAAAYAAJ
“The American Scholar”
The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut
about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.
Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 85
The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true
dignity of his ministry. He sees his bushel and his cart and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer instead
of Man on the farm.
The tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal worth to his work, but is ridden by the routine of his craft, and the
soul is subject to dollars.
Nature is the opposite [i.e. complement] of the soul, answering to it part for part. One is seal, and one is print.
Its beauty is the beauty of his own mind. ... The ancient precept, “Know thyself,” and the modern precept,
“Study nature,” become at last one maxim.
Precisely in proportion to the depth of mind from which it issued, so high does it soar, so long does it sing.
It depends on how far the process had gone, of transmuting life into truth. In proportion to the completeness
of the distillation, so will the purity and imperishableness of the product be.
As no air-pump can by any means make a perfect vacuum, so neither can any artist entirely exclude the
conventional
Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, pp. 89-90
Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.
Hence arises a grave mischief. The sacredness which attaches to the act of creation, the act of thought, is
transferred to the record.
484
The sluggish and perverted mind of the multitude, slow to open to the incursions of Reason, having once so
opened, having once received this book, stands upon it, and makes an outcry, if it is disparaged.
Books are written on it by thinkers, not by Man Thinking; by men of talent, that is, who start wrong, who set
out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of principles. Meek young men grow up in libraries,
believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful
that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.
Instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. Hence, the book-learned class, who value books, as such;
not as related to nature and the human constitution...
I had better never see a book, than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made
a satellite instead of a system.
The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. This every man is entitled to; this every man contains
within him, although in almost all men obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul active sees absolute truth and
utters truth, or creates. In this action it is genius; not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but the sound
estate of every man.
The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius.
This is good, say they,—let us hold by this.
There is a right way of reading, so it be sternly subordinated. Man thinking must not be subdued by his
instruments. Books are for the scholar’s idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too
precious to be wasted in other men’s transcripts of their readings.
A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.

The scholar loses no hour which the man lives.

There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. … Only be this
limitation observed, that a man shall not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any opinion to the popular
judgments and modes of action.
His [the scholar’s] duties may all be comprised in self-trust.

485
In the long period of his preparation, he must betray often an ignorance and shiftlessness in popular arts,
incurring the disdain of the able, who shoulder him aside. Long he must stammer in his speech; often forego
the living for the dead. Worse yet, he must accept—how often! poverty and solitude. For the ease and
pleasure of treading the old road, accepting the fashions, the education, the religion of society, he takes the
cross of making his own; and, of course, the self-accusation, the faint heart, the frequent uncertainty and loss
of time, which are the nettles and tangling vines in the way of the self-relying and self-directed; and the state
of virtual hostility in which he seems to stand to society, and especially to educated society. For all this loss
and scorn, what offset? He is to find consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature. He is
one who raises himself from private considerations, and breathes and lives on public and illustrious thoughts.
He is the world’s eye. He is the world’s heart. He is to resist the vulgar prosperity that retrogrades ever to
barbarism, by preserving and communicating heroic sentiments, noble biographies, melodious verse, and
the conclusions of history.
Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, pp. 101-102
Is it not the chief disgrace in the world not to be a unit, not to be reckoned one character, not to yield
that peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear, but to be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred
or the thousand of the party, the section, to which we belong?
“The Method of Nature”
Talent finds its models, methods, and ends, in society, exists for exhibition, and goes to the soul only for
power to work. Genius is its own end, and draws its means and the style of its architecture from within.
Emerson, “The Method of Nature,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 207
Nature is a mute, and man, her articulate, speaking brother, lo! he also is a mute. Yet when Genius arrives, its
speech is like a river.
Emerson, “The Method of Nature,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 208
Essays, First Series (1841)

http://books.google.com/books?id=vmQ4AAAAYAAJ
“History”
The fact narrated must correspond to something in me to be credible or intelligible. We, as we read, must
become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and kind, martyr and executioner, must fasten the images to some
reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly.
Emerson, “History,” Essays: First Series (1841)
There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He
that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he
may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel.
Emerson, “History,” Essays: First Series (1841)
The student is to read history actively and not passively; to esteem his own life the text, and books the
commentary.
Emerson, “History,” Essays: First Series, Complete Works (1883), p. 13
The world exists for the education of each man.

Emerson, “History,” Essays: First Series, Complete Works (1883), vol. 2, p. 14
To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all
days holy, all men divine. For the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance.
Emerson, “History,” Essays: First Series, Complete Works (1883), vol. 2, pp. 17-18
486
He must sit solidly at home, and not suffer himself to be bullied by kings or empires, but know that he is
greater than all the geography and all the government of the world; he must transfer the point of view from
which history is commonly read, from Rome and Athens and London, to himself, and not deny his
conviction that he is the court, and if England or Egypt have any thing to say to him he will try the case; if
not, let them forever be silent.
Emerson, “History,” Essays: First Series, Complete Works (1883), vol. 2, p. 14
“Self-Reliance”
Prayer that craves a particular commodity, — any thing less than all good, — is vicious.
Emerson, “Self-Reliance”
The sentiment they instill is of more value than any thought they may contain.
Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 47
To believe your own thought; to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—
that is genius.
The highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and
spoke not what men, but what they, thought.
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within more
than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his own thought, because
it is his.
Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), pp. 47-48
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts. They come back to us with a certain
alienated majesty.
... imitation is suicide.

The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray.
Trust thyself. Every heart vibrates to that iron strain.

Accept the place that divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the
connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of
their age, betraying the perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated in their hearts.
What pretty oracles natures yield us on this text in the behavior of children. ... Their mind being whole, their
eye is as yet unconquered. ... Infancy conforms to nobody.
The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to
conciliate one is the healthy attitude of human nature.
487
Independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and
sentences them on their merits in the swift summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent,
troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests. He gives an independent,
genuine verdict.
But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken
with éclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections
must now enter into his account. ... Ah that he could pass again into his neutrality! He who can thus avoid all
pledges and, having observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted
innocence, must always be formidable. He would utter opinions on all passing affairs which ... would sink
like darts into the ear of mean and put them in fear.
These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world.
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.
The virtue in most request is conformity.

Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist... must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must
explore if it be goodness.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

I remember an answer which, when quite young, I was prompted to make to a valued advisor who was wont
to importune me with the dual doctrines of the Church. On my saying “What have I to do with the sacredness
of traditions, if I live wholly from within?” My friend suggested “But these impulses may be from below, not
from above.” I replied “They do not seem to me to be such, but if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from
the Devil. No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. ... The only right is what is after my
constitution, the only wrong what is against it.”
A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if everything were titular and ephemeral but he.
I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.
I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.
If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass? … Thy love afar is spite at home.
Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love.

Your truth must have some edge to it,—else it is none.

488
The doctrine of hatred must be preached, as the counteraction of the doctrine of love, when that pules and
whines.
Do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they
my poor? I tell thee thou foolish philanthropist that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men
as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual
affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison if need be; but your miscellaneous popular
charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many
now stand; alms to sots, and the thousand-fold Relief Societies;—though I confess with shame I sometimes
succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar, which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.
Virtues are, in the popular estimate rather the exception than the rule. … Men do what is called a good action
... much as they would pay a fine. ... Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the
world. ... Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself, and not for a
spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of lower strain, so it be genuine and equal than that it be glittering
and unsteady.
I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I know
that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned
excellent. ... Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or
the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.
Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 54-55
It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion. It is easy in solitude to live after our own. But
the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of
solitude.
The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is that it scatters your force. It loses
your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead
Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base
housekeepers,—under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are: and of course so
much force is withdrawn from your proper life.
If I know your sect I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the
expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a
new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the
institution he will do no such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side,
the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the
bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another
handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity
makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every
truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word
they say chagrins us and we know not where to begin to set them right.
489
For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to
estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlor. If this
aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own he might well go home with a sad
countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put
on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs.
Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again,
though it contradict every thing you said to-day.—' Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.'—Is it so
bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and
Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be
misunderstood.
Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that
virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.
There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour.
For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties ore lost sight of at
a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a
zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average
tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself and will explain your other genuine actions. Your
conformity explains nothing.
Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the
face of custom and trade and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible
Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works.
That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead-drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house,
washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious
ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it
symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up,
exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince.
Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say ' I think,' ' I am,' but quotes some saint
or sage.
These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones
Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in
communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men.
Your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At times the whole world
seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want,
charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say, —' Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into
their confusion.
490
Truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity and has
ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may
in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron
necessity is to others!
The pupil takes the same delight in subordinating every thing to the new terminology as a girl who has just
learned botany in seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby. It will happen for a time that the pupil will
find his intellectual power has grown by the study of his master's mind. But in all unbalanced minds the
classification is idolized, passes for the end and not for a speedily exhaustible means, so that the walls
of the system blend to their eye in the remote horizon with the walls of the universe; the luminaries of
heaven seem to them hung on the arch their master built.
The reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance.
Men … measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is.
Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series, Complete Works (1883), vol. 2, p. 86
“Spiritual Laws”
The thing uttered in words is not therefore affirmed. It must affirm itself, or no forms of logic or of oath can
give it evidence. The sentence must also contain its own apology for being spoken.
Emerson, “Spiritual Laws,” Essays: First Series, Complete Works (1883), vol. 2, p. 145
That statement only is fit to be made public which you have come at in attempting to satisfy your own
curiosity.
They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it
appears, but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated and not to be overawed,
decides upon every man's title to fame.
The common experience is, that the man fits himself as well as he can to the customary details of that work
or trade he falls into, and tends it as a dog turns a spit. Then is he a part of the machine he moves; the man is
lost. Until he can manage to communicate himself to others in his full stature and proportion, he does
not yet find his vocation.
Emerson, “Spiritual Laws”
Foolish, whenever you take the meanness and formality of that thing you do, instead of converting it into the
obedient spiracle of your character and aims.
What we call obscure condition or vulgar society is that condition and society whose poetry is not yet
written, but which you shall presently make as enviable and renowned as any.
In our estimates, let us take a lesson from kings. The parts of hospitality, the connection of families, the
impressiveness of death, and a thousand other things, royalty makes its own estimate of, and a royal mind
will. To make habitually a new estimate, - that is elevation.
491
“Friendship”
I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass
threads or frostwork, but the solidest thing we know.
Emerson, “Friendship,” Essays: First Series, Complete Works (1883), vol. 2, p. 192
The sweet sincerity of joy and peace which I draw from this alliance with my brother's soul is the nut itself
whereof all nature and all thought is but the husk and shell.
Emerson, “Friendship,” Essays: First Series, Complete Works (1883), vol. 2, pp. 192-193
All the speed in that contest [for friendship] depends on intrinsic nobleness and the contempt of trifles.
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the
presence of a man so real and equal that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation,
courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and
wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another. Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and
authority, only to the highest rank; that being permitted to speak truth, as having none above it to court or
conform unto.
Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.
We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs.
We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a man who under a certain religious frenzy
cast off this drapery, and omitting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person
he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was
mad. But persisting—as indeed he could not help doing—for some time in this course, he attained to the
advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. No man would think of
speaking falsely with him, or of putting him off with any chat of markets or reading-rooms. But every man
was constrained by so much sincerity to the like plain dealing, and what love of nature, what poetry, what
symbol of truth he had, he did certainly show him. But to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but
its side and its back. To stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not? We
can seldom go erect. Almost every man we meet requires some civility,—requires to be humored; he has
some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and
which spoils all conversation with him.
I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances.
“Circles”
Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.
Emerson, “Circles,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 295
492
Essays, Second Series (1844)
http://books.google.com/books?id=92U4AAAAYAAJ
“The Poet”
Those who are esteemed umpires of taste are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of
admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire
whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they
are selfish and sensual.
Emerson, “The Poet,” Essays, Second Series (1883), p. 9
The poet … stands among partial men for the complete man.
Emerson, “The Poet,” Essays, Second Series, Complete Works (1883), p. 11
The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is.
All men live by truth and stand in need of expression. … In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in
games, we study to utter our painful secret. The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.
The great majority of men seem to be minors, who have not yet come into possession of their own, or mutes,
who cannot report the conversation they have had with nature.
The poet is the Namer or Language-maker, naming things sometimes after their appearance, sometimes after
their essence, and giving to every one its own name and not another's, thereby rejoicing the intellect, which
delights in detachment or boundary. The poets made all the words, and therefore language is the archives of
history, and, if we must say it, a sort of tomb of the muses. For though the origin of most of our words is
forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency because for the moment it
symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have
been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry.
“Experience”
To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good
hours, is wisdom. ... Since our office is with moments, let us husband them.
Emerson, “Experience,” Essays, Second Series (1883), p. 63
A sympathetic person is placed in the dilemma of a swimmer among drowning men who all catch at
him, and if he gives so much as a leg or a finger, they will drown him.
The world I converse with in the city and in the farms, is not the world I think. I observe that difference, and
shall observe it.
I have not found that much was gained by manipular attempts to realize the world of thought.
... paltry empiricism

493
Did our birth fall in some fit of indigence and frugality in nature, that she was so sparing of her fire and so
liberal of her earth that it appears to us that we lack the affirmative principle, and though we have health and
reason, yet we have no superfluity of spirit for new creation?
Emerson, “Experience,” Essays, Second Series (1883)
Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in. Embark, and the romance quits our vessel and hangs
on every other sail in the horizon. Our life looks trivial, and we shun to record it.
Men seem to have learned of the horizon the art of perpetual retreating and reference.
The men ask, 'What's the news?' as if the old were so bad.
How many individuals can we count in society? how many actions? how many opinions? So much of our
time is preparation, so much is routine, and so much retrospect, that the pith of each man's genius contracts
itself to a very few hours.
I know that the world I converse with in the city and in the farms, is not the world I think. I observe that
difference, and shall observe it. One day I shall know the value and law of this discrepance. But I have not
found that much was gained by manipular attempts to realize the world of thought. Many eager persons
successively make an experiment in this way, and make themselves ridiculous. They acquire democratic
manners, they foam at the mouth, they hate and deny. Worse, I observe that in the history of mankind there is
never a solitary example of success,—taking their own tests of success. I say this polemically, or in reply to
the inquiry, Why not realize your world?
Far be from me the despair which prejudges the law by a paltry empiricism.
We must be very suspicious of the deceptions of the element of time. It takes a good deal of time to eat or to
sleep, or to earn a hundred dollars, and a very little time to entertain a hope and an insight which becomes the
light of our life. We dress our garden, eat our dinners, discuss the household with our wives, and these things
make no impression, are forgotten next week; but, in the solitude to which every man is always returning, he
has a sanity and revelations which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with him.
There are moods in which we court suffering, in the hope that here at least we shall find reality, sharp peaks
and edges of truth. But it turns out to be scene-painting and counterfeit.
Nature does not like to be observed, and likes that we should be her fools.
Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and as we pass through them they prove to be many-colored
lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus. From the mountain
you see the mountain. We animate what we can, and we see only what we animate. Nature and books belong
to the eyes that see them. It depends on the mood of the man whether he shall see the sunset or the fine poem.
There are always sunsets, and there is always genius; but only a few hours so serene that we can relish nature
or criticism. The more or less depends on structure or temperament. Temperament is the iron wire on which
the beads are strung.
494
Of what use is genius if the organ is too convex or too concave and cannot find a focal distance within the
actual horizon of human life?
The grossest ignorance does not disgust like this impudent knowingness.
The physicians say they are not materialists; but they are:— Spirit is matter reduced to an extreme thinness:
O so thin!
The definition of spiritual should be, that which is its own evidence.
Our love of the real draws us to permanence, but health of body consists in circulation, and sanity of mind in
variety or facility of association. We need change of objects. Dedication to one thought is quickly odious.
We house with the insane, and must humor them; then conversation dies out. Once I took such delight in
Montaigne that I thought I should not need any other book; before that, in Shakespeare; then in Plutarch; then
in Plotinus; at one time in Bacon; afterwards in Goethe; even in Bettine; but now I turn the pages of either of
them languidly, whilst I still cherish their genius. So with pictures; each will bear an emphasis of attention
once, which it cannot retain, though we fain would continue to be pleased in that manner.
Divinity is behind our failures and follies also. The plays of children are nonsense, but very educative
nonsense.
“Nominalist and Realist”
Money, which represents the prose of life.

Emerson, “Nominalist and Realist”, Essays, Second Series, Complete Works (1883), p. 221
Representative Men (1850)

http://books.google.com/books?id=ZyIRAAAAYAAJ
http://books.google.com/books?id=9vQOAAAAIAAJ
1. Uses of Great Men
The search after the great is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.
Emerson, “Uses of Great Men,” Representative Men (1892), p. 6
Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds.
Emerson, “Uses of Great Men,” Representative Men (1892), p. 8
It costs a beautiful person no exertion to paint her image on our eyes; yet how splendid is that benefit!
It costs no more for a wise soul to convey his quality to other men.
Emerson, “Uses of Great Men,” Representative Men (1892), pp. 8-9
2. Plato, or the Philosopher
When we are praising Plato, it seems we are praising quotations from Solon, and Sophron, and Philolaus. Be
it so. Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone
quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.
Emerson, “Plato, or the Philosopher,” Representative Men (1892), p. 44
495
Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. ... They lived in their writings, and so their house and street life
was trivial and commonplace.
Emerson, 2, “Plato, or the Philosopher,” Representative Men (1892), p. 45
4. Montaigne, or the Skeptic
The lesson of life is practically to generalize; to believe what the years and the centuries say against the
hours; to resist the usurpation of particulars.
Emerson, 4, “Montaigne, or the Skeptic,” Representative Men (1892)
7. Goethe; or, the Writer
His [the writer’s] failures are the preparation of his victories. A new thought, or a crisis of passion, apprises
“him that all that he has yet learned and written is exoteric, —is not the fact, but some rumor of the fact.
What then ? Does he throw away the pen? No; he begins again to describe in the new light which has shined
on him.
Emerson, 7, “Goethe; or, the Writer,” Representative Men (1892), pp. 267-268
There is a certain heat in the breast, which attends the perception of a primary truth, which is the shining of
the spiritual sun down into the shaft of the mine.
Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer,” Representative Men (1892), p. 269
Every thought which dawns on the mind, in the moment of its emergence announces its own rank.
Society has, at all times, the same want, namely, of one sane man with adequate powers of expression to hold
up each object of monomania, in its right relations. The ambitious and mercenary bring their last new
mumbo-jumbo, whether tariff, Texas, railroad, Romanism, mesmerism, or California; and, by detaching the
object from its relations, easily succeed in making it seen in a glare; and a multitude go mad about it, and
they are not to be reproved or cured by the opposite multitude, who are kept from this particular insanity by
an equal frenzy on another crotchet.
Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer,” Representative Men (1892), pp. 269-270
There is a certain ridicule, among superficial people, thrown on the scholars or clerisy, which is of no import,
unless the scholar heed it. In this country, the emphasis of conversation, and of public opinion, commends
the practical man. … It is believed, the ordering a cargo of goods from New York to Smyrna; or, the running
up and down to procure a company of subscribers to set a-going five or ten thousand spindles; or, the
negotiations of a caucus, and the practicing on the prejudices and facility of country-people, to secure their
votes in November,—is practical and commendable.
Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer” Representative Men (1892), pp. 270-271
Act, if you like,—but you do it at your peril. Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who
has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action. What they have done commits and
enforces them to do the same again. The first act, which was to be an experiment, becomes a
sacrament. The fiery reformer embodies his aspiration in some rite or covenant, and he and his friends
cleave to the form, and lose the aspiration. The Quaker has established Quakerism, the Shaker has
established his monastery and his dance; and, although each prates of spirit, there is no spirit, but
repetition, which is anti-spiritual.
Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer” Representative Men (1892), p. 271
In actions of enthusiasm, this drawback appears: but in those lower activities, which have no higher aim
than to make us more comfortable and more cowardly, in actions of cunning, actions that steal and lie,
actions that divorce the speculative from the practical faculty, and put a ban on reason and sentiment, there is
nothing else but drawback and negation.
496
The measure of action is the sentiment from which it proceeds. The greatest action may easily be one of
the most private circumstance.
How can he [today’s writer] be honored, when he does not honor himself; when he loses himself in the
crowd; when he is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless
public.
Amid littleness and detail, he detected the Genius of life, the old cunning Proteus, nestling close beside us,
and showed that the dullness and prose we ascribe to the age was only another of his masks:
“His very flight is presence in disguise”
that he had put off a gay uniform for a fatigue dress, … and this by tracing the pedigree of every usage and
practice, every institution, utensil, and means, home to its origin in the structure of man.
The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the
American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks
steadily, To what end?
Talent alone can not make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth
and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not
otherwise; holding things because they are things. If he can not rightly express himself to-day, the same
things subsist, and will open themselves to-morrow. There lies the burden on his mind,—the burden of truth
to be declared,—more or less understood; and it constitutes his business and calling in the world, to see those
facts through, and to make them known. What signifies that he trips and stammers; that his voice is harsh or
hissing; that his method or his tropes are inadequate? That message will find method and imagery,
articulation and melody. Though he were dumb, it would speak. If not,—if there be no such God's word in
the man,—what care we how adroit, how fluent, how brilliant he is?
It makes a great difference to the force of any sentence, whether there be a man behind it, or no. In the
learned journal, in the influential newspaper, I discern no form; only some irresponsible shadow; oftener
some moneyed corporation, or some dangler, who hopes, in the mask and robes of his paragraph, to pass for
somebody. But, through every clause and part of speech of a right book, I meet the eyes of the most
determined of men: his force and terror inundate every word: the commas and dashes are alive; so that the
writing is athletic and nimble.
He has no aims less large than the conquest of universal nature, of universal truth, to be his portion: a
man not to be bribed, nor deceived, nor overawed; of a stoical self-command and self denial, and
having one test for all men,—What can you teach me? All possessions are valued by him for that only;
rank, privileges, health, time, being itself.
An intellectual man can see himself as a third person; therefore his faults and delusions interest him equally
with his successes. Though he wishes to prosper in affairs, he wishes more to know the history and destiny of
man; whilst the clouds of egotists drifting about him are only interested in a low success.
497
Goethe, coming into an over-civilized time and country, when original talent was oppressed under the load of
books and mechanical auxiliaries, and the distracting variety of claims, taught men how to dispose of this
mountainous miscellany, and make it subservient. I join Napoleon with him, as being both representatives of
the impatience and reaction of nature against the morgue of conventions,—two stern realists, who, with their
scholars, have severally set the axe at the root of the tree of cant.
It is the last lesson of modern science, that the highest simplicity of structure is produced, not by few
elements, but by the highest complexity. Man is the most composite of all creatures.
Goethe teaches courage, and the equivalence of all times; that the disadvantages of any epoch exist only to
the faint-hearted.
We too must write bibles.

The Conduct of Life (1860)

http://books.google.com/books?id=4PM_AAAAYAAJ
Money often costs too much.

Emerson, The Conduct of Life, Chapter 3, “Wealth,” p. 107
I am not much an advocate for traveling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are
not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the
most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home? I have been
quoted as saying captious things about travel; but I mean to do justice. .... He that does not fill a place at
home, cannot abroad. He only goes there to hide his insignificance in a larger crowd. You do not think you
will find anything there which you have not seen at home? The stuff of all countries is just the same. Do you
suppose there is any country where they do not scald milk-pans, and swaddle the infants, and burn the
brushwood, and broil the fish? What is true anywhere is true everywhere. And let him go where he will, he
can only find so much beauty or worth as he carries.
Emerson, The Conduct of Life, Chapter 4, “Culture,” p. 145
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
Emerson, The Conduct of Life, Chapter 6, “Worship,” p. 214
Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their
demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to
them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.
Emerson, The Conduct of Life, Chapter 7, “Considerations by the Way,” Complete Works (1883), vol. 6, p. 237
Society and Solitude (1870)

http://books.google.com/books?id=KUstAAAAYAAJ
There are metals, like potassium and sodium, which, to be kept pure, must be kept under naphtha. Such are
the talents determined on some specialty, which a culminating civilization fosters in the heart of great cities
and in royal chambers. Nature protects her own work. To the culture of the world an Archimedes, a Newton
is indispensable; so she guards them by a certain aridity. If these had been good fellows, fond of dancing,
port, and clubs, we should have had no “Theory of the Sphere” and no “Principia.” They had that necessity
of isolation which genius feels. Each must stand on his glass tripod if he would keep his electricity.
Emerson, Society and Solitude, Chapter 1, Complete Works (1883), vol. 7, p. 12
498
Such is the tragic necessity which strict science finds underneath our domestic and neighborly life,
irresistibly driving each adult soul as with whips into the desert, and making our warm covenants sentimental
and momentary. We must infer that the ends of thought were peremptory, if they were to be secured at such
ruinous cost. They are deeper than can be told, and belong to the immensities and eternities. They reach
down to that depth where society itself originates and disappears ; where the question is, Which is first, man
or men ? where the individual is lost in his source.
A scholar is a candle which the love and desire of all men will light.
'T is not new facts that avail, but the heat to dissolve everybody's facts.
In society, high advantages are set down to the individual as disqualifications.

We sink as easily as we rise, through sympathy. So many men whom I know are degraded by their
sympathies; their native aims being high enough, but their relation all too tender to the gross people about
them. Men cannot afford to live together on their merits, and they adjust themselves by their demerits,—by
their love of gossip, or by sheer tolerance and animal good-nature. They untune and dissipate the brave
aspirant.
That work is ever the more pleasant to the imagination which is not now required.
Emerson, Society and Solitude, Chapter 7, “Works and Days,” Complete Works (1883), vol. 7, p. 169
Letters and Social Aims

http://books.google.com/books?id=rgoRAAAAYAAJ
Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can
make any stand against good wit.
Emerson, Letters and Social Aims, Complete Works (1883), Volume 8, p. 163
Poems
http://books.google.com/books?id=OCo4AAAAYAAJ
The horseman serves the horse,

The neatherd serves the neat,
The merchant serves the purse,
The eater serves his meat;
'T is the day of the chattel,
Web to weave, and corn to grind;
Things are in the saddle,
And ride mankind.
Emerson, “Ode,” Complete Works (1883), vol. 9, p. 73
499
Lectures and Biographical Sketches
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The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the
expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a
dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatness, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art.
Emerson, “The Scholar,” Lectures and Biographical Sketches, Complete Works (1883), vol. 10, p. 279
Natural History of Intellect

http://books.google.com/books?id=Djs6AAAAMAAJ
When I look at the tree or the river and have not yet definitely made out what they would say to me, they are
by no means unimpressive. I wait for them, I enjoy them before they yet speak. I feel as if I stood by an
ambassador charged with the message of his king, which he does not deliver because the hour when he
should say it is not yet arrived.
Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, pp. 6-7
My belief in the use of a course on philosophy is that the student shall learn to appreciate the miracle of the
mind; shall learn its subtle but immense power, or shall begin to learn it; shall come to know that in seeing
and in no tradition he must find what truth is; that he shall see in it the source of all traditions, and shall see
each one of them as better or worse statement of its revelations; shall come to trust it entirely, as the only
true; to cleave to God against the name of God.
Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 7
'T is a great vice in all countries, the sacrifice of scholars to be courtiers and diners-out, to talk for the
amusement of those who wish to be amused, though the stars of heaven must be plucked down and packed
into rockets to this end.
What we really want is not a haste to act, but a certain piety toward the source of action and knowledge. In
fact we have to say that there is a certain beatitude, — I can call it nothing less, — to which all men are
entitled, tasted by them in different degrees, which is a perfection of their nature, and to which their entrance
must be in every way forwarded. Practical men, though they could lift the globe, cannot arrive at this.
Something very different has to be done, — the availing ourselves of every impulse of genius, an emanation
of the heaven it tells of, and the resisting this conspiracy of men and material things against the sanitary and
legitimate inspirations of the intellectual nature. What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by
the angle at which he looks at objects. What is life but what a man is thinking of all day? This is his fate
and his employer. Knowing is the measure of the man. By how much we know, so much we are.
Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 9-10
My contribution will be simply historical. I write anecdotes of the intellect; a sort of Farmer's Almanac
of mental moods. I confine my ambition to true reporting of its play in natural action.
I confess to a little distrust of that completeness of system which metaphysicians are apt to affect. 'T is the
gnat grasping the world. All these exhaustive theories appear indeed a false and vain attempt to introvert and
analyze the Primal Thought. That is upstream, and what a stream! Can you swim up Niagara Falls?
Metaphysics is dangerous as a single pursuit. We should feel more confidence in the same results from the
mouth of a man of the world.
500
I want not the logic, but the power, if any, which it brings into science and literature; the man who can
humanize this logic, these syllogisms, and give me the results. The adepts value only the pure
geometry, the aerial bridge ascending from earth to heaven with arches and abutments of pure reason.
I am fully contented if you tell me where are the two termini.
But this watching of the mind, in season and out of season, to see the mechanics of the thing, is a little of the
detective. The analytic process is cold and bereaving and, shall I say it? somewhat mean, as spying. There is
something surgical in metaphysics as we treat it. Were not an ode a better form? The poet sees wholes and
avoids analysis; the metaphysician, dealing as it were with the mathematics of the mind, puts himself out of
the way of the inspiration; loses that which is the miracle and creates the worship.
Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p.
Philosophy is still rude and elementary. It will one day be taught by poets. The poet is in the natural attitude;
he is believing; the philosopher, after some struggle, having only reasons for believing.
To Be is the unsolved, unsolvable wonder. To Be, in its two connections of inward and outward, the mind
and Nature. The wonder subsists, and age, though of eternity, could not approach a solution. But the
suggestion is always returning, that hidden source publishing at once our being and that it is the source of
outward Nature. Who are we, and what is Nature, have one answer in the life that rushes into us.
In my thought I seem to stand on the bank of a river and watch the endless flow of the stream, floating
objects of all shapes, colors and natures; nor can I much detain them as they pass, except by running beside
them a little way along the bank. But whence they come or whither they go is not told me. ... Who has found
the boundaries of human intelligence? Who has made a chart of its channel, or approached the fountain of
this wonderful Nile?
Life is incessant parturition. There are viviparous and oviparous minds; minds that produce their thoughts
complete men, like armed soldiers, ready and swift to go out to resist and conquer all the armies of error, and
others that deposit their dangerous unripe thoughts here and there to lie still for a time and be brooded in
other minds, and the shell not be broken until the next age, for them to begin, as new individuals, their career.
Our eating, trading, marrying, and learning are mistaken by us for ends and realities, whilst they are properly
symbols only; when we have come, by a divine leading, into the inner firmament, we are apprised of the
unreality or representative character of what we esteemed final.
There is no solitary flower and no solitary thought. It comes single like a foreign traveller,— but find
out its name, and it is related to a powerful and numerous family.
The mind is first only receptive. Surcharge it with thoughts in which it delights and it becomes active. The
moment a man begins not to be convinced, that moment he begins to convince.
501
I never hear a good speech at caucus or at cattle-show but it helps me, not so much by adding to my
knowledge as by apprising me of admirable uses to which what I know can be turned. The commonest
remark, if the man could only extend it a little, would make him a genius; but the thought is prematurely
checked, and grows no more. All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a
third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man had taken the first step. With every
additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first.
In unfit company the finest powers are paralyzed. No ambition, no opposition, no friendly attention and
fostering kindness, no wine, music or exhilarating aids, neither warm fireside nor fresh air, walking or riding,
avail at all to resist the palsy of mis-association. Genius is mute, is dull; there is no genius. Ask of your
flowers to open when you have let in on them a freezing wind.
There is no permanent wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company or other
favorable conditions, become wise.
Each man is a new power in Nature. He holds the keys of the world in his hands. No quality in Nature's vast
magazines he cannot touch, no truth he cannot see. Silent, passive, even sulkily, Nature offers every morning
her wealth to man. She is immensely rich; he is welcome to her entire goods, but she speaks no word, will
not so much as beckon or cough; only this, she is careful to leave all her doors ajar, — towers, hall,
storeroom and cellar. If he takes her hint and uses her goods she speaks no word; if he blunders and starves
she says nothing. To the idle blockhead Nature is poor, sterile, inhospitable. To the gardener her loam is all
strawberries, pears, pineapples. To the miller her rivers whirl the wheel and weave carpets and broadcloth.
To the sculptor her stone is soft; to the painter her plumbago and marl are pencils and chromes. To the poet
all sounds and words are melodies and rhythms.
Every man is a new method.

Every man is a new method and distributes things anew. If he could attain full size he would take up, first or
last, atom by atom, all the world into a new form.
Echo the leaders and they will fast enough see that you have nothing for them. They came to you for
something they had not.
The one thing not to be forgiven to intellectual persons is that they believe in the ideas of others. From this
deference comes the imbecility and fatigue of their society, for of course they cannot affirm these from the
deep life; they say what they would have you believe, but what they do not quite know. Profound sincerity is
the only basis of talent as of character. The temptation is to patronize Providence, to fall into the accepted
ways of talking and acting of the good sort of people.
There is no property or relation in that immense arsenal of forces which the earth is, but some man is at last
found who affects this, delights to unfold and work it, as if he were the born publisher and demonstrator of it.
502
A mind does not receive truth as a chest receives jewels that are put into it, but as the stomach takes
up food into the system. It is no longer food, but flesh, and is assimilated. The appetite and the power
of digestion measure our right to knowledge. He has it who can use it. As soon as our accumulation
overruns our invention or power to use, the evils of intellectual gluttony begin,— congestion of the
brain, apoplexy and strangulation.
Newton did not exercise more ingenuity but less than another to see the world.
Pan ... could intoxicate by the strain of his shepherd's pipe,— silent yet to most, for his pipes make the music
of the spheres, which, because it sounds eternally, is not heard at all by the dull, but only by the mind.
A man is intellectual in proportion as he can make an object of every sensation, perception and intuition;
so long as he has no engagement in any thought or feeling which can hinder him from looking at it as
somewhat foreign.
A man of talent has only to name any form or fact with which we are most familiar, and the strong light
which he throws on it enhances it to all eyes. People wonder they never saw it before. The detachment
consists in seeing it under a new order, not under a personal but under a universal light. To us it had
economic, but to the universe it has poetic relations, and it is as good as sun and star now. Indeed, this is the
measure of all intellectual power among men, the power to complete this detachment, the power of genius to
hurl a new individual into the world.
An intellectual man has the power to go out of himself and see himself as an object; therefore his defects
and delusions interest him as much as his successes. He not only wishes to succeed in life, but he wishes in
thought to know the history and destiny of a man; whilst the cloud of egotists drifting about are only
interested in a success to their egotism.
A perception is always a generalization. It lifts the object, whether in material or moral nature, into a type.
The animal, the low degrees of intellect, know only individuals. The philosopher knows only laws. That is,
he considers a purely mental fact, part of the soul itself. We say with Kenelm Digby, "All things that she
knoweth are herself, and she is all that she knoweth." Insight assimilates the thing seen. Is it only another
way of affirming and illustrating this to say that it sees nothing alone, but sees each particular object in just
connections, — sees all in God? In all healthy souls is an inborn necessity of presupposing for each particular
fact a prior Being which compels it to a harmony with all other natures. The game of Intellect is the
perception that whatever befalls or can be stated is a universal proposition; and contrariwise, that every
general statement is poetical again by being particularized or impersonated.
A single thought has no limit to its value; a thought, properly speaking, — that is a truth held not from any
man's saying so, or any accidental benefit or recommendation it has in our trade or circumstance, but because
we have perceived it is a fact in the nature of things.
Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, Complete Works (1883), vol. 12, p. 40-41
Every new impression on the mind is not to be derided, but is to be accounted for, and, until accounted for,
registered as an indisputable addition to our catalogue of natural facts.
My seeing this or that, and that I see it so or so, is as much a fact in the natural history of the world as is the
freezing of water at thirty-two degrees of Fahrenheit.
503
My percipiency affirms the presence and perfection of law, as much as all the martyrs. A perception, it is of a
necessity older than the sun and moon, and the Father of the Gods.
Do not trifle with your perceptions, or hold them cheap. ... Say, what impresses me ought to impress me. I
am bewildered by the immense variety of attractions and cannot take a step; but this one thread, fine as
gossamer, is yet real; and I hear a whisper, which I dare trust, that it is the thread on which the earth and the
heaven of heavens are strung.
Genius is a delicate sensibility to the laws of the world, adding the power to express them again in some new
form.
The highest measure of poetic power is such insight and faculty to fuse the circumstances of to-day as shall
make transparent the whole web of circumstance and opinion in which the man finds himself, so that he
releases himself from the traditions in which he grew,—no longer looks back to Hebrew or Greek or English
use or tradition in religion, laws or life, but sees so truly the omnipresence of eternal cause that he can
convert the daily and hourly event of New York, of Boston, into universal symbols. I owe to genius always
the same debt, of lifting the curtain from the common and showing me that gods are sitting disguised in
every company.
Genius is not a lazy angel contemplating itself and things. It is insatiable for expression.
Other Unpublished Papers

The whole audience were known to him and were drawn together by the expectation of witnessing his
powers. Mr. E [i.e. Charles] was fully aware of all this, and aware that whatever he said would be eagerly
and favorably listened to. Instead, therefore, of feeling that the audience was an object of attention from him,
he felt that he was an object of attention to the audience. This of course is the reverse of what it should be.
Instead of finding his audience—like other orators—an angry master who is to be pacified, or a sturdy master
who is to be cajoled,—and in any case, one whose difficult regard is to be won,—he takes it for granted that
he has the command. He makes a King’s Speech; condescendingly drops very fine things, which, if you listen
with all your might, will pay you. …
Let him remember that the true orator must not wrap himself in himself, but must wholly abandon himself
to the sentiment he utters and to the multitude he addresses;—must become their property, to the end that
they may become his.
Emerson, An unsent letter to his brother Charles, dated July 15, 1828, cited in First We Read, Then We Write (2009), p. 67
SAINTE-BEUVE (1804-1869)
It was said in the town that “madness only began in the Brentano family where it ended in other people.”
Little Bettina considered this saying as a compliment. “What others call eccentricity is quite comprehensible
to me,” she would remark, “and is part of some esoteric quality that I cannot define.” She had in her much of
the devil and the imp—in fact, all that is the reverse of the bourgeois and conventional mind, against which
she waged eternal war.
Sainte-Beuve, Portraits of Men, Forsyth Edeveain, trans. (London: 1891), p. 2
504
LUDWIG FEUERBACH (1804-1872)
Do not wish to be a philosopher in contrast to being a man; be nothing more than a thinking man; do not
think as a thinker, that is, with a faculty torn out of the totality of the real being of man and set up as
something in and for itself! Think as a real, living being, as one exposed to the vivifying and refreshing surge
of the sea of worldly experiences; think in existence, in the world as a part of it, not in the vacuum of
abstraction, like an isolated monad, an absolute monarch, an indifferent god! Then for a certainty thy
thoughts will be unities of being and thought.
Ludwig Feuerbach, as cited in the introduction to The Essence of Christianity (1957), p. xiii
While I do reduce theology to anthropology, I exalt anthropology to theology; very much as Christianity
while lowering God into man, made man into God.
Ludwig Feuerbach, as cited in the introduction to The Essence of Christianity (1957), p. xv
God is for man the commonplace book where he registers his highest feelings and thoughts, the genealogical
album into which he enters the names of the things most dear and sacred to him.
Ludwig Feuerbach, as cited in the introduction to The Essence of Christianity (1957), p. xvi
What is nearest to man is precisely what is most remote to him—because it has no air of mystery about it.
Ludwig Feuerbach, “On ‘The Beginning of Philosophy,’” Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 136
To elevate something from being an object of ordinary, everyday life to an object of thought—i.e., an object
of knowledge—is an absolute, a philosophical act—an act to which philosophy or knowledge in general
owes its existence.
Ludwig Feuerbach, “On ‘The Beginning of Philosophy,’” Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 136
Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy (1839)

Hegel determines and presents only the most striking differences of various religions, philosophies, time and
peoples, and in a progressive series of stages, but he ignores all that is common and identical in all of them.
... His system knows only subordination and succession; coordination and coexistence are unknown to it.
Ludwig Feuerbach, “Towards a critique of Hegel’s philosophy” (1839), Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 54
To the extent that I present my thoughts, I place them in time; an insight that contains all its successive
moments within a simultaneity in my mind now becomes a sequence.
Demonstrating is therefore only the means through which I strip my thought of the form of “mine-ness” so
that the other person may recognize it as his own.
Every presentation of philosophy, whether oral or written, is to be taken and can only be taken in the sense of
a means. Every system is only an expression or image of reason, and hence only an object of reason, an
object which reason—a living power that procreates itself in new thinking beings—distinguishes from itself
and posits as an object of criticism. Every system that is not recognized and appropriated as just a means,
limits and warps the mind for it sets up the indirect and formal thought in the place of the direct, original and
material thought.
All presentation, all demonstration—and the presentation of thought is demonstration—has, according to its
original determination—and this is all that matters to us—the cognitive activity of the other person as its
ultimate aim.
505
The history of philosophical system is the picture gallery of reason.
Hegel ... proceeds abstractly from the pre-existence of the intellect. ... He does not appeal to the intellect
within us.
To prove cannot mean anything other than to bring the other person to my own conviction. The truth lies
only in the unification of “I” and “You.” The Other of pure thought, however, is the sensuous intellect in
general. In the field of philosophy, proof therefore consists only in the fact that the contradiction between
sensuous intellect and pure thought is disposed, so that thought is true not only for itself but also for its
opposite.
Das Wesen des Christenthums [The Essence of Christianity] (1843)

English: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/essence/index.htm
English: http://books.google.com/books?id=ArMHAAAAQAAJ
German: http://books.google.com/books?id=02EVAAAAYAAJ
Bewußtsein im strengsten Sinne ist nur da, wo einem Wesen seine Gattung, seine Wesenheit Gegenstand ist.
Das Thier ist wohl sich als Individuum—darum hat es Selbstgefühl—aber nicht als Gattung Gegenstand—
darum mangelt ihm das Bewußtsein, welches seinen Namen vom Wissen ableitet.
Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Christenthums (1843)
Consciousness in the strictest sense is present only in a being to whom his species, his essential nature, is an
object of thought. The brute is indeed conscious of himself as an individual—and he has accordingly the
feeling of self as the common centre of successive sensations—but not as a species: hence, he is without that
consciousness which in its nature, as in its name, is akin to science.
Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (1843), G. Eliot, trans. (1881), p. 1
Es handelt sich also im Verhältniß der selbstbewußten Vernunft zur Religion nur um die Vernichtung einer
Illusion—einer Illusion aber, die keineswegs indifferent ist, sondern vielmehr grundverderblich auf die
Menschheit wirkt, den Menschen, wie um die Kraft des wirklichen Lebens, so um den Wahrheits- und
Tugendsinn bringt; denn selbst die Liebe, an sich die innerste, wahrste Gesinnung, wird durch die
Religiosität zu einer nur scheinbaren, illusorischen, indem die religiöse Liebe den Menschen nur um
Gotteswillen, also nur scheinbar den Menschen, in Wahrheit nur Gott liebt.
Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Christenthums (1843), S. 408
Thus the work of the self-conscious reason in relation to religion is simply to destroy an illusion:—an
illusion, however, which is by no means indifferent, but which, on the contrary, is profoundly injurious in its
effect on mankind; which deprives man as well of the power of real life as of the genuine sense of truth and
virtue: for even love, in itself the deepest, truest emotion, becomes by means of religiousness merely
ostensible, illusory, since religious love gives itself to man only for God’s sake, so that it is given only in
appearance to man, but in reality to God.
Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, M. Evans a.k.a. G. Eliot, trans. (London: 1881), p. 274
The power of thought is the light of knowledge, the power of will is the energy of character, the power of
heart is love. Reason, love and power of will are perfections of man.
Ludwig Feuerbach, Introduction to The Essence of Christianity (1843), Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 99
The first philosophers were astronomers. The heavens remind man ... that he is destined not merely to act,
but also to contemplate.
Ludwig Feuerbach, Introduction to The Essence of Christianity (1843), Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), pp. 101-102
506
What man calls Absolute Being, his God, is his own being. The power of the object over him is therefore the
power of his own being. Thus, the power of the object of feeling is the power of feeling itself; the power of
the object of reason is the power of reason itself; and the power of the object of will is the power of will
itself.
To be sure, the human individual can, even must, feel and know himself to be limited—and this is what
distinguishes him from the animal—but he can become conscious of his limits, his finite-ness, only because
he can make the perfection and infinity of his species the object either of his feeling, conscience, or thought.
But if his limitations appear to him as emanating from the species, this can only be due to his delusion that he
is identical with the species, a delusion intimately linked with the individual’s love of ease, lethargy, vanity,
and selfishness; for a limit which I know to be mine alone, humiliates, shames, and disquiets me. Hence, in
order to free myself of this feeling of shame, this uneasiness, I make the limits of my individuality the limits
of man’s being itself. What is incomprehensible to me is incomprehensible to others; why should this worry
me at all? It is not due to any fault of mine or of my understanding: the cause lies in the understanding of the
species itself. But it is a folly, a ludicrous and frivolous folly to designate that which constitutes the nature of
man and the absolute nature of the individual, the essence of the species, as finite and limited.
Ludwig Feuerbach, Introduction to The Essence of Christianity (1843), Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), pp. 103-104
The Divine Being perceived by feeling is in reality nothing but the being of feeling itself which is enraptured
and fascinated by itself—feeling that is blissful in itself, intoxicated with joy.
In view of its relation to the objects of the senses, the consciousness of the object can be distinguished from
self-consciousness; but, in the case of the religious object, consciousness and self-consciousness directly
coincide.
Man transposes his essential being outside himself before he finds it within himself. His own being becomes
the object of his thought first as another being.
The hidden nature of religion, which remains opaque to religion itself, is transparent to the thinker who
makes it the object of his thought.
Ludwig Feuerbach, Introduction to The Essence of Christianity (1843), Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 110-111
507
By positing God as unknowable, man excuses himself to what is still left of his religious conscience for
his oblivion of God, his surrender to the world. He negates God in practice – his mind and his senses
have been absorbed by the world – but he does not negate him in theory. He does not attack his
existence; he leaves it intact. But this existence neither affects nor incommodes him, for it is only a
negative existence, an existence without existence; it is an existence that contradicts itself – a being
that, in view of its effects, is indistinguishable from non-being. The negation of determinate, positive
predicates of the Divine Being is nothing else than the negation of religion, but one which still has an
appearance of religion, so that it is not recognized as a negation – it is nothing but a subtle, sly atheism. The
alleged religious horror of limiting God by determinate predicates is only the irreligious wish to forget all
about God, to banish him from the mind. He who is afraid to be finite is afraid to exist. All real existence,
that is, all existence that really is existence, is qualitative, determinate existence. He who seriously, truly
believes in the existence of God is not disturbed even by grossly sensuous qualities attributed to God. He
who regards the fact of his existence as an insult, he who recoils from that which is gross, may just as well
give up existing. A God to whom his determinateness is an insult lacks the courage and strength to exist.
Determinateness is the fire, the oxygen, the salt of existence. An existence in general, an existence without
qualities, is an insipid and preposterous existence. But there is nothing more, and nothing less, in God than
what religion puts in him. Only when man loses his taste for religion, that is, when religion itself becomes
insipid, does God become an insipid existence.
A true atheist, that is, an atheist in the ordinary sense, is therefore he alone to whom the predicates of the
Divine Being – for example, love, wisdom, and justice – are nothing, not he to whom only the subject of
these predicates is nothing.
That a quality is possessed by God does not make it divine; God possesses it, because it is in itself divine.
The more the sensuous is denied, the more sensuous is the God to whom it is sacrificed.
If I am absolutely, i.e., by nature wicked and unholy, how can holiness and goodness be the objects of my
thought – no matter whether these objects are given to me internally or externally? If my heart is wicked, my
understanding corrupt, how can I perceive and feel the holy to be holy, the good to be good? How can I
perceive a beautiful painting as beautiful if my soul is by nature ugly, and hence incapable of perceiving
aesthetic beauty?
That which is ascribed to the God of man is in truth ascribed to man himself; that which man predicates of
God, he in truth predicates of himself. Augustinianism would only then be true – and true, indeed, in a sense
opposed to Pelagianism – if the devil were the God of man, if man, aware that be was himself a devil,
worshiped and celebrated the devil as the highest expression of his own being. But as long as man worships a
good being as God, that long does he behold his own goodness in God.
As the activity of the arteries drives the blood into the extremities, and the action of the veins leads it back
again, as life basically consists in a constant systole and diastole, so is it also in religion. In the religious
systole man’s being departs from itself into an outward projection; man disowns, rejects himself; in the
religious diastole his heart again embraces his rejected being.
508
Grundsätze der Philosophie der Zukunft (1843)
God as God—as an intellectual or abstracted being, that is, a nonhuman, nonsensuous being that is an object
only of reason or intelligence and is accessible only to them—is nothing but the essence of reason itself. He
is, however, conceived by ordinary theology or theism by means of the imagination as a being distinct from
and independent of reason.
Ludwig Feuerbach, Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, M. Vogel, trans (1966), § 6
That reason that conceives of God as an unlimited being conceives … only its own limitlessness.
Ludwig Feuerbach, Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, M. Vogel, trans (1966), § 6
Vorlesungen über das Wesen der Religion [Lectures on the Essence of Religion]
(1851)
A subject interests me and holds my attention only so long as it presents me with difficulties, only so long as
I am at odds with it and have, as it were, to struggle with it; but once I have mastered it I hurry on to
something else, to a new subject; for my interest is not confined to any particular field or subject; it extends
to everything human. This does not mean that I am an intellectual miser or egoist, who amasses knowledge
for himself alone; by no means! What I do and think for myself, I must also think and do for others. But I
feel the need of instructing others in a subject only so long as, while instructing others, I am also instructing
myself.
Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, R. Manheim, trans. (1967), Lecture 1, p. 2
I do not write or speak easily. To tell the truth, I can speak and write only when the subject matter grips me
emotionally, when it commands my enthusiasm. But emotion and enthusiasm are not products of the will;
they do not take their cue from the clock, arising on appointed days or at set hours. I can speak and write
only about things that strike me as worth speaking and writing about. And to me only what is not self-evident
or has not already been fully dealt with by others is worth speaking and writing about. Accordingly, even in
writing I deal only with that part of a subject which has not been dealt with in other books, or at least not in a
way that fully satisfies me; the rest I leave aside. Consequently my thinking is aphoristic, as my critics say,
but aphoristic in a very different sense and for very different reasons than they suppose. It is aphoristic
because it is critical, that is, because it distinguishes essence from appearance, the necessary from the
superfluous.
That was the period in which all public life was so poisoned and befouled that the only way of preserving
one's freedom of spirit and one's health was to abandon all government service, every public function, even
that of a university instructor; when no public position, even as a teacher, was obtainable except at the price
of political servility and religious obscurantism, and only the written word devoted to learned matters was
free – though only to a very limited degree and not because learning was respected, but rather because it was
disparaged for its real or supposed ineffectualness or lack of influence on public affairs. What was one to do
at such a time, especially if one was conscious of holding ideas opposed to the prevailing system of
government, but withdraw and resort to writing as the only means of escaping the impertinence of a despotic
state power.
To theology, ... only what it holds sacred is true, whereas to philosophy, only what holds true is sacred.
509
The more recent philosophers differ in one striking respect from their predecessors. For the earlier
philosophers separated philosophy and religion and even set them in opposition, arguing that religion is
grounded on divine wisdom and authority, while philosophy is grounded solely on human wisdom—or, as
Spinoza put it, that religion aims solely at the advantage and welfare of man, while philosophy aims at the
truth.
It was only in my later work on philosophy and the philosophy of religion that I resolutely attacked both the
abstract inhumanity of philosophy and the fictitious, illusory humanity of religion. It was only then that, fully
aware of what I was doing, I replaced the abstract, merely cogitated cosmic being known as God by the
reality of the world, or nature; that I replaced the rational being deprived of his senses, which philosophy has
extracted out of man, be the real, sensuous man endowed with reason.
Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, R. Manheim, trans. (1967), Lecture 2, pp. 13-14
Religion is indeed essential to or innate in man, but ... this is not the religion of theology or theism, not an
actual belief in God, but solely the religion that expresses nothing other than man’s feeling of finiteness and
dependency on nature. ...
I distinguish religion from theism, the belief in a being distinct from nature and man. ... Today theism,
theology, the belief in God have become so identified with religion that to have no God, to theological being,
is considered synonymous with having no religion. But here we deal with the original elements of religion. It
is theism, theology, that has wrenched man out of his relationship with the world, isolated him, made him
into an arrogant self-centered being who exalts himself above nature. And it is only on this level that religion
becomes identified with theology, with the belief in a being outside and above nature as the true God.
Originally religion expressed nothing other than man’s feeling that he is an inseparable part of nature or the
world.
Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, R. Manheim, trans. (1967), Fifth Lecture, pp. 34-35
Though I myself am an atheist, I openly profess religion in the sense just mentioned, that is, a nature religion.
I hate the idealism that wrenches man out of nature; I am not ashamed of my dependency on nature; I openly
confess that the workings of nature affect not only my surface, my skin, my body, but also my core, my
innermost being, that the air I breathe in bright weather has a salutary effect not only on my lungs but also on
my mind, that the light of the sun illumines not only my eyes but also my spirit and my heart. And I do not,
like a Christian, believe that such dependency is contrary to my true being or hope to be delivered from it. I
know further that I am a finite moral being, that I shall one day cease to be. But I find this very natural and
am therefore perfectly reconciled to the thought.
Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, R. Manheim, trans. (1967), Fifth Lecture, pp. 35-36
BENJAMIN DISRAELI (1804-1881)

To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.
Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil, 1845
Philosophy becomes poetry and science imagination, in the enthusiasm of genius.

Benjamin Disraeli
I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad.
Benjamin Disraeli
When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.
Benjamin Disraeli
The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but to reveal to him his own.
Benjamin Disraeli
510
Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic makes heroes.
Benjamin Disraeli
My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.

Benjamin Disraeli
Grief is the agony of an instant, the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.
Benjamin Disraeli
I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?

Benjamin Disraeli
ALEKSANDER CHODŹKO (1804-1891)

Specimens of the popular poetry of Persia, orally collected and translated with
philological and historical notes
http://books.google.com/books?id=l9_YAAAAMAAJ
Without Kyrat, life and the world is but a sin to me.

Aleksander Chodźko, Kurroglou speaking of his horse Kyrat, Specimens of the popular poetry of Persia, p. 165
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE (1805-1859)

I see an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring
the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls. Each of them, withdrawn and apart, is like a
stranger to the destiny of all the others: his children and his particular friends form the whole human species
for him; as for dwelling with his fellow citizens, he is beside them but he does not see them. ...
Above these an immense tutelary power is elevated, which alone takes charge of assuring their
enjoyments and watching over their fate, It is absolute, detailed, regular, far-seeing. and mild. ... It seeks only
to keep [men] fixed irrevocably in childhood. ... It provides for [the citizens’] security, foresees and secures
their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principal affairs, directs their industry, regulates their
estates, divides their inheritances; can it not take away from them entirely the trouble of thinking and the pain
of living?
Thus after taking each individual by turns in its powerful hands and kneading him as it likes, the sovereign
extends its arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated.
painstaking uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a
way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them, and directs them. ... It does
not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates,
extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious
animals of which the government is the shepherd.
Tocqueville
Democracy in America (1835)

English: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/de-tocqueville/democracy-america/index.htm
English, vol. 1: http://books.google.com/books?id=vPEtAAAAIAAJ
English, vol. 2: http://books.google.com/books?id=KO8tAAAAIAAJ
French, vol. 1.: http://books.google.com/books?id=husJAAAAIAAJ
French, vol. 2:
French, vol. 3: http://books.google.com/books?id=yvdmyX3HlZUC
In the United States the general thrust of education is directed toward political life; in Europe its main aim is
to fit men for private life.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America
511
The idea of evil is inseparable in their minds from that of novelty.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, preface
I have never, knowingly, molded facts to ideas, instead of ideas to facts.

Tocqueville, Democracy in America, preface
What one must fear, moreover, is not so much the sight of the immorality of the great as that of immorality
leading to greatness. In democracy, plain citizens see a man who issues from their ranks, and who in a few
years achieves wealth and power; the spectacle excites their surprise and their envy; they inquire how he who
was their equal yesterday is vested today with the right to direct them. To attribute his elevation to his talents
or his virtues is inconvenient, for it is to avow that they are less virtuous and less skillful than he. They
therefore place the principal cause of it in some of his vices, and often they are right in doing so. Thus there
is at work some sort of odious mixing of ideas of baseness and power, of unworthiness and success, of utility
and dishonor.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, H. Mansfield, trans. (Chicago: 2000), p. 212
The idea of rights is noting other than the idea of virtue introduced into the political world.
It is with the idea of rights that men have defined what license and tyranny are. Enlightened by it, each could
show himself independent without arrogance and submissive without baseness. The man who obeys violence
bows down and demeans himself; but when he submits to the right to command that he recognized in
someone like him, he raises himself in a way above the very one who commands him. There are no great
men without virtue; without respect for rights, where is no great people: one can almost say that there is no
society; for, what is a union of rational and intelligent beings among whom force is the sole bond?
Why, in America, a country of democracy par excellence, does no one make heard those complaints against
property in general that often ring out in Europe? Is there need to say it?—it is that in America there are no
proletarians. Each one, having a particular good to defend, recognizes the right of property in principle.
Those who want to attack the laws are therefore reduced to doing openly one of these two things: they must
either change the opinion of the nation or ride roughshod over its will.
In the United States, where the poor man governs, the rich always have to fear lest he abuse his power
against them.
512
Do you want to give a certain loftiness to the human spirit, a generous way of viewing the things if this
world? Do you want to inspire in men a sort of contempt for material goods? Do you desire to give birth to or
to maintain profound convictions and to prepare for great devotions?
Is it a question for you of polishing mores, of elevating manners, of making the arts shine? Do you want
poetry, renown, glory? …
If this is, according to you, the principal object that men ought to propose for themselves in society, do
not take the government of democracy; it would surely not lead to the goal.
But if it seems to you useful to turn the intellectual and moral activity of man to the necessities of material
life and to employ it in producing well-being; if reason appears to you to be more profitable to men than
genius; if your object is not to create heroic virtues but peaceful habits; it you would rather see vices than
crimes, and if you prefer to find fewer great actions on condition that you will encounter fewer enormities if
instead of acting within a brilliant society it is enough for you to live in the midst of a prosperous society; if,
finally, the principal object of government, according to you, is not to give the most force or the most glory
possible to the entire body of the nation, but to procure the most well-being for each of the individuals who
compose it and to have each avoid the most misery, then equalize conditions and constitute the government
of a democracy.
If there is no longer a time to make a choice and if a force superior to man already carries you along
toward one of the two governments without consulting your desires, seek at least to derive from it all the
good that it can do; and knowing its good instinct as will as its evil penchants, strive to restrict the effects of
the latter and develop the former.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, H. Mansfield, trans. (Chicago: 2000), pp. 234-235
It is of the very essence of democratic governments that the empire of the majority is absolute; for in
democracies, outside the majority there is nothing that resists it.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, H. Mansfield, trans. (Chicago: 2000), p.
The moral empire of the majority is founded in part of the idea that there is more enlightenment and wisdom
in many men united than in one alone, in the number of legislators than in their choice. It is the theory of
equality applied to intellects.
The French under the former monarchy held as a constant that the king could never fail; and when he
happened to do evil, they thought that the fault was in his counselors. That marvelously facilitated obedience.
One could murmur against the law without ceasing to love and respect the legislator. The Americans have
the same opinion of the majority.
The members of the minority cannot hope to attract the majority to them, because for that it would be
necessary to abandon the very object of the struggle they sustain against it.
The majority in the United States therefore has an immense power in fact, and a power in opinion almost as
great; and once it has formed on a question, there are so to speak no obstacles that can, I shall not say stop,
but even delay its advance, and allow it the time to hear the complaints of those it crushes as it passes.
A nation is like a jury charged with representing the universal society and with applying the justice that is its
law.
When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not deny to the majority the right to command; I only appeal from
the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of the human race.
513
What therefore is a majority taken collectively, if not an individual who has opinions and most often interests
contrary to another individual that one names the minority? Now, if you accept that one man vested with
omnipotence can abuse it against his adversaries, why not accept the same thing for a majority? Have men
changed in character by being united?
What is most repugnant to me in America is not the extreme freedom that reigns there, it is the lack of a
guarantee against tyranny.
When a man or party suffers from an injustice in the United States, whom do you want him to address?
Public opinion? that is what forms the majority; the legislative body? it represents the majority and obeys it
blindly; the executive power? it is named by the majority and serves as its passive instrument; the public
forces? the public forces are nothing other than the majority in arms; the jury? the jury is the majority vested
with the right to pronounce decrees: in certain states, the judges themselves are elected by the majority.
Therefore, however iniquitous or unreasonable is the measure that strikes you, you must submit to it.
One must distinguish well arbitrariness from tyranny. Tyranny can be exercised by means of law itself, and
then is not arbitrariness; arbitrariness can be exercised in the interest of the governed, and then it is not
tyrannical.
In our day the most absolute sovereigns of Europe cannot prevent certain thoughts hostile to their
authority from mutely circulating in their states and even in the heart of their courts. It is not the same in
America: as long as the majority is doubtful, one speaks; but when it has irrevocably pronounced, everyone
becomes silent and friends and enemies alike then seem to hitch themselves together to its wagon. The
reason for this is simple: there is no monarch so absolute that the can gather in his hands all the
strength of society and defeat resistance as can a majority vested with the right to make the laws and
execute them.
A king, moreover, has only a material power that acts on actions and cannot reach wills; but the
majority is vested with a force, at once material and moral, that acts on the will as much as on actions,
and which at the same time prevents the deed and the desire to do it.
I do not know any country were, in general, less independence of mind and genuine freedom of discussion
reign than in America.
There is no single country in Europe so subject to one single power that he who wants to speak the truth does
not find support capable of assuring him against the consequences of his independence. If he has the
misfortune to live under an absolute government, he often has the people for him; if he inhabits a free
country, he can take shelter behind royal authority if need be. The aristocratic fraction of the society sustains
him in democratic regions, and democracy in the others. But in the heart of a democracy organized as the
United States, one encounters only a single power, a single element of force and success, and nothing outside
it.
In America the majority draws a formidable circle around thought. Inside those limits, the writer is free; but
unhappiness awaits him if he dares to leave them.
514
Princes had so to speak made violence material; democratic republics in our day have rendered it just as
intellectual as the human will it wants to constrain. Under the absolute government of one alone, despotism
struck the body crudely, so as the reach the soul; and the soul, escaping from those blows, rose
gloriously above it; but in democratic republics, tyranny does not proceed in this way; it leaves the
body and goes straight for the soul. The master no longer says to it: You shall think as I do or you shall
die; he says: You are free not to think as I do; your life, your goods, everything remains to you; but
from this day on, you are a stranger among us. … You shall remain among men, but you shall lose your
rights of humanity. When you approach those like you, they shall flee you as being impure; and those who
believe in your innocence, even they shall abandon you, for one would flee them in their turn. Go in peace, I
leave you your life, but I leave it to you worse than death.
In the proudest nations of the Old World, works destined to paint faithfully the vices and ridiculousness of
contemporaries were published; La Bruyère lived at the palace of Louis XIV when he composed his chapter
on the great, and Molière criticized the Court in plays that he had performed before courtiers. But the power
that dominates in the United States [the majority] does not intend to be made fun of like this. The slightest
reproach wounds it, the least prickly truth alarms it; and one must praise it from the forms of its language to
its most solid virtues. No writer, whatever his renown may be, can escape the obligation of singing the
praises of his fellow citizens. The majority, therefore, lives in perpetual adoration of itself.
In absolute governments, the great who are near the throne flatter the passions of the master and
voluntarily bend to his caprices. … In democratic republics, … where the sovereign is approachable from all
sides and where it is only a question of raising one’s voice to reach its ear, one encounters many more people
who seek to speculate about its weakness and to live at the expense of its passions than in absolute
monarchies. It is not that men are naturally worse there than elsewhere, but the temptation there is very
strong and is offered to more people at the same time. A much more general abasement of souls results from
it.
Democratic republics put the spirit of the court with reach of the many and let it penetrate all classes at
once. This is one of the principal reproaches that can be made against them.
In democratic states organized like the American republics, where the majority possesses an empire so
absolute and so irresistible that one must in a way renounce one’s rights as a citizen and so to peak
one’s quality as a man when one wants to deviate from the path it has traced.
Among the immense crowd that flocks to a political career in the United States, I have seen few men indeed
who show that virile candor, that manly independence of thought, that often distinguished Americans in
previous times, and that, everywhere it is found, forms the salient feature of great characters.
515
In absolute governments, the great who are near the throne flatter the passions of the master and
voluntarily bend to his caprices. … In democratic republics, … where the sovereign is approachable from all
sides and where it is only a question of raising one’s voice to reach its ear, one encounters many more people
who seek to speculate about its weakness and to live at the expense of its passions than in absolute
monarchies. It is not that men are naturally worse there than elsewhere, but the temptation there is very
strong and is offered to more people at the same time. A much more general abasement of souls results from
it.
Democratic republics put the spirit of the court with reach of the many and let it penetrate all classes at
once. This is one of the principal reproaches that can be made against them.
In democratic states organized like the American republics, where the majority possesses an empire so
absolute and so irresistible that one must in a way renounce one’s rights as a citizen and so to peak one’s
quality as a man when one wants to deviate from the path it has traced.
Among the immense crowd that flocks to a political career in the United States, I have seen few men
indeed who show that virile candor, that manly independence of thought, that often distinguished Americans
in previous times, and that, everywhere it is found, forms the salient feature of great characters.
I have encountered genuine patriotism in the people. I have often sought it in vain in those who direct it.
This is easily understood by analogy: despotism depraves the one who submits to it much more than the one
who imposes it. In absolute monarchies, the king often has great virtues, but the courtiers are always base.
It is true that the courtiers in America do not say “Sire” and “Your Majesty”—a great and capital
difference; but they speak constantly of the natural enlightenment of their master; they do not hold a
competition on the question of knowing which one of the virtues of their prince most merits being admired;
for they are sure he possess all the virtues, without having acquired them and so to speak without wanting to
do so; they do not give him their wives and their daughters o that he may deign to elevate them to the rank of
his mistresses; but in sacrificing their opinions to him, they prostitute themselves.
If ever freedom is lost in America, one will have to blame the omnipotence of the majority that will have
brought minorities to despair and have forced them to make an appeal to material force. one will then see
anarchy, but it will have come as a consequence of despotism.
In America, … each finds easy ways, unknown elsewhere, to make his fortune or to increase it. Cupidity is
always out of breath there, and the human mind, distracted at every moment from pleasures of the
imagination and works of the intellect, gets carried away only in the pursuit of wealth. Not only does one see
industrial and commercial classes in the United States, as in all other countries; but what has never
been encountered—all men simultaneously occupied with industry and commerce.
If the Americans had been alone in the universe … they would not have been slow to discover that one
cannot make progress in the practice of the sciences for long without cultivating the theory; that all the arts
are perfected by one another, and however absorbed they might have been in the pursuit of the principal
object of their desires, they would soon have recognized that one must turn aside from it from time to time,
the better to attain it.
516
The situation of the Americans is … entirely exceptional. … Their uniquely commercial habits; the very
country they inhabit, which seems to turn their intelligence away from the study of the sciences, letters, and
arts; the proximity of Europe, which permits them not to study these without falling back into barbarism; a
thousand particular causes, of which I could make only the principal ones known, must have concentrated the
American mind in a singular manner on caring for purely material things. Their passions, needs, education,
circumstances—all in fact seem to cooperate in making the inhabitant of the United States incline toward the
earth. Religion alone, from time to time, makes him raise passing, distracted glances toward heaven.
Democratic and free societies … always contain within themselves a multitude of people who are … well-to-
do. These wealthy will not be bound as closely among themselves as the members of the former aristocratic
class; they will have different instincts and will almost never possess a leisure as secure and as complete; but
they will be infinitely more numerous than those who composed that class could be. These men will not be
closely confined to the preoccupations of material life and they will be able, although in different degrees, to
engage in the works and pleasures of the intellect: they therefore will engage in them; for if it is true that the
human mind leans at one extreme toward the bounded, material, and useful, at the other it naturally rises
toward the infinite, immaterial, and beautiful. Physical needs tie it to the earth, but as soon as it is no longer
restrained, it rights itself.
In democratic, enlightened, and free centuries, men have nothing separating them or keeping them in their
place; they rise or fall with singular rapidity. All classes see each other constantly because they are very
close. They communicate and mix with each other every day, they imitate and envy each other. …
Thus no one easily lets himself be reduced to the mere material cares of life, and the most humble artisan
casts some eager and furtive glances at the superior world of the intellect from time to time. …
From the moment when the crowd begins to be interested in works of the mind, it is discovered that a
great means of acquiring glory, power, or wealth is to excel in some of them. The restive ambition equality
gives birth to is immediately turned in this direction as in all others. The number of those who cultivate the
sciences, letters, and arts becomes immense. A prodigious activity is awakened in the world of the intellect;
each one seeks to open a path to it and strives to bring the public eye is his wake. Something analogous to
what happens in the United States in political society takes place; works are often imperfect, but they are
innumerable; and although the results of individual efforts are ordinarily very small, the general result is
always very great.
It is therefore not true to say that men who live in democratic centuries are naturally indifferent to the
sciences, letters, and arts; one must only recognize that they cultivate them in their own manner, and that
they bring in this way the qualities and faults that are their own
If the democratic social state and institutions do not stop the ascent of the human mind, it is at least
incontestable that they steer it in one direction rather than another.
Nothing is more necessary to the cultivation of the advanced sciences or of the elevated portion of sciences
than meditation, and there is nothing less fit for meditation than the interior of a democratic society. One
does not encounter there, as in aristocratic peoples, a numerous class that stays at rest because it finds itself
well-off and another than does not move because it despairs of being better off. Everyone is agitated: some
want to attain power, others to take possession of wealth. In the midst of this universal tumult, the repeated
collision of contrary interests, the continual advance of men toward fortune, where does one find the calm
necessary to the profound combinations of the intellect? how does each man bring his thought to a stop at
such and such a point, when everything moves around him and he himself is carried along and tossed about
every day in the impetuous current that swirls all things along?
517
Great revolutions are no more common in democratic peoples; I am even brought to believe that they are less
so. But a slight, bothersome movement reigns within these nations, a sort of incessant rotation of men over
one another that troubles and distracts the mind without animating or elevating it.
Not only do men living in democratic societies give themselves over to meditation with difficulty, but
they naturally have little esteem for it. The democratic social state and institutions bring most men to act
continually; yet the habits of mind suited to action are not always suited to thought. The man who acts is
often reduced to contenting himself with that is nearly so because he would never arrive at the end of his
design if he wished to perfect every detail. He must constantly rely on ideas that he has not had the leisure to
fathom, for it is much more the timeliness of the idea he makes use if than its rigorous exactness that helps
him; and all in all, there is less risk for him in making use of some false principle than in wasting his time
establishing the truth of all his principles. It is not by long and learned demonstrations that the world is led.
There, the quick look at a particular fact, the daily study of the changing passions of the crowd, the chance of
the moment and the skill to seize it decide affairs.
In centuries in which almost everyone acts, one is therefore generally brought to attach an excessive value
to rapid sparks and superficial conceptions of the intellect and, on the contrary, to deprecate immoderately its
profound, slow work.
There are several manners of studying the sciences. In a crowd of men one encounters a selfish, mercenary,
industrial taste for the discoveries of the mind which must not be confused with the disinterested passion that
lights up in the hearts of a few; there is a desire to utilize knowledge and a pure desire to know.
An ardent and inexhaustible love of truth that nourishes itself and enjoys itself incessantly without being able
to satisfy itself arises now and then in some men. It is that ardent, haughty, and disinterested love of the true
that guides men to the abstract sources of truth from which to draw out mother ideas.
If Pascal had envisaged only some great profit, or even if he had been moved by the desire for glory
alone, I cannot believe that he would ever have been able to assemble, as he did, all the powers of his
intellect in order better to discover the most hidden secrets of the Creator. When I see his soul in a way from
the midst of the cares of life to tie it wholly to that search, … I halt in bewonderment and understand that it is
no ordinary cause that can produce such extraordinary efforts.
The future will prove whether those passions, so rare and fruitful, are born and developed as easily in the
midst of democratic societies as within aristocracies. As for me, I avow that I have trouble believing it.
In aristocratic societies the class that directs opinion and leads affairs, placed in a permanent and
hereditary manner above the crowd, naturally conceives a high-minded idea of itself and of man. It willingly
imagines glorious enjoyments for him and fixes magnificent goals for his desires. … In aristocratic times one
generally gets used to very vast ideas of the dignity, power, and greatness of man. These opinions influence
those who cultivate the sciences as well as all others; they facilitate the natural spark of the mind toward the
highest regions of thought and naturally dispose it to conceive a sublime and almost divine love of truth. …
It cannot be the same in democratic nations.
Most men who compose these nations are very eager for present material enjoyments; as they are always
discontented with the position they occupy and always free to leave it, they dream only of the means of
changing their fortune or of increasing it. For minds so disposed, every new method that leads to wealth by a
shorter path, every machine that shortens work, every instrument that diminishes the costs of production,
every discovery that facilitates pleasures and augments them seems to be the most magnificent effort of
human intelligence. It is principally in this way that democratic peoples apply themselves to the sciences,
understand them, and honor them. …
One can easily conceive that in a society organized in this manner, the human mind is insensibly guided
to neglect theory and that it must, on the contrary, feel impelled with unparalleled energy toward application
518
or, at the very least, toward the portion of theory that is necessary to those who apply it.
In vain does an instinctive penchant elevate the mind toward the highest spheres of the intellect; interest
leads it back toward the middle ones.
In aristocratic societies, enjoyments of the mind are particularly demanded of the sciences; in democratic,
those of the body.
If democracy does not bring men to cultivate the sciences for the sciences’ sake, on the other hand it
increases immensely the number of those who cultivate them. It is not to be believed that among such a great
multitude some speculative genius whom the singular love of truth inflames will not be born from time to
time. One can be assured that he will strive to penetrate the most profound mysteries of nature, whatever the
spirit of his country and his times should be.
If the lights that enlighten us ever came to be extinguished, they would be obscured little by little and as if
by themselves. By dint of being confined to application, one would lose sight of the principles, and when one
had entirely forgotten the principles one would follow the methods derived from them badly; one would no
longer be able to invent new ones, and one would employ without intelligence and without art the erudite
procedures that one would no longer understand.
When the Europeans landed in China three hundred years ago, they found … most of the scientific
methods had been preserved within it; but science itself no longer existed. … The Chinese, in following the
trail of their fathers, had forgotten the reasons that had directed them. They still made use of the formula
without seeking the sense of it; they kept the instrument and no longer possessed the art of modifying or
reproducing it. … They were forced to imitate their fathers always and in everything, so as not to be cast into
impenetrable darkness if they strayed for an instant from the path these latter had traced.
The general mediocrity of fortunes, the absence of superfluity, the universal desire for well-being, and the
constant efforts in which each engages to procure it for himself, make the taste for the useful predominate
over the love of the beautiful in the heart of man. Democratic nations, in which all these things are
encountered, will therefore cultivate the arts that serve to render life convenient in preference to those whose
object is to embellish it; they will habitually prefer the useful to the beautiful and they will want the beautiful
to be useful.
In democracies one always sees a very great number of men whose fortune grows, but whose desires grow
much more quickly than their fortune and who devour with their eyes the goods it promises long before it
delivers them. … It results that in democracies one always encounters a multitude of citizens whose needs
are above their resources and who would willingly consent to be incompletely satisfied rather than to
renounce absolutely the object of their covetousness.
The worker easily understands these passions because he himself shares them: in aristocracies he sought
to sell his products very dear to some, he now conceives that there might be a more expeditious means of
enriching himself, which would be to sell them cheaply to all.
Excellent workers who penetrate to the furthest limits of their profession are formed; but they rarely have the
occasion to show what they know how to do: they are carefully sparing in their efforts; they keep themselves
in a skillful mediocrity that judges itself and that, though being capable of reaching beyond the goal it
proposes for itself, aims only at the goal it reaches for. In aristocracies, on the contrary, workers always do
all they know how to do.
519
In the United States it is almost never said that virtue is beautiful. They maintain that it is useful and they
prove it every day.
What attaches the human heart most keenly is not the peaceful possession of a precious object, but the
imperfectly satisfied desire to possess it and the incessant fear of losing it.
In aristocratic societies the rich, never having known a state different from their own, do not fear
changing it; they hardly imagine another. Material well-being is therefore not the goal of life for them; it is a
manner of living. They consider it in a way like existence and enjoy it without thinking about it.
The natural and instinctive taste for tell-being thus being satisfied without trouble and without fear, their
souls transport themselves elsewhere and apply themselves to some more difficult and greater undertaking
that animates them and carries them along.
Thus even in the midst of material enjoyments, the members of an aristocracy often display a haughty
scorn of these same enjoyments and find singular strength when they must at last be deprived of them. All
revolutions that have troubled or destroyed aristocracies have shown with what facility people accustomed to
the superfluous can do without the necessary, whereas men who have laboriously arrived at ease can hardly
live after having lost it.
The passion for material well-being is essentially a middle-class passion.

I did not encounter a citizen in America so poor that he did not case a glance of hope and longing on the
enjoyments of the rich and whose imagination was not seized in advance by the goods that fate was so
obstinately refusing him.
On the other hand, I never perceived that high-minded disdain for material well-being among the rich of
the United States that is sometimes shown even within the most opulent and most dissolute aristocracies.
Most of these rich have been poor; they have felt the sting of need; they have long combated adverse
fortune, and, now that victory is gained, the passions that accompanied the struggle survive it; they stand as if
intoxicated in the midst of little enjoyments that they have pursued for forty years.
It is not that in the United States as elsewhere one does not encounter a great enough number of the rich
who, holding their goods by inheritance, possess effortlessly an opulence that they have not acquired. But
even they do not show themselves less attached to the enjoyments of material life. Love of well-being has
become the national and dominant taste; the great current of human passions bears from this direction; it
carries everything along in its course.
The passion for material enjoyments produces different effects within democracies than in aristocratic
peoples.
If sometimes happens that the lassitude of affairs, the excess of wealth, the ruin of beliefs, the decadence
of the state turn the heart of an aristocracy little by little toward material enjoyments alone. … When the
members of an aristocratic body thus turn exclusively toward love of material enjoyments, they ordinarily
gather on this side alone all the energy that the long habit of power has given them.
For such men the search for well-being is not enough; they must have a sumptuous depravity and a
brilliant corruption. They render magnificent worship to the material and they seem to want to vie with each
other to excel in the art of besotting themselves.
These objects [material comforts] are small, but the soul clings to them: it considers them every day and from
very close; in the end they hide the rest of the world from it.
520
The most opulent citizens of a democracy will not show tastes very different from those of the people,
whether having come from within the people, they really share them, or whether they believe they ought to
submit to them.
In democratic societies, the sensuality of the public has taken a certain moderate and tranquil style, to which
all souls are held to conform. It is as difficult to escape the common rule by one’s vices as by one’s
virtues.
The rich who live in the midst of democratic nations therefore aim at the satisfaction of their least needs
rather than at extraordinary enjoyments; they gratify a multitude of small desires and do not give themselves
over to any great disordered passion. They fall into softness rather than debauchery.
What I reproach equality for is not that it carries men away in the pursuit of forbidden enjoyments; it is for
absorbing them entirely in the search for permitted enjoyments.
All that elevates, enlarges, extends the soul renders it more capable of succeeding in the very one of its
undertakings that does not concern it. … Thus the soul must remain great and strong, if only to be able from
time to time to put its force and its greatness in the service of the body.
Alexis de Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique (Paris: 1888), p. 522
In democratic peoples, where there is no hereditary wealth, everyone works to live, or has worked, or was
born of people who worked. The idea of work as a necessary, natural, and honest condition of humanity is
therefore offered to the human mind on every side.
Not only is work not held in dishonor among these peoples, but it is held in honor; the prejudice is not
against it but for it. …
Equality not only rehabilitates the idea of work, it uplifts the idea of working to procure lucre.
In aristocracies, it is not precisely work that is scorned, but work with a view to profit. Work is glorious
when ambition or virtue alone makes one undertake it. Under aristocracy, nevertheless, it constantly happens
that he who works for honor is not insensitive to the lure of gain. But these two desires meet only in the
depth of his soul. He takes much care to conceal from all regard the place where they unite. He willingly
hides it from himself. In aristocratic countries there is scarcely a public official who does not claim to serve
the state without interest. Their wages are a detail they sometimes think little of and always affect not to
think of.
Thus the idea of gain remains distinct from that of work. No matter that they are joined in fact. …
In democratic societies, these two ideas are, on the contrary, always visibly united.
In democratic countries, … the rich do not know what to do with their leisure. The restiveness, the taste for
the extraordinary that those who raise themselves above the crowd in any manner whatsoever almost always
feel press them to act. The route of commerce alone is open to them.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, H. Mansfield, trans. (Chicago: 2000), p. 527-528
In democratic countries there is nothing greater nor more brilliant than commerce; it is what attracts the
regard of the public and fills the imagination of the crowd; all energetic passions are directed toward it.
Since the great fortunes that one sees within a democratic people almost always have a commercial origin,
several generations must succeed one another before their possessors have entirely lost the habits of trade.
521
Those who live amid democratic instability constantly have the image of chance before their eyes, and in the
end they love all undertakings in which chance plays a role.
What chiefly diverts the men of democracies from lofty ambition is not the scantiness of their fortunes,
but the vehemence of the exertions they daily make to improve them.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Book 2, Chapter 19, “Why so many ambitions men and so little lofty ambition are to be found in the United
States”
The First thing that strikes a traveler in the United States is the innumerable multitude of those who seek to
emerge from their original condition; and the second is the rarity of lofty ambition to be observed in the
midst of the universally ambitious stir of society. No Americans are devoid of a yearning desire to rise, but
hardly any appear to entertain hopes of great magnitude or to pursue very lofty aims. All are constantly
seeking to acquire property, power, and reputation.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume 2, Book 3, Chapter 19
When conditions are unequal and men are not alike, there are some individuals who are very enlightened,
very learned, and of very powerful intellect, and a multitude who are very ignorant and very limited. People
who live in aristocratic times are therefore naturally brought to take the superior reason of one man or one
class as a guide for their opinions.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume 2, Book 1, Chapter 2, H. Mansfield, trans. (2000), p. 409
522
When the ranks of society are unequal, and men unlike one another in condition, there are some
individuals wielding the power of superior intelligence, learning, and enlightenment, while the multitude are
sunk in ignorance and prejudice. Men living at these aristocratic periods are therefore naturally induced to
shape their opinions by the standard of a superior person, or a superior class of persons, while they are averse
to recognizing the infallibility of the mass of the people.
The contrary takes place in ages of equality. The nearer the people are drawn to the common level of an
equal and similar condition, the less prone does each man become to place implicit faith in a certain man or a
certain class of men. But his readiness to believe the multitude increases, and opinion is more than ever
mistress of the world. Not only is common opinion the only guide which private judgment retains among a
democratic people, but among such a people it possesses a power infinitely beyond what it has elsewhere. At
periods of equality men have no faith in one another, by reason of their common resemblance; but this very
resemblance gives them almost unbounded confidence in the judgment of the public; for it would seem
probable that, as they are all endowed with equal means of judging, the greater truth should go with the
greater number.
When the inhabitant of a democratic country compares himself individually with all those about him, he
feels with pride that he is the equal of any one of them; but when he comes to survey the totality of his
fellows and to place himself in contrast with so huge a body, he is instantly overwhelmed by the sense of his
own insignificance and weakness. The same equality that renders him independent of each of his fellow
citizens, taken severally, exposes him alone and unprotected to the influence of the greater number. The
public, therefore, among a democratic people, has a singular power, which aristocratic nations cannot
conceive; for it does not persuade others to its beliefs, but it imposes them and makes them permeate
the thinking of everyone by a sort of enormous pressure of the mind of all upon the individual
intelligence. In the United States the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made
opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of
their own. Everybody there adopts great numbers of theories, on philosophy, morals, and politics, without
inquiry, upon public trust; and if we examine it very closely, it will be perceived that religion itself holds
sway there much less as a doctrine of revelation than as a commonly received opinion.
The fact that the political laws of the Americans are such that the majority rules the community
with sovereign sway materially increases the power which that majority naturally exercises over the
mind. For nothing is more customary in man than to recognize superior wisdom in the person of his
oppressor. This political omnipotence of the majority in the United States doubtless augments the influence
that public opinion would obtain without it over the minds of each member of the community; but the
foundations of that influence do not rest upon it. They must be sought for in the principle of equality itself.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1840), Volume 2, Book 1, Chapter 2, J. Spencer, trans.
ERNST VON FEUCHTERSLEBEN (1806-1849)

The Dietetics of the Soul; Or, True Mental Discipline (1838)
We live in stormy and unsettled times. Hence we may confer a benefit, not only on ourselves, but on others,
by diverting attention from the exciting circumstances of the present day—from the disheartening
eccentricities of a literature which meanders in a thousand frivolous directions—to the calm regions where
the inner man, self-examined, submits himself to moral treatment. Here our connection with things, our
object, our duty, become clear; and, while we quietly separate ourselves from a world which is unable to
assure us of anything, we feel that the joy we thought lost again returns, and that a second innocence spreads
its clear and tranquillizing light over human existence. The child may amuse himself with childish rhymes.
Man should find his recreation in reflecting on his relation to the things of this life. To all has this power
been vouchsafed; by all should it be exercised.
Ernst von Feuchtersleben, The Dietetics of the Soul; Or, True Mental Discipline (1838), H. Ouvry, trans. (1873), pp. 1-2
523
We have aimed at popularity in the best sense of that term. The truly popular writer never sinks into the
vulgar crowd. He rather raises the masses by bringing the highest subjects within their comprehension,
making them, without a show of erudition, easily understood.
Ernst von Feuchtersleben, The Dietetics of the Soul; Or, True Mental Discipline (1838), p. 4
Our minds are so constituted that a change of objects brings nearly as much relief as actual repose.
Ernst Feuchtersleben, Dietetics of the Soul
Those views of life which deify pleasure are less likely to yield it.
It is not enough to contemplate ourselves objectively; we must also treat ourselves objectively.
The man dissatisfied with the world will be dissatisfied with himself, so as to be continually eaten up by his
own ill humor. And in such a state of mind how can he retain health?
We cannot avoid moodiness; but we may turn to account, as does the poet, the various dispositions of the
mind, or give them form and shape, as the sculptor his marble.
It has been well remarked of the poems of Hafiz, that their refreshing influence does not depend so much on
the sense of the words as on the tone of mind produced in the reader.
Ernst Feuchtersleben, Dietetics of the Soul , Aphorism 60
Composition, even when we have no idea of appearing in print, is an excellent dietetic tonic. ... The best and
quickest mode of banishing a painful impression, or a torturing feeling, is to give it expression in words. We
thus relieve the mind from present, and fortify it against future pangs.
True philosophy is a living wisdom, for which there is no death.

Ich muss wollen. Ich will müssen.

Ernst Feuchtersleben, Zur Diätetik der Seele , Aphorismus 69
You must master an object before you attempt to despise it.

JOHAN KASPER SCHMIDT, a.k.a. MAX STIRNER (1806-1856)

Das unwahre Prinzip unserer Erziehung oder der Humanismus und Realismus
German: http://books.google.com/books?id=x5FYAAAAMAAJ
English: http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/falseprinciple.html
Until the Enlightenment began to spread its light in the Eighteenth Century, so called higher education lay
without protest in the hands of the humanists and was based almost solely on the understanding of the old
classics. Another education went along at the same time which likewise sought its example in antiquity and
mainly ended up with a considerable knowledge of the Bible. That in both cases they selected the best
education of the world of antiquity for their exclusive subject matter proves sufficiently how little of dignity
our own life offered, and how far we still were from being able to create the forms of beauty out of our own
originality and the content of truth out of our own reason.
Max Stirner, “The False Principles of Our Education,”
524
The ultimate object of education can scarcely be knowledge any more: it is, rather, the will born of such
knowledge. In short, its tendency will be to create the personal or free man. What is truth but the revelation
of what we are? It is a matter of discovering ourselves, of freeing ourselves from everything extraneous to us,
or refraining (?) ourselves or releasing ourselves radically from all authority, of a return to innocence.
Max Stirner, “The False Principles of Our Education,” in No Gods No Masters (San Francisco: 1988), p. 11
Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (1844)

German: http://www.lsr-projekt.de/msee.html
German: http://books.google.com/books?id=7fsNAQAAIAAJ
English: http://books.google.com/books?id=T4SN0M7YSqMC
Hat Gott, hat die Menschheit, wie Ihr versichert, Gehalt genug in sich, um sich alles in allem zu sein: so
spüre Ich, dass es Mir noch weit weniger daran fehlen wird, und dass Ich über meine »Leerheit« keine Klage
zu führen haben werde. Ich bin nicht Nichts im Sinne der Leerheit, sondern das schöpferische Nichts, das
Nichts, aus welchem Ich selbst als Schöpfer alles schaffe.
Max Stirner, Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (1844)
If God, if mankind, as you affirm, have substance enough in themselves to be all in all to themselves, then I
feel that I shall still less lack that, and that I shall have no complaint to make of my ‘emptiness.’ I am not
nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself as creator
create everything.
Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, ed. David Leopold (Cambridge: 1995), p. 7
Wie Ich Mich hinter den Dingen finde, und zwar als Geist, so muss Ich Mich später auch hinter den
Gedanken finden, nämlich als ihr Schöpfer und Eigner.
As I find myself behind things, and that as mind, so I must later find myself also behind thoughts, namely, as
their creator and owner.
Stiess Ich als Geist die Welt zurück in tiefster Weltverachtung, so stosse Ich als Eigner die Geister oder Ideen
zurück in ihre »Eitelkeit«. Sie haben keine Macht mehr über Mich, wie über den Geist keine »Gewalt der
Erde« eine Macht hat.
If as spirit I had thrust away the world in the deepest contempt, so as owner I thrust spirits or ideas away into
their ‘vanity.’ They have no longer any power over me, as no ‘earthly might’ has power over the spirit.
Wie der Christ nämlich sich niemals von der Eitelkeit des göttlichen Wortes überzeugen kann, sondern an die
ewige und unerschütterliche Wahrheit desselben glaubt, die, je mehr in ihren Tiefen geforscht werde, nur um
so glänzender an den Tag kommen und triumphieren müsse: so lebten die Alten ihrerseits in dem Gefühle,
dass die Welt und weltliche Verhältnisse (z.B. die natürlichen Blutsbande) das Wahre seien, vor dem ihr
ohnmächtiges Ich sich beugen müsse.
As the Christian can never convince himself of the vanity of the divine world, but believes in its eternal and
unshakeable truth, which, the more its depths are searched, must all the more brilliantly come to light and
triumph, so the ancients on their side lived in the feeling that the world and mundane relations (such as the
natural ties of blood) were the truth before which their powerless ‘I’ must bow.
525
Die reine Herzlichkeit ist gegen Niemand herzlich, sie ist nur theoretische Teilnahme, Anteil am Menschen
als Menschen, nicht als Person. Die Person ist ihr widerlich, weil sie »egoistisch«, weil sie nicht der Mensch,
diese Idee, ist. Nur für die Idee aber gibt es ein theoretisches Interesse. Für die reine Herzlichkeit oder die
reine Theorie sind die Menschen nur da, um kritisiert, verhöhnt und gründlichst verachtet zu werden: sie sind
für sie nicht minder, als für den fanatischen Pfaffen, nur »Dreck« und sonst dergleichen Sauberes.
Max Stirner, Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (Leipzig: 1845)
Pure warm-heartedness is warm-hearted toward nobody, it is only a theoretical interest, concern for man as
man, not as a person. The person is repulsive because of being ‘egoistic’, because of not being that
abstraction, man. It is only for the abstraction that one can have a theoretical regard. To pure warm-
heartedness or pure theory men exist only to be criticized, scoffed at, and thoroughly despised.
Ihr unterscheidet Euch darin, daß Du den Geist, er aber Sich zum Mittelpunkte macht, oder daß Du Dein Ich
entzweist und Dein „eigentliches Ich”, den Geist, zum Gebieter des wertloseren Restes erhebst, während er
von dieser Entzweiung nichts wissen will, und geistige und materielle Interessen eben nach seiner Lust
verfolgt.
The distinction between you is … that you cut your identity in two and exalt your ‘proper self’, the spirit, to
be ruler of the paltrier remainder, while he will hear nothing of this cutting in two, and pursues spiritual and
material interests just as he pleases.
Max Stirner, describing the difference between the possessed man and the egoist, The Ego and Its Own, ed. David Leopold (Cambridge: 1995), p. 32
Wie Du Uns durch »den Menschen«, der in Dir spukt, geheiligt bist, so war man zu jeder Zeit durch irgend
ein höheres Wesen, wie Volk, Familie u. dergl. geheiligt. Nur um eines höhern Wesens willen ist man von
jeher geehrt, nur als ein Gespenst für eine geheiligte, d. h. geschützte und anerkannte Person betrachtet
worden.
As you are hallowed to us by ‘man’, … so at every time men have been hallowed by some higher essence. …
Only for the sake of a higher essence has any one been honoured from of old, only as a ghost has he been
regarded in the light of a hallowed, a protected and recognized person.
Was nennt man denn eine „fixe Idee”? Eine Idee, die den Menschen sich unterworfen hat. Erkennt Ihr an
einer solchen fixen Idee, daß sie eine Narrheit sei, so sperrt Ihr den Sklaven derselben in eine Irrenanstalt. …
Ist nicht alles dumme Geschwätz, z. B. unserer meisten Zeitungen, das Geplapper von Narren, die an der
fixen Idee der Sittlichkeit, Gesetzlichkeit, Christlichkeit usw. leiden, und nur frei herumzugehen scheinen,
weil das Narrenhaus, worin sie wandeln, einen so weiten Raum einnimmt?
Max Stirner, Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (Leipzig: 1845), s. 57
What is it, then, that is called a ‘fixed idea’? An idea that has subjected the man to itself. When you
recognize, with regard to such a fixed idea, that it is folly, you shut its slave up in an asylum. … Is not all the
stupid chatter of most of our newspapers the babble of fools who suffer from the fixed idea of morality,
legality, Christianity, and so forth, and only seems to go about free because the madhouse in which they walk
takes in so broad a space?
526
Gleichwie die Scholastiker nur philosophirten innerhalb des Glaubens der Kirche, Papst Benedict XIV
dickleibige Bücher innerhalb des papistischen Aberglaubens schrieb, ohne je diesen Glauben in Zweifel zu
ziehen, Schriftsteller ganze Folianten über den Staat anfüllen, ohne die fixe Idee des Staates selbst in Frage
zu stellen, unsere Zeitungen von Politik strotzen, weil sie in dem Wahne gebannt sind, der Mensch sei dazu
geschaffen, ein Zoon politikon zu werden, so vegetiren auch Unterthanen im Unterthanenthum, tugendhafte
Menschen in der Tugend, Liberale im „Menschenthum” u. s. w., ohne jemals an diese ihre fixen Ideen das
schneidende Messer der Kritik zu legen. Unverrückbar, wie der Irrwahn eines Tollen, stehen jene Gedanken
auf festem Fuße, und wer sie bezweifelt, der—greift das Heilige an!
Max Stirner, Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (Leipzig: 1845), s. 58-59
Just as the schoolmen philosophized only inside the belief of the church, … without ever throwing a doubt
upon this belief; as authors fill whole folios on the State without calling in question the fixed idea of the State
itself; as our newspapers are crammed with politics because they are conjured into the fancy that man was
created to be a zoon politicon,—so also subjects vegetate in subjection, virtuous people in virtue, liberals in
humanity, etc., without ever putting to these fixed ideas of theirs the searching knife of criticism.
Undislodgeable, like a madman’s delusion, those thoughts stand on a firm footing, and he who doubts
them—lays hands on the sacred!
Die Sittlichen schöpften das beste Fett von der Religion ab, genossen es selbst und haben nun ihre liebe Not,
die daraus entstandene Drüsenkrankheit loszuwerden.
Max Stirner, Der Einzige und sein Eigentum
Moral people skimmed off the best fat from religion, ate it themselves, and are now having a tough job to get
rid of the resulting metabolic derangement.
Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own
Feuerbach …erkennt das auch, daß es sich bei ihm »nur um die Vernichtung einer Illusion handelt«, meint
jedoch, sie »wirke grundverderblich auf die Menschen, da selbst die Liebe, an sich die innerste, wahrste
Gesinnung, durch die Religiosität zu einer unscheinbaren, illusorischen werde, indem die religiöse Liebe den
Menschen nur um Gottes willen, also nur scheinbar den Menschen, in Wahrheit nur Gott liebt«. Ist dies
anders mit der sittlichen Liebe? Liebt sie den Menschen, diesen Menschen um dieses Menschen willen, oder
um der Sittlichkeit willen, um des Menschen willen, also—denn homo homini Deus—um Gottes willen?
Feuerbach … recognizes, too, that with him it is “only a matter of annihilating an illusion”; he thinks,
however, that the effect of the illusion on men is “downright ruinous, since even love, in itself the truest,
most inward sentiment, becomes an obscure, illusory one through religiousness, since religious love loves
man only for God’s sake, therefore loves man only apparently, but in truth God only.” Is this different with
moral love? Does it love the man, this man for this man’s sake, or for morality’s sake, for Man’s sake, and
so—for homo homini Deus—for God’s sake?
527
So ist die Selbstverleugnung den Heiligen gemein mit den Unheiligen, den Reinen und Unreinen. Der
Unreine verleugnet alle »besseren Gefühle«, alle Scham, ja die natürliche Furchtsamkeit, und folgt nur der
ihn beherrschenden Begierde. Der Reine verleugnet seine natürliche Beziehung zur Welt (»verleugnet die
Welt«) und folgt nur dem ihn beherrschenden »Verlangen«. Von Gelddurst getrieben verleugnet der
Habgierige alle Mahnungen des Gewissens, alles Ehrgefühl, alle Milde und alles Mitleid: er setzt alle
Rücksichten aus den Augen: ihn reißt die Begierde fort. Gleiches begehrt der Heilige. Er macht sich zum
»Spotte der Welt«, ist hartherzig und »strenggerecht«; denn ihn reißt das Verlangen fort. Wie der Unheilige
vor dem Mammon sich selbst verleugnet, so verleugnet der Heilige sich vor Gott und den göttlichen
Gesetzen.
Self-renunciation is common to the holy with the unholy, to the pure and the impure. The impure man
renounces all “better feelings,” all shame, even natural timidity, and follows only the appetite that rules him.
The pure man renounces his natural relation to the world (“renounces the world”) and follows only the
“desire” which rules him. Driven by the thirst for money, the avaricious man renounces all admonitions of
conscience, all feeling of honor, all gentleness and all compassion; he puts all considerations out of sight; the
appetite drags him along. The holy man behaves similarly. He .. is hard-hearted and “strictly just”; for the
desire drags him along. As the unholy man renounces himself before Mammon, so the holy man renounces
himself before God.
Wer hätte es niemals, bewußter oder unbewußter gemerkt, daß Unsere ganze Erziehung darauf ausgeht,
Gefühle in Uns zu erzeugen, d. h. sie uns einzugeben, statt die Erzeugung derselben Uns zu überlassen, wie
sie auch ausfallen mögen. Hören Wir den Namen Gottes, so sollen Wir Gottesfurcht empfinden, hören Wir
den der fürstlichen Majestät, so soll er mit Ehrfurcht, Ehrerbietung, Untertänigkeit aufgenommen werden,
hören Wir den der Moral, so sollen Wir etwas Unverletzliches zu hören meinen, hören Wir von dem und den
Bösen, so sollen Wir schaudern usw. Auf diese Gefühle ist’s abgesehen, und wer z. B. die Taten der »Bösen«
mit Wohlgefallen vernähme, der müßte durch die Zuchtrute »gezüchtigt und erzogen« werden. So mit
eingegebenen Gefühlen vollgestopft, erscheinen Wir vor den Schranken der Mündigkeit und werden
»mündig gesprochen«. Unsere Ausrüstung besteht aus »erhebenden Gefühlen, erhabenen Gedanken,
begeisternden Grundsätzen, ewigen Prinzipien« usw. Mündig sind die Jungen dann, wenn sie zwitschern wie
die Alten; man hetzt sie durch die Schule, damit sie die alte Leier lernen, und haben sie diese inne, so erklärt
man sie für mündig.
Who is there that has never, more or less consciously, noticed that our whole education is calculated to
produce feelings in us, i.e. impart them to us, instead of leaving their production to ourselves however
they may turn out? If we hear the name of God, we are to feel veneration; if we hear that of the prince’s
majesty, it is to be received with reverence, deference, submission; if we hear that of morality, we are to
think that we hear something inviolable; if we hear of the Evil One or evil ones, we are to shudder; etc. The
intention is directed to these feelings, and he who e. g. should hear with pleasure the deeds of the “bad “
would have to be “taught what’s what” with the rod of discipline. Thus stuffed with imparted feelings, we
appear before the bar of majority and are “pronounced of age.” Our equipment consists of “elevating
feelings, lofty thoughts, inspiring maxims, eternal principles,” etc. The young are of age when they twitter
like the old; they are driven through school to learn the old song, and, when they have this by heart, they are
declared of age.
Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, ed. David Leopold (Cambridge: 1995), pp. 61-62
Vor dem Heiligen verliert man alles Machtgefühl und allen Mut: man verhält sich gegen dasselbe
ohnmächtig und demütig. Und doch ist kein Ding durch sich heilig, sondern durch Meine Heiligsprechung,
durch Meinen Spruch, Mein Urteil, Mein Kniebeugen
Before the sacred, people lose all sense of power and all confidence; they occupy a powerless and humble
attitude toward it. And yet no thing is sacred of itself, but by my declaring it sacred, by my declaration, my
judgment, my bending the knee.
528
»Religiös soll der Mensch sein«, das steht fest; daher beschäftigt man sich nur mit der Frage, wie dies zu
erreichen, welches der rechte Sinn der Religiosität usw. Ganz anders, wenn man das Axiom selbst fraglich
macht und in Zweifel zieht, und sollte es auch über den Haufen stürzen. Sittlichkeit ist auch solch eine
heilige Vorstellung: sittlich müsse man sein, und müsse nur das rechte Wie, die rechte Art es zu sein,
aufsuchen. An die Sittlichkeit selbst wagt man sich nicht mit der Frage, ob sie nicht selbst ein Truggebilde
sei: sie bleibt über allem Zweifel erhaben, unwandelbar.
“Man is to be religious,” that is settled; therefore people busy themselves only with the question how this is
to be attained, what is the right meaning of religiousness, etc. ... Morality too is such a sacred conception;
one must be moral, and must look only for the right “how,” the right way to be so. One dares not go at
morality itself with the question whether it is not itself an illusion; it remains exalted above all doubt,
unchangeable.
Wenn ein Verbrechen auch weder Mir, noch irgend einem derjenigen, an welchen Ich Anteil nehme, den
geringsten Schaden brächte, so würde Ich dennoch gegen dasselbe eifern. Warum? Weil Ich für die
Sittlichkeit begeistert, von der Idee der Sittlichkeit erfüllt bin; was ihr feindlich ist, das verfolge Ich. Weil
ihm der Diebstahl ohne alle Frage für verabscheuungswürdig gilt, darum glaubt z. B. Proudhon schon mit
dem Satze: »Das Eigentum ist ein Diebstahl« dieses gebrandmarkt zu haben.
Even if a crime did not cause the slightest damage either to me or to any of those in whom I take an interest, I
should nevertheless denounce it. Why? Because I am enthusiastic for morality, filled with the idea of
morality; what is hostile to it I everywhere assail. Because in his mind theft ranks as abominable without any
question, Proudhon, for instance, thinks that with the sentence “Property is theft” he has at once denounced
property. In the sense of the priestly, theft is always a crime
Diese bestimmte Person, die den Korb gestohlen hat, ist meiner Person völlig gleichgültig; nur an dem
Diebe, diesem Begriffe, von welchem jene Person ein Exemplar darstellt, nehme Ich ein Interesse. Der Dieb
und der Mensch sind in meinem Geiste unversöhnliche Gegensätze; denn man ist nicht wahrhaft Mensch,
wenn man Dieb ist; man entwürdigt in sich den Menschen, oder die »Menschheit«, wenn man stiehlt.
This particular person who has stolen the basket is perfectly indifferent to my person; it is only the thief, this
concept of which that person presents a specimen, that I take an interest in. The thief and man are in my mind
irreconcilable opposites; for one is not truly man when one is a thief; one degrades man or “humanity” in
himself when one steals.
Aus dem persönlichen Anteil herausfallend, gerät man in den Philanthropismus, die Menschenfreundlichkeit,
die gewöhnlich so mißverstanden wird, als sei sie eine Liebe zu den Menschen, zu jedem Einzelnen, während
sie nichts als eine Liebe des Menschen, des unwirklichen Begriffs, des Spuks ist. Nicht ,
die Menschen, sondern , den Menschen, schließt der Philanthrop in sein Herz. Allerdings
bekümmert er sich um jeden Einzelnen, aber nur deswegen, weil er sein geliebtes Ideal überall verwirklicht
sehen möchte.
Philanthropism … is usually misunderstood as if it was a love to men, to each individual, while it is nothing
but a love of man, the unreal concept, the spook. It is not , men, but , man,
that the philanthropist carries in his heart. To be sure, he cares for each individual, but only because he wants
to see his beloved ideal realized everywhere.
Because the revolutionary priests or schoolmasters served man, they cut off the heads of men.
529
A man is to bend before the calling of man, be tractable, become humble, give up his will for an alien one
which is set up as rule and law; he is to abase himself before something higher: self-abasement. “He that
abaseth himself shall be exalted.”
As long as faith sufficed for man’s honor and dignity, no labor, however strenuous, could be objected to if it
only did not hinder a man in his faith. Now, on the contrary, when every one is to cultivate himself into man,
condemning a man to machine-like labor amounts to the same thing as slavery. If a factory worker must tire
himself to death twelve hours and more, he is cut off from becoming man. Every labor is to have the intent
that the man be satisfied. Therefore he must become a master in it too, be able to perform it as a totality. He
who in a pin-factory only puts on the heads, only draws the wire, works, as it were, mechanically, like a
machine; he remains half-trained, does not become a master: his labor cannot satisfy him, it can only fatigue
him. His labor is nothing taken by itself, has no object in itself, is nothing complete in itself; he labors only
into another’s hands and is used (exploited) by this other. For this laborer in another’s service there is no
enjoyment of a cultivated mind, at most crude amusements: culture, you see, is barred against him.
Do not call men sinners, and they are not: you alone are the creator of sinners; you, who fancy that you love
men, are the very one to throw them into the mire of sin, the very one to divide them into vicious and
virtuous, into men and un-men.
Wer aber voll heiliger (religiöser, sittlicher, humaner) Liebe ist, der liebt nur den Spuk, den »wahren
Menschen«, und verfolgt mit dumpfer Unbarmherzigkeit den Einzelnen, den wirklichen Menschen, unter
dem phlegmatischen Rechtstitel des Verfahrens gegen den »Unmenschen«. Er findet es lobenswert und
unerlässlich, die Erbarmungslosigkeit im herbsten Masse zu üben; denn die Liebe zum Spuk oder
Allgemeinen gebietet ihm, den nicht Gespenstischen, d.h. den Egoisten oder Einzelnen, zu hassen; das ist der
Sinn der berühmten Liebeserscheinung, die man »Gerechtigkeit« nennt.
Max Stirner, Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (Leipzig: 1845), s. 321
Whoso is full of sacred (religious, moral, humane) love loves only the spook, the “true man,” and persecutes
with dull mercilessness the individual, the real man, under the phlegmatic legal title of measures against the
“un-man.” He finds it praiseworthy and indispensable to exercise pitilessness in the harshest measure; for
love to the spook or generality commands him to hate him who is not ghostly, i.e. the egoist or individual;
such is the meaning of the renowned love-phenomenon that is called “justice.”
Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, S. Byington, trans. (1913), p. 383
530
Hieran knüpft sich die Einsicht, dass jedes Urteil, welches Ich über ein Objekt fälle, das Geschöpf meines
Willens ist, und wiederum leitet Mich jene Einsicht dahin, dass Ich Mich nicht an das Geschöpf, das Urteil,
verliere, sondern der Schöpfer bleibe, der Urteilende, der stets von neuem schafft. Alle Prädikate von den
Gegenständen sind meine Aussagen, meine Urteile, meine—Geschöpfe. Wollen sie sich losreissen von Mir,
und etwas für sich sein, oder gar Mir imponieren, so habe Ich nichts Eiligeres zu tun, als sie in ihr Nichts,
d.h. in Mich, den Schöpfer, zurückzunehmen. Gott, Christus, Dreieinigkeit, Sittlichkeit, das Gute usw. sind
solche Geschöpfe, von denen Ich Mir nicht bloss erlauben muss, zu sagen, sie seien Wahrheiten, sondern
auch, sie seien Täuschungen. Wie Ich einmal ihr Dasein gewollt und dekretiert habe, so will Ich auch ihr
Nichtsein wollen dürfen; Ich darf sie Mir nicht über den Kopf wachsen, darf nicht die Schwachheit haben,
etwas »Absolutes« aus ihnen werden zu lassen, wodurch sie verewigt und meiner Macht und Bestimmung
entzogen würden. Damit würde Ich dem Stabilitätsprinzip verfallen, dem eigentlichen Lebensprinzip der
Religion, die sich’s angelegen sein lässt, »unantastbare Heiligtümer«, »ewige Wahrheiten«, kurz ein
»Heiliges« zu kreieren und Dir das Deinige zu entziehen.
Max Stirner, Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (Leipzig: 1845), s. 378-379
Connected with this is the discernment that every judgment which I pass upon an object is the creature of my
will; and that discernment again leads me to not losing myself in the creature, the judgment, but remaining
the creator, the judge, who is ever creating anew. All predicates of objects are my statements, my judgments,
my—creatures. If they want to tear themselves loose from me and be something for themselves, or actually
overawe me, then I have nothing more pressing to do than to take them back into their nothing, into me the
creator. God, Christ, Trinity, morality, the good, etc., are such creatures, of which I must not merely allow
myself to say that they are truths, but also that they are deceptions. As I once willed and decreed their
existence, so I want to have license to will their non- existence too; I must not let them grow over my head,
must not have the weakness to let them become something “absolute,” whereby they would be eternalized
and withdrawn from my power and decision. With that I should fall a prey to the principle of stability, the
proper life-principle of religion, which concerns itself with creating “sanctuaries that must not be touched,”
“eternal truths”—in short, that which shall be “sacred”—and depriving you of what is yours.
Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own
Die Revolution zielte auf neue Einrichtungen, die Empörung führt dahin, Uns nicht mehr einrichten zu
lassen, sondern Uns selbst einzurichten, und setzt auf „Institutionen” keine glänzende Hoffnung.
Stirner, Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum (Leipzig: 1845), s. 422
Revolution is aimed at new arrangements; insurrection leads us no longer to let ourselves be arranged,
but to arrange ourselves, and set no glittering hopes on “institutions.”
Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, S. Byington, trans. (1913), p. 421
Recensenten Stirners: Entgegnung an Feuerbach, Szeliga und Hess (1845)

http://books.google.com/books?id=x5FYAAAAMAAJ&pg=107
Das heilige Interesse ist das Uninteressante, weil es ein absolutes oder ein Interesse für sich ist, gleichviel ob
Du daran ein Interesse nimmst oder nicht. Du sollst es zu Deinem Interesse machen; es ist nicht ursprünglich
Dein, ist nicht aus Dir geboren, sondern ein ewiges, ein allgemeines, ein rein menschliches. Es ist
uninteressant, weil auf Dich und Dein Interesse dabei keine Rücksicht genommen wird; es ist ein Interesse
ohne Interessenten, weil es ein allgemeines oder ein Interesse des Menschen ist. Und weil Du nicht Eigner
desselben bist, sondern sein Anhänger und Diener werden sollst, darum hört ihm gegenüber der Egoismus
auf und die „Uninteressirtheit” beginnt.
Max Stirner, „Recensenten Stirners” Kleinere Schriften (Berlin:1898), s. 126
The sacred interest is the uninteresting, because it is an absolute interest, an interest for its own sake,
irrespective of whether you actually take an interest in it or not. You are obligated to make it your interest. It
is not originally yours. It is not born not from you, but rather from the eternal, the common, the purely
human. It is uninteresting, because no consideration is to be given to you or your interests. It is an interest
with no interested parties, because it is a general interest, an interest of man. And because you are not the
owner of yourself, but must rather become the disciple of man, the servant of man, egoism therefore ceases
opposing itself to man, and true “disinteresteness” begins.
Max Stirner, “Stirner’ Critics,” my translation
531
Wollt Ihr, dass die Menschen ein Interesse an Euch nehmen, so zwingt ihnen eins ab und bleibt nicht
uninteressante Heilige, die ihr heiliges Menschenthum, wie einen heiligen Rock, hinhalten und bettlermässig
rufen: „Respect vor unserer Menschheit, die heilig ist!”
Max Stirner, „Recensenten Stirners” Kleinere Schriften (Berlin:1898), s. 144
You want men to display an interest in you? Well then, … stop being uninteresting saints who wear their
blessed humanity like a sacred garment and clamor like beggars: “Respect our human nature, for it is
sacred!”
Max Stirner, “Stirner’ Critics,” in No Gods No Masters (San Francisco: 1988), p.23
JOHN STUART MILL (1806-1873)

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool
satisfied.
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism
God is a word to express, not our ideas, but the want of them.
John Stuart Mill
All great movements go through three states: ridicule, discussion, adoption.

John Stuart Mill
How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of a great mind is agreeing in the
opinions of small minds?
John Stuart Mill, cited in James Huneker, Egoists: A Book of Supermen (New York: 1909), p. 367
The ancients were concise, because of the extreme pains they took with their compositions; almost all
moderns are prolix because they do not.
John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St. Andrews (London: 1867), p. 37
On Liberty (1859)
http://books.google.com/books?id=EPMQAAAAYAAJ
I forego any advantage which could be derived to my argument from the idea of abstract right as a thing
independent of utility. I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions.
J.S. Mill, On Liberty (Henry Holt, New York: 1895), Chapter 1
Let us suppose, therefore, that the government is entirely at one with the people, and never thinks of exerting
any power of coercion unless in agreement with what it conceives to be their voice. But I deny the right of
the people to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by their government. The power itself is
illegitimate. The best government has no more title to it than the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious,
when exerted in accordance with public opinion, than when in opposition to it.
J.S. Mill, On Liberty (Henry Holt, New York: 1895), Chapter 2, pp. 34-35
If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind
would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in
silencing mankind.
J.S. Mill, On Liberty (Henry Holt, New York: 1895), Chapter 2, p. 35
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race, posterity as
well as the existing generation—those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the
opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what
is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision
with error.
532
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure,
stifling it would be an evil still. … The opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority may possibly
be true. Those who desire to suppress it, of course, deny its truth; but they are not infallible They have no
authority to decide the question for all mankind, and exclude every other person from the means of judging.
To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the
same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility
Unfortunately for the good sense of mankind, the fact of their fallibility is far from carrying the weight in
their practical judgment, which is always allowed to it in theory; for while every one well knows himself to
be fallible, few think it necessary to take any precautions against their own fallibility, or admit the
supposition that any opinion, of which they feel very certain, may be one of the examples of the error
to which they acknowledge themselves to be liable. Absolute princes, or others who are accustomed to
unlimited deference, usually feel this complete confidence in their own opinions on nearly all subjects.
People, more happily situated, who sometimes hear their opinions disputed, and are not wholly unused to be
set right when they are wrong, place the same unbounded reliance only on such of their opinions as are
shared by all who surround them, or to whom they habitually defer: for in proportion to a man’s want of
confidence in his own solitary judgment, does he usually repose, with implicit trust, on the infallibly of
“the world” in general. And the world, to each individual, means the part of it with which he comes in
contact; his party, his sect, his church, his class of society: the man may be called, by comparison,
almost liberal and large-minded to whom it means anything so comprehensive as his own country or
his own age. Nor is his faith in this collective authority at all shaken by his being aware that other ages,
countries, sects, churches, classes, and parties have thought, and even now think, the exact reverse. He
devolves upon his own world the responsibility of being in the right against the dissentient worlds of other
people; and it never troubles him that mere accident has decided which of these numerous worlds is the
object of his reliance, and that the same causes which make him a Churchman in London, would have made
him a Buddhist or a Confucian in Pekin.
J. S. Mill, On Liberty (Henry Holt, New York: 1895), Chapter 2, pp. 36-37
Ages are no more infallible than individuals; every age having held many opinions which subsequent ages
have deemed not only false but absurd; and it is as certain that many opinions, now general, will be rejected
by future ages, as it is that many, once general, are rejected by the present.
J. S. Mill, On Liberty (Henry Holt, New York: 1895), Chapter 2, pp. 37-38
There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for
contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its; refutation.
Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in
assuming its truth.
The whole strength and value, then, of human judgment, depending on the one property, that it can be set
right when it is wrong, reliance can be placed on it only when the means of setting it right are kept constantly
at hand.
The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution, is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men
repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes. History teems
with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not suppressed forever, it may be thrown back for
centuries.
533
It is the opinions men entertain, and the feelings they cherish, respecting those who disown the beliefs they
deem important, which makes this country not a place of mental freedom. … The chief mischief of the legal
penalties is that they strengthen the social stigma. It is that stigma which is really effective. … In respect to
all persons but those whose pecuniary circumstances make them independent of the good will of other
people, opinion, on this subject, is as efficacious as law; men might as well be imprisoned, as excluded from
the means of earning their bread.
It is not the minds of heretics that are deteriorated most, by the ban placed on all inquiry which does not end
in the orthodox conclusions. The greatest harm done is to those who are not heretics, and whose whole
mental development is cramped, and their reason cowed, by the fear of heresy. Who can compute what the
world loses in the multitude of promising intellects combined with timid characters, who dare not follow out
any bold, vigorous, independent train of thought, lest it should land them in something which would admit of
being considered irreligious or immoral? Among them we may occasionally see some man of deep
conscientiousness, and subtile and refined understanding, who spends a life in sophisticating with an intellect
which he cannot silence, and exhausts the resources of ingenuity in attempting to reconcile the promptings of
his conscience and reason with orthodoxy, which yet he does not, perhaps, to the end succeed in doing.
No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize, that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his
intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead.
Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by
the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.
Not that it is solely, or chiefly, to form great thinkers, that freedom of thinking is required. On the contrary, it
is as much, and even more indispensable, to enable average human beings to attain the mental stature which
they are capable of.
The exclusive pretension made by a part of the truth to be the whole, must and ought to be protested against.
We have now recognized the necessity to the mental well-being of mankind (on which all their other well-
being depends) of freedom of opinion, and freedom of the expression of opinion, on four distinct grounds;
which we will now briefly recapitulate.
First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true.
To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.
Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of
truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only
by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.
Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and
actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner
of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourthly,
the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect
on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but
cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or
personal experience.
534
If he refrains from molesting others in what concerns them, and merely acts according to his own inclination
and judgment in things which concern himself, the same reasons which show that opinion should be free,
prove also that he should be allowed, without molestation, to carry his opinions into practice at his own cost.
That mankind are not infallible; that their truths, for the most part, are only half-truths; that unity of opinion,
unless resulting from the fullest and freest comparison of opposite opinions, is not desirable, and diversity
not an evil, but a good, until mankind are much more capable than at present of recognizing all sides of the
truth, are principles applicable to men’s modes of action, not less than to their opinions. As it is useful that
while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different
experiments of living.
Though the customs be both good as customs, and suitable to him, yet to conform to custom, merely as
custom, does not educate or develop in him any of the qualities which are the distinctive endowment of a
human being. The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even
moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom,
makes no choice. He gains no practice either in discerning or in desiring what is best. The mental and moral,
like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used. The faculties are called into no exercise by doing
a thing merely because others do it, no more than by believing a thing only because others believe it.
The faculties are called into no exercise by doing a thing merely because others do it, no more than by
believing a thing only because others believe it.
If the grounds of an opinion are not conclusive to the person’s own reason, his reason cannot be
strengthened, but is likely to be weakened by his adopting it.
He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other
faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties.
He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other
faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He
must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision,
discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate
decision. And these qualities he requires and exercises exactly in proportion as the part of his conduct which
he determines according to his own judgment and feelings is a large one. It is possible that he might be
guided in some good path, and kept out of harm’s way, without any of these things. But what will be his
comparative worth as a human being? It really is of importance, not only what men do, but also what manner
of men they are that do it. Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting and
beautifying, the first in importance surely is man himself.
.S. Mill, On Liberty (Henry Holt, New York: 1895), Chapter 3, p. 106
Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but
a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces
which make it a living thing.
535
It will probably be conceded that it is desirable people should exercise their understandings, and that an
intelligent following of custom, or even occasionally an intelligent deviation from custom, is better than a
blind find simply mechanical adhesion to it . To a certain extent it is admitted, that our under standing should
be our own: but there is not the same willingness to admit that our desires and impulses should be our own
likewise; or that to possess impulses of our own, and of any strength, is anything but a peril and a snare. …
To say that one person’s desires and feelings are stronger and more various than those of another, is merely
to say that he has more of the raw material of human nature, and is therefore capable, perhaps of more evil,
but certainly of more good. Strong impulses are but another name for energy. Energy may be turned to bad
uses; but more good may always be made of an energetic nature, than of an indolent and impassive one.
Those who have most natural feeling, are always those whose cultivated feelings may be made the strongest.
The same strong susceptibilities which make the personal impulses vivid and powerful, are also the source
from whence are generated the most passionate love of virtue, and the sternest self-control. It is through the
cultivation of these, that society both does its duty and protects its interests: not by rejecting the stuff of
which heroes are made, because it knows not how to make them.
J.S. Mill, describing the English, On Liberty (Henry Holt, New York: 1895), Chapter 3, pp. 107-108
A person whose desires and impulses are his own—are the expression of his own nature, as it has been
developed and modified by his own culture—is said to have a character. One whose desires and impulses are
not his own, has no character.
There has been a time when the element of spontaneity and individuality was in excess, and the social
principle had a hard struggle with it. ... But society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the
danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal impulses and
preferences. Things are vastly changed, since the passions of those who were strong by station or by personal
endowment were in a state of habitual rebellion against laws and ordinances, and required to be rigorously
chained up to enable the persons within their reach to enjoy any particle of security. In our times, from the
highest class of society down to the lowest every one lives as under the eye of a hostile and dreaded
censorship. Not only in what concerns others, but in what concerns only themselves, the individual, or the
family; do not ask themselves—what do I prefer? or, what would suit my character and disposition? or, what
would allow the best and highest in me to have fair play, and enable it to grow and thrive? They ask
themselves, what is suitable to my position? what is usually done by persons of my station and pecuniary
circumstances? or (worse still) what is usually done by persons of a station and circumstances superior to
mine? I do not mean that they choose what is customary, in preference to what suits their own inclination. It
does not occur to them to have any inclination, except for what is customary. Thus the mind itself is bowed
to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds;
they exercise choice only among things commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are
shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature, they have no nature to follow:
their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native
pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own.
536
On the Calvinistic theory, ... the one great offence of man is Self-will. All the good of which humanity is
capable, is comprised in Obedience. You have no choice; thus you must do, and no otherwise: “whatever is
not a duty is a sin.” Human nature being radically corrupt, there is no redemption for any one until human
nature is killed within him. To one holding this theory of life, crushing out any of the human faculties,
capacities, and susceptibilities, is no evil: man needs no capacity, but that of surrendering himself to the will
of God: and if he uses any of his faculties for any other purpose but to do that supposed will more
effectually, he is better without them. That is the theory of Calvinism; and it is held, in a mitigated form, by
many who do not consider themselves Calvinists; the mitigation consisting in giving a less ascetic
interpretation to the alleged will of God; asserting it to be his will that mankind should gratify some of their
inclinations; of course not in the manner they themselves prefer, but in the way of obedience, that is, in a way
prescribed to them by authority; and, therefore, by the necessary conditions of the case, the same for all.
Many persons, no doubt, sincerely think that human beings thus cramped and dwarfed, are as their Maker
designed them to be; just as many have thought that trees are a much finer thing when clipped into pollards,
or cut out into figures of animals, than as nature made them. But if it be any part of religion to believe that
man was made by a good Being, it is more consistent with that faith to believe, that this Being gave all
human faculties that they might be cultivated and unfolded, not rooted out and consumed, and that he takes
delight in every nearer approach made by his creatures to the ideal conception embodied in them, every
increase in any of their capabilities of comprehension, of action, or of enjoyment. There is a different type of
human excellence from the Calvinistic; a conception of humanity as having its nature bestowed on it for
other purposes than merely to be abnegated. “Pagan self-assertion” is one of the elements of human worth, as
well as “Christian self-denial.” There is a Greek ideal of self-development, which the Platonic and Christian
ideal of self-government blends with, but does not supersede.
It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual in themselves, but by cultivating it and calling
it forth, within the limits imposed by the rights and interests of others, that human beings become a noble and
beautiful object of contemplation.
To be held to rigid rules of justice for the sake of others, develops the feelings and capacities which have the
good of others for their object. But to be restrained in things not affecting their good, by their mere
displeasure, develops nothing valuable, except such force of character as may unfold itself in resisting the
restraint. If acquiesced in, it dulls and blunts the whole nature.
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called.

There are but few persons, in comparison with the whole of mankind, whose experiments, if adopted by
others, would be likely to be any improvement on established practice. But these few are the salt of the earth;
without them, human life would become a stagnant pool. Not only is it they who introduce good things
which did not before exist; it is they who keep the life in those which already existed. If there were nothing
new to be done, would human intellect cease to be necessary? Would it be a reason why those who do the old
things should forget why they are done, and do them like cattle, not like human beings? There is only too
great a tendency in the best beliefs and practices to degenerate into the mechanical; and unless there were a
succession of persons whose ever-recurring originality prevents the grounds of those beliefs and practices
from becoming merely traditional, such dead matter would not resist the smallest shock.
537
Persons of genius are, ex vi termini, more individual than any other people—less capable, consequently, of
fitting themselves, without hurtful compression, into any of the small number of moulds which society
provides in order to save its members the trouble of forming their own character. If from timidity they
consent to be forced into one of these moulds, and to let all that part of themselves which cannot expand
under the pressure remain unexpanded, society will be little the better for their genius. If they are of a strong
character, and break their fetters, they become a mark for the society which has not succeeded in reducing
them to commonplace, to point at with solemn warning as “wild,” “erratic,” and the like.
Whatever homage may be professed, or even paid, to real or supposed mental superiority, the general
tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.
In politics it is almost a triviality to say that public opinion now rules the world. The only power deserving
the name is that of masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and
instincts of masses. This is as true in the moral and social relations of private life as in public transactions.
Those whose opinions go by the name of public opinion, are not always the same sort of public: in America,
they are the whole white population in England, chiefly the middle class. But they are always a mass, that is
to say, collective mediocrity. And what is a still greater novelty, the mass do not now take their opinions
from dignitaries in Church or State, from ostensible leaders, or from books. Their thinking is done for them
by men much like themselves, addressing them or speaking in their name, on the spur of the moment,
through the newspapers.
No government by a democracy, ... either in its political acts or in the opinions, qualities, and tone of mind
which it fosters, ever did or could rise above mediocrity, except in so far as the sovereign Many have let
themselves be guided (which in their best times they always have done) by the counsels and influence of a
more highly gifted and instructed One or Few.
It is important to give the freest scope possible to uncustomary things, in order that it may in time appear
which of these are fit to be converted into customs.
There is no reason that all human existences should be constructed on some one, or some small number of
patterns. If a person possesses any tolerable amount of common sense and experience, his own mode of
laying out his existence is the best, not because it is the best in itself, but because it is his own.
A man cannot get a coat or a pair of boots to fit him, unless they are either made to his measure, or he has a
whole warehouseful to choose from: and is it easier to fit him with a life than with a coat, or are human
beings more like one another in their whole physical and spiritual conformation than in the shape of their
feet?
Nowhere (except in some monastic institutions) is diversity of taste entirely unrecognized; a person may
without blame, either like or dislike rowing, or smoking, or music, or athletic exercises, chess, or cards, or
study, because both those who like each of these things, and those who dislike them, are too numerous to be
put down. But the man, and still more the woman, who can be accused either of doing “what nobody does,”
or of not doing “what everybody does,” is the subject of as much depreciatory remark as if he or she had
committed some grave moral delinquency.
538
In former days, when it was proposed to burn atheists, charitable people used to suggest putting them in a
madhouse instead: it would be nothing surprising now-a-days were we to see this done, and the doers
applauding themselves, because, instead of persecuting for religion, they had adopted so humane and
Christian a mode of treating these unfortunates, not without a silent satisfaction at their having thereby
obtained their deserts.
J.S. Mill, On Liberty (Henry Holt, New York: 1895), Chapter 3, p. 123 footnote
The general average of mankind are not only moderate in intellect, but also moderate in inclinations: they
have no tastes or wishes strong enough to incline them to do anything unusual, and they consequently do not
understand those who have, and class all such with the wild and intemperate. … Tendencies of the time
cause the public to be more disposed than at most former periods to prescribe general rules of conduct, and
endeavor to make every one conform to the approved standard. And that standard, express or tacit, is to
desire nothing strongly. Its ideal of character is to be without any marked character; to maim by compression,
like a Chinese lady’s foot, every part of human nature which stands out prominently, and tends to make the
person markedly dissimilar in outline to commonplace humanity.
As is usually the case with ideals which exclude one half of what is desirable, the present standard of
approbation produces only an inferior imitation of the other half. Instead of great energies guided by
vigorous reason, and strong feelings strongly controlled by a conscientious will, its result is weak feelings
and weak energies, which therefore can be kept in outward conformity to rule without any strength either of
will or of reason.
There is now scarcely any outlet for energy in this country except business. The energy expended in that may
still be regarded as considerable. What little is left from that employment, is expended on some hobby; which
may be a useful, even a philanthropic hobby, but is … generally a thing of small dimensions. The greatness
of England is now all collective: individually small, we only appear capable of anything great by our habit of
combining; and with this our moral and religious philanthropists are perfectly contented. But it was men of
another stamp than this that made England what it has been; and men of another stamp will be needed to
prevent its decline.
The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement, being in unceasing
antagonism to that disposition to aim at something better than customary.
The only unfailing and permanent source of improvement is liberty, since by it there are as many possible
independent centres of improvement as there are individuals.
It is not progress that we object to; on the contrary, we flatter ourselves that we are the most progressive
people who ever lived. It is individuality that we war against: we should think we had done wonders if we
had made ourselves all alike; forgetting that the unlikeness of one person to another is generally the first
thing which draws the attention of either to the imperfection of his own type, and the superiority of another,
or the possibility, by combining the advantages of both, of producing something better than either.
J.S. Mill, describing the English, On Liberty (Henry Holt, New York: 1895), Chapter 3, p. 128
539
Wilhelm von Humboldt … points out two things as necessary conditions of human development, because
necessary to render people unlike one another; namely, freedom, and variety of situations. The second of
these two conditions is in this country every day diminishing. The circumstances which surround different
classes and individuals, and shape their characters, are daily becoming more assimilated. Formerly, different
ranks, different neighborhoods, different trades and professions lived in what might be called different
worlds; at present, to a great degree in the same. Comparatively speaking, they now read the same things,
listen to the same things, see the same things, go to the same places, have their hopes and fears directed to
the same objects, have the same rights and liberties, and the same means of asserting them. Great as are the
differences of position which remain, they are nothing to those which have ceased. And the assimilation is
still proceeding. All the political changes of the age promote it, since they all tend to raise the low and to
lower the high. Every extension of education promotes it, because education brings people under common
influences, and gives them access to the general stock of facts and sentiments. Improvements in the means of
communication promote it, by bringing the inhabitants of distant places into personal contact, and keeping up
a rapid flow of changes of residence between one place and another. The increase of commerce and
manufactures promotes it, by diffusing more widely the advantages of easy circumstances, and opening all
objects of ambition, even the highest, to general competition, whereby the desire of rising becomes no longer
the character of a particular class, but of all classes. A more powerful agency than even all these, in bringing
about a general similarity among mankind, is the complete establishment, in this and other free countries, of
the ascendency of public opinion in the State. As the various social eminences which enabled persons
entrenched on them to disregard the opinion of the multitude, gradually become levelled; as the very idea of
resisting the will of the public, when it is positively known that they have a will, disappears more and more
from the minds of practical politicians; there ceases to be any social support for non-conformity—any
substantive power in society, which, itself opposed to the ascendancy of numbers, is interested in taking
under its protection opinions and tendencies at variance with those of the public.
The notion that it is one man’s duty that another should be religious, was the foundation of all the religious
persecutions ever perpetrated. … Though the feeling which breaks out in the repeated attempts to stop
railway traveling on Sunday, in the resistance to the opening of museums, and the like, has not the cruelty of
the old persecutors, the state of mind indicated by it is fundamentally the same. It is a determination not to
tolerate others in doing what is permitted by their religion, because it is not permitted by the persecutor’s
religion. It is a belief that God not only abominates the act of the misbeliever, but will not hold us guiltless if
we leave him unmolested.
J.S. Mill, On Liberty (Henry Holt, New York: 1895), pp. 161-162
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807-1882)

I heard the trailing garments of the Night
Sweep through her marble halls!
I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light
From the celestial halls.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Hymn to the night”
O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear

What man has borne before!
Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care,
And they complain no more.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Hymn to the night”
540
ZYGMUNT KRASIŃSKI (1812-1859)
Alas! thou sufferest, too, although thy pangs
Bring naught to birth, nothing create, nor serve!
Zygmunt Krasiński, The Undivine Comedy
Not that I rise against thee, Poetry,

Mother of Beauty, of ideal Life!
But I must pity him condemned to dwell
Within the limits of these whirling worlds
In dying agonies, or yet to be,
Doomed to sad memories, or prophecies,
Perchance remorse, or vague presentiments,—
Who gives himself to thee! for everywhere
Thou ruinest wholly those who consecrate
Themselves, with all they are, to thee alone,
Who solely live the voices of thy glory!
Painting the sensual with thy hues divine,—

Thou turn'st away thy face, while scattering
Perchance upon his brow some fading flowers,
Of which he strives to twine a funeral crown,
Spending his life to weave a wreath of death!
SØREN KIERKEGAARD (1813-1855)

Christianity is an effort … to get rid of Christianity, to do it lavishly under the pretext that this is Christianity,
claiming that it is Christianity perfected.
Kierkegaard, “The Instant,” as Cited in The Subversion of Christianity (1986)
Christendom … transforms Christianity into something entirely different from what it is in the New
Testament, yea, into exactly the opposite..
Kierkegaard, “The Instant,” as Cited in The Subversion of Christianity (1986)
When the question of truth is raised in an objective manner, reflection is directed objectively to the truth, as
an object to which the knower is related. Reflection is not focused on the relationship, however, but upon the
question of whether it is the truth to which the knower is related. … When the question of truth is raised
subjectively, reflection is directed subjectively to the nature of the individual’s relationship; if only the mode
of this relationship is in the truth, the individual is in the truth even if he should happen to be thus related to
what is not true.
Kierkegaard, cited in Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, pp. 114-115, italics in original
Leben lässt sich nur rückwärts verstehen, muss aber vorwärts gelebt werden.
Kierkegaard
What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge
must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall
do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and
die. ... I certainly do not deny that I still accept an imperative of knowledge and that through it men may be
influenced, but then it must come alive in me, and this is what I now recognize as the most important of all.
Søren Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, part 1 (1829-1848), p. 34
541
Lord Jesus Christ, our foolish minds are weak; they are more than willing to be drawn—and there is so much
that wants to draw us to itself. There is pleasure with its seductive power, the multiplicity with its
bewildering distractions, the moment with its infatuating importance and the conceited laboriousness of
busyness and the careless time-wasting of light-mindedness and the gloomy brooding of heavy-
mindedness—all this will draw us away from ourselves to itself in order to deceive us. But you, who are the
truth, only you, Savior and Redeemer, can truly draw a person to yourself, which you have promised to do-
that you will draw all to yourself. Then may God grant that by repenting we may come to ourselves, so that
you, according to your Word, can draw us to yourself—from on high, but through lowliness and abasement.
Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity (1850), Hong, trans., p.157
The genius differs from us men in being able to endure isolation, his rank as a genius is proportionate to his
strength for enduring isolation, whereas we men are constantly in need of "the others," the herd; we die, or
despair, if we are not reassured by being in the herd, of the same opinion as the herd.
Kierkegaard
Each age has its own characteristic depravity. Ours is perhaps not pleasure or indulgence or sensuality, but
rather a dissolute pantheistic contempt for the individual man.
Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 317, cited in Merold Westphal, Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society, p. 39
You must yourself experience fear and trembling in your soul, and only thus ... will you achieve being a
human being, a personality, that is free from the absurdity that we are the unpersonal ‘objective’ creatures
that we have become.
Kierkegaard, Lo specchio della parola, , cited in Rhetoric As Philosophy (1980), p. 112
Schopenhauer … makes asceticism interesting—the most dangerous thing possible for a pleasure-seeking
age which will be harmed more than ever by distilling pleasure even out of asceticism, … by studying
asceticism in a completely impersonal way, by assigning it a place in the system.
Kierkegaard, Journals, 1854
After reading through Schopenhauer’s Ethic one learns—naturally he is to that extent honest—that he
himself is not an ascetic. And consequently he himself has not reached contemplation through asceticism, but
only a contemplation which contemplates asceticism. This is extremely suspicious, and may even conceal the
most terrible and corrupting voluptuous melancholy: a profound misanthropy. In this too it is suspicious, for
it is always suspicious to propound an ethic which does not exert so much power over the teacher that he
himself expresses.
Kierkegaard, Journals, 1854
Truth … abhors … aspiring after broad dissemination.

Kierkegaard, cited in Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, p. 98
Let no one say that it is possible for … the press to get the better of lies and errors. You who speak thus, do
you venture to maintain that men regarded as a crowd are just as quick to seize upon truth which is not
always palatable as upon falsehood which always is prepared delicately to give delight? … Or do you
venture even to maintain that “truth” can just as quickly be understood as falsehood, which requires no
preliminary knowledge, no schooling, no discipline, no abstinence, no self-denial, no honest concern about
oneself, no patient labor?
Kierkegaard, cited in Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, p. 98, grammatical corrections
The witness for the truth … naturally has nothing to do with politics and must above everything else be most
vigilantly on the watch not to be confounded with the politician.
542
The crowd is untruth. Hence none has more contempt for what it is to be a man than they who make it
their profession to lead the crowd. Let some one approach a person of this sort, some individual—that is an
affair too small for his attention, and he proudly repels him. There must be hundreds at least. And when there
are thousands, he defers to the crowd, bowing and scraping to them.
The crowd is untruth.

Kierkegaard
We should aspire to become this life in complete consciousness of itself.

Kierkegaard
The individuals of the contemporary generation are fearful of existence … only in great masses do they dare
to live, and they cluster together en masse in order to feel that they amount to something.
Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 318, cited in Merold Westphal, Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society, p. 39
Most people, at a certain point in their search for truth, change. They marry, and they take on a certain
position, in consequence of which they feel that they must in all honor have something finished … and
so they think of themselves as really finished. … Living in this manner, one is relieved of the necessity of
becoming executively aware of the strenuous difficulties which the simplest of propositions about existing
qua human-being involves.
Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, pp. 78-79, cited in Merold Westphal, Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society, p. 34
Everyone is so prone to set his mind at ease in a relativity. Anyone who is a little better than his family and
relatives or the others in the provincial town where he lives or among his peers, etc., promptly sets his mind
at ease.
Kierkegaard, Papers, 3:2966, cited in Merold Westphal, Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society, p. 51
The law of existence for the numerical or for mass men is that they live by comparisons.
Kierkegaard, Papers, 3:2986, cited in Merold Westphal, Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society, p. 52
All existential problems are passionate problems, for when existence is interpenetrated with reflection, it
generates passion. To think about existential problems in such a way as to leave out the passion is
tantamount to not thinking about them at all, since it is to forget the point, which is that the thinker
himself is an existing individual.
Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 313, cited in Louis Pojman, The Logic of Subjectivity, p. 58
If real success is to attend the effort to bring a man to a definite position, one must first of all take pains to
find him where he is and begin there. This is the secret of the art of helping others.
Kierkegaard, The point of view for my work as an author, W. Lowrie, trans. (1962), p. 27
One understands only in proportion to becoming himself that which he understands.

Kierkegaard, Papers, V B 40, cited in Louis Pojman, The Logic of Subjectivity, p. 61
The task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted.
Kierkegaard, JP I 656 (Pap. VIII 2 B 88)
If one is to succeed in leading a person to a specific place, one must first find him where he is and begin
there.
Kierkegaard, The Point of View for My Work as an Author, p. 45
I have always preferred the free and thus perhaps somewhat indefinite course of study to that service offered
at a pre-set table where one knows in advance the guests one will meet and the food one will be served every
single day of the week.
Kierkegaard, Journal entry, June 1, 1835
543
What I really need is to get clear about what I am to do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge
must precede every act. What matters is to find my purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall
do; the crucial thing is to find a truth that is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and
die. Of what use would it be to me to discover a so-called objective truth, to work through the philosophical
systems so that I could, if asked, make critical judgments about them, could point out the fallacies in each
system; of what use would it be to me to be able to develop a theory of the state, getting details from various
sources and combining them into a whole, and constructing a world I did not live in but merely held up for
others to see.
Kierkegaard, Journal entry, August 1, 1835
How many there are who experience life’s different impressions the way the sea sketches figures in the sand
and then promptly erases them without a trace.
I also wanted to become an actor so that by putting myself in another’s role I could, so to speak, find a
substitute for my own life and by means of this external change find some diversion. This was what I needed
to lead a completely human life and not merely one of knowledge, so that I could base the development of my
thought not on—yes, not on something objective—something that in any case is not my own, but upon
something that is bound up with the deepest roots of my existence.
What is truth but to live for an idea?

It will be easy for us once we receive the ball of yarn from Ariadne (love) and then go through all the
mazes of the labyrinth (life) and kill the monster. But how many are there who plunge into life (the
labyrinth) without taking that precaution?
It seems to me that I have not drunk from the cup of wisdom but have fallen into it.
It is as useless for a person to want first of all to decide the externals and after that the fundamentals
as it is for a cosmic body, thinking to form itself, first of all to decide the nature of its surface, to what
bodies it should turn its light, which its dark side, without first letting the harmony of centrifugal and
centripetal forces realize its existence and letting the rest come of itself. One must learn to know
oneself before knowing anything else (). Not until a person has inwardly understood
himself and then sees the course he is to take does his life gain peace and meaning.
Frequently, when a person is most convinced that he has understood himself, he is assaulted by the uneasy
feeling that he has really only learned someone else’s life by rote.
The Socratic secret … is that the movement of the spirit is inward, that the truth is the subject’s
transformation in himself.
Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. D. F. Swenson (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1941), pp. 37-38,
The Concept of Irony

It is one of Hegel’s great merits that he halted or at least wanted to halt the prodigal sons of speculation on
their way to perdition. But he did not always use the mildest means for this, and when he called out to them
his voice was not always gentle and fatherly but at times was harsh and schoolmasterly. … He soon gave up
hope for their salvation and now treats them as irreclaimable and obdurate sinners.
Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, XIII 338-339
544
The whole substantial life of Greek culture had lost its validity for him, which means that to him the
established actuality was unactual, not in this or that particular aspect but in its totality as such.
Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, XIII 343
Fear and Trembling (1843)

The present writer ... writes because for him it is a luxury that becomes all the more enjoyable and
conspicuous the fewer who buy and read what he writes.
Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (1843), S. Walsh, trans. (2006), p. 5
The present writer ... foresees his fate in an age when passion has been abandoned in order to serve
scholarship.
An old adage drawn from the external and visible world says: “Only one who works gets the bread.”
Oddly enough, the adage does not apply in the world where it is most at home, for the external world is
subject to the law of imperfection, and here it happens again and again that the one who does not work also
gets the bread, and the one who sleeps gets it more abundantly than the one who works. In the external world
everything belongs to the possessor; it toils slavishly under the law of indifference, and the genie of the ring
obeys whoever has the ring, whether he is a Noureddinn or an Aladdin, and whoever has the world’s
treasures has them no matter how he got them. In the world of the spirit it is otherwise. Here an eternal divine
order prevails, here it does not rain on both the just and the unjust, here the sun does not shine on both good
and evil, here it holds true that only the one who works gets the bread. ...
There is a form of knowledge that presumptuously wants to introduce into the world of spirit the same law
of indifference under which the external world sighs. It thinks it is enough to know the great. Other work is
not needed. But that is why it gets no bread; it perishes from hunger while everything is transmuted into gold.
It goes against the grain for me to do what so often happens, to speak inhumanly about the great as if a
few millennia were an immense distance. I prefer to speak humanly about it, as if it happened
yesterday, and let only the greatness itself be the distance.
Either-Or (1843, 1849)

Do not interrupt the flight of your soul; do not distress what is best in you; do not enfeeble your spirit with
half wishes and half thoughts. Ask yourself and keep on asking until you find the answer, for one may have
known something many times, acknowledged it; one may have willed something many times, attempted it—
and yet, only the deep inner motion, only the heart's indescribable emotion, only that will convince you that
what you have acknowledged belongs to you, that no power can take it from you—for only the truth that
builds up is truth for you.
Kierkegaard, Judge Vilhelm, Either-Or, H. Hong, trans. (1987)
How unreasonable people are! They never use the freedoms they have but demand those they do not have;
they have freedom of thought—they demand freedom of speech.
Kierkegaard, Either-Or, H. Hong, trans. (1987), part 1 (I 4), p. 19
The most ludicrous of all ludicrous things, it seems to me, is to be busy in the world, to be a man who is
brisk at his meals and brisk at his work. ... What, after all, do these busy bustlers achieve? Are they not just
like that woman who, in a flurry because the house was on fire, rescued the fire tongs? What more, after all,
do they salvage from life’s huge conflagration?
545
Most people rush after pleasure so fast that they rush right past it.
Kierkegaard, Either-Or, H. Hong, trans. (1987), part 1 (I 13)
To work for a living certainly cannot be the meaning of life, since it is indeed a contradiction that the
continual production of the conditions is supposed to be the answer to the question of the meaning of
that which is conditional upon their production. The lives of the rest of them generally have no meaning
except to consume the conditions.
The esthete will perhaps say to him, … “Money is and remains the rervus rerum gerendarum [moving
force], the true condition sine qua non [necessary condition]. To be sure, it is beautiful to read about rustic
contentment, about idyllic simplicity, and I like to read poetry of that sort; but one would soon become bored
with that way of life, and the people who live that way do not enjoy that life half as much as the person who
has money and then in all tranquility and leisure reads the poets’ songs. Money is and remains the absolute
condition for living.” …
But obviously this explanation would not help our hero. … If he said to the esthete, … “I have nothing at
all either in capital or interest,” … the esthete would shrug his shoulders and say, … “Then you’ll have to be
satisfied with going to the workhouse.” …
But there is something terribly callous in such a view of life, to murder in cold blood all the joy in life for
everyone who does not have money. This is indeed what the monied person does, for it is at least his view
that without money there is no joy in life.
Kierkegaard, Either-Or, H. Hong, trans. (1987), part 2, pp. 277-278
“Gracious gods, thank you for everything, but—forgive me for speaking so frankly to you—you lack
experience in worldly affairs; for a human being to be happy there is one thing lacking—money. Of what use
is it to him that he is created to rule over the world if he cannot spare the time for it because of financial
worries? What is the idea—to turn a rational creature out into the world and then let him drudge and slave; is
that a way to treat a human being?”
Kierkegaard, Judge William describing A’s view, Either-Or, H. Hong, trans. (1987), part 2, p. 279
“Most men live in order to make a living; when they have that, they live in order to make a good living;
when they have that, they die. …
“This comment can be developed into a demonstration of human immortality. This demonstration could
be stated as follows: It is the destiny of every human being to make a good living. If he dies before he does
that, he has not fulfilled his destiny. …But if he makes a good living, then he has achieved his destiny, but
the destiny of making a good living cannot be that he is supposed to die, but, on the contrary, that he is
supposed to live well on his good living—ergo, man is immortal.”
Kierkegaard, Judge William describing A’s view, Either-Or, H. Hong, trans. (1987), part 2, p. 279
The reason we so often hear that strident, contemptible talk about money being everything is partly because
those who must work lack the ethical vigor to acknowledge the meaning of working, lack the ethical
conviction of its meaning.
Kierkegaard, Either-Or, H. Hong, trans. (1987), part 2, p. 281
546
Strangely enough, I have seen people who with gladness sensed the meaning of work, who were satisfied
with their work, happy in their contentment with little, and yet did not seem to have the courage to admit it.
If they talked about what they spent, they always made it seem that they spent much more than they actually
did; they did not want to appear hard-working, although they actually were—just as if it were greater to
spend much than to spend little, greater to be a loafer than to be hard-working. How rarely we meet a person
who with calmness and cheerful dignity says: I do not do this or that, because it is beyond my means. It is as
if he had a bad conscience, as if he feared for the answer the fox had. In this way all true virtue is annihilated
or changed into a phantom, for why should those who do not need to be contented with little be so? And
those who need to be contented with little do indeed make a virtue of necessity. It is quite as if one could not
be contented with little unless one had the possibility of abundance along with it, quite as if craving were not
an equally great temptation to contentment with little.
I have known men whom I would never call craven or soft, men who in no way thought that life should be
without struggle, who had the energy and courage and urge to go into battle where others would give up—I
have also heard them say: Would that God preserve me from cares about the necessities of life; there is
nothing that smothers the higher life in a person as they do. On the occasion of such comments, it has often
struck me that there is nothing as deceitful as the human heart. … We think we have the courage to venture
out into the most perilous struggles, but we do not wish to struggle with cares about the necessities of life,
and yet at the same time we want it to be greater to win that battle than this one.
There are men on whom a title bestows honor, and there are men who bestow honor on a title.
There are men on whom a title bestows honor, and there are men who bestow honor on a title. Let a
person apply this to himself, he who, although he feels the energy and the urge to venture into glorious
battles, must be content with the sorriest of all, struggling with the cares about the necessities of life.
Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments (1846)

H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong, trans. (Princeton: 1992)
The objective way deems itself to have a security which the subjective way does not have (and, of course,
existence and existing cannot be thought in combination with objective security); it thinks to escape a danger
which threatens the subjective way and this danger is at its maximum: madness. In a merely subjective
determination of the truth, madness and truth become in the last analysis indistinguishable.
Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript,
The more objective the observer becomes, the less he builds an eternal happiness, that is, his eternal
happiness, on his relation to his observation, because an eternal happiness is a question only for the
impassioned, infinitely interested subjectivity.
at which he is continually arriving.
Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 32
In historical knowledge, he comes to know much about the world, nothing about himself; he is continually
moving in the sphere of approximation-knowledge, while with his presumed positivity he fancies himself to
have a certainty that can be had only in infinitude, in which, however, he cannot be as an existing person but
at which he is continually arriving.
547
Every subject is an existing subject, and this must be essentially expressed in all of his knowing and must be
expressed by keeping his knowledge from an illusory termination in sensate certainty, in historical
knowledge, in illusory results.
All of this positive [knowledge] fails to express the state of the knowing subject in existence, hence it
pertains to a fictive objective subject, and to mistake oneself for such a subject is to be fooled and remain
fooled.
Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 81 (underlining added)
The world has always had a lack of what could be called authentic individualities, decisive subjectivities,
those artistically permeated with reflection, the independent thinkers who differ from the bellowers and the
didacticizers.
With regard to actually becoming subjective, it is a matter of what reflective presuppositions the subject has
to penetrate, what ballast of objectivity he must dispose of.
Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 66 (underlining added)
The admired wisdom turns out to be that the subject’s task is to strip away more and more of his subjectivity
and become more and more objective. … It thereby quite correctly understands the accidental, the angular,
the selfish, the eccentric, etc., of which every human being can have plenty. Christianity does not deny,
either, that such things are to be discarded. … But the difference is simply that science and scholarship want
to teach that becoming objective is the way, whereas Christianity teaches that the way is to become
subjective, that is, truly to become a subject.
Christianity explicitly wants to intensify passion to its highest, but passion is subjectivity, and objectively
does not exist at all.
Philosophy (Hegel) seeks speculatively to confuse the ethical for the single individual with the world-
historical task for the human race. The ethical is the highest task assigned to every human being.
Instead of presenting the good in the form of an actuality, as it is ordinarily done, that this person and that
person have actually lived and have actually done this, and thus transforming the reader into an observer, an
admirer, an appraiser, it should be presented in the form of a possibility. ... Never in all eternity is it true that
someone has been assisted in doing the good by someone else’s actually having done it... there is nothing on
which one sleeps so soundly as on admiration over an actuality.
What is abstract thinking? It is thinking where there is no thinker. ... What does it mean, then, in the language
of abstract thinking to ask about actuality ... when abstraction expressly ignores it?
To observe ethically cannot be done, because there is only one ethical observing—it is self-observation.
A thinker is a creature ... who at certain times of the day is singularly ingenious but otherwise has nothing in
common with a human being.
548
If in our day thinking had not become secondhand, thinkers would indeed make a totally different impression
on people, as was the case in Greece, where a thinker was also an ardent existing person impassioned by his
thinking.
In Greece a thinker was not a stunted existing person who produced works of art, but he himself was an
existing work of art.
By frequently having made the transition from thinking to acting he has finally lost the power for it in the
bondage of habit, which at his expense makes it faster and faster.
Ethics has been shoved out of the system and has been replaced with a surrogate that confuses the world-
historical and the individual and confuses the bewildering, bellowing demands of the times with the eternal
demands of conscience upon the individual.
The Sickness Unto Death (1849)

http://www.scribd.com/doc/38234112/Kierkegaard-The-Sickness-Unto-Death-Princeton-UP-1980
http://www.religion-online.org/showbook.asp?title=2067
From the Christian point of view, everything, indeed everything, ought to serve for upbuilding. The kind of
scholarliness and scienticity that ultimately does not build up is precisely thereby unchristian. Everything
essentially Christian must have in its presentation a resemblance to the way a physician speaks at the
sickbed; even if only medical experts understand it, it must never be forgotten that the situation is the bedside
of a sick person. It is precisely Christianity's relation to life (in contrast to a scholarly distance from life) or
the ethical aspect of Christianity that is upbuilding, and the mode of presentation, however rigorous it may be
otherwise, is completely different, qualitatively different, from the kind of scienticity and scholarliness that is
"indifferent," whose lofty heroism is so far, Christianly, from being heroism that, Christianly, it is a kind of
inhuman curiosity. It is Christian heroism—a rarity, to be sure—to venture wholly to become oneself,
an individual human being, this specific individual human being, alone before God, alone in this
prodigious strenuousness and this prodigious responsibility; but it is not Christian heroism to be taken in
by the idea of man in the abstract or to play the wonder game with world history. All Christian knowing,
however rigorous its form, ought to be concerned, but this concern is precisely the upbuilding. Concern
constitutes the relation to life, to the actuality of the personality, and therefore earnestness from the Christian
point of view; the loftiness of indifferent knowledge is, from the Christian point of view, a long way from
being more earnest—Christianly, it is a witticism, an affectation.
Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, H. and E. Hong, trans. (1980), pp. 5-6
ARTHUR HELPS (1813-1875)

Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd (1835)
http://books.google.com/books?id=DdAsAAAAYAAJ
The unfortunate Ladurlad did not desire the sleep that for ever fled his weary eyelids with more earnestness
than most people seek the deep slumber of a decided opinion.
Arthur Helps, Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd (1835)
The business of the head is to form a good heart, and not merely to rule an evil one, as is generally imagined.
549
There is nothing more painful to contemplate, than a young child impressed with a desire to excel, when a
fatal self-sentience has usurped the place of childishness. It has been said that the children of the poor are
never young: I am sure that the children of the ambitious are equally unfortunate. Rousseau observes that "it
is very strange, that, ever since mankind have taken it into their heads to trouble themselves so much about
the education of children, they should never have thought of any other instruments to effect their purpose
than those of emulation, jealousy, envy, pride, covetousness, and servile fear—all passions the most
dangerous, the most apt to ferment, and the most fit to corrupt the soul, even before the body is formed. With
every premature instruction we instil into the head, we implant a vice in the bottom of the heart."
Let no colour be given to the theory ... that people met together to constitute society for the purpose of
more effectually tormenting each other. ... Do not let us for ever be engaged in a petty contest with our
fellow men, in order that we may be, or appear to be, less ignorant than those around us.
The lesser lights alone are those which never suffer an eclipse.
There is another cause of failure that has not often been contemplated. The object may be too eagerly
desired, ever to be obtained. Its importance, even if it be important, may too often be presented to the mind.
The end may always appear so clearly defined, that the aspirant, forgetting the means that are necessary,
forgetting the distance that must intervene, is for ever stretching out his hand to grasp that which is not yet
within his power. The calm exercise of his faculties is prevented, the habit of concentrating his attention is
destroyed.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN (1814-1876)

There is a class of people who, if they do not believe, must at least make a semblance of believing. This
class, comprising all the tormentors, all the oppressors, and all the exploiters of humanity; priests, monarchs,
statesmen, soldiers, public and private financiers, officials of all sorts, policemen, gendarmes, jailers and
executioners, monopolists, capitalists, tax-leeches, contractors and landlords, lawyers, economists, politicians
of all shades, down to the smallest vendor of sweetmeats, all will repeat in unison those words of Voltaire: ‘If
God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.’ For, you understand, ‘the people must have a
religion.’ That is the safety valve.
Bakunin
There exists, finally, a somewhat numerous class of honest but timid souls who, too intelligent to take the
Christian dogmas seriously, reject them in detail, but have neither the courage nor the strength nor the
necessary resolution to summarily renounce them altogether. They abandon to your criticism all the special
absurdities of religion, they turn up their noses at all the miracles, but they cling desperately to the principal
absurdity; the source of all the others, to the miracle that explains and justifies all the other miracles, the
existence of God.
Bakunin
Thus, then, the antiquity and universality of a belief should be regarded, contrary to all science and all logic,
as sufficient and unimpeachable proof of its truth. Why? ... Nothing, in fact, is as universal or as ancient as
the iniquitous and absurd; truth and justice, on the contrary, are the least universal, the youngest features in
the development of human society. In this fact, too, lies the development of a constant historical
phenomenon—namely, the persecution of which those who first proclaim the truth have been and continue to
be the objects at the hands of the official, privileged, and interested representatives of ‘universal’ and
‘ancient’ beliefs, and often also at the hands of the same masses who, after having tortured them, always end
by adopting their ideas and rendering them victorious.
Bakunin
550
Let us, then, never look back, let us look ever forward; for forward is our sunlight, forward our salvation. If it
is justifiable, and even useful and necessary, to turn back to study our past, it is only in order to establish
what we have been and what we must no longer be.
Bakunin
Christianity is precisely the religion par excellence, because it exhibits and manifests, to the fullest extent,
the very nature and essence of every religious system, which is the impoverishment, enslavement, and
annihilation of humanity. ... God being everything, the real world and man are nothing. God being truth,
justice, goodness, beauty, power, and life, man is falsehood, iniquity, evil, ugliness, impotence, and death.
God being master, man is the slave. ... Slaves of God, men must also be slaves of Church, and the State, in so
far as the State is consecrated by the Church. This truth Christianity, better than all other religions that exist
or have existed, understood.
Bakunin
The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of
human liberty, and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind, both in theory and practice.
Bakunin
Is it necessary to point out to what extent and in what manner religions debase and corrupt the people? They
destroy their reason, the principal instrument of human emancipation, and reduce them to imbecility, the
essential condition of their slavery.
Bakunin
HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817-1862)

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
Henry David Thoreau
That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

Thoreau, Journal entry, March 11, 1856
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Thoreau
If anything ail a man, so that he does not perform his function, if he have a pain in the bowels even … he
forthwith sets about reforming—the world.
Thoreau, cited in Eric Hoffer, Between the Devil and the Dragon (New York: 1982), p. 177
My life has been the poem I would have writ,

But I could not both live and utter it.
Thoreau
Any fool can make a rule

And any fool will mind it.
Thoreau, Journals, February 3, 1860
One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors. To dwell long upon them is to add to the offense.
Repentance and sorrow can only be displaced by something better, which is as free and original as if they
had not been.
Thoreau, Journals, January 9, 1842
The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level
with the lowest.
Thoreau
551
I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject.
Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
If a man believes and expects great things of himself, it makes no odds where you put him, or what you show
him ... he will be surrounded by grandeur. He is in the condition of a healthy and hungry man, who says to
himself,—How sweet this crust is!
Thoreau, Letter to Harrison Blake (20 May 1860); published in Familiar Letters (1865)
The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls—the worst man is as strong as the best
at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what
kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.
Thoreau, Slavery in Massachusetts
It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?
Thoreau, Letter to Harrison Blake (16 November 1857)
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive
hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a
more simple and meager life than the poor.
Thoreau, Walden (1854), p. 13
None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call
voluntary poverty.
Thoreau
What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study.
Thoreau
Most men do not know that any nation but the Hebrews have had a scripture.
Thoreau
We spend more on almost any article of bodily aliment or ailment than on our mental aliment.
Thoreau
Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.

Thoreau
If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the
darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us.
Thoreau
To worship at a temple not your own is mere flattery.

Thoreau, “Sayings of Confucius,” The Dial Vol. III, No. 4, April, 1843, p. 493
Having knowledge, to apply it; not having knowledge, to confess your ignorance; this is real knowledge.
Thoreau, “Sayings of Confucius,” The Dial Vol. III, No. 4, April, 1843, p. 493
There is a divine nobility and a human nobility. Benevolence, justice, fidelity, and truth, and to delight in
virtue without weariness, constitute divine nobility. To be a prince, a prime minister, or a great officer of
state constitute human nobility. The ancients adorned divine nobility, and human nobility followed it. The
men of the present day cultivate divine nobility in order that they may obtain human nobility; and when they
once get human nobility, they throw away divine nobility. This is the height of delusion, and must end in the
loss of both.
Thoreau, “The Taou,” The Dial Vol. IV, No. 2, Oct., 1843, p. 205
552
It is remarkable that the highest intellectual mood which the world tolerates is the perception of truth of the
most ancient revelations, now in some respects out of date; but any direct revelation, any original thoughts, it
hates like virtue. The fathers and the mothers of the town would rather hear the young man or young woman
at their tables express reverence for some old statement of the truth than utter a direct revelation themselves.
They don’t want to have any prophets born into their families—damn them! So far as thinking is concerned,
surely original thinking is the divinest thing. Rather we should reverently watch for the least motions, the
least scintillations, of thought in this sluggish world, and men should run to and fro on the occasion more
than at an earthquake. We check and repress the divinity that stirs within us, to fall down and worship the
divinity that is dead without us. I go to see many a good man or good woman, so called, and utter freely that
thought which alone it was given to me to utter; but there was a man who lived a long, long time ago, and his
name was Moses, and another whose name was Christ, and if your thought does not, or does not appear to,
coincide with what they said, the good man or the good woman has no ears to hear you. They think they love
God! It is only his old clothes, of which they make scarecrows for the children. Where will they come nearer
to God than in those very children?
Thoreau, “Thomas Carlyle and His Works”
The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad.
Thoreau
Walden (1854)
http://books.google.com/books?id=-EoLAAAAIAAJ
http://thoreau.eserver.org/walden00.html
Where is this division of labor to end? And what object does it finally serve? No doubt another may also
think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.
Thoreau, Walden (1854), “Economy”
I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am
confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience.
Thoreau, Walden (1854), “Economy” ¶ A2
Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students.

I have travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants
have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.
Thoreau, Walden (1854) , “Economy” ¶ A3
The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken;
for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster
or finished any labor. They have no friend Iolaus to burn with a hot iron the root of the hydra's head, but as
soon as one head is crushed, two spring up.
Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer
eyes what field they were called to labor in.
Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born?
By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up
treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will
find when they get to the end of it, if not before.
553
Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied
with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.
Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that.
The laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day.
How can he remember well his ignorance—which his growth requires—who has so often to use his
knowledge?
The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate
handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.
Some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for
the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend
borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour.
... making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day.
It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are the
slave-driver of yourself.
What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere
smoke of opinion.
What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds
for new.
We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages.
The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it
is very likely to be my good behavior.
... to learn what are the gross necessaries of life ... the grossest groceries.
By the words, necessary of life, I mean whatever, of all that man obtains by his own exertions, has been from
the first, or from long use has become, so important to human life that few, if any, whether from savageness,
or poverty, or philosophy, ever attempt to do without it.
Is it impossible to combine the hardiness of these savages with the intellectualness of the civilized man?
The luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot; as I implied before, they are
cooked, of course à la mode.
554
There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess
because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor
even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity,
independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only
theoretically, but practically. The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like
success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their
fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a noble race of men.
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive
hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a
more simple and meagre life than the poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek,
were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward.
None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call
voluntary poverty.
What is the nature of the luxury which enervates and destroys nations? Are we sure that there is none of it in
our own lives?
I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are
well employed or not; — but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the
hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them. There are some who complain most
energetically and inconsolably of any, because they are, as they say, doing their duty. I also have in my mind
that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know
not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.
In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it
on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present
moment; to toe that line.
Thoreau, Walden (1854), “Economy” ¶ B2
There are more secrets in my trade than in most men's, and yet not voluntarily kept.
Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my
neighborhood. "Do you wish to buy any baskets?" he asked. "No, we do not want any," was the reply.
"What!" exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, "do you mean to starve us?" Having seen his
industrious white neighbors so well off — that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by some magic,
wealth and standing followed — he had said to himself: I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a
thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it
would be the white man's to buy them. He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth
the other's while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it
would be worth his while to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it
worth any one's while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them,
and instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid
the necessity of selling them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should
we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?
555
He considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected.
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had
better aim at something high.
If one designs to construct a dwelling-house, it behooves him to exercise a little Yankee shrewdness, lest
after all he find himself in a workhouse, a labyrinth without a clue, a museum, an almshouse, a prison, or a
splendid mausoleum instead.
Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your example which leaves them far
behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them.
Men have become the tools of their tools.

Thoreau, Walden (1854), Chapter 1, “Economy”
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
Thoreau, Walden (1854), Chapter 2, “Where I lived, and what I lived for”
The owner does not know it for many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind
of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer
only the skimmed milk.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I
could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a
farm or the county jail.
The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted ; but few are the ears that hear it.
What should we think of the shepherd's life if his flocks always wandered to higher pastures than his
thoughts?
556
Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with
Nature herself. ... They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of king Tching-thang to this
effect: "Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again." I can understand that.
Morning brings back the heroic ages. ... The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the
awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes
which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day,
to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not
awakened by our own newly-acquired force and aspirations from within, accompanied by the undulations of
celestial music, instead of factory bells, and a fragrance filling the air — to a higher life than we fell asleep
from; and thus the darkness bear its fruit, and prove itself to be good, no less than the light. That man who
does not believe that each day contains an earlier, more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned,
has despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way. After a partial cessation of his
sensuous life, the soul of man, or its organs rather, are reinvigorated each day, and his Genius tries again
what noble life it can make. ... To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is
a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I
am awake and there is a dawn in me. ... The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a
million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or
divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake.
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious
endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few
objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through
which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every
man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and
critical hour.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I
could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish
to live what was not life, living is so dear. ... I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live
so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to
drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the
whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by
experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.
Our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness.
Our life is frittered away by detail.

The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them.
They have only been read as the multitude read the stars, at most astrologically, not astronomically.
Most men have learned to read to serve a paltry convenience, as they have learned to cipher in order
to keep accounts and not be cheated in trade; but of reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know
little or nothing; yet this only is reading, in a high sense, not that which lulls us as a luxury and suffers
the nobler faculties to sleep the while, but what we have to stand on tip-toe to read and devote our
most alert and wakeful hours to.
Thoreau, Walden (1854), Chapter 3, “Reading”
557
A man, any man, will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words,
which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have
assured us of; and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading, the primers and class-books, and when
we leave school, the “Little Reading,” and story-books, which are for boys and beginners; and our reading,
our conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, worthy only of pygmies and manikins.
Thoreau, Walden (1854), Chapter 3, “Reading”
With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand
aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not
wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the driftwood in the stream, or Indra in the sky looking down on
it. I may be affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand, I may not be affected by an actual event
which appears to concern me much more. I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of
thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself
as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of
me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that
is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It
was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. This doubleness may easily
make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes.
Thoreau, Walden (1854), Chapter 5, “Solitude,” ¶ 11
I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men,
and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than
the good.
Thoreau, Walden (1854), Chapter 11, “Higher Laws”
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Thoreau, Walden (1854), 1854
Collected Poems
Life is a summer’s day
When as it were for aye
We sort and play.
Anon the night comes on,

The ploughman’s work is done,
And day is gone.
We read in this one page

Both Youth, Manhood, and Age
That hoary Sage.
The morning is our prime

That laughs to scorn old Time,
And knows no crime.
Thoreau, “Life is a summer’s day”
Lately alas I knew a gentle boy,

Whose features all were cast in Virtue’s mould,
As one she had designed for Beauty’s toy,
But after manned him for her own strong-hold.
558
On every side he open was as day,
That you might see no lack of strength within,
For walls and ports do only serve always
For a pretence to feebleness and sin.
Say not that Cæsar was victorious,

With toil and strife who stormed the House of Fame;
In other sense this youth was glorious,
Himself a kingdom wheresoe’er he came.
No strength went out to get him victory,

When all was income of its own accord;
For where he went none other was to see,
But all were parcel of their noble lord.
He forayed like the subtle breeze of summer,

That stilly shows fresh landscapes to the eyes,
And revolutions worked without a murmur,
Or rustling of a leaf beneath the skies.
Thoreau, “Sympathy”
I am a parcel of vain strivings tied

By a chance bond together,
Dangling this way and that, their links
Were made so loose and wide,
Methinks,
For milder weather.
A bunch of violets without their roots,

And sorrel intermixed,
Encircled by a wisp of straw
Once coiled about their shoots,
The law
By which I’m fixed.
A nosegay which Time clutched from out

Those fair Elysian fields,
With weeds and broken stems, in haste,
Doth make the rabble rout
That waste
The day he yields.
And here I bloom for a short hour unseen,

Drinking my juices up,
With no root in the land
To keep my branches green,
But stand
In a bare cup.
559
Some tender buds were left upon my stem
In mimicry of life,
But ah! the children will not know,
Till time has withered them,
The woe
With which they’re rife.
But now I see I was not plucked for naught,

And after in life’s vase
Of glass set while I might survive,
But by a kind hand brought
Alive
To a strange place.
That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours,

And by another year,
Such as God knows, with freer air,
More fruits and fairer flowers
Will bear,
While I droop here.
Thoreau, “Sic Vita”
My life more civil is and free

Than any civil polity.
Ye princes keep your realms
And circumscribed power,
Not wide as are my dreams,
Nor rich as is this hour.
What can ye give which I have not?

What can ye take which I have got?
Can ye defend the dangerless?
Can ye inherit nakedness?
To all true wants time’s ear is deaf,

Penurious states lend no relief
Out of their pelf
But a free soul Thank God
Can help itself.
Be sure your fate

Doth keep apart its state—
Not linked with any band—
Even the nobles of the land
In tented fields with cloth of gold—

No place doth hold
But is more chivalrous than they are.
And sigheth for a nobler war.
A finer strain its trumpet rings—
A brighter gleam its armor flings.
560
The life that I aspire to live
No man proposeth me—
No trade upon the street
Wears its emblazonry.
Thoreau, “Independence”
Whate’er we leave to God, God does,

And blesses us;
The work we choose should be our own,
God leaves alone.
If with light head erect I sing,

Though all the Muses lend their force,
From my poor love of anything,
The verse is weak and shallow as its source.
But if with bended neck I grope

Listening behind me for my wit,
With faith superior to hope,
More anxious to keep back than forward it;
Making my soul accomplice there

Unto the flame my heart hath lit,
Then will the verse forever wear—
Time cannot bend the line which God hath writ.
Always the general show of things

Floats in review before my mind,
And such true love and reverence brings,
That sometimes I forget that I am blind.
But now there comes unsought, unseen,

Some clear divine electuary,
And I, who had but sensual been,
Grow sensible, and as God is, am wary.
I hearing get, who had but ears,

And sight, who had but eyes before,
I moments live, who lived but years,
And truth discern, who knew but learning’s lore.
I hear beyond the range of sound,

I see beyond the range of sight,
New earths and skies and seas around,
And in my day the sun doth pale his light.
A clear and ancient harmony

Pierces my soul through all its din,
As through its utmost melody—
Farther behind than they, farther within.
561
More swift its bolt than lightning is,
Its voice than thunder is more loud,
It doth expand my privacies
To all, and leave me single in the crowd.
It speaks with such authority,

With so serene and lofty tone,
That idle Time runs gadding by,
And leaves me with Eternity alone.
Now chiefly is my natal hour,

And only now my prime of life;
Of manhood’s strength it is the flower,
‘Tis peace’s end and war’s beginning strife.
It comes in summer’s broadest noon,

By a grey wall or some chance place,
Unseasoning Time, insulting June,
And vexing day with its presuming face.
Such fragrance round my couch it makes,

More rich than are Arabian drugs,
That my soul scents its life and wakes
The body up beneath its perfumed rugs.
Such is the Muse, the heavenly maid,

The star that guides our mortal course,
Which shows where life’s true kernel’s laid,
Its wheat’s fine flour, and its undying force.
She with one breath attunes the spheres,

And also my poor human heart,
With one impulse propels the years
Around, and gives my throbbing pulse its start.
I will not doubt for evermore,

Nor falter from a steadfast faith,
For thought the system be turned o’er,
God takes not back the word which once He saith.
I will not doubt the love untold

Which not my worth nor want has bought,
Which wooed me young, and woos me old,
And to this evening hath me brought.
My memory I’ll educate

To know the one historic truth,
Remembering to the latest date
The only true and sole immortal youth.
562
Be but thy inspiration given,
No matter through what danger sought,
I’ll fathom hell or climb to heaven,
And yet esteem that cheap which love has bought.
Fame cannot tempt the bard

Who’s famous with his God,
Nor laurel him reward
Who has his Maker’s nod.
Thoreau, “Inspiration”
“Life without Principle” (1863)

http://thoreau.eserver.org/life1.html
This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! ... It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure
for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are
commonly ruled for dollars and cents. ... If a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a
cripple for life, … it is regretted chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for—business! I think there is
nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.
Thoreau, “Life without Principle,” 1.4
I do not need the police of meaningless labor to regulate me.

Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in
throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed
now. For instance: just after sunrise, one summer morning, I noticed one of my neighbors walking beside his
team, which was slowly drawing a heavy hewn stone swung under the axle, surrounded by an atmosphere of
industry,—his day's work begun,—his brow commenced to sweat,—a reproach to all sluggards and idlers,—
pausing abreast the shoulders of his oxen, and half turning round with a flourish of his merciful whip, while
they gained their length on him. And I thought, Such is the labor which the American Congress exists to
protect,—honest, manly toil,—honest as the day is long,—that makes his bread taste sweet, and keeps
society sweet,—which all men respect and have consecrated; one of the sacred band, doing the needful but
irksome drudgery. Indeed, I felt a slight reproach, because I observed this from a window, and was not
abroad and stirring about a similar business. The day went by, and at evening I passed the yard of another
neighbor, who keeps many servants, and spends much money foolishly, while he adds nothing to the
common stock, and there I saw the stone of the morning lying beside a whimsical structure intended to adorn
this Lord Timothy Dexter's premises, and the dignity forthwith departed from the teamster's labor, in my
eyes. In my opinion, the sun was made to light worthier toil than this. I may add that his employer has since
run off, in debt to a good part of the town, and, after passing through Chancery, has settled somewhere else,
there to become once more a patron of the arts.
The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by
which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the
wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself.
Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man.

563
Perhaps I am more than usually jealous with respect to my freedom. I feel that my connection with
and obligation to society are still very slight and transient. Those slight labors which afford me a
livelihood, and by which it is allowed that I am to some extent serviceable to my contemporaries, are as
yet commonly a pleasure to me, and I am not often reminded that they are a necessity. So far I am
successful. But I foresee that if my wants should be much increased, the labor required to supply them
would become a drudgery. If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear
to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus
sell my birthright for a mess of pottage. I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet
not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his
life getting his living.
If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for
me there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a
mess of pottage.
A man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well.
There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.
You must get your living by loving.

As it is said of the merchants that ninety-seven in a hundred fail, so the life of men generally, tried by this
standard, is a failure.
Men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.
It is remarkable that there is little or nothing to be remembered written on the subject of getting a
living; how to make getting a living not merely honest and honorable, but altogether inviting and
glorious; for if getting a living is not so, then living is not.
Cold and hunger seem more friendly to my nature than those methods which men have adopted and
advise to ward them off.
The title wise is, for the most part, falsely applied. How can one be a wise man, if he does not know any
better how to live than other men?—if he is only more cunning and intellectually subtle?
Is there any such thing as wisdom not applied to life? Is she merely the miller who grinds the finest logic?
Thoreau, “Life without Principle, “ 1.16
The ways in which most men get their living, that is, live, are mere makeshifts, and a shirking of the real
business of life.
I might pursue some path, however solitary and narrow and crooked, in which I could walk with love and
reverence.
564
I asked myself why I might not be washing some gold daily, though it were only the finest particles,—why I
might not sink a shaft down to the gold within me, and work that mine. ... Men rush to California and
Australia as if the true gold were to be found in that direction; but that is to go to the very opposite extreme
to where it lies. They go prospecting farther and farther away from the true lead, and are most unfortunate
when they think themselves most successful. Is not our native soil auriferous? Does not a stream from the
golden mountains flow through our native valley? and has not this for more than geologic ages been bringing
down the shining particles and forming the nuggets for us? Yet, strange to tell, if a digger steal away,
prospecting for this true gold, into the unexplored solitudes around us, there is no danger that any will dog
his steps, and endeavor to supplant him. He may claim and undermine the whole valley even, both the
cultivated and the uncultivated portions, his whole life long in peace, for no one will ever dispute his claim.
They will not mind his cradles or his toms. He is not confined to a claim twelve feet square, as at Ballarat,
but may mine anywhere, and wash the whole wide world in his tom.
It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in
excusing the ways of men.
A man had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the process of getting his bread.
As we grow old, we live more coarsely, we relax a little in our disciplines, and, to some extent, cease to obey
our finest instincts. But we should be fastidious to the extreme of sanity, disregarding the gibes of those who
are more unfortunate than ourselves.
In our science and philosophy, even, there is commonly no true and absolute account of things. The spirit of
sect and bigotry has planted its hoof amid the stars. You have only to discuss the problem, whether the stars
are inhabited or not, in order to discover it. Why must we daub the heavens as well as the earth?
I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in
his society. Most with whom you endeavor to talk soon come to a stand against some institution in
which they appear to hold stock,—that is, some particular, not universal, way of viewing things. They
will continually thrust their own low roof, with its narrow skylight, between you and the sky, when it is
the unobstructed heavens you would view.
In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office. You may
depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his
extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while.
It requires more than a day’s devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day.
I did not know why my news should be so trivial,—considering what one’s dreams and expectations are, why
the developments should be so paltry. The news we hear, for the most part, is not news to our genius. It
is the stalest repetition.
If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events that make the
news transpire,—thinner than the paper on which it is printed,—then these things will fill the world for you;
but if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them.
Thoreau, “Life without Principle”
565
Not without a slight shudder at the danger, I often perceive how near I had come to admitting into my mind
the details of some trivial affair,—the news of the street; and I am astonished to observe how willing men are
to lumber their minds with such rubbish,—to permit idle rumors and incidents of the most insignificant kind
to intrude on ground which should be sacred to thought. Shall the mind be a public arena, where the affairs of
the street and the gossip of the tea-table chiefly are discussed? Or shall it be a quarter of heaven itself,—an
hypæthral temple, consecrated to the service of the gods? I find it so difficult to dispose of the few facts
which to me are significant, that I hesitate to burden my attention with those which are insignificant, which
only a divine mind could illustrate. Such is, for the most part, the news in newspapers and conversation. It is
important to preserve the mind’s chastity in this respect. Think of admitting the details of a single case of the
criminal court into our thoughts, to stalk profanely through their very sanctum sanctorum for an hour, ay, for
many hours! to make a very bar-room of the mind’s inmost apartment, as if for so long the dust of the street
had occupied us,—the very street itself, with all its travel, its bustle, and filth, had passed through our
thoughts’ shrine! Would it not be an intellectual and moral suicide?
I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that
all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality.
Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.

We are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufactures and
agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end.
What is called politics is something so superficial and inhuman that, practically, I have never fairly
recognized that it concerns me at all.
Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is
true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding
functions of the physical body. They are infra-human, a kind of vegetation. I sometimes awake to a
half-consciousness of them going on about me, as a man may become conscious of some of the
processes of digestion in a morbid state, and so have the dyspepsia, as it is called.
Walden (1854)
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let
him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
Thoreau, Walden
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
Thoreau, Walden
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862), Walden (1854), “Reading”, 1854
Civil Disobedience (1849)

http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil1.html
The people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of
government which they have.
Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1.2
566
Unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a
better government.
The practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and
for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this
seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest.
Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but
conscience?—in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable?
Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why
has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which
I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.
Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily
made the agents of injustice.
Most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders, serve the state chiefly with their heads;
and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as
God.
A very few—as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men—serve the state with their
consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by
it.
A wise man will only be useful as a man, and will not submit to be “clay.”
I quarrel not with far-off foes, but with those who, near at home, co-operate with, and do the bidding of those
far away, and without whom the latter would be harmless.
It is not so important that many should be good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere;
for that will leaven the whole lump.
They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At
most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and Godspeed, to the right, as it goes by them.
567
All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with
right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is
not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should
prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency.
Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should
prevail.
Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should
prevail.
I find that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position, and despairs of his
country, when his country has more reason to despair of him. He forthwith adopts one of the candidates thus
selected as the only available one, thus proving that he is himself available for any purposes of the
demagogue.
It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most
enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash
his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to
other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another
man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too.
Under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our
own meanness. After the first blush of sin comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were,
unmoral.
Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance
and support are ... the most serious obstacles to reform.
Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
The rich man... is always sold to the institution which makes him rich.
The more money, the less virtue; for money comes between a man and his objects, and obtains them for him;
it was certainly no great virtue to obtain it.
KARL MARX (1818-1883)

Die herrschende Geschichtsschreibung ist die Geschichtsschreibung der Herrschenden.
Marx
568
Die Aufhebung der Religion als des illusorischen Glücks des Volkes ist die Forderung seines wirklichen
Glücks. Die Forderung, die Illusionen über seinen Zustand aufzugeben, ist die Forderung, einen Zustand
aufzugeben, der der Illusionen bedarf.
Karl Marx, „Zur Kritik der Hegel’schen Rechtsphilosophie“ (1843)
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness.
To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition
that requires illusions.
Karl Marx, “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” (1843)
Die Kritik hat die imaginären Blumen an der Kette zerpflückt, nicht damit der Mensch die phantasielose,
trostlose Kette trage, sondern damit er die Kette abwerfe und die lebendige Blume breche. Die Kritik der
Religion enttäuscht den Menschen, damit er denke, handle, seine Wirklichkeit gestalte, wie ein enttäuschter,
zu Verstand gekommener Mensch, damit er sich um sich selbst und damit um seine wirkliche Sonne bewege.
Die Religion ist nur die illusorische Sonne, die sich um den Menschen bewegt, solange er sich nicht um sich
selbst bewegt.
Karl Marx, „Zur Kritik der Hegel’schen Rechtsphilosophie“ (1843)
Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear
that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living
flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a
man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his
own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not
revolve around himself.
Karl Marx, “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” (1843)
All mythology overcomes and dominates and shapes the forces of nature in the imagination and by the
imagination; it therefore vanishes with the advent of real mastery over them.
Marx, Grundrisse (1857)
Truth ... owns me, I do not own it.

Karl Marx
Crude and thoughtless communism ... wants to destroy everything what is not capable of being possessed by
all as private property. It wants to do away by force with talent, etc. For it, the sole purpose of life and
existence is direct, physical possession. The task of the laborer is not done away with, but extended to all
men.
Karl Marx, as quoted in Herbert Marcuse, “The Foundations of Historical Materialism,” Studies in Critical Philosophy (1972), p. 9
The product of mental labor—science—always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary
to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-time required for its original production.
Marx, "Relative and Absolute Surplus Value," Economic Manuscripts
Let us suppose that we had carried out production as human beings. Each of us would have in two ways
affirmed himself and the other person. 1) In my production I would have objectified my individuality, its
specific character, and therefore enjoyed not only an individual manifestation of my life during the activity,
but also when looking at the object I would have the individual pleasure of knowing my personality to be
objective, visible to the senses and hence a power beyond all doubt. 2) In your enjoyment or use of my
product I would have the direct enjoyment both of being conscious of having satisfied a human need by my
work, that is, of having objectified man’s essential nature, and of having thus created an object corresponding
to the need of another man’s essential nature. ... Our products would be so many mirrors in which we saw
reflected our essential nature.
Marx, Comment on James Mill
569
The criticism of religion ends with the doctrine that man is the supreme being for man. It ends, therefore,
with the categorical imperative to overthrow all those conditions in which man is an abased, enslaved,
abandoned, contemptible being.
Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843)
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected
circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition
of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.
Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852)
The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and intellectual life process in
general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their
social being that determines their consciousness.
Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)
Every emancipation is a restoration of the human world and of human relationships.

Marx, On the Jewish Question (1843)
The fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work,
therefore he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop
freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and his mind. The worker therefore only feels
himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself.
Marx, Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts (1844)
Die herrschenden Ideen einer Zeit waren stets nur die Ideen der herrschenden Klasse.
Marx
Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert, es kömmt drauf an, sie zu verändern.
Marx
Philosophers have merely interpreted the world differently; the point, however, is to change it.
Marx, “Thesen über Feuerbach” #11
Money ... has, therefore, deprived the whole world, both the human world and nature, of their proper value.
Money is the alienated essence of man’s work and existence, this essence dominates him and he worships it.
Marx , ''Marx-Engels Reader'' (1978), p. 50
Betrachtung eines Jünglings bei der Wahl eines Berufes [Reflections of a Youth on
Choosing an Occupation] (1835)
German: http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Marx,+Karl/Betrachtungen+eines+J%C3%BCnglings+bei+der+Wahl+seines+Berufes
[The career a young man should choose should be] one that is most consonant with our dignity, one that is
based on ideas of whose truth we are wholly convinced, one that offers us largest scope in working for
humanity and approaching that general goal towards which each profession offers only one of the means: the
goal of perfection ... If he works only for himself he can become a famous scholar, a great sage, an excellent
imaginative writer, but never a perfected, a truly great man.
Marx, “A Young Man's Reflections on the Choice of a Career" (1835), in Karl Marx and World Literature, (Oxford: 1976), p. 2
Dem Tiere hat die Natur selber den Wirkungskreis bestimmt, in welchem es sich bewegen soll, und ruhig
vollendet es denselben, ohne über ihn hinauszustreben, ohne auch nur einen anderen zu ahnen. Auch dem
Menschen gab die Gottheit ein allgemeines Ziel, die Menschheit und sich zu veredlen, aber sie überließ es
ihm selber, die Mittel aufzusuchen, durch welche er es erringen kann; sie überließ es ihm, den Standpunkt in
der Gesellschaft zu wählen, der ihm am angemessensten ist, von welchem aus er sich und die Gesellschaft
am besten erheben kann.
Marx, “Betrachtung eines Jünglings bei der Wahl eines Berufes” (1835), Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe (1970), Band 1.2, S. 164
570
Jeder hat ein Ziel, das ihm wenigstens groß scheint, vor Augen, das auch groß ist, wenn die tiefste
Überzeugung, die innerste Stimme des Herzens es so nennt. … Leicht aber wird diese Stimme übertäubt,
das, was wir für Begeistrung gehalten, kann der Augenblick er zeugt haben, wird der Augenblick vielleicht
auch wieder vernichten. …
Wir müssen daher ernst prüfen, ob wir wirklich für einen Beruf begeistert sind, ob eine Stimme von innen
ihn billigt, oder ob die Begeisterung Täuschung, das, was wir für einen Ruf der Gottheit gehalten,
Selbstbetrug gewesen ist. Wie aber vermögen wir dieses zu erkennen, als wenn wir der Quelle der
Begeistrung selbst nachspüren?
Das Große glänzt, der Glanz erregt Ehrgeiz, und der Ehrgeiz kann leicht die Begeisterung oder, was wir
dafür gehalten, hervorgerufen haben; aber, wen die Furie der Ehrsucht lockt, den vermag die Vernunft nicht
mehr zu zügeln, und er stürzt dahin, wohin ihn der ungestüme Trieb ruft: er wählt sich nicht mehr seinen
Stand, sondern Zufall und Schein bestimmen ihn.
Und nicht zu dem Stande sind wir berufen, in welchem wir am meisten zu glänzen vermögen; er ist nicht
derjenige, der in der langen Reihe von Jahren, in welchen wir ihn vielleicht verwalten, uns nie ermatten,
unsern Eifer nie untersinken, unsere Begeistrung nie erkalten läßt, sondern bald werden wir unsere Wünsche
nicht gestillt, unsere Ideen nicht befriedigt sehn, der Gottheit grollen, der Menschheit fluchen.
Marx, “Betrachtung eines Jünglings bei der Wahl eines Berufes” (1835), Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe (1970), Band 1.2, S. 164
Everyone has a goal which appears to be great, at least to himself, and is great when deepest conviction, the
innermost voice of the heart, pronounces it great. ... This voice, however, is easily drowned out, and what we
thought to be inspiration may have been created by the fleeting moment and again perhaps destroyed by it. ...
We must seriously ask ourselves, therefore, whether we are really inspired about a vocation, whether an
inner voice approves of it, or whether the inspiration was a deception, whether that which we took as the
Deity’s calling to us was self-deceit. But how else could we recognize this except by searching for the source
of our inspiration?
Everything great glitters, glitter begets ambition, and ambition can easily have caused the inspiration or
what we thought to be inspiration. But reason can no longer restrain one who is lured by the fury of ambition.
He tumbles where his vehement drive calls him; no longer does he choose his position, but rather chance and
luster determine it.
Then we are not called to the position where we can most shine. It is not the one which, in the long
succession of years during which we may hold it, will never make us weary, subdue our zeal, or dampen our
inspiration. Soon we shall see our wishes unfulfilled and our ideas unsatisfied. We shall have a grievance
against the Deity and curse humanity.
Marx, “Reflections of a Youth on Choosing an Occupation” (1835), Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, L. Easton, trans. (1967),
p. 36
But we cannot always choose the vocation to which we believe we are called. Our social relations, to some
extent, have already begun to form before we are in a position to determine them.
p. 37
Self-contempt is a serpent which eternally gnaws in one’s breast, sucks out the heart’s lifeblood, and mixes it
with the poison of misanthropy and despair.
p. 38
A deception about our aptitude for a position we have examined closely is a misdeed which revengefully
falls back on ourselves, and even though it may not be censured by the external world, provokes in our breast
a pain more terrible than the external world can cause.
p. 38
571
When we have weighed everything, and when our relations in life permit us to choose any given position, we
may take that one which guarantees us the greatest dignity, which is based on ideas of whose truth we are
completely convinced, which offers the largest field to work for mankind and approach the universal goal
for which every position is only a means: perfection.
p. 38
Only that position can impart dignity in which we do not appear as servile tools but rather create
independently within our circle.
p. 38
Just as a position without dignity lowers us, we certainly succumb to the burden of one based on ideas we
later recognize as false. Then we see no aid except in self-deception, and what a desperate rescue is the one
that guarantees self-betrayal.
p. 38
The high opinion we have of the ideas on which our vocation is based bestows on us a higher standpoint in
society, enlarges our own dignity, makes our actions unwavering.
p. 39
The main principle, however, which must guide us in the selection of a vocation is the welfare of humanity,
our own perfection. One should not think that these two interests combat each other, that the one must
destroy the other. Rather, man’s nature makes it possible for him to reach his fulfillment only by working for
the perfection and welfare of his society.
p. 39
If a person works only for himself he can perhaps be a famous scholar, a great wise man, a distinguished
poet, but never a complete, genuinely great man.
p. 39
When we have chosen the vocation in which we can contribute most to humanity, burdens cannot bend us
because they are only sacrifices for all. Then we experience no meager, limited, egotistic joy, but our
happiness belongs to millions, our deeds live on quietly but eternally effective, and glowing tears of noble
men will fall on our ashes.
p. 39
Das philosophische Manifest der historischen Rechtsschule [The philosophical

manifesto of the historical school of law] (1842)
German: http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Marx,+Karl/Das+philosophische+Manifest+der+historischen+Rechtsschule
English: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1842/08/09.htm
It is commonly held that the historical school is a reaction against the frivolous spirit of the eighteenth
century. The currency of this view is in inverse ratio to its truth. In fact, the eighteenth century had only one
product, the essential character of which is frivolity, and this sole frivolous product is the historical school.
Marx, “The philosophical manifesto of the historical school of law” (1842), Karl Marx Frederick Engels Collected Works (1975), vol. 16, p. 203
Hugo mißdeutet den Meister Kant dahin, daß, weil wir das Wahre nicht wissen können, wir
konsequenterweise das Unwahre, wenn es nur existiert, für vollgültig passieren lassen.
Karl Marx, „Das philosophische Manifest der historischen Rechtsschule“
572
[Gustav] Hugo misinterprets his teacher Kant by supposing that because we cannot know what is true, we
consequently allow the untrue, if it exists at all, to pass as fully valid. He is a sceptic as regards the necessary
essence of things, so as to be a courtier as regards their accidental appearance.
Marx, “The philosophical manifesto of the historical school of law” (1842), Karl Marx Frederick Engels Collected Works (1975), vol. 16, p. 203
[Gustav] Hugo misinterprets the master Kant in saying that since we cannot know what is true, we
consequently let pass as entirely valid what is untrue if it merely exists.
Marx, describing the positivist view, “The philosophical manifesto of the historical school of law,” (1842), Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy
and Society, L. Easton, ed. (1967), p. 98
Wie das Prinzip, so ist die Argumentation Hugos positiv, d.h. unkritisch. Er kennt keine Unterschiede. Jede
Existenz gilt ihm für eine Autorität, jede Autorität gilt ihm für einen Grund.
Everything that exists is an authority.

Marx, describing the positivist view, “The philosophical manifesto of the historical school of law,” (1842), Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy
and Society, L. Easton, ed. (1967), p. 98, as cited in Social Amnesia (1975), p. 61
Der Hautausschlag ist so positiv als die Haut.

The pimple is as positive as the skin.

Marx, describing the positivist view, “The philosophical manifesto of the historical school of law” (1842), Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy
and Society, L. Easton, ed. (1967), p. 99
Early Writings
Private property has made us so stupid and partial that an object is only ours when we have it, when it
exists for us as capital … Thus all the physical and intellectual senses have been replaced by … the
sense of having.
Marx, Early Writings, (trans. T. B. Bottomore), London: Watts, p. 159
Universal envy setting itself up as a power is only a camouflaged form of cupidity which re-establishes itself
and satisfies itself in a different way.
Marx, Early Writings (1964), p. 154
The German Ideology

The class which is the ruling material force of a society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The
class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means
of mental production.
Marx, The German Ideology, as cited in Brian Leiter, “The Hermeneutics of Suspicion: Recovering Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud,” University of
Texas Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 72. http://ssrn.com/abstract=691002
Philosophy stands in the same relation to the study of the actual world as masturbation to sexual love.
Marx, The German Ideology, International Publishers, ed. Chris Arthur, p. 103
It is not a matter of freeing labor but rather of abolishing it.

Marx, The German Ideology
The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the
means of intellectual (geistig) production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the
means of intellectual production are subject to it.
Marx, The German Ideology
573
Whilst in ordinary life every shopkeeper is very well able to distinguish between what somebody
professes to be and what he really is, our historians have not yet won even this trivial insight. They
take every epoch at its word concerning what it says and imagines about itself.
Marx, The German Ideology (London: 1965), p. 64
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844

English: http://mpush.blogspot.com/2007/07/humanist-socialism.html
English: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/preface.htm
Worin besteht nun die Entäußerung der Arbeit? Erstens, daß die Arbeit dem Arbeiter äußerlich ist, d.h. nicht
zu seinem Wesen gehört, daß er sich daher in seiner Arbeit nicht bejaht, sondern verneint, nicht wohl,
sondern unglücklich fühlt, keine freie physische und geistige Energie entwickelt, sondern seine Physis
abkasteit und seinen Geist ruiniert. Der Arbeiter fühlt sich daher erst außer der Arbeit bei sich und in
der Arbeit außer sich. Zu Hause ist er, wenn er nicht arbeitet, und wenn er arbeitet, ist er nicht zu
Haus. Seine Arbeit ist daher nicht freiwillig, sondern gezwungen, Zwangsarbeit. Sie ist daher nicht die
Befriedigung eines Bedürfnisses, sondern sie ist nur ein Mittel, um Bedürfnisse außer ihr zu
befriedigen. Ihre Fremdheit tritt darin rein hervor, daß, sobald kein physischer oder sonstiger Zwang
existiert, die Arbeit als eine Pest geflohen wird.
Karl Marx, „Entfremdete Arbeit,“ Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte (1844)
What, then, constitutes the alienation of labor? First, in the fact that labor is external to the worker, that is,
that it does not belong to his essential being; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies
himself, does not feel well but unhappy, does not freely develop his physical and mental energy but mortifies
his body and ruins his mind. The worker, therefore, feels himself only outside his work, and feels beside
himself in his work. He is at home when he is not working, and when he is working he is not at home.
His work therefore is not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of
a need, but only a means for satisfying needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact
that labor is shunned like the plague as soon as there is no physical or other compulsion..
Karl Marx, “Alienated Labor,” Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844), in The Potable Karl Marx (1983), p. 136
Labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his essential being; in his work, therefore, he does
not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical
and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside
his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He is at home when he is not working, and when he is
working he is not at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it's forced labor. It is therefore
not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it.
Karl Marx, 1844 Manuscripts
Though private property appears to be the reason, the cause of alienated labor, it is rather its
consequence, just as the gods are originally not the cause but the effect of man’s intellectual confusion.
Marx, “Estranged Labor,” Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts
The worker is related to the product of labor as to an alien object. For on this premise it is clear that the more
the worker spends himself, the more powerful becomes the alien world of objects which he creates over and
against himself, the poorer he himself—his inner world—becomes, the less belongs to him as his own. It is
the same in religion. The more man puts into God, the less he retains in himself. The worker puts his life into
the object; but now his life no longer belongs to him but to the object. Hence, the greater this activity, the
more the worker lacks. Whatever the product of his labor is, he is not. Therefore, the greater this product, the
less is he himself. The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labor becomes an
object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that
it becomes a power on its own confronting him. It means that the life which he has conferred on the object
confronts him as something hostile and alien.
574
The more values he [the worker] creates, the more valueless, the more unworthy he becomes; the better
formed his product, the more deformed becomes the worker; the more civilized his object, the more
barbarous becomes the worker.
How could the worker come to face the product of his activity as a stranger, were it not that in the very act of
production he was estranging himself from himself? The product is after all but the summary of the activity,
of production. If then the product of labor is alienation, production itself must be active alienation. ... In the
estrangement of the object of labor is merely summarized the estrangement, the alienation, in the activity of
labor itself.
The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He
feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is
therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it
is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon
as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague. External labor, labor in which
man alienates himself, is a labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external character of labor for
the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s, that it does not belong to him, that in
it he belongs, not to himself, but to another. Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human
imagination, of the human brain and the human heart, operates on the individual independently of him—that
is, operates as an alien, divine or diabolical activity—so is the worker’s activity not his spontaneous activity.
It belongs to another; it is the loss of his self.
As a result, therefore, man (the worker) only feels himself freely active in his animal functions—
eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing-up, etc.; and in his human
functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal. What is animal becomes human and
what is human becomes animal.
Certainly eating, drinking, procreating, etc., are also genuinely human functions. But taken abstractly,
separated from the sphere of all other human activity and turned into sole and ultimate ends, they are animal
functions.
Marx
Crude communism ... appears in a double form; the domination of material property looms so large that it
aims to destroy everything which is incapable of being possessed by everyone as private property. It wishes
to eliminate talent, etc., by force. ... The role of worker is not abolished but extended to all men. The relation
of private property remains the relation of the community to the world of things. ... This communism, which
negates the personality of man in every sphere is ... universal envy setting itself up as a power, is only
camouflaged form of cupidity which re-establishes itself and satisfies itself in a different way. The thoughts
of every individual private property are at least directed against any wealthier private property, in the form of
envy and the desire to reduce everything to a common level; so that this envy and leveling in fact constitute
the essence of competition. Crude communism is only the culmination of such envy and leveling-down on
the basis of a preconceived minimum. How little this abolishing of private property represents a genuine
appropriation is shown by the abstract negation of the whole world of culture and civilization, and the
regression to the unnatural simplicity of the poor and wantless individual who has not only not surpassed
private property but has not even attained to it. The community is only a community of work and of equality
of wages paid out by the communal capital, by the community as universal capitalists. The two sides of the
relation are raised to a supposed universality; labor as a condition in which everyone is placed, and capital as
the acknowledged universality and power of the community.
Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts
Communism is in its first form … appears in a two-fold form: on the one hand, the dominion of material
property bulks so large that it wants to destroy everything which is not capable of being possessed by all as
private property. It wants to disregard talent, etc., in an arbitrary manner. For it the sole purpose of life and
575
existence is direct, physical possession. The category of the worker is not done away with, but extended to all
men. The relationship of private property persists as the relationship of the community to the world of things.
Finally, this movement of opposing universal private property to private property finds expression in the
brutish form of opposing to marriage (certainly a form of exclusive private property) the community of
women, in which a woman becomes a piece of communal and common property. It may be said that this idea
of the community of women gives away the secret of this as yet completely crude and thoughtless
communism. Just as woman passes from marriage to general prostitution, so the entire world of wealth (that
is, of man’s objective substance) passes from the relationship of exclusive marriage with the owner of private
property to a state of universal prostitution with the community. This type of communism—since it negates
the personality of man in every sphere—is but the logical expression of private property, which is this
negation.
General envy constituting itself as a power is the disguise in which greed re-establishes itself and satisfies
itself, only in another way. The thought of every piece of private property as such is at least turned against
wealthier private property in the form of envy and the urge to reduce things to a common level, so that this
envy and urge even constitute the essence of competition. Crude communism is only the culmination of this
envy and of this leveling-down proceeding from the preconceived minimum. It has a definite, limited
standard.
How little this annulment of private property is really an appropriation is in fact proved by the abstract
negation of the entire world of culture and civilization, the regression to the unnatural simplicity of the poor
and crude man who has few needs and who has not only failed to go beyond private property, but has not yet
even reached it.
The community is only a community of labor, and equality of wages paid out by communal capital—by
the community as the universal capitalist. Both sides of the relationship are raised to an imagined
universality—labor as the category in which every person is placed, and capital as the acknowledged
universality and power of the community.
In the approach to woman as the spoil and hand-maid of communal lust is expressed the infinite
degradation in which man exists for himself, for the secret of this approach has its unambiguous, decisive,
plain and undisguised expression in the relation of man to woman and in the manner in which the direct and
natural species-relationship is conceived. The direct, natural, and necessary relation of person to person is the
relation of man to woman. In this natural species-relationship man’s relation to nature is immediately his
relation to man, just as his relation to man is immediately his relation to nature—his own natural destination.
In this relationship, therefore, is sensuously manifested, reduced to an observable fact, the extent to which
the human essence has become nature to man, or to which nature to him has become the human essence of
man.
From this relationship one can therefore judge man’s whole level of development. From the character of
this relationship follows how much man as a species-being, as man, has come to be himself and to
comprehend himself; the relation of man to woman is the most natural relation of human being to human
being. It therefore reveals the extent to which man’s natural behavior has become human, or the extent to
which the human essence in him has become a natural essence—the extent to which his human nature has
come to be natural to him. This relationship also reveals the extent to which man’s need has become a human
need; the extent to which, therefore, the other person as a person has become for him a need—the extent to
which he in his individual existence is at the same time a social being.
The first positive annulment of private property—crude communism—is thus merely a manifestation of
the vileness of private property, which wants to set itself up as the positive community system.
Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, M. Mulligan, trans., Third Manuscript, “Private property and communism”
Capital (1867)
In reality, the laborer belongs to capital before he has sold himself to capital.
Marx, Capital (1867)
The entire process seems simple and natural, i.e., possesses the naturalness of a shallow rationalism.
Marx, Capital, Volume II, Chapter III
576
Anyone wanting a new house picks one from among those built on speculation or still in process of
construction. The builder no longer works for his customers but for the market.
Marx, Capital, Volume II, Chapter XII
The most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest.
Marx, Capital, Preface
The general character of the labour-process is evidently not changed by the fact, that the labourer works
for the capitalist instead of for himself; moreover, the particular methods and operations employed in
bootmaking or spinning are not immediately changed by the intervention of the capitalist. … The labour-
process, turned into the process by which the capitalist consumes labour-power, exhibits two characteristic
phenomena. First, the labourer works under the control of the capitalist to whom his labour belongs; the
capitalist taking good care that the work is done in a proper manner, and that the means of production are
used with intelligence, so that there is no unnecessary waste of raw material, and no wear and tear of the
implements beyond what is necessarily caused by the work.
Secondly, the product is the property of the capitalist and not that of the labourer, its immediate producer.
Suppose that a capitalist pays for a day’s labour-power at its value; then the right of use that power for a day
belongs to him, just as much as the right to use any other commodity, such as a horse that he has hired for the
day. To the purchaser of a commodity belongs its use, and the seller of labour-power, by giving his labour,
does no more, in reality, than part with the use-value that he has sold. From the instant he steps into the
workshop, the use-value of his labour-power, and therefore also its use, which is labour, belongs to the
capitalist. By the purchase of labour-power, the capitalist incorporates labour, as a living ferment, with the
lifeless constituents of the product From his point of view, the labour-process is nothing more than the
consumption of the commodity purchased, i.e., of labour-power; hut this consumption cannot be effected
except by supplying the labour-power with the means of production. The labour-process is a process between
things that the capitalist has purchased, things that have become his property. The product of this process
also belongs, therefore, to him, just as much as does the wine which is the product of a process of
fermentation completed in his cellar.
Marx, Capital (Chicago: 1921), vol. 1, p. 206
The builder no longer works for his customers but for the market.
Marx, Capital, Volume II, Chapter XII, p. 237
In a social order dominated by capitalist production even the non-capitalist producer is gripped by capitalist
conceptions.
Marx, Capital, Volume III, Chapter I, “Cost Price and Profit,” p. 39
Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei [The Communist Manifesto]

The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole
bourgeoisie.
Marx, The Communist Manifesto, Section 1
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations.
It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley of ties that bound man to his “natural superiors,” and left remaining
no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment.”
Marx, The Communist Manifesto, Section 1, paragraph 14, lines 1-5
Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as
many bourgeois interests.
Marx, The Communist Manifesto, Section 1, paragraph 47, lines 7-9
The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole
bourgeoisie.
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, I
577
Die Bourgeoisie, wo sie zur Herrschaft gekommen, hat alle feudalen, patriarchalischen, idyllischen
Verhältnisse zerstört. Sie hat die buntscheckigen Feudalbande, die den Menschen an seinen natürlichen
Vorgesetzten knüpften, unbarmherzig zerrissen und kein anderes Band zwischen Mensch und Mensch
übriggelassen als das nackte Interesse, als die gefühllose "bare Zahlung". Sie hat die heiligen Schauer der
frommen Schwärmerei, der ritterlichen Begeisterung, der spießbürgerlichen Wehmut in dem eiskalten
Wasser egoistischer Berechnung ertränkt. Sie hat die persönliche Würde in den Tauschwert aufgelöst und an
die Stelle der zahllosen verbrieften und wohlerworbenen Freiheiten die eine gewissenlose Handelsfreiheit
gesetzt. Sie hat, mit einem Wort, an die Stelle der mit religiösen und politischen Illusionen verhüllten
Ausbeutung die offene, unverschämte, direkte, dürre Ausbeutung gesetzt.
Karl Marx, Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic
relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural
superiors,” and has left no other bond between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous
“cash payment.” It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous
enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved
personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has
set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious
and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, I
Die Bourgeoisie hat alle bisher ehrwürdigen und mit frommer Scheu betrachteten Tätigkeiten ihres
Heiligenscheins entkleidet. Sie hat den Arzt, den Juristen, den Pfaffen, den Poeten, den Mann der
Wissenschaft in ihre bezahlten Lohnarbeiter verwandelt.
Karl Marx, Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent
awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage
laborers.
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE (1818-1894)

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.
Markham Sutherland's father, quoted in James Anthony Froude, The Nemesis of Faith (1849), Letter I
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

I scarcely know a professional man I can like, and certainly not one who has been what the world calls
successful, that I should the least wish to resemble.
James Anthony Froude, The Nemesis of Faith (1849), Letter I
I would sooner perish for ever than stoop down before a Being who may have power to crush me, but whom
my heart forbids me to reverence.
James Anthony Froude, The Nemesis of Faith (1849), Letter II
It is so good that as men looked at it they said this is too good for man: nothing but the inspiration of God
could have given this. Likely enough men should say so; but what might be admired as a metaphor became
petrified into a doctrine, and perhaps the world has never witnessed any more grotesque idol-worship than
what has resulted from it in modern Bibliolatry.
James Anthony Froude, The Nemesis of Faith (1849), Letter III
Whatever grows in time is a child of time, and is born and lives, and dies at its appointed day like ourselves.
James Anthony Froude, The Nemesis of Faith (1849), Letter IV
578
Life is change, to cease to change is to cease to live.
If you may shed a tear beside the death-bed of an old friend, let not your heart be silent on the dissolving of a
faith.
Charity is from person to person; and it loses half, far more than half, its moral value when the giver is not
brought into personal relation with those to whom he gives.
James Anthony Froude, The Nemesis of Faith (1849), Letter IX
GEORGE ELIOT, a.k.a. MARY ANN EVANS (1819-1880)

Journals
The difficulty is, to decide how far resolution should set in the direction of activity rather than in the
acceptance of a more negative state.
George Eliot, Journal entry, December 31, 1877
My life has deepened unspeakably during the last year: I feel a greater capacity for moral and intellectual
enjoyment, a more acute sense of my deficiencies in the past, a more solemn desire to be faithful to coming
duties, than I remember at any former period of my life. And my happiness has deepened too: the
blessedness of a perfect love and union grows daily. … Few women I fear have had such reason as I have to
think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.
George Eliot, reflecting on her past year of living with Lewes and writing her first short fictions, Journal Entry, Dec. 31, 1857
Hardly anything could have happened to me which I could regard as a greater blessing than this growth of
my spiritual existence when my bodily existence is decaying.
George Eliot, Journal Entry, Jan 1, 1873
The merely egoistic satisfactions of fame are easily nullified by toothache.

George Eliot’s response to the critical success of Middlemarch, Journal Entry, Jan 1, 1873
Wise, Witty, and Tender Sayings in Prose and Verse Selected from the Works of
George Eliot (1873)
http://books.google.com/books?id=uctaAAAAMAAJ
In recognition of a genius as original as it is profound and a morality as pure as it is impassioned.

Alexander Main, dedication to Wise, Witty, and Tender Sayings in Prose and Verse Selected from the Works of George Eliot
579
“The Natural History of German Life,” (1856)
It is an interesting branch of psychological observation to note the images that are habitually associated with
abstract or collective terms–what may be called the picture-writing of the mind, which it carries on
concurrently with the more subtle symbolism of language. Perhaps the fixity or variety of these associated
images would furnish a tolerably fair test of the amount of concrete knowledge and experience which a given
word represents, in the minds of two persons who use it with equal familiarity. The word railways, for
example, will probably call up, in the mind of a man who is not highly locomotive, the image either of a
“Bradshaw,” or of the station with which he is most familiar, or of an indefinite length of tram-road; he will
alternate between these three images, which represent his stock of concrete acquaintance with railways. But
suppose a man to have had successively the experience of a “navvy,” an engineer, a traveller, a railway
director and shareholder, and a landed proprietor in treaty with a railway company, and it is probable that the
range of images which would by turns present themselves to his mind at the mention of the word “railways,”
would include all the essential facts in the existence and relations of the thing. Now it is possible for the first-
mentioned personage to entertain very expanded views as to the multiplication of railways in the abstract,
and their ultimate function in civilization. He may talk of a vast net-work of railways stretching over the
globe, of future “lines” in Madagascar, and elegant refreshment-rooms in the Sandwich Islands, with none
the less glibness because his distinct conceptions on the subject do not extend beyond his one station and his
indefinite length of tram-road. But it is evident that if we want a railway to be made, or its affairs to be
managed, this man of wide views and narrow observation will not serve our purpose.
George Eliot, “The Natural History of German Life,” The Westminster Review (July 1856), Vol. 66, pp. 51-79
Scenes from Clerical Life (1857)

It is with men as with trees: if you lop off their finest branches, into which they were pouring their young
life-juice, the wounds will be healed over with some rough boss, some odd excrescence ; and what might
have been a grand tree expanding into liberal shade, is but a whimsical misshapen trunk. Many an irritating
fault, many an unlovely oddity, has come of a hard sorrow, which has crushed and maimed the nature just
when it was expanding into plenteous beauty; and the trivial erring life which we visit with our harsh blame,
may be but as the unsteady motion of a man whose best limb is withered.
George Eliot, Scenes from Clerical Life
Adam Bede (1859)

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds
George Eliot, Adam Bede
The Mill on the Floss (1860)

Silas Marner (1861)
A man will tell you that he has worked in a mine for forty years unhurt by an accident as a reason why he
should apprehend no danger, though the roof is beginning to sink.
George Eliot, Silas Marner
“The Influence of Rationalism” (1865)

http://webscript.princeton.edu/~mnoble/eliot-texts/eliot-rationalism.html
There is a valuable class of book on great subjects which have something of the character and function of
good popular lecturing. They are not original, not subtle, not of close logical texture, not exquisite either in
thought or style; but by virtue of these negatives they are all the more fit to act on the average intelligence.
George Eliot, “The Influence of Rationalism,” Fortnightly Review 1 (1865: May), pp. 43-55
580
There is a valuable class of book on great subjects which have something of the character and function of
good popular lecturing. They are not original, not subtle, not of close logical texture, not exquisite either in
thought or style; but by virtue of these negatives they are all the more fit to act on the average intelligence.
They have enough of organizing purpose in them to make their facts illustrative, and to leave a distinct result
in the mind even when most of the facts are forgotten, and they have enough of vagueness and vacillation in
their theory to win them ready acceptance from a mixed audience. The vagueness and vacillation are not
devices of timidity; they are the honest result of the writer's own mental character, which adapts him to be
the instructor and the favourite of “the general reader.” For the most part, the general reader of the present
day does not exactly know what distance he goes; he only knows that he does not go “too far.” Of any
remarkable thinker, whose writings have excited controversy, he likes to have it said that “his errors are to be
deplored,” leaving is not too certain what those errors are; he is fond of what may be called disembodied
opinions, that float in vapoury phrase above all systems of thought or action; he likes an undefined
Christianity which opposes itself to nothing in particular, an undefined education of the people, an undefined
amelioration of all things: in fact, he likes sound views—nothing extreme, but something between the
excesses of the past and the excesses of the present. This modern type of the general reader may be known in
conversation by the cordiality with which he assents to indistinct, blurred statements: say that black is black,
he will shake his head and hardly think it; say that black is not so very black, he will reply “Exactly.” He has
no hesitation, if you wish it, even to get up at a public meeting and express his conviction that at times, and
within certain limits, the radii of a circle have a tendency to be equal; but, on the other hand, he would urge
that the spirit of geometry may be carried a little too far. His only bigotry is a bigotry against a clearly
defined opinion; not in the least based on a scientific scepticism, but belonging to a lack of coherent
thought—a spongy texture of mind, that gravitates strongly to nothing. The one thing he is staunch for is, the
utmost liberty of private haziness.
George Eliot, “The Influence of Rationalism,” Fortnightly Review 1 (1865: May), pp. 43-55
Felix Holt, the Radical (1866)

The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.
George Eliot, Felix Holt, the Radical
Middlemarch (1871)
http://books.google.com/books?id=Nuc0AAAAMAAJ
Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a
failure.
George Eliot, Dorothea in Middlemarch, Chapter 22
To know intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul. Mr. Casaubon had
never had a strong bodily frame, and his soul was sensitive without being enthusiastic: it was too languid to
thrill out of self-consciousness into passionate delight; it went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it
was hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying. His experience was of that pitiable kind which shrinks
from pity, and fears most of all that it should be known: it was that proud narrow sensitiveness which has not
mass enough to spare for transformation into sympathy, and quivers thread-like in small currents of self-
preoccupation or at best of an egoistic scrupulosity. And Mr. Casaubon had many scruples: he was capable of
a severe self-restraint; he was resolute in being a man of honor according to the code; he would be
unimpeachable by any recognized opinion.
George Eliot, Middlemarch, Chapter 29
People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors.
George Eliot, Dorothea in Middlemarch, Chapter 72
581
Daniel Deronda (1876)
You know nothing about Hope, that immortal, delicious maiden forever courted forever propitious, whom
fools have called deceitful, as if it were Hope that carried the cup of disappointment, whereas it is her deadly
enemy, Certainty, whom she only escapes by transformation.
George Eliot, Daniel Deronda
Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879)

http://books.google.com/books?id=ILM6AAAAMAAJ
I have often been forced into the reflection that even the acquaintances who are as forgetful of my
biography and tenets as they would be if I were a dead philosopher, are probably aware of certain points in
me which may not be included in my most active suspicion. We sing an exquisite passage out of tune and
innocently repeat it for the greater pleasure of our hearers. Who can be aware of what his foreign accent is in
the ears of a native? And how can a man be conscious of that dull perception which causes him to mistake
altogether what will make him agreeable to a particular woman, and to persevere eagerly in a behaviour
which she is privately recording against him? I have had some confidences from my female friends as to
their opinion of other men whom I have observed trying to make themselves amiable, and it has occurred to
me that though I can hardly be so blundering as Lippus and the rest of those mistaken candidates for favour
whom I have seen ruining their chance by a too elaborate personal canvass, I must still come under the
common fatality of mankind and share the liability to be absurd without knowing that I am absurd. It is in the
nature of foolish reasoning to seem good to the foolish reasoner. Hence with all possible study of myself,
with all possible effort to escape from the pitiable illusion which makes men laugh, shriek, or curl the lip at
Folly's likeness, in total unconsciousness that it resembles themselves, I am obliged to recognise that while
there are secrets in me unguessed by others, these others have certain items of knowledge about the extent of
my powers and the figure I make with them, which in turn are secrets unguessed by me. ...
If I laugh at you, O fellow-men! if I trace with curious interest your labyrinthine self-delusions, note the
inconsistencies in your zealous adhesions, and smile at your helpless endeavours in a rashly chosen part, it is
not that I feel myself aloof from you: the more intimately I seem to discern your weaknesses, the stronger to
me is the proof that I share them. How otherwise could I get the discernment?—for even what we are averse
to, what we vow not to entertain, must have shaped or shadowed itself within us as a possibility before we
can think of exorcising it. No man can know his brother simply as a spectator. Dear blunderers, I am one of
you.
George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such, Part 1
I never felt myself sufficiently meritorious to like being hated as a proof of my superiority.
If a squint or other ocular defect disturbs my vision, I can get instructed in the fact, be made aware that my
condition is abnormal, and either through spectacles or diligent imagination I can learn the average
appearance of things: is there no remedy or corrective for that inward squint which consists in a dissatisfied
egoism?
The bias of personal discontent was just as misleading and odious as the bias of self-satisfaction. Whether we
look through the rose-coloured glass or the indigo, we are equally far from the hues which the healthy human
eye beholds.
I began ... to watch with peculiar alarm lest what I called my philosophic estimate of the human lot in
general, should be a mere prose lyric expressing my own pain and consequent bad temper.
582
The standing-ground worth striving after seemed to be some Delectable Mountain, whence I could see things
in proportions as little as possible determined by that self-partiality which certainly plays a necessary part in
our bodily sustenance, but has a starving effect on the mind.
Examining the world in order to find consolation is very much like looking carefully over the pages of
a great book in order to find our own name. ... Whether we find what we want or not, our
preoccupation has hindered us from a true knowledge of the contents.
If anything hindered my thought from rising to the force of passionately interested contemplation, or my poor
pent-up pond of sensitiveness from widening into a beneficent river of sympathy, it was my own dullness.
I occasionally, in the glow of sympathy which embraced me and my confiding friend on the subject of his
satisfaction or resentment, was urged to hint at a corresponding experience in my own case; but the signs of a
rapidly lowering pulse and spreading nervous depression in my previously vivacious interlocutor, warned me
that I was acting on that dangerous misreading, "Do as you are done by." Recalling the true version of the
golden rule, I could not wish that others should lower my spirits as I was lowering my friend's.
This world would be worth living in without any lot of one's own. Is it not possible for me to enjoy the
scenery of the earth without saying to myself, I have a cabbage-garden in it?
My conversational reticences about myself turn into garrulousness on paper — as the sea-lion plunges and
swims the more energetically because his limbs are of a sort to make him shambling on land. The act of
writing, in spite of past experience, brings with it the vague, delightful illusion of an audience nearer to my
idiom than the Cherokees, and more numerous than the visionary One for whom many authors have declared
themselves willing to go through the pleasing punishment of publication. My illusion is of a more liberal
kind, and I imagine a far-off, hazy, multitudinous assemblage, as in a picture of Paradise, making an
approving chorus to the sentences and paragraphs of which I myself particularly enjoy the writing. The haze
is a necessary condition. If any physiognomy becomes distinct in the foreground, it is fatal. The countenance
is sure to be one bent on discountenancing my innocent intentions: it is paleeyed, incapable of being amused
when I am amused or indignant at what makes me indignant; it stares at my presumption, pities my
ignorance, or is manifestly preparing to expose the various instances in which I unconsciously disgrace
myself. I shudder at this too corporeal auditor, and turn towards another point of the compass where the haze
is unbroken.
Thus I make myself a charter to write, and keep the pleasing, inspiring illusion of being listened to, though I
may sometimes write about myself.
Most of us who have had decent parents would shrink from wishing that our father and mother had been
somebody else whom we never knew; yet it is held no impiety, rather, a graceful mark of instruction, for a
man to wail that he was not the son of another age and another nation, of which also he knows nothing
except through the easy process of an imperfect imagination and a flattering fancy.
... that modern sect of Flagellants who make a ritual of lashing—not themselves but—all their neighbours.
583
I might have objected to Aristotle as too much of a systematiser, and have preferred the freedom of a little
self-contradiction as offering more chances of truth. I gather, too, from the undeniable testimony of his
disciple Theophrastus that there were bores, illbred persons, and detractors even in Athens, of species
remarkably corresponding to the English, and not yet made endurable by being classic; and, altogether, with
my present fastidious nostril, I feel that I am the better off for possessing Athenian life solely as an inodorous
fragment of antiquity.
All reverence and gratitude for the worthy Dead on whose labours we have entered, all care for the future
generations whose lot we are preparing; but some affection and fairness for those who are doing the actual
work of the world, some attempt to regard them with the same freedom from ill-temper, whether on private
or public grounds, as we may hope will be felt by those who will call us ancient! Otherwise, the looking
before and after, which is our grand human privilege, is in danger of turning to a sort of otherworldliness,
breeding a more illogical indifference or bitterness than was ever bred by the ascetic's contemplation of
heaven.
I see no rational footing for scorning the whole present population of the globe, unless I scorn every
previous generation from whom they have inherited their diseases of mind and body, and by consequence
scorn my own scorn, which is equally an inheritance of mixed ideas and feelings concocted for me in the
boiling caldron of this universally contemptible life, and so on—scorning to infinity. This may represent
some actual states of mind, for it is a narrow prejudice of mathematicians to suppose that ways of thinking
are to be driven out of the field by being reduced to an absurdity. The Absurd is taken as an excellent juicy
thistle by many constitutions.
Reflections of this sort have gradually determined me not to grumble at the age in which I happen to have
been born—a natural tendency certainly older than Hesiod. Many ancient beautiful things are lost, many ugly
modern things have arisen; but invert the proposition and it is equally true.
To my father's mind the noisy teachers of revolutionary doctrine were, to speak mildly, a variable mixture of
the fool and the scoundrel; the welfare of the nation lay in a strong Government which could maintain order;
and I was accustomed to hear him utter the word "Government" in a tone that charged it with awe, and made
it part of my effective religion, in contrast with the word "rebel," which seemed to carry the stamp of evil in
its syllables, and, lit by the fact that Satan was the first rebel, made an argument dispensing with more
detailed inquiry.
Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact—from
calling on us to look through a heap of millet-seed to be sure that there is no pearl in it.
The talk even of an honest man must often represent merely his wish to be inoffensive or agreeable rather
than his genuine opinion or feeling on the matter in hand. His thought, if uttered, might be wounding; or he
has not the ability to utter it with exactness and snatches at a loose paraphrase; or he has really no genuine
thought on the question and is driven to fill up the vacancy by borrowing the remarks in vogue. These are the
winds and currents we have all to steer amongst, and they are often too strong for our truthfulness or our wit.
Let us not bear too hardly on each other for this common incidental frailty, or think that we rise superior to it
by dropping all considerateness and deference.
584
Considered purely as a matter of information, it cannot any longer be important for us to learn that a British
subject included in the last census holds Shakespeare to be supreme in the presentation of character; still, it is
as admissible for any one to make this statement about himself as to rub his hands and tell you that the air is
brisk, if only he will let it fall as a matter of course, with a parenthetic lightness, and not announce his
adhesion to a commonplace with an emphatic insistance, as if it were a proof of singular insight. We mortals
should chiefly like to talk to each other out of goodwill and fellowship, not for the sake of hearing
revelations or being stimulated by witticisms; and I have usually found that it is the rather dull person who
appears to be disgusted with his contemporaries because they are not always strikingly original, and to satisfy
whom the party at a country house should have included the prophet Isaiah, Plato, Francis Bacon, and
Voltaire.
There is a sense in which the worthy child of a nation that has brought forth illustrious prophets, high and
unique among the poets of the world, is bound by their visions.
Is bound?
Yes, for the effective bond of human action is feeling, and the worthy child of a people owning the triple
name of Hebrew, Israelite, and Jew, feels his kinship with the glories and the sorrows, the degradation and
the possible renovation of his national family.
Will any one teach the nullification of this feeling and call his doctrine a philosophy? He will teach a
blinding superstition—the superstition that a theory of human wellbeing can be constructed in disregard of
the influences which have made us human.
WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892)

The friendly and flowing savage—who is he?
Is he waiting for civilization or past it?
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 32
Democratic Vistas (1871)

America is steadily developing through its current practical, business-oriented phase toward a time when
great 'bards' will arise, producing a true democratic literature that will instill much-needed religiosity and
moral conscience into American life.
Walt Whitman, Democratic Vistas (1871), 1
Democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art,
poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under
opposite influences.
The priest departs, the divine literatus comes.

JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900)

The highest reward for a man’s toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it.
John Ruskin
Work, the process of work in itself, is the most important things for us, and its reward should be of minor
importance. ... If the reward is of major importance, then you are the slave of the reward.
John Ruskin, as cited in A Calendar of Wisdom, March 7
585
Labour without joy is base.
John Ruskin, Time and Time (1867), Letter 5
Ask a great money-maker what he wants to do with his money, — he never knows. He doesn't make it to do
anything with it. He gets it only that he may get it. "What will you make of what you have got?" you ask.
"Well, I'll get more," he says. Just as at cricket, you get more runs. There's no use in the runs, but to get more
of them than other people is the game. So all that great foul city of London there, — rattling, growling,
smoking, stinking, — a ghastly heap of fermenting brickwork, pouring out poison at every pore, — you
fancy it is a city of work? Not a street of it! It is a great city of play; very nasty play and very hard play, but
still play.
John Ruskin, The Crown of Wild Olive, Lecture I: “Work,” sections 23-24 (1866)
We blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to
refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages.
John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice (1853), Volume II, chapter VI, section 16
You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended
to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that
precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves
like compasses, you must unhumanize them.
John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice (1853), Volume II, chapter VI, section 12
Unto This Last (1860)

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Unto_This_Last_(Ruskin)
“I choose my physician and my clergyman, thus indicating my sense of the quality of their work.” By all
means, also, choose your bricklayer; that is the proper reward of the good workman, to be “chosen.” The
natural and right system respecting all labour is, that it should be paid at a fixed rate, but the good workman
employed, and the bad workman unemployed. The false, unnatural, and destructive system is when the bad
workman is allowed to offer his work at half-price, and either take the place of the good, or force him by his
competition to work for an inadequate sum.
John Ruskin, Unto This Last (1860), Essay I: "The Roots of Honour," section 29
The force of the guinea you have in your pockets depends wholly on the default of a guinea in your
neighbour's pocket. If he did not want it, it would be of no use to you; the degree of power it possesses
depends accurately upon the need or desire he has for it,— and the art of making yourself rich, in the
ordinary mercantile economist's sense, is therefore equally and necessarily the art of keeping your neighbour
poor.
John Ruskin, Unto This Last (1860), Essay two: 'The Veins of Wealth'
the art of becoming 'rich', in the common sense, is not absolutely nor finally the art of accumulating much
money for ourselves, but also of contriving that our neighbour shall have less. In accurate terms, it is 'the art
of establishing the maximum inequality in your own favour'.
John Ruskin, Unto This Last (1860), Essay two: 'The Veins of Wealth'
I neither impugn nor doubt the conclusion of the science [of economics] if its terms are accepted. I am
simply uninterested in them, as I should be in those of a science of gymnastics which assumed that men had
no skeletons.
John Ruskin, Unto This Last (1860)
… the ‘science’ of the modern political economist, teaching covetousness instead of truth
John Ruskin, Unto This Last (1860), note 31
586
This inhumanity of mercenary commerce is the more notable because it is a fulfilment of the law that the
corruption of the best is the worst. … And this is the ultimate lesson which the leader of English intellect
meant for us … in the tale of the "Merchant of Venice"; in which the true and incorrupt merchant,—kind and
free, beyond every other Shakespearian conception of men,—is opposed to the corrupted merchant, or
usurer; the lesson being deepened by the expression of the strange hatred which the corrupted merchant bears
to the pure one, mixed with intense scorn.
John Ruskin, Unto This Last (1860), 3
Sesame and Lilies (1865)

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext98/sesli10.txt
I receive many letters from parents respecting the education of their children. In the mass of these
letters I am always struck by the precedence which the idea of a “position in life” takes above all other
thoughts in the parents’—more especially in the mothers’—minds. “The education befitting such and
such a station in life”—this is the phrase, this the object, always. They never seek, as far as I can make
out, an education good in itself, … but, an education … “which shall lead to advancement in life;—this
we pray for on bent knees—and this is all we pray for.” It never seems to occur to the parents that
there may be an education which, in itself, is advancement in life.
John Ruskin, “Sesame and Lilies” (1865)
At present, “advancement in life” means, becoming conspicuous in life; obtaining a position which shall be
acknowledged by others to be respectable or honourable. We do not understand by this advancement, in
general, the mere making of money, but the being known to have made it; not the accomplishment of any
great aim, but the being seen to have accomplished it. In a word, we mean the gratification of our thirst for
applause.
We want to get into good society, not that we may have it, but that we may be seen in it; and our notion of its
goodness depends primarily on its conspicuousness.
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Nearly all our associations are determined by chance or necessity; and restricted within a narrow circle.
We cannot know whom we would; and those whom we know, we cannot have at our side when we most
need them. All the higher circles of human intelligence are, to those beneath, only momentarily and partially
open. We may, by good fortune, obtain a glimpse of a great poet, and hear the sound of his voice; or put a
question to a man of science, and be answered good- humouredly. We may intrude ten minutes’ talk on a
cabinet minister, answered probably with words worse than silence, being deceptive; or snatch, once or twice
in our lives, the privilege of throwing a bouquet in the path of a princess, or arresting the kind glance of a
queen. And yet these momentary chances we covet; and spend our years, and passions, and powers, in
pursuit of little more than these; while, meantime, there is a society continually open to us, of people who
will talk to us as long as we like, whatever our rank or occupation;—talk to us in the best words they can
choose, and of the things nearest their hearts. And this society, because it is so numerous and so gentle, and
can be kept waiting round us all day long,—kings and statesmen lingering patiently, not to grant audience,
but to gain it!—in those plainly furnished and narrow ante-rooms, our bookcase shelves,—we make no
account of that company,—perhaps never listen to a word they would say, all day long!
You may tell me, perhaps, or think within yourselves, that the apathy with which we regard this company
of the noble, who are praying us to listen to them; and the passion with which we pursue the company,
probably of the ignoble, who despise us, or who have nothing to teach us, are grounded in this,—that we can
see the faces of the living men, and it is themselves, and not their sayings, with which we desire to become
familiar. But it is not so. Suppose you never were to see their faces;—suppose you could be put behind a
screen in the statesman’s cabinet, or the prince’s chamber, would you not be glad to listen to their words,
though you were forbidden to advance beyond the screen? And when the screen is only a little less, folded in
two instead of four, and you can be hidden behind the cover of the two boards that bind a book, and listen all
day long, not to the casual talk, but to the studied, determined, chosen addresses of the wisest of men;—this
station of audience, and honourable privy council, you despise!
The motives with which you strive to take high place in the society of the living [are] measured, as to all the
truth and sincerity that are in them, by the place you desire to take in this company of the dead.
Do you ask to be the companion of nobles? Make yourself noble, and you shall be. Do you long for the
conversation of the wise? Learn to understand it, and you shall hear it.
Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours. Judge it afterwards if you think
yourself qualified to do so; but ascertain it first. And be sure, also, if the author is worth anything, that you
will not get at his meaning all at once;—nay, that at his whole meaning you will not for a long time arrive in
any wise. Not that he does not say what he means, and in strong words too; but he cannot say it all; and what
is more strange, will not, but in a hidden way and in parables, in order that he may be sure you want it. I
cannot quite see the reason of this, nor analyse that cruel reticence in the breasts of wise men which makes
them always hide their deeper thought. They do not give it you by way of help, but of reward; and will make
themselves sure that you deserve it before they allow you to reach it. But it is the same with the physical
type of wisdom, gold. There seems, to you and me, no reason why the electric forces of the earth should not
carry whatever there is of gold within it at once to the mountain tops, so that kings and people might know
that all the gold they could get was there; and without any trouble of digging, or anxiety, or chance, or waste
of time, cut it away, and coin as much as they needed. But Nature does not manage it so. She puts it in little
fissures in the earth, nobody knows where: you may dig long and find none; you must dig painfully to find
any.
And it is just the same with men’s best wisdom. When you come to a good book, you must ask yourself,
“Am I inclined to work as an Australian miner would? Are my pickaxes and shovels in good order, and am I
in good trim myself, my sleeves well up to the elbow, and my breath good, and my temper?” And, keeping
the figure a little longer, even at cost of tiresomeness, for it is a thoroughly useful one, the metal you are in
search of being the author’s mind or meaning, his words are as the rock which you have to crush and smelt in
588
order to get at it. And your pickaxes are your own care, wit, and learning; your smelting furnace is your own
thoughtful soul. Do not hope to get at any good author’s meaning without those tools and that fire; often you
will need sharpest, finest chiselling, and patientest fusing, before you can gather one grain of the metal.
A well-educated gentleman may not know many languages,—may not be able to speak any but his own,—
may have read very few books. But whatever language he knows, he knows precisely; whatever word he
pronounces, he pronounces rightly; above all, he is learned in the peerage of words; knows the words of true
descent and ancient blood, at a glance, from words of modern canaille; remembers all their ancestry, their
intermarriages, distant relationships, and the extent to which they were admitted, and offices they held,
among the national noblesse of words at any time, and in any country.
The accent, or turn of expression of a single sentence, will at once mark a scholar.
You can easily ascertain the meanings through which the English word has passed; and those which in a
good writer’s work it must still bear.
We have got something out of the lines, I think, and much more is yet to be found in them; but we have done
enough by way of example of the kind of word-by-word examination of your author which is rightly called
“reading”; watching every accent and expression, and putting ourselves always in the author’s place,
annihilating our own personality, and seeking to enter into his, so as to be able assuredly to say, “Thus
Milton thought,” not “Thus I thought, in misreading Milton.” And by this process you will gradually come to
attach less weight to your own “Thus I thought” at other times. You will begin to perceive that what you
thought was a matter of no serious importance;—that your thoughts on any subject are not perhaps the
clearest and wisest that could be arrived at thereupon:—in fact, that unless you are a very singular person,
you cannot be said to have any “thoughts” at all; that you have no materials for them, in any serious
matters;—no right to “think,” but only to try to learn more of the facts. Nay, most probably all your life
(unless, as I said, you are a singular person) you will have no legitimate right to an “opinion” on any
business, except that instantly under your hand.
You will not be able, I tell you again, for many and many a day, to come at the real purposes and teaching of
these great men; but a very little honest study of them will enable you to perceive that what you took for your
own “judgment” was mere chance prejudice, and drifted, helpless, entangled weed of castaway thought; nay,
you will see that most men’s minds are indeed little better than rough heath wilderness, neglected and
stubborn, partly barren, partly overgrown with pestilent brakes, and venomous, wind-sown herbage of evil
surmise; that the first thing you have to do for them, and yourself, is eagerly and scornfully to set fire to this;
burn all the jungle into wholesome ash-heaps, and then plough and sow.
We are only human in so far as we are sensitive, and our honour is precisely in proportion to our passion.
The essence of all vulgarity lies in want of sensation.

Alas! it is the narrowness, selfishness, minuteness, of your sensation that you have to deplore in England at
this day;—sensation which spends itself in bouquets and speeches: in revellings and junketings; in sham
fights and gay puppet shows, while you can look on and see noble nations murdered, man by man, without
an effort or a tear.
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If public libraries were half so costly as public dinners, or books cost the tenth part of what bracelets do, even
foolish men and women might sometimes suspect there was good in reading, as well as in munching and
sparkling.
It is pitiful, to have dim conceptions of duty; more pitiful, it seems to me, to have conceptions like these, of
mirth.
It is our imaginary Christianity that helps us to commit these crimes, for we revel and luxuriate in our
faith, for the lewd sensation of it; dressing it up, like everything else, in fiction.
Our National wish and purpose are only to be amused; our National religion is the performance of church
ceremonies, and preaching of soporific truth (or untruths) to keep the mob quietly at work, while we amuse
ourselves; and the necessity for this amusement is fastening on us, as a feverous disease of parched throat
and wandering eyes—senseless, dissolute, merciless.
When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work, as the colour-petals out of a
fruitful flower;—when they are faithfully helpful and compassionate, all their emotions become steady, deep,
perpetual, and vivifying to the soul as the natural pulse to the body. But now, having no true business, we
pour our whole masculine energy into the false business of money-making; and having no true
emotion, we must have false emotions dressed up for us to play with, not innocently, as children with
dolls, but guiltily and darkly.
The more I see of our national faults or miseries, the more they resolve themselves into conditions of childish
illiterateness and want of education in the most ordinary habits of thought. It is, I repeat, not vice, not
selfishness, not dulness of brain, which we have to lament; but an unreachable schoolboy’s recklessness,
only differing from the true schoolboy’s in its incapacity of being helped, because it acknowledges no
master.
Mighty of heart, mighty of mind—”magnanimous”—to be this, is indeed to be great in life; to become this
increasingly, is, indeed, to “advance in life,”—in life itself—not in the trappings of it.
Suppose the offer were this: You shall die slowly; your blood shall daily grow cold, your flesh petrify, your
heart beat at last only as a rusted group of iron valves. Your life shall fade from you, and sink through the
earth into the ice of Caina; but, day by day, your body shall be dressed more gaily, and set in higher chariots,
and have more orders on its breast—crowns on its head, if you will. Men shall bow before it, stare and shout
round it, crowd after it up and down the streets; build palaces for it, feast with it at their tables’ heads all the
night long; your soul shall stay enough within it to know what they do, and feel the weight of the golden
dress on its shoulders, and the furrow of the crown-edge on the skull;—no more. Would you take the offer,
verbally made by the death-angel? Would the meanest among us take it, think you? Yet practically and
verily we grasp at it, every one of us, in a measure; many of us grasp at it in its fulness of horror. Every man
accepts it, who desires to advance in life without knowing what life is; who means only that he is to get more
horses, and more footmen, and more fortune, and more public honour, and—not more personal soul.
590
FRIEDRICH ENGELS (1820-1895)
Not only the laborers but also the classes directly or indirectly exploiting the laborers are made subject,
through the division of labor, to the tool of their function: – the empty-minded bourgeois to his own capital
and his own thirst for profits; the lawyer to his fossilized legal conceptions, which dominate him as a power
independent of him; the ‘educated classes’ in general to their manifold local limitations and one-sided
specialized education and the fact that they are chained for life to a specialized activity.
Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring (1878)
HERBERT SPENCER (1820-1903)

Spencer deduced from the principle of equal liberty the individual’s “right to ignore the state.” … Spencer
compared this right with the right claimed by the Dissenters to refuse to pay dues to the church and argued
that if religious separation and independence was just, then this, “if consistently maintained, implies a right
to ignore the state entirely.” By exercising their natural rights to property and uncoerced activity, the political
protestant who refused to pay taxes to the state became a “voluntary outlaw” who merely had exercised his
right to “drop connection with the state.”
David Hart, “Gustave de Molinari and the Anti-statist Liberal Tradition,” Anarchy and the Law (2007), p. 388
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.
Herbert Spencer, Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative (1891), Vol. 3, Ch. IX
Ethics (1879)
http://books.google.com/books?id=fS9WAAAAMAAJ
People … become so preoccupied with the means by which an end is achieved, as eventually to mistake
it for the end. Just as money, which is a means of satisfying wants, comes to be regarded by a miser as
the sole thing to be worked for, leaving the wants unsatisfied; so the conduct men have found
preferable because most conducive to happiness, has come to be thought of as intrinsically preferable:
not only to be made a proximate end (which it should be), but to be made an ultimate end, to the
exclusion of the true ultimate end.
Herbert Spencer, Ethics (New York:1915), § 14, pp. 38-39
It may be shown that conduciveness to happiness, here represented as an incidental trait of the acts which
receive these innate moral approvals, is really the test by which these approvals are recognized as moral. The
intuitionists place confidence in these verdicts of conscience, simply because they vaguely, if not distinctly,
perceive them to be consonant with the disclosures of that ultimate test. Observe the proof.
By the hypothesis, the wrongness of murder is known by a moral intuition which the human mind was
originally constituted to yield; and the hypothesis therefore negatives the admission that this sense of its
wrongness arises, immediately or remotely, from the consciousness that murder involves deduction from
happiness, directly and indirectly. But if you ask an adherent of this doctrine to contrast his intuition with
that of the Fijian, who, considering murder an honourable action, is restless until he has distinguished himself
by killing some one; and if you inquire of him in what way the civilized intuition is to be justified in
opposition to the intuition of the savage; no course is open save that of showing how conformity to the one
conduces to well-being, while conformity to the other entails suffering, individual and general.
Views of life and conduct which originated with those who propitiated deified ancestors by self-tortures,
enter even still into the ethical theories of many persons who have years since cast away the theology of the
past, and suppose themselves to be no longer influenced by it.
Herbert Spencer, Ethics (New York:1915), § 14, p. 40
591
It may be urged that blessedness, characterized by excess of aggregate pains over aggregate pleasures, should
nevertheless be pursued as an end, rather than the happiness constituted by excess of pleasures over pains.
But now, defensible though this conception of blessedness may be when limited to one individual, or some
individuals, it becomes indefensible when extended to all individuals; as it must be if blessedness is taken for
the end of conduct. To see this we need but ask for what purpose are these pains in excess of pleasures to be
borne. Blessedness being the ideal state for all persons; and the self-sacrifices made by each person in
pursuance of this ideal state, having for their end to help all other persons in achieving the like ideal state; it
results that the blessed though painful state of each, is to be acquired by furthering the like blessed though
painful states of others: the blessed consciousness is to be constituted by the contemplation of their
consciousnesses in a condition of average suffering. Does any one accept this inference? If not, his rejection
of it involves the admission that the motive for bearing pains in performing acts called blessed, is not the
obtaining for others like pains of blessedness, but the obtaining of pleasures for others; and that thus pleasure
somewhere is the tacitly-implied ultimate end.
If insistence on them tends to unsettle established systems, … self-evident truths are by most people
silently passed over; or else there is a tacit refusal to draw from them the most obvious inferences.
The pursuit of individual happiness within those limits prescribed by social conditions, is the first
requisite to the attainment of the greatest general happiness. To see this it needs but to contrast one
whose self-regard has maintained bodily well-being, with one whose regardlessness of self has brought its
natural results; and then to ask what must be the contrast between two societies formed of two such kinds of
individuals.
Bounding out of bed after an unbroken sleep, singing or whistling as he dresses, coming down with
beaming face ready to laugh on the smallest provocation, the healthy man of high powers, conscious of past
successes and by his energy, quickness, resource, made confident of the future, enters on the day’s business
not with repugnance but with gladness; and from hour to hour experiencing satisfactions from work
effectually done, comes home with an abundant surplus of energy remaining for hours of relaxation. Far
otherwise is it with one who is enfeebled by great neglect of self. Already deficient, his energies are made
more deficient by constant endeavors to execute tasks that prove beyond his strength, and by the resulting
discouragement. Besides the depressing consciousness of the immediate future, there is the depressing
consciousness of the remoter future, with its probability of accumulated difficulties and diminished ability to
meet them. Hours of leisure which, rightly passed, bring pleasures that raise the tide of life and renew the
powers of work, cannot be utilized: there is not vigor enough for enjoyments involving action, and lack of
spirits prevents passive enjoyments from being entered upon with zest. In brief, life becomes a burden. Now
if, as must be admitted, in a community composed of individuals like the first the happiness will be relatively
great, while in one composed of individuals like the last there will be relatively little happiness, or rather
much misery; it must be admitted that conduct causing the one result is good and conduct causing the other is
bad.
592
He who carries self-regard far enough to keep himself in good health and high spirits, in the first
place thereby becomes an immediate source of happiness to those around, and in the second place
maintains the ability to increase their happiness by altruistic actions. But one whose bodily vigour and
mental health are undermined by self-sacrifice carried too far, in the first place becomes to those
around a cause of depression, and in the second place renders himself incapable, or less capable, of
actively furthering their welfare.
In estimating conduct we must remember that there are those who by their joyousness beget joy in
others, and that there are those who by their melancholy cast a gloom on every circle they enter. And
we must remember that by display of overflowing happiness a man of the one kind may add to the happiness
of others more than by positive efforts to benefit them; and that a man of the other kind may decrease their
happiness more by his presence than he increases it by his actions. Full of vivacity, the one is ever welcome.
For his wife he has smiles and jocose speeches; for his children stores of fun and play; for his friends
pleasant talk interspersed with the sallies of wit that come from buoyancy. Contrariwise, the other is
shunned. The irritability resulting now from ailments, now from failures caused by feebleness, his family has
daily to bear. Lacking adequate energy for joining in them, he has at best but a tepid interest in the
amusements of his children; and he is called a wet blanket by his friends. Little account as our ethical
reasonings take note of it, yet is the fact obvious that since happiness and misery are infectious, such regard
for self as conduces to health and high spirits is a benefaction to others, and such disregard of self as brings
on suffering, bodily or mental, is a malefaction to others. The duty of making one’s self agreeable by
seeming to be pleased, is, indeed, often urged; and thus to gratify friends is applauded so long as self-
sacrificing effort is implied. But though display of real happiness gratifies friends far more than display of
sham happiness, and has no drawback in the shape either of hypocrisy or strain, yet it is not thought a duty to
fulfil the conditions which favour the display of real happiness. Nevertheless, if quantity of happiness
produced is to be the measure, the last is more imperative than the first.
That one man may yield up to another a gratification, it is needful that the other shall accept it; and where the
gratification is of a kind to which their respective claims are equal, or which is no more required by the one
than by the other, acceptance implies a readiness to get gratification at another’s cost. The circumstances and
needs of the two being alike, the transaction involves as much culture of egoism in the last as it involves
culture of altruism in the first.
Sentient beings have progressed from low to high types, under the law that the superior shall profit by their
superiority and the inferior shall suffer from their inferiority.
Excesses in one direction do not prevent excesses in the opposite direction; but rather, extreme deviations
from the mean on one side lead to extreme deviations on the other side. A society in which the most exalted
principles of self-sacrifice for the benefit of neighbours are enunciated, may be a society in which
unscrupulous sacrifice of alien fellow-creatures is not only tolerated but applauded. … As in these cases
transcendent altruism in theory co-exists with brutal egoism in practice, so, conversely, a more qualified
altruism may have for its concomitant a greatly moderated egoism. For asserting the due claims of self, is, by
implication, drawing a limit beyond which the claims are undue; and is, by consequence, bringing into
greater clearness the claims of others.
Herbert Spencer, Ethics (New York: 1915), § 74, pp. 199-200
593
This commits us to an examination of “the greatest happiness principle,” as enunciated by Bentham and
his followers. The doctrine that “the general happiness” ought to be the object of pursuit, is not, indeed,
overtly identified with pure altruism. But as. if general happiness is the proper end of action, the individual
actor must regard his own share of it simply as a unit in the aggregate, no more to be valued by him than any
other unit, it results that since this unit is almost infinitesimal in comparison with the aggregate, his action, if
directed exclusively to achievement of general happiness, is, if not absolutely altruistic, as nearly so as may
be. Hence the theory which makes general happiness the immediate object of pursuit, may rightly be taken as
one form of the pure altruism to be here criticized.
Both as justifying this interpretation and as furnishing a definite proposition with which to deal, let me set
out by quoting a passage from Mr. Mill’s Utilitarianism.
“The Greatest-Happiness Principle,” he says, “is a mere form of words without rational signification,
unless one person’s happiness, supposed equal in degree (with the proper allowance made for kind), is
counted for exactly as much as another’s. Those conditions being supplied, Bentham’s dictum, ‘everybody to
count for one, nobody for more than one,’ might be written under the principle of utility as an explanatory
commentary” (p. 91.)
Now though the meaning of “greatest happiness” as an end, is here to a certain degree defined, the need
for further definition is felt the moment we attempt to decide on ways of regulating conduct so as to attain
the end. The first question which arises is—Must we regard this “greatest happiness principle” as a principle
of guidance for the community in its corporate capacity, or as a principle of guidance for its members
separately considered, or both? If the reply is that the principle must he taken as a guide for governmental
action rather than for individual action, we are at once met by the inquiry,—What is to be the guide for
individual action?
Herbert Spencer, Ethics (New York: 1915), § 83, pp. 220-221
The Man versus the State

http://www.econlib.org/library/LFBooks/Spencer/spnMvS0.html
The great political superstition of the past was the divine right of kings. The great political
superstition of the present is the divine right of parliaments. The oil of anointing seems unawares to have
dripped from the head of the one on to the heads of the many, and given sacredness to them also and to their
decrees.
However irrational we may think the earlier of these beliefs, we must admit that it was more consistent
than is the latter. Whether we go back to times when the king was a god, or to times when he was a
descendant of a god, or to times when he was god-appointed, we see good reason for passive obedience to his
will. ... But for the modern belief such a warrant does not exist. Making no pretension to divine descent or
divine appointment, a legislative body can show no supernatural justification for its claim to
unlimited authority. …
It is curious how commonly men continue to hold in fact, doctrines which they have rejected in
name—retaining the substance after they have abandoned the form. … The tacitly-asserted doctrine,
common to Tories, Whigs, and Radicals, that governmental authority is unlimited, dates back to
times when the law-giver was supposed to have a warrant from God; and it survives still, though the
belief that the law-giver has God’s warrant has died out.
Herbert Spencer, The Man versus the State, pp. 174-175
594
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE (1821-1867)
Le génie n’est que l’enfance retrouvée à volonté, l’enfance douée maintenant, pour s’exprimer, d’organes
virils et de l’esprit analytique qui lui permet d’ordonner la somme de matériaux involontairement amassée.
Baudelaire, Le peintre de la vie moderne (1863), III: “L’artiste, homme du monde, homme des foules et
enfant.”
Baudelaire, L’art romantique
Genius is youth recaptured.
Baudelaire, Le peintre de la vie moderne (1863), III: “L’artiste, homme du monde, homme des foules et enfant”
Quel est celui de nous qui n’a pas, dans ses jours d’ambition, rêvé le miracle d’une prose poétique, musicale
sans rythme et sans rime, assez souple et assez heurtée pour s’adapter aux mouvements lyriques de l’âme,
aux ondulations de la rêverie, aux soubresauts de la conscience?
Baudelaire, Petits poèmes en prose, éd. Henri Lemaitre, Garnier (1997), p. 7
Which one of us, in his moments of ambition, has not dreamed of a miracle of poetic prose, musical without
rhythm and without rhyme, supple enough and rugged enough to adapt itself to the lyrical impulses of the
soul, the undulations of reverie?
Baudelaire, Petits poèmes en prose
Il faut être toujours ivre.

Tout est là:
c’est l’unique question.
Pour ne pas sentir
l’horrible fardeau du Temps
qui brise vos épaules
et vous penche vers la terre,
il faut vous enivrer sans trêve.
Mais de quoi?
De vin, de poésie, ou de vertu, à votre guise.
Mais enivrez-vous.
Et si quelquefois,
sur les marches d’un palais,
sur l’herbe verte d’un fossé,
dans la solitude morne de votre chambre,
vous vous réveillez,
l’ivresse déjà diminuée ou disparue,
demandez au vent,
à la vague,
à l’étoile,
à l’oiseau,
à l’horloge,
à tout ce qui fuit,
à tout ce qui gémit,
à tout ce qui roule,
à tout ce qui chante,
à tout ce qui parle,
demandez quelle heure il est;
et le vent,
la vague,
l’étoile,
l’oiseau,
l’horloge,
vous répondront:
595
“Il est l’heure de s’enivrer!
Pour n’être pas les esclaves martyrisés du Temps,
enivrez-vous;
enivrez-vous sans cesse!
De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise.”
Baudelaire, “Enivrez-Vous” http://poetry.eserver.org/enivrez-vous.html
Il est l’heure de s’enivrer!

Pour n’être pas les esclaves martyrisés du Temps,
enivrez-vous;
enivrez-vous sans cesse!
De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise.
Baudelaire, “Enivrez-Vous”
Ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: “It is time to be drunk! So as not to be
the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you
wish.”
Baudelaire
Fleurs du mal (1857)

Si le viol, le poison, le poignard, l’incendie,
N’ont pas encor brodé de leurs plaisants dessins
Le canevas banal de nos piteux destins,
C’est que notre âme, hélas! n’est pas assez hardie.
Baudelaire, Fleurs du mal
If rape, poison, daggers, arson
Have not yet embroidered with their pleasing designs
The banal canvas of our pitiable lives,
It is because our souls have not enough boldness.
Baudelaire, Fleurs du mal
FERDINAND KÜRNBERGER (1821-1879)

Der Amerika-Müde, amerikanisches Kulturbild (1855)
Aus dem Rinde macht man Talg aus dem Menschen Geld.
Ferdinand Kürnberger, Der Amerika-Müde, amerikanisches Kulturbild (1855)
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT (1821-1880)

Le seul moyen de rester tranquille dans son assiette c’est de regarder le genre humain comme use vaste
association de crétins et de canailles.
Flaubert, cited in Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (Chicago: 1964), p. 139
One mustn’t look at the abyss, because there is at the bottom an inexpressible charm which attracts us.
Gustave Flaubert
Letters
La haine du Bourgeois est le commencement de la vertu.
Hatred of the bourgeois is the beginning of wisdom.
Flaubert, Letter to George Sand, May 10, 1867
596
Don't read him as children do, for amusement, nor as the ambitious do, to be instructed. No, read him in
order to live.
Flaubert’s advice about how to read Montaigne
The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of bourgeois stupidity.
Flaubert, Letter to George Sand (1871)
One must not always think that feeling is everything. Art is nothing without form.
Flaubert, Letter to Madame Louise Colet, August 12, 1846
Do not read as children do to enjoy themselves, nor as the ambitious do to educate themselves. No, read to
live.
Flaubert, Letter to Mademoiselle Leroyer de Chantepie, June 1857
What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it.

Flaubert, Letter to Guy de Maupassant, October 26, 1880
Soyez réglé dans votre vie et ordinaire comme un bourgeois, afin d'être violent et original dans vos œuvres.
Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.
Flaubert, Letter to Gertrude Tennant, December 25, 1876
Madame Bovary (1857)

English: http://books.google.com/books?id=TegPAAAAYAAJ
French: http://books.google.com/books?id=EjdKQyHqEO8C
It seemed to her that certain portions of the earth must produce happiness—as thought it were a plant native
only to those soils and doomed to languish elsewhere.
Flaubert, Madame Bovary (1857), Part 1, Chapter 7
She might have been glad to confide all these things to someone. But how to speak about so elusive a
malaise, one that keeps changing its shape like the clouds and its direction like the wind? She could find no
words; and hence neither occasion nor courage came to hand.
But even as they were brought closer together by the details of daily life, she was separated from him by a
growing sense of inward detachment. Charles' conversation was flat as a sidewalk, a place of passage for the
ideas of everyman; they wore drab everyday clothes, and they inspired neither laughter nor dreams.
In her longing she made no difference between the pleasures of luxury and the joys of the heart, between
elegant living and sensitive feeling. Didn't love, like Indian plants, require rich soils, special temperatures?
Mon Dieu, à moi, c'est le Dieu de Socrate, de Franklin, de Voltaire et de Béranger! … Je ' n'admets pas un
bonhomme de Bon-Dieu qui se promène dans son parterre la canne à la main, loge ses amis dans le ventre
des baleines, meurt en poussant un cri et ressuscite au bout de trois jours—choses absurdes en elles-mêmes et
complètement opposées d'ailleurs à toutes les lois de la physique, ce qui nous démontre en passant, que les
prêtres ont toujours croupi dans une ignorance turpide, où ils s'efforcent d'engloutir avec eux les populations.
My God is the God of Socrates, of Franklin, of Voltaire, and of Beranger. … I do not admit the hypothesis of
a simple old fellow of a God who strolls in his garden with his walking-stick in his hand, houses his friends
in the belly of whales, dies uttering a cry and comes to life again at the end of three days: things absurd in
themselves and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws; a fact which shows us, in passing, that
the priests have always wallowed in a dense ignorance, in which they strive to engulf the peoples with
themselves.
Flaubert, M. Homais, Madame Bovary (1857), Part 2, Chapter 1
597
They spoke of the mediocrity of provincial life, so suffocating, so fatal to all noble dreams.
— Ah! encore, dit Rodolphe: Toujours les devoirs, je sais assommé de ces mots-là. Ils sont un tas de vieilles
ganaches en gilet de flanelle, et de bigotes à chaufferette et à chapelet, qui continuellement nous chantent aux
oreilles : « Le devoir ! le devoir» Eh ! parbleu ! le devoir, c'est de sentir ce qui est grand, de chérir ce qui est
beau, et non pas d'accepter toutes les conventions de la société, avec les ignominies qu'elle nous impose.
— Cependant..., cependant..., objectait madame Bovary.
— Eh non! pourquoi déclamer contre les passions? Ne sont-elles pas la seule belle chose qu'il y ait sur la
terre, la source de l'héroïsme, de l'enthousiasme, de la poésie, de la musique, des arts, de tout enfin?
— Mais il faut bien, dit Emma, suivre un peu l'opinion du monde et obéir à sa morale.
— Ah ! c'est qu'il y en a deux, répliqua-t-il. La petite, le convenue, celle des hommes, celle qui varie sans
cesse et qui braille si fort, s'agite en bas, terre à terre, comme ce rassemblement d'imbéciles que vous voyez.
Mais l'autre, l'éternelle, elle est tout autour et au-dessus, comme le paysage qui nous environne et le ciel bleu
qui nous éclaire.
Flaubert, Rodolphe and Mme. Bovary, Madame Bovary (1857)
“Always duties; I am sick of that word. A pack of old fools in flannel waistcoats and hypocrites with foot-
warmers and chaplets are forever singing in our ears, 'Duty! duty!' Hokum! Our duty is to feel what is great
and love what is beautiful—not to accept all the social conventions and the infamies they impose on us.”
“Still . . . nevertheless . . .” objected Mme. Bovary.
“No, indeed. Why declaim against the passions? Are they not the one beautiful thing the world has, the
fount of heroism, of enthusiasm, of poetry, of music, of the arts, of everything, in short?”
“But,” said Emma, “ one must, after all, follow, to a certain extent, the opinion of the world and conform
to its morality.”
“Ah! but then there are two moralities. The petty, the conventional one, that of men, that which varies
unceasingly and bawls so loudly, that one grovels below, close to the earth, like this assembly of idiots which
you behold. But the other, the eternal, is all around and above us, like the landscape that encircles us and the
blue heaven that gives us light.”
Flaubert, Rodolphe and Mme. Bovary, Madame Bovary (1857), Part 2, Chapter 8
She repented her virtue of days past as though it had been a crime.
Il s'était tant de fois entendu dire ces choses, qu'elles n'avaient pour lui rien d'original. Emma ressemblait à
toutes les maîtresses; et le charme de la nouveauté, peu à peu tombant comme un vêtement, laissait voir à nu
l'éternelle monotonie de la passion, qui a toujours les mêmes formes et le même langage. Il ne distinguait
pas, cet homme si plein de pratique, la dissemblance des sentiments sous la parité des expressions. Parce que
des lèvres libertines ou vénales lui avaient murmuré des phrases pareilles, il ne croyait que faiblement à la
candeur de celles-là; on en devait rabattre, pensait-il, les discours exagérés cachant les affections médiocres;
comme si la plénitude de l'âme ne débordait pas quelquefois par les métaphores les plus vides, puisque
personne, jamais, ne peut donner l'exacte mesure de ses besoins, P' de ses conceptions, ni de ses douleurs, et
que la parole humaine est comme un chaudron fêlé où nous battons des mélodies à faire danser les ours,
quand on voudrait attendrir les étoiles.
Flaubert, Madame Bovary (1857)
We shouldn't maltreat our idols: the gilt comes off on our hands.
598
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY (1821-1881)
Notes from Underground (1864)
An intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes anything. Yes, a
man in the nineteenth century must and morally ought to be pre-eminently a characterless creature; a man of
character, an active man is pre-eminently a limited creature.
Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground, as cited in Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre (1989), p. 55
MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888)

Inequality has the natural and necessary effect, under the present circumstances, of materializing our upper
class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.
Matthew Arnold, “Equality" (1879).
But be his
My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul,
From first youth tested up to extreme old age,
Business could not make dull, nor passion wild;|
Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole.
Matthew Arnold, "To a Friend" (1849), line 9-12
For poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion
to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry.
Matthew Arnold, Introduction to Ward's English Poets (1880)
Conduct is three-fourths of life.

Matthew Arnold
Civilization in the United States (1888)

That which in England we call the middle class is in America virtually the nation.
Matthew Arnold, "A Word About America," Civilization in the United States (1888)
If one were searching for the best means to efface and kill in a whole nation the discipline of self-respect, the
feeling for what is elevated, he could do no better than take the American newspapers.
Matthew Arnold, Civilization in the United States (1888), p. 177
This is a case where the question of numbers is of capital importance. Even in our poor old country, with its
aristocratic class materialized, its middle class vulgarized, its lower class brutalized, there are to be found
individuals, as I have again and again said, lovers of the humane life, lovers of perfection, who emerge in all
classes, and who, while they are more or less in conflict with the present, point to a better future. Individuals
of this kind I make no doubt at all that there are in American society as well as here. ... The important
question is: In what numbers are they to be found?
599
One of the best of Mr. James's novels, Roderick Hudson, ... carries us to one of the "smaller cities of the
interior," a city of which, I own, I had never heard — the American Northampton. Those who have read
Roderick Hudson will recollect, that in that part of the story where the scene is laid at Northampton, there
occurs a personage called Striker, an auctioneer. And when I came upon the Boston newspaper's assurances
that, in almost every small town of the Union, I should find "an elegant and simple social order," the
comment which rose to my lips was this: "I suspect what I should find there, in great force, is Striker." Now
Striker was a Philistine.
These childish and half-savage minds are not moved except by very elementary narratives composed without
art, in which burlesque and melodrama, vulgarity and eccentricity, are combined in strong doses.
A “French critic,” cited in Matthew Arnold, "A Word About America," Civilization in the United States (1888)
This hard greed, and the exclusive pursuit of gain, with the indifference to all which does not aid in its
acquisition, are eating up family love and life throughout the West.
“Miss Bird,” cited in Matthew Arnold, "A Word About America," Civilization in the United States (1888)
All that we hear from America — hear from Americans themselves — points, so far as I can see, to a great
presence and power of these middle-class misgrowths.
As we in England, with our aristocracy, gentlemen, liberty, industry, religion, and sense for conduct, have the
civilization of the most important part of our people, the immense middle class, impaired by a defective type
of religion, a narrow range of intellect and knowledge, a stunted sense of beauty, a low standard of manners;
so in America, too, where this class is yet more important and all-pervading than it is here, civilization
suffers in the like way.
The real cultivation of the people of the United States, as of the English middle class, has been in and by its
religion, its "one thing needful." But the insufficiency of this religion is now every day becoming more
manifest. It deals, indeed, with personages and words which have an indestructible and inexhaustible truth
and salutariness; but it is rooted and grounded in preternaturalism, it can receive those personages and those
words only on conditions of preternaturalism, and a religion of preternaturalism is doomed — whether with
or without the battle of Armageddon for which Lord Salisbury is preparing— to inevitable dissolution.
Fidelity to conscience! cries the popular Protestantism of Great Britain and America, and thinks that it has
said enough. But the modern analysis relentlessly scrutinizes this conscience, and compels it to give an
account of itself. What sort of a conscience? a true conscience or a false one?" Conscience is the most
changing of rules; conscience is presumptuous in the strong, timid in the weak and unhappy, wavering in the
undecided; obedient organ of the sentiment which sways us and of the opinions which govern us; more
misleading than reason and nature." So says one of the noblest and purest of moralists, Vauvenargues; and
terrible as it may be to the popular Protestantism of England and of America to hear it, Vauvenargues thus
describes with perfect truth that conscience to which popular Protestantism appeals as its supposed
unshakable ground of reliance
600
Poems
Weary of myself, and sick of asking
What I am, and what I ought to be,
At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me
Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.
And a look of passionate desire

O'er the sea and to the stars I send:
"Ye who from my childhood up have calm'd me,
Calm me, ah, compose me to the end!
"Ah, once more," I cried, "ye stars, ye waters,

On my heart your mighty charm renew;
Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,
Feel my soul becoming vast like you!"
Matthew Arnold, Self-Dependence
... to prize
Those virtues, priz’d and practis’d by too few.
Matthew Arnold, To a Republican Friend
Those sterner spirits let me prize,

Who, though the tendence of the whole
They less than us might recognize,
Kept, more than us, their strength of soul.
Matthew Arnold, Courage
For rigorous teachers seized my youth,

And purged its faith, and trimm’d its fire,
Show’d me the high white star of Truth,
There bade me gaze, and there aspire.
Matthew Arnold, Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse (1855), st. 12
Wandering between two worlds, one dead,

The other powerless to be born,
With nowhere yet to rest my head,
Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.
The kings of modern thought are dumb.

Style...is a peculiar recasting and heightening, under a certain condition of spiritual excitement, of what a
man has to say, in such a manner as to add dignity and distinction to it.
Matthew Arnold, On the Study of Celtic Literature (1867), Pt. 6.
We cannot kindle when we will

The fire that in the heart resides,
The spirit bloweth and is still,
In mystery our soul abides; —
But tasks, in hours of insight willed.
Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled.
Matthew Arnold, Morality
601
Below the surface stream, shallow and light,
Of what we say and feel—below the stream,
As light, of what we think we feel, there flows
With noiseless current, strong, obscure and deep,
The central stream of what we feel indeed.
Matthew Arnold, St. Paul and Protestantism (1870)
Conduct is three-fourths of our life and its largest concern.

Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma (1873), ch. 1.
Inequality has the natural and necessary effect, under the present circumstances, of materializing our upper
class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.
Matthew Arnold, “Equality” (1879)
That which in England we call the middle class is in America virtually the nation.
Mathew Arnold, “A Word More About America” (1885)
Physician of the Iron Age,

Goethe has done his pilgrimage.
He took the suffering human race,
He read each wound, each weakness clear —
And struck his finger on the place,
And said—Thou ailest here, and here.
Matthew Arnold, Memorial Verses, St. 3
The sophist sneers: Fool, take

Thy pleasure, right or wrong!
The pious wail: Forsake
A world these sophists throng!
Be neither saint nor sophist-led, but be a man.
Matthew Arnold, Empedocles on Etna, Act I, sc. ii
We do not what we ought,

What we ought not, we do,
And lean upon the thought
That chance will bring us through.
Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy’d the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done;
To have advanc’d true friends, and beat down baffling foes?
O born in days when wits were fresh and clear,

And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames;
Before this strange disease of modern life,
With its sick hurry, its divided aims,
Its heads o’ertax’d, its palsied hearts, was rife.
Matthew Arnold, The Scholar Gypsy, St. 21
I am bound by my own definition of criticism: a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that
is known and thought in the world.
Matthew Arnold, The Functions of Criticism at the Present Time (1864)
602
whose even-balanced soul,
From first youth tested up to extreme old age,
Business could not make dull, nor passion wild;
Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole;
Matthew Arnold, “To a Friend”
Weary of myself, and sick of asking

What I am, and what I ought to be,
At this vessel’s prow I stand, which bears me
Forwards, forwards, o’er the starlit sea.
And a look of passionate desire

O’er the sea and to the stars I send:
“Ye who from my childhood up have calm’d me,
Calm me, ah, compose me to the end!
“Ah, once more,” I cried, “ye stars, ye waters,

On my heart your mighty charm renew;
Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,
Feel my soul becoming vast like you!”
From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven,

Over the lit sea’s unquiet way,
In the rustling night-air came the answer:
“Wouldst thou be as these are? Live as they.
“Unaffrighted by the silence round them,

Undistracted by the sights they see,
These demand not that the things without them
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.
“And with joy the stars perform their shining,

And the sea its long moon-silver’d roll;
For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting
All the fever of some differing soul.
“Bounded by themselves, and unregardful

In what state God’s other works may be,
In their own tasks all their powers pouring,
These attain the mighty life you see.”
O air-born voice! long since, severely clear,

A cry like thine in mine own heart I hear:
“Resolve to be thyself; and know that he,
Who finds himself, loses his misery!”
Matthew Arnold, “Self-Dependence” (complete)
One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee,

One lesson which in every wind is blown,
One lesson of two duties kept at one
Though the loud world proclaim their enmity—
603
Of toil unsever’d from tranquility!
Of labor, that in lasting fruit outgrows
Far noisier schemes, accomplish’d in repose,
Too great for haste, too high for rivalry.
Matthew Arnold, “Quiet Work”
O monstrous, dead, unprofitable world,

That thou canst hear, and hearing, hold thy way!
A voice oracular hath peal’d to-day,
To-day a hero’s banner is unfurl’d;
Hast thou no lip for welcome?”—So I said.

Man after man, the world smil’d and pass’d by;
A smile of wistful incredulity
As though one spake of life unto the dead—
Scornful, and strange, and sorrowful, and full

Of bitter knowledge. Yet the will is free;
Strong is the soul, and wise, and beautiful;
The seeds of god-like power are in us still;

Gods are we, bards, saints, heroes, if we will!—
Dumb judges, answer, truth or mockery?
Matthew Arnold, “Written in Emerson’s Essays” (complete)
Affections, Instincts, Principles, and Powers,

Impulse and Reason, Freedom and Control—
So men, unravelling God’s harmonious whole,
Rend in a thousand shreds this life of ours.
Vain labour! Deep and broad, where none may see,

Spring the foundations of that shadowy throne
Where man’s one nature, queen-like, sits alone,
Centred in a majestic unity.
Matthew Arnold, “Written in Butler’s Sermons”
“In harmony with Nature?” Restless fool,

Who with such heat dost preach what were to thee,
When true, the last impossibility—
To be like Nature strong, like Nature cool!
Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more,

And in that more lie all his hopes of good.
Nature is cruel, man is sick of blood;
Nature is stubborn, man would fain adore;
Nature is fickle, man hath need of rest;

Nature forgives no debt, and fears no grave;
Man would be mild, and with safe conscience blest.
604
Man must begin, know this, where Nature ends;
Nature and man can never be fast friends.
Fool, if thou canst not pass her, rest her slave!
Matthew Arnold, “In harmony with Nature: To a Preacher” (complete)
Culture and Anarchy (1869)

http://books.google.com/books?id=u0FoAB7FF9MC
The whole scope of the essay is to recommend culture as the great help out of our present difficulties; culture
being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us,
the best which has been thought and said in the world; and through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh
and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically, vainly
imagining that there is a virtue in following them staunchly which makes up for the mischief of following
them mechanically.
Matthew Arnold, Preface to Culture and Anarchy (1869)
As there is a curiosity about intellectual matters which is futile, and merely a disease, so there is certainly a
curiosity, —a desire after the things of the mind simply for their own sakes and for the pleasure of seeing
them as they are, —which is, in an intelligent being, natural and laudable. Nay, and the very desire to see
things as they are implies a balance and regulation of mind which is not often attained without fruitful effort,
and which is the very opposite of the blind and diseased impulse of mind which is what we mean to blame
when we blame curiosity. Montesquieu says:—”The first motive which ought to impel us to study is the
desire to augment the excellence of our nature, and to render an intelligent being yet more intelligent.” This
is the true ground to assign for the genuine scientific passion, however manifested, and for culture, viewed
simply as a fruit of this passion; and it is a worthy ground, even though we let the term curiosity stand to
describe it.
Matthew Arnold, “Sweetness and Light,” Culture and Anarchy (1869), p. 6
Culture is then properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of
perfection; it is a study of perfection.
But there is of culture another view, ...in which all the love of our neighbour, the impulses towards action,
help, and beneficence, the desire for stopping human error, clearing human confusion, and diminishing the
sum of human misery, the noble aspiration to leave the world better and happier than we found it,—motives
eminently such as are called social,—come in as part of the grounds of culture, and the main and pre-eminent
part. ... As, in the first view of it, we took for its worthy motto Montesquieu’s words: “To render an
intelligent being yet more intelligent!” so, in the second view of it, there is no better motto which it can have
than these words of Bishop Wilson: “To make reason and the will of God prevail!” Only, whereas the
passion for doing good is apt to be overhasty in determining what reason and the will of God say, because its
turn is for acting rather than thinking, and it wants to be beginning to act; and whereas it is apt to take its own
conceptions, which proceed from its own state of development and share in all the imperfections and
immaturities of this, for a basis of action; what distinguishes culture is, that it is possessed by the scientific
passion, as well as by the passion of doing good; that it has worthy notions of reason and the will of God, and
does not readily suffer its own crude conceptions to substitute themselves for them; and that, knowing that no
action or institution can be salutary and stable which are not based on reason and the will of God, it is not so
bent on acting and instituting, even with the great aim of diminishing human error and misery ever before its
thoughts, but that it can remember that acting and instituting are of little use, unless we know how and what
we ought to act and to institute.
605
Where was the hope of making reason and the will of God prevail among people who had a routine which
they had christened reason and the will of God, in which they were inextricably bound, and beyond which
they had no power of looking? But now the iron force of adhesion to the old routine,—social, political,
religious,—has wonderfully yielded; the iron force of exclusion of all which is new has wonderfully yielded;
the danger now is, not that people should obstinately refuse to allow anything but their old routine to pass for
reason and the will of God, but either that they should allow some novelty or other to pass for these too
easily, or else that they should underrate the importance of them altogether, and think it enough to follow
action for its own sake, without troubling themselves to make reason and the will of God prevail therein.
Now, then, is the moment for culture to be of service, culture which believes in making reason and the will of
God prevail, believes in perfection, is the study and pursuit of perfection, and is no longer debarred, by a
rigid invincible exclusion of whatever is new, from getting acceptance for its ideas, simply because they are
new.
Faith in machinery is, I said, our besetting danger; often in machinery most absurdly disproportioned to the
end which this machinery, if it is to do any good at all, is to serve; but always in machinery, as if it had a
value in and for itself. What is freedom but machinery? what is population but machinery? what is coal but
machinery? what are railroads but machinery? what is wealth but machinery? what are religious
organisations but machinery?
Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest, and admiration; and the outward proof of
possessing greatness is that we excite love, interest, and admiration.
The use of culture is that it helps us, by means of its spiritual standard of perfection, to regard wealth as but
machinery, and not only to say as a matter of words that we regard wealth as but machinery, but really to
perceive and feel that it is so. If it were not for this purging effect wrought upon our minds by culture, the
whole world, the future as well as the present, would inevitably belong to the Philistines. The people who
believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich, and who most give
their lives and thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very people whom we call the Philistines.
Culture says: “Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones
of their voice; look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the things which give them
pleasure, the words which come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of
their minds; would any amount of wealth be worth having with the condition that one was to become
just like these people by having it?”
Everything in our political life tends to hide from us that there is anything wiser than our ordinary selves.
Matthew Arnold, “Barbarians, Philistines, Populace,” Culture and Anarchy (1869)
Civilization in the United States (1888)

http://books.google.com/books?id=LW1LAAAAMAAJ
If one were searching for the best means to efface and kill in a whole nation the discipline of self-
respect, the feeling for what is elevated, he could do no better than take the American newspapers.
Matthew Arnold, Civilization in the United States (1888), p. 177, cited in Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (Chicago: 1948), p. 28
606
ERNEST RENAN (1823-1892)
C’est quand il est bon qu’il veut que la vertu corresponde á un ordre éternel, c’est quand il contemple les
choses d’une manière désintéressée qu’il trouve la mort révoltante et absurde. Comment ne pas supposer que
c’est dans ces moments-là, que l’homme voit le mieux?
Ernest Renan
When he [man] is good he wants virtue to correspond to an eternal order, when he contemplates things in a
disinterested manner he finds death revolting and absurd. How can we not assume that it is in those former
moments that man sees best?
Ernest Renan
United States have created a considerable popular instruction without any serious higher instruction, and will
long have to expiate this fault by their intellectual mediocrity, their vulgarity of manners, their superficial
spirit, their lack of general intelligence.
Renan, as cited in Civilization in the United States (1888)
The great reign of the spirit will only begin when the material world is entirely subject to man.
Renan
No miracle has ever taken place under conditions which science can accept. Experience shows, without
exception, that miracles occur only in times and in countries in which miracles are believed, and in the
presence of persons who are disposed to believe them.
Ernest Renan, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 182
L'extrême simplicité de l'esprit sémitique, sans étendue, sans diversité, sans arts plastiques, sans philosophie,
sans mythologie, sans vie politique, sans progrès, n'a pas d'autre cause : il n'y a pas de variété dans le
monothéisme.
Ernest Renan, Etudes d'histoire religieuse (1838)
The extreme simplicity of the Semitic spirit, without breadth, without diversity, without plastic arts, without
philosophy, without mythology, without political life, without progress, has no other cause than this: there is
no variety in monotheism.
Ernest Renan, Studies in Religious History (1838), my translation
It is much to be feared that the last expression of democracy may be a social state with a degenerate populace
having no other aim than to indulge in the ignoble appetites of the vulgar.
Ernest Renan, cited in Eric Hoffer, Between the Devil and the Dragon (New York: 1982), p. 111
One can love the people in holding an aristocratic philosophy, and not love it in loudly advertising
democratic principles.
Ernest Renan, Dialogues Philosophiques, p. 16
PAUL DE LAGARDE (1827-1891)

In many ways, Lagarde with his tempestuous moods had remained a child, wounded, frightened, craving the
affectionate recognition of others, yet so fearful of losing his independence that he rebuffed and insulted the
very friends he sought.
Frtiz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair (1961), p. 26
Lagarde ... was more closely attuned to the sufferings of other men and the shortcomings of his culture than
those healthy people who were caught up in the bounding advance of their society.
Lagarde ... sneered at the real, the practical world; he distrusted positivism, loathed materialism, and mocked
progress.
607
In his deprecation of the political and economic man, of the common man of everyday life, and of the
political culture that adapts itself to him, he appeared as an idealist because he had turned his back on
modernity, on practicality, because he preferred to legislate for an implausible future rather than to reform an
intractable present.
Das war mir bei der Versammlung am widerwärtigsten, daß mir der Gestank der Zunft überall
entgegenquoll: geistiges Proletariat, das im Schweiße seines Angesichts seine Artikel fertig macht wie sie
verlangt werden, das von der Wissenschaft, die ja frei macht, und selig, nichts weiß.
Anna de Lagarde, Paul de Lagarde: Erinnerungen aus seinem Leben für die Freunde zusammengestellt (1894), S. 23
What was most repulsive at the meetings was the stench of the guild, which assailed me everywhere:
intellectual proletariat, that labors on it's humdrum articles in the sweat of its brow, that does not know that
science is to make one free and happy.
Paul de Lagarde, describing an 1851 convention of philologists, from Paul de Lagarde: Erinnerungen aus seinem Leben für die Freunde
zusammengestellt (1894), S. 21, as cited in The Politics of Cultural Despair (1961), p. 12, note
Es ist das höchste Glück des Menschen, anzubeten, oder, milder gesagt, andre Menschen über sich
anzuerkennen, die er liebt und die ihn lieben.
Anna de Lagarde, Paul de Lagarde: Erinnerungen aus seinem Leben für die Freunde zusammengestellt (1894), S. 40
Man’s greatest joy is to revere other men, or to put it less extravagantly, to recognize other men above
himself, and to love and be loved by these men.
Paul de Lagarde, as cited in The Politics of Cultural Despair (1961), p. 29
Our speech has ceased to speak, it shouts; it says cute, not beautiful, colossal, not great; it cannot find the
right word any more, because the word is no longer the designation of an object, but the echo of some kind of
gossip about the object.
Paul de Lagarde, “Zum Unterrichtsgesetze,” as cited in The Politics of Cultural Despair (1961), p. 31
HENRIK IBSEN (1828-1906)

Friends are dangerous, not so much for what they make one do, but for what they prevent one from doing.
Ibsen, cited in André Gide, Corydon (1950), p. xix
Tar De livsløgnen fra et gennemsnitsmenneske, så tar De lykken fra ham med det samme.
If you take the life lie from an average man, you take away his happiness as well.
Ibsen, The Wild Duck, Relling, Act V
A Doll House
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2542/2542-h/2542-h.htm
There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt.
Ibsen, A Doll House, Torvald Helmer, Act I
NORA. Sit down here, Torvald. You and I have much to say to one another.
HELMER. Nora—what is this?—this cold, set face?
NORA. Sit down. It will take some time; I have a lot to talk over with you.
HELMER. You alarm me, Nora!—and I don’t understand you.
NORA. No, that is just it. You don’t understand me, and I have never understood you either—before
tonight. No, you mustn’t interrupt me. You must simply listen to what I say. Torvald, this is a settling of
accounts.
HELMER. What do you mean by that?
NORA. Isn’t there one thing that strikes you as strange in our sitting here like this?
HELMER. What is that?
NORA. We have been married now eight years. Does it not occur to you that this is the first time we two,
you and I, husband and wife, have had a serious conversation?
608
HELMER. What do you mean by serious?
NORA. In all these eight years—longer than that—from the very beginning of our acquaintance, we have
never exchanged a word on any serious subject.
HELMER. Was it likely that I would be continually and forever telling you about worries that you could
not help me to bear?
NORA. I am not speaking about business matters. I say that we have never sat down in earnest together to
try and get at the bottom of anything.
HELMER. But, dearest Nora, would it have been any good to you?
NORA. That is just it; you have never understood me. I have been greatly wronged, Torvald—first by papa
and then by you.
HELMER. What! By us two—by us two, who have loved you better than anyone else in the world?
NORA. You have never loved me. You have only thought it pleasant to be in love with me.
HELMER. Nora, what do I hear you saying?
NORA. It is perfectly true, Torvald. When I was at home with papa, he told me his opinion about
everything, and so I had the same opinions; and if I differed from him I concealed the fact, because he
would not have liked it. He called me his doll-child, and he played with me just as I used to play with
my dolls. And when I came to live with you—
HELMER. What sort of an expression is that to use about our marriage?
NORA. I mean that I was simply transferred from papa’s hands into yours. You arranged everything
according to your own taste, and so I got the same tastes as your else I pretended to, I am really not
quite sure which—I think sometimes the one and sometimes the other. When I look back on it, it seems
to me as if I had been living here like a poor woman—just from hand to mouth. I have existed merely
to perform tricks for you, Torvald. But you would have it so. You and papa have committed a great sin
against me. It is your fault that I have made nothing of my life.
HELMER. How unreasonable and how ungrateful you are, Nora! Have you not been happy here?
NORA. No, I have never been happy. I thought I was, but it has never really been so.
HELMER. Not—not happy!
NORA. No, only merry. And you have always been so kind to me. But our home has been nothing but a
playroom. I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I was papa’s doll-child; and here the children have
been my dolls. I thought it great fun when you played with me, just as they thought it great fun when I played
with them. That is what our marriage has been, Torvald.
HELMER. There is some truth in what you say—exaggerated and strained as your view of it is. But for the
future it shall be different. Playtime shall be over, and lesson-time shall begin.
NORA. Whose lessons? Mine, or the children’s?
HELMER. Both yours and the children’s, my darling Nora.
NORA. Alas, Torvald, you are not the man to educate me into being a proper wife for you.
HELMER. And you can say that!
NORA. And I—how am I fitted to bring up the children?
HELMER. Nora!
NORA. Didn’t you say so yourself a little while ago—that you dare not trust me to bring them up?
HELMER. In a moment of anger! Why do you pay any heed to that?
NORA. Indeed, you were perfectly right. I am not fit for the task. There is another task I must undertake
first. I must try and educate myself—you are not the man to help me in that. I must do that for myself. And
that is why I am going to leave you now.
HELMER. What do you say?
NORA. I must stand quite alone, if I am to understand myself and everything about me. It is for that
reason that I cannot remain with you any longer.
HELMER. Nora, Nora!
NORA. I am going away from here now, at once. I am sure Christine will take me in for the night—
HELMER. You are out of your mind! I won’t allow it! I forbid you!
NORA. It is no use forbidding me anything any longer. I will take with me what belongs to myself. I will
take nothing from you, either now or later.
609
HELMER. What sort of madness is this!
NORA. Tomorrow I shall go home—I mean, to my old home. It will be easiest for me to find something to
do there.
HELMER. You blind, foolish woman!
NORA. I must try and get some sense, Torvald.
HELMER. To desert your home, your husband and your children! And you don’t consider what people
will say!
NORA. I cannot consider that at all. I only know that it is necessary for me.
HELMER. It’s shocking. This is how you would neglect your most sacred duties.
NORA. What do you consider my most sacred duties?
HELMER. Do I need to tell you that? Are they not your duties to your husband and your children?
NORA. I have other duties just as sacred.
HELMER. That you have not. What duties could those be?
NORA. Duties to myself.
HELMER. Before all else, you are a wife and a mother.
NORA. I don’t believe that any longer. I believe that before all else I am a reasonable human being,
just as you are—or, at all events, that I must try and become one. I know quite well, Torvald, that
most people would think you right, and that views of that kind are to be found in books; but I can no
longer content myself with what most people say, or with what is found in books. I must think over
things for myself and get to understand them.
HELMER. Can you not understand your place in your own home? Have you not a reliable guide in such
matters as that?—have you no religion?
NORA. I am afraid, Torvald, I do not exactly know what religion is.
HELMER. What are you saying?
NORA. I know nothing but what the clergyman said, when I went to be confirmed. He told us that religion
was this, and that, and the other. When I am away from all this, and am alone, I will look into that matter too.
I will see if what the clergyman said is true, or at all events if it is true for me.
HELMER. This is unheard of in a girl of your age! But if religion cannot lead you aright, let me try and
awaken your conscience. I suppose you have some moral sense? Or—answer me—am I to think you have
none?
NORA. I assure you, Torvald, that is not an easy question to answer. I really don’t know. The thing
perplexes me altogether. I only know that you and I look at it in quite a different light. I am learning, too, that
the law is quite another thing from what I supposed; but I find it impossible to convince myself that the law
is right. According to it a woman has no right to spare her old dying father, or to save her husband’s life. I
can’t believe that.
HELMER. You talk like a child. You don’t understand the conditions of the world in which you live.
NORA. No, I don’t. But now I am going to try. I am going to see if I can make out who is right, the world
or I.
HELMER. You are ill, Nora; you are delirious; I almost think you are out of your mind.
NORA. I have never felt my mind so clear and certain as tonight.
HELMER. And is it with a clear and certain mind that you forsake your husband and your children?
NORA. Yes, it is.
HELMER. Then there is only one possible explanation.
NORA. What is that?
HELMER. You do not love me anymore.
NORA. No, that is just it.
HELMER. Nora!—and you can say that?
NORA. It gives me great pain, Torvald, for you have always been so kind to me, but I cannot help it. I do
not love you any more.
HELMER. Is that a clear and certain conviction too?
NORA. Yes, absolutely clear and certain. That is the reason why I will not stay here any longer.
HELMER. And can you tell me what I have done to forfeit your love?
610
NORA. Yes, indeed I can. It was tonight, when the wonderful thing did not happen; then I saw you were
not the man I had thought you were.
HELMER. Explain yourself better. I don’t understand you.
NORA. I have waited so patiently for eight years; for, goodness knows, I knew very well that wonderful
things don’t happen every day. Then this horrible misfortune came upon me; and then I felt quite certain that
the wonderful thing was going to happen at last. When Krogstad’s letter was lying out there, never for a
moment did I imagine that you would consent to accept this man’s conditions. I was so absolutely certain
that you would say to him: Publish the thing to the whole world. And when that was done—
HELMER. Yes, what then?—when I had exposed my wife to shame and disgrace?
NORA. When that was done, I was so absolutely certain, you would come forward and take everything
upon yourself, and say: I am the guilty one.
HELMER. Nora—!
NORA. You mean that I would never have accepted such a sacrifice on your part? No, of course not. But
what would my assurances have been worth against yours? That was the wonderful thing which I hoped for
and feared; and it was to prevent that, that I wanted to kill myself.
HELMER. I would gladly work night and day for you, Nora—bear sorrow and want for your sake.
But no man would sacrifice his honor for the one he loves.
NORA. It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have done.
HELMER. Oh, you think and talk like a heedless child.
NORA. Maybe. But you neither think nor talk like the man I could bind myself to. As soon as your fear
was over—and it was not fear for what threatened me, but for what might happen to you—when the whole
thing was past, as far as you were concerned it was exactly as if nothing at all had happened. Exactly as
before, I was your little skylark, your doll, which you would in future treat with doubly gentle care, because
it was so brittle and fragile. [Getting up.] Torvald—it was then it dawned upon me that for eight years I had
been living here with a strange man, and had borne him three children—. Oh, I can’t bear to think of it! I
could tear myself into little bits!
HELMER [sadly]. I see, I see. An abyss has opened between us—there is no denying it. But, Nora, would it
not be possible to fill it up?
NORA. As I am now, I am no wife for you.
HELMER. I have it in me to become a different man.
NORA. Perhaps—if your doll is taken away from you.
HELMER. But to part!—to part from you! No, no, Nora, I can’t understand that idea.
NORA. That makes it all the more certain that it must be done.
Henrik Ibsen, A Doll House, Act 3
An Enemy of the People (1882)

The most insidious enemy of truth among us the solid majority.
Dr. Stockmann in Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People (Signet:1970), p. 191
HOVSTAD. The majority is always right. …

DR. STOCKMANN. The majority is never right. I say, never! That’s one of those social lies that any free man
who thinks for himself has to rebel against. Who makes up the majority in any country—the intelligent, or
the stupid? I think we’ve all got to agree that, all over the whole wide earth, the stupid are in a fearsomely
overpowering majority. I’ll be damned to perdition if it’s part of the eternal plan that the stupid are meant to
rule the intelligent! … The majority has the might—unhappily—but it lacks the right. The right is with me,
and the other few, the solitary individuals.
Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People (Signet:1970), pp. 191-2
611
HOVSTAD. Well, and now he’s a revolutionist!
DR. STOCKMANN. Yes, you’re damn right I am, Mr. Hovstad! I’m fomenting a revolution against the lie that
only the majority owns the truth. What are these truths the majority flocks around? They’re the ones so ripe
in age they’re nearly senile. But, gentlemen, when a truth’s grown that old, it’s gone a long way toward
becoming a lie. … These majority truths are … like rancid, tainted pork.
Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People (Signet:1970), p. 192
It’s simply inexcusable of the Courier, day in and day out, to promote the fallacy that it’s the masses, the
solid majority, who stand as the guardian of tolerance and morality—and that degeneracy and corruption of
all kinds are a sort of by-product of culture
I’m not as meek as one certain person; I’m not saying “I forgive them, because they know not what they do.”
Dr. Stockmann in Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People (Signet:1970), pp. 200-201
The height of insanity is that here you’ve got all these full-grown liberals going round in a bloc and deluding
themselves and the others that they’re independent thinkers!
A political party—it’s like a sausage grinder; it grinds all the heads up together into one mash, and then it
turns them out, link by link, into fatheads and meatheads!
I just want to hammer into the heads of these mongrels that the so-called liberals are the most insidious
enemies of free men—that party programs have a way of smothering every new, germinal truth—that acting
out of expedience turns morality and justice into a hollow mockery.
[The party leaders] maul and mutilate [the lesser creatures] till they can’t be more than home owners and
subscribers to the Courier!
The strongest man in the world is the one who stands most alone.
An Enemy of the People, as adapted by Arthur Miller

PETER. You have an ingrained tendency to go your own way, Thomas, and that simply cannot go on in a
well organized society. The individual really must subordinate himself to the overall-or more accurately, to
the authorities who are in charge of the general welfare.
STOCKMANN. Well, that’s probably so, but how the hell does that concern me, Peter?
PETER. My dear Thomas, this is exactly what you will never learn—but you had better watch out because
some day you might pay dearly for it.
Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People, as adapted by Arthur Miller (1950), p. 12
GEORGE MEREDITH (1828-1909)

Willoughby ... was endowed with the power of saying No to those first agents of destruction, besieging
relatives. He said it with the resonant emphasis of death to younger sons. For if the oak is to become a stately
tree, we must provide against the crowding of timber. Also the tree beset with parasites prospers not.
George Meredith, The Egoist (1879)
612
See ye not, Courtesy
Is the true Alchemy,
Turning to gold all it touches and tries?
Like the true knight, so may we
Make the basest that there be
Beautiful by Courtesy!
George Meredith, “The Song of Courtesy”
“Modern Love”
http://books.google.com/books?id=uH8_AAAAYAAJ
Cold as a mountain in its star-pitched tent,

Stood high Philosophy, less friend than foe:
Whom self-caged Passion, from its prison-bars,
Is always watching with a wondering hate.
George Meredith, “Modern Love” 4
Not till the fire is dying in the grate,

Look we for any kinship with the stars.
Oh, wisdom never comes when it is gold,
And the great price we pay for it full worth:
We have it only when we are half earth.
A world of household matters filled her mind,

Wherein he saw hypocrisy designed.
Shamed nature, then, confesses love can die:

And most she punishes the tender fool
Who will believe what honours her the most!
But, no: we are two reed-pipes, coarsely stopped:

The God once filled them with his mellow breath;
And they were music till he flung them down.
Shall I, unsustained,
Drag on Love's nerveless body thro' all time?
I must have slept, since now I wake. Prepare,
You lovers, to know Love a thing of moods:
Not like hard life, of laws. In Love's deep woods,
I dreamt of loyal Life:—the offence is there!
Love's jealous woods about the sun are curled;
At least, the sun far brighter there did beam.—
My crime is, that the puppet of a dream,
I plotted to be worthy of the world.
613
'I play for Seasons; not Eternities!'
Says Nature, laughing on her way. 'So must
All those whose stake is nothing more than dust!’
And lo, she wins, and of her harmonies
She is full sure! Upon her dying rose,
She drops a look of fondness, and goes by,
Scarce any retrospection in her eye.
At dinner, she is hostess, I am host.

Went the feast ever cheerfuller? She keeps
The Topic over intellectual deeps
In buoyancy afloat. They see no ghost.
With sparkling surface-eyes we ply the ball:
It is in truth a most contagious game:
Hiding The Skeleton, shall be its name.
Such play as this, the devils might appal!
But here's the greater wonder; in that we
Enamoured of an acting nought can tire,
Each other, like true hypocrites, admire;
Warm-lighted looks, Love's ephemerioe,
Shoot gaily o'er the dishes and the wine.
We waken envy of our happy lot.
Fast, sweet, and golden, shows the marriage-knot.
Dear guests, you now have seen Love's corpse-light shine.
LEO TOLSTOY (1828-1910)

There are many things to know in this world, but how to live is the only thing that really matters.
Tolstoy
I sit on a man's back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very
sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back.
Tolstoy, “What then must we do?”
Christ says, "Do not resist evil." The sole object of courts of law is – to resist evil. Christ enjoins us to return
good for evil. Courts of law return evil for evil. Christ says, "Make no distinction between the just and the
unjust." Courts of law do nothing else. Christ says, "Forgive all. Forgive not once, not seven times, but
forgive without end." "Love your enemies." "Do good to those who hate you." Courts of law do not forgive,
but they punish; they do not do good, but evil, to those whom they call the enemies of society. So, the true
sense of the doctrine is that Christ forbids all courts of law.
Tolstoy, What I Believe (1885), Ch. 3
Government is violence, Christianity is meekness, non-resistance, love. And, therefore, government cannot
be Christian, and a man who wishes to be a Christian must not serve government.
Tolstoy, Letter to Dr. Eugen Heinrich Schmitt (1896)
614
From the time that the heads of government assumed an external and nominal Christianity, men began to
invent all the impossible, cunningly devised theories by means of which Christianity can be reconciled with
government. But no honest and serious-minded man of our day can help seeing the incompatibility of true
Christianity — the doctrine of meekness, forgiveness of injuries, and love — with government, with its
pomp, acts of violence, executions, and wars. The profession of true Christianity not only excludes the
possibility of recognizing government, but even destroys its very foundations.
Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894), Ch. X
The State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens.
Tolstoy, Letter to Vasily Botkin
It is generally supposed that conservatives are usually old people, and that those in favor of change are the
young. This is not quite correct. Many conservatives are young people: those who want to live but who do
not think about how to live, and have not time to think, and therefore take as a model for themselves a way of
life they have seen.
Tolstoy, The Devil
Yesterday a conversation about divinity and faith suggested to me a great, a stupendous idea to the
realization of which I feel capable of dedicating my whole life. This is the idea—the founding of a new
religion corresponding to the development of mankind: the religion of Christ, but purged of all dogma and
mystery, a practical religion, not promising future bliss but realizing bliss on earth. I understand that to bring
this idea to fulfillment the conscientious labor of generations toward this end will be necessary.
Tolstoy, Journal Entry 1855, cited in Selected Essays (New York: 1964), p. v
It gives one great inner force, calmness and happiness to communicate with such great thinkers as Socrates,
Epictetus, Arnold, Parker. ... They tell us about what is most important.
Tolstoy, Letter to Chertkov, 1885
I cannot understand how some people can live without communicating with the wisest people who ever
lived on earth.
Tolstoy, Letter to Gusev, May 16, 1908
I become more and more astonished by the ignorance, and especially by the cultural, moral ignorance of our
society. ... All our education should be directed to the accumulation of the cultural heritage of our ancestors,
the best thinkers of the world.
Tolstoy
Letter to a Hindu (1908)

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Letter_to_a_Hindu
By the term "scientific" is understood just what was formerly understood by the term "religious": just as
formerly everything called "religious" was held to be unquestionable simply because it was called religious,
so now all that is called "scientific" is held to be unquestionable.
Tolstoy, Letter to a Hindu (1908), part 4
615
A Calendar of Wisdom (1908)
When I translated thoughts by German, French, or Italian thinkers, I did not strictly follow the original,
usually making it shorter and easier to understand, and omitting some words. ... In some cases I even express
the thought entirely in my own words. I did this because the purpose of my book is not to give exact, word-
for-word translations of thoughts created by other authors, but to use the great and fruitful intellectual
heritage created by different writers to present for a wide reading audience an easily accessible, everyday
circle of reading which will arouse their best thought and feelings.
I hope the readers of this book may experience the same benevolent and elevating feeling which I have
experienced when I was working on its creation, and which I experience again and again, when I reread it
every day, working on the enlargement and improvement of the previous edition.
Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans.(1997), Introduction
The difference between real material poison and intellectual poison is that most material poison is disgusting
to the taste, but intellectual poison, which takes the form of cheap newspapers or bad books, can
unfortunately sometimes be attractive.
Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), January 1
Those who know the rules of true wisdom are baser than those who love them. Those who love them are
baser than those who follow them.
Tolstoy, “Chinese proverb,” A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), January 3
Knowledge is real knowledge only when it is acquired by the efforts of your intellect, not by memory.
Only when we forget what we are taught do we start to have real knowledge.
Thoreau, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), January 9
A constant flow of thoughts expressed by other people can stop and deaden your own thought and your own
initiative. ... That is why constant learning softens your brain. ... Stopping the creation of your own thoughts
to give room for the thoughts from books reminds me of Shakespeare's remark about his contemporaries who
sold their land in order to see other countries.
Schopenhauer, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), January 9
Read less, study less, but think more.

Learn from your teachers and from the books you read only those things which you really need and really
want to know.
Perfection is impossible without humility. Why should I strive for perfection, if I am already good enough?
The most important feature of Christ's character was ... his confidence in the greatness of the human soul.
Tolstoy, paraphrasing William Ellery Channing, A Calendar of Wisdom, January 11
We would think a man insane who, instead of covering his house with a roof and putting windows in his
window frames, goes out in stormy weather, and scolds the wind, the rain, and the clouds. But we all do the
same when we scold and blame the evil in other people instead of fighting the evil which exists in us. It is
possible to get rid of the evil inside of us, as it is possible to make a roof and windows for our house. This is
possible. But it is not possible for us to destroy evil in this world, just as we cannot order the weather to
change and the clouds to disappear. If, instead of teaching others, we would educate and improve ourselves,
then there would be less evil in this world, and all people would live better lives.
616
It seems to us that the most important work in the world is the work which we can see: building a house,
plowing the land, feeding cattle, gathering fruits; and that the work which is invisible, the work done by our
soul, is not important. But our invisible work at the improvement of our soul is the most important work in
the world, and all other visible kinds of work are useful only when we do this major work.
When people wanted to kill a bear in the ancient times, they hung a heavy log over a bowl of honey. The
bear would push the log away in order to eat the honey. The log would swing back and hit the bear. The bear
would become irritated and push the log even harder, and it would hit him harder in return. This would
continue until the log killed the bear. People behave in the same way when they return evil of the evil they
receive.
An unbeliever says: “What is spirit? What I ate and what I enjoyed, this is what I posses, this is material and
real!” And such a person, without thinking much, takes care only of the outer things, arranging in order only
his own mean, dirty affairs; he becomes a liar, a snob, a slave, and does not feel any higher needs: freedom,
truth, and love.
Alexander Arkhangelsky, cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), February 1
A man is free only when he lives in truth, and truth can be perceived only by the intellect.
Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), February 4
If you throw some nuts and cookies on a road, you will eventually see children come, pick them up, and
start to argue and fight for them. Adults would not fight for such things. And even children would not pick
up the nuts’ empty shells.
For a wise man, the wealth, the glory and the rewards of this world are like sweets or empty shells on a
road. Let the children pick them up and fight for them. Let them kiss the hands of the rich men, the rulers,
and their servants. For the wise one, all these are but empty shells.
Epictetus, cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), February 4
Perhaps it is even more important to know what one should not think about than what one should think
about.
In order to change the nature of things, either within yourself or in others, one should change, not the events,
but those thoughts which created whose events.
If a man does not work at necessary and good things, then he will work at unnecessary and stupid things.
Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), March 7
Real wisdom is not the knowledge of everything, but the knowledge of which things in life are
necessary, which are less necessary, and which are completely unnecessary to know. Among the most
necessary knowledge is the knowledge of how to live well. ... At present, people study useless sciences,
but forget to study this, the most important knowledge.
A person who knows little likes to talk, and one who knows much mostly keeps silent. This is because a
person who knows little thinks that everything he knows is important, and wants to tell everyone. A person
who knows much also knows that there is much more he doesn’t know. That’s why he speaks only when it is
necessary to speak, and when he is not asked questions, he keeps his silence.
Tolstoy, “after J. J. Rousseau,” A Calendar of Wisdom, , P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), March 16
If you want to correct your own failings, you do not have the time to waste in blaming other people.
617
When you are in company, do not forget what you have found out when you were thinking in solitude; and
when you are meditating in solitude, think about what you found out by communicating with other people.
Science can be divided into an infinite number of disciplines, and the amount of knowledge that can be
pursued in each discipline is limitless. The most critical piece of knowledge, then, is the knowledge of what
is essential to learn and what isn’t.
Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), April 1
Spiritual effort and the joy that comes from understanding life go hand in hand like physical exertion
and rest. Without physical exertion, there is no joy in rest; without spiritual effort, there can be no
joyful understanding of life.
Life could be limitless joy, if we would only take it for what it is, in the way it is given to us.
A truly wise man is always joyful.

When joy disappears, look for your mistake.

Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, , P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), April 4
People involve themselves in countless activities which they consider to be important, but they forget about
one activity which is more important and necessary than any other, and which includes all other things: the
improvement of their soul.
When we treat our neighbors as they deserve to be treated, we make them even worse; when we treat them as
if they were who we wish they were, we improve them.
Goethe, cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), April 7
One can deny Christ in various ways: one can blaspheme rudely, or mock his greatness. But such ways are
not dangerous. ... But there is another way to deny Christ: this is when you call Him your master and you
claim to follow His commandments, but you suppress any free thought by quoting his words, and disguise all
stupidities, all mistakes, and all sins of the people in his name. This second way is the truly dangerous one.
We live in this world like a child who enters a room where a clever person is speaking. The child did not hear
the beginning of the speech, and he leaves before the end; and there are certain things which he hears but
does not understand.
What is important is not the quantity of your knowledge, but its quality. You can know many things without
knowing that which is most important.
Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), April18
It is a mistake to think that there are times when you can safely address a person without love.
In the same way as you cannot work with bees without being cautious, you cannot work with people without
being mindful of their humanity.
The worst mistake which was ever made in this world was the separation of political science from ethics.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), April 21
618
Give thanks to God, who made necessary things simple, and complicated things unnecessary.
Gregory Skovoroda, cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), April 23
Most of our spending is done to forward our efforts to look like others.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), April 23
Every great thing is done in a quiet, humble, simple way— ... you cannot do such things when there are
thunder and lightning around you. Great and true things are always simple and humble.
A bad mood is often the reason for blaming others; but very often blaming others causes bad feelings in us:
the more we blame others, the worse we feel.
It seems that it is impossible to live without discovering the purpose of your life. And the first thing which a
person should do is to understand the meaning of life. But the majority of people who consider themselves
to be educated are proud that they have reached such great height that they cease to care about the
meaning of existence.
If you do not know your place in the world and the meaning of your life, you should know there is something
to blame; and it is not the social system, or your intellect, but the way in which you have directed your
intellect.
He who sees his life as a process of spiritual perfection does not fear external events.
Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), May 1
Clever people study in order to know more. Undeserving people study in order to be more known.
Tolstoy, “Eastern Wisdom,” A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), May 3
Every person has only one purpose: to find perfection in goodness. Therefore, only that knowledge is
necessary which leads to this.
A person who tries to find good outside himself, wither in this life or in the one to come, is making a
mistake.
In the long run, there is only one subject worthy of study, and this is the different forms of transformation of
the spirit.
Henri Amiel, cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), May 10
I can send my thoughts to many different people at once; they will cross the seas and they will go to different
lands if there is God’s will, and the power of love and wisdom. My thoughts by themselves are a spiritual
power; they can exist at the same time in thousands of places. My body, however, can only exist at one place
at one time.
Lucy Malory, cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans., May 10
A wise man sets requirements only for himself; an unwise man makes requirements for others.
Tolstoy, “Chinese Wisdom,” A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), May 13
Only the truth which was acquired by your own thinking, through the efforts of your intellect, becomes a
member of your own body, and only this truth really belongs to us.
Schopenhauer, cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), May 13
619
Fear nobody and nothing. That which is the most precious matter in you can be damaged by no one and by
nothing.
The quality of a really virtuous person is to be unknown to people, or misunderstood by people, but not to be
disappointed by this.
Tolstoy, “Chinese Wisdom,” A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), May 17
It only seems that people are busy with trade, with making agreements, negotiations and wars, science and
the arts. There is in fact only one thing which people do; this is to search for the understanding of the moral
law by which they live. And this understanding is not only the most important but the only real concern for
all humankind.
Your understanding of your inner self holds the meaning of your life.
To be a person with high morals is to be a person with a liberated soul.

Confucius, cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), May 20
The growth of your desires is not the way to perfection, as many people think. To the contrary, the more a
person limits himself, the better he can understand his human dignity, and the more free, the more brave he
becomes.
Very often, all the activity of the human mind is directed not in revealing the truth, but in hiding the truth.
The court jury has, as it’s raison d’être, the task of preserving society as it exists now, and therefore, it
persecutes and executes those who stand higher than the general level of society.
People strive in this world, not for those things which are truly good, but for the possession of many things
which they call their property.
A person who has spoiled his stomach will criticize his meal saying that the food is bad; the same thing
happens with people who are not satisfied with their lives.
If it seems to us that we are not satisfied with life, we should see this as a reason to be unsatisfied with
ourselves.
Cruel people are busy all the time, as if to find justification for the cruelty of their dealings.
Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), June 1
He who is looking for wisdom is already wise; and he who thinks that he has found wisdom is a stupid man.
Tolstoy, “Eastern Wisdom,” as cited in A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), June 2
The more respect that objects, customs, or laws are given, the more attentively you must question the
right these things have to this respect.
Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), (modified) June 4
All material changes in our everyday life are small in comparison with those in our spiritual life.
620
We regret losing a purse full of money, but a good thought which has come to us, which we’ve heard or read,
a thought which we should have remembered and applied to our life, which could have improved the
world—we lose this thought and promptly forget about it, and we do not regret it, although it is more
precious than millions.
The more strictly and mercilessly you judge yourself, the more just and kind you will be in the judgment of
others.
Confucius, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), June 14
A person who understands the law but who is far from the love of God is like a bank official who has the
keys for the inside of the building but not the key for the front door.
The Talmud, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), June 15
The commandments of God should be followed because of love of God, not because of fear of God.
The Talmud, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), June 15
If you love a person without loving God, which is the goodness inside of him, then you plant the seeds for
future disappointments and sufferings with this love.
In order to feel complete love, we can either delude ourselves that some imperfect object of our love is
“perfection” or we can love perfection, which is God.
When you suffer, think not on how you can escape suffering, but concentrate your efforts on what kind of
inner moral and spiritual perfection this suffering requires.
I praise Christianity because it develops, strengthens, and elevates my intellectual nature.

William Ellery Channing, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), June 26
In order not to pour out a vessel full of water, you should hold it evenly. In order to have a razor sharp, you
should sharpen it. The same should happen with your soul if you are looking for real goodness.
Lao Tzu, cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), June 27
If there is something great in you, it will not appear on your first call. It will not appear and come to you
easily, without any work and effort.
Emerson, cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), June 27
When everything you see appears in dark, gloomy shades, and seems baleful, and you want to tell others only
bad and unpleasant things, do not trust your perceptions. Treat yourself as though you were drunk. Take no
steps and actions until this state has disappeared.
Instead of saving humanity, every person should save himself.

Alexander Herzen, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), June 30
Every truth has its origin in God. When it is manifested in a man, this in not because it comes from him, but
because he has such a quantity of transparency that he can reveal it.
Pascal, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), July 1
Life is given to us in the same way as a child is given to a nanny, so that it can be raised to maturity.
Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), July 1
621
A work of art makes a great impression on us only when it gives us something which, even with all the
efforts of our intellect, we cannot understand completely.
Schopenhauer, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), July 2
You cannot do anything wonderful driven by competition; you cannot do anything noble from pride.
John Ruskin, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), July 2
Real science studies and makes accessible that knowledge which people at that period of history think
important, and real art transfers this truth from the domain of knowledge to the domain of feelings.
When you have no freedom, then your life becomes the life of an animal.
Giuseppe Mazzini, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), July 3
A person has done evil, so another person, or a group of people, in order to fight this evil, cannot think of
anything better than to create another evil, which they call punishment.
Every punishment is based, not on logic or the feeling of justice, but on the desire to wish evil on those who
have done evil to you or to another person.
Everything about our present system of punishments and about all criminal law will be thought of by future
generations in the same way that we think of cannibalism or human sacrifice to the pagan gods. “How did
they not see the uselessness and cruelty of those things which they did?” our descendents will say about us.
Follow the best way of life you possibly can, and habit will make this way suitable and pleasant to you.
Pay bad people with your goodness; fight their hatred with your kindness. Even if you do not achieve victory
over other people, you will conquer yourself.
Henri Amiel, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), July 8
Do not fear the lack of knowledge, fear false knowledge.

In the world today, real faith has in most case been replaced by public opinion.
Wise consumption is much more complicated than wise production.

A person is higher than an animal because of his ability to speak, but he is lower than an animal if he cannot
properly use this ability.
Muslih-Ud-Din Saadi, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), July 16
Those people speak most who do not have much to say.

People know little, because they try to understand those things which are not open to them for understanding:
God, eternity, spirit; or those things which are not worth thinking about: how hot water becomes frozen, or a
new theory of numbers, or how viruses can transmit illnesses. How to live your life is the only real
knowledge.
622
Repentance always precedes perfection.
As rules go, “You should behave just as other people behave” is among the most dangerous; it almost always
results in your behaving badly.
La Bruyère, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), August 7
For the majority of mankind, religion is a habit, or, more precisely, tradition is their religion. Though it
seems strange, I think that the first step to moral perfection is your liberation from the religion in which you
were raised. Not a single person has come to perfection except by following this way.
Thoreau, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), August 8
If we think every word in every holy book is true, then we have created an idol.
Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), August 8
If you suffer misfortunes in your life, look for their cause, not in your actions, but in the thoughts which
inspired them, and try to improve these thoughts.
You should not be upset by the sight of wisdom being criticized. Wisdom would not be wisdom if it did not
reveal the stupidity of a bad life, and people would not be people if they endured this revelation without
criticism.
One hour of honest, serious thinking is more precious than weeks spent in empty talk.
Mysterious language is not a sign of wisdom. The wiser a person is, the simpler the language he uses to
express his thoughts.
Lucy Mallory, as sited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), August 22
Justice is achieved not in striving for justice, but with love.

In order to be just, you should make a self-sacrifice, be unjust to yourself.

[opposition] Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), August 26
A person who knows all sciences but does not know himself is a poor and ignorant person.
When you feel the desire for power, you should stay in solitude for some time.
Thoreau, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), August 27
The way to fame goes thorough the palaces, the way to happiness does through the markets, the way to virtue
goes through the deserts.
Tolstoy, “Chinese Proverb,” A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), August 27
As soon as the higher ideal is put before us, all false ideals will fade away as the stars fade away when they
meet the sun.
The creation and sale of most art today is pure prostitution.

623
Real art can only rarely be created even by a real artist; like a child in a mother’s womb, it is the ripened fruit
of his prior life. False art, though, can be ceaseless produced by craftsmen, according to the dictates of a
market.
True art comes out of an artist’s urgent need to express the feelings that have formed inside him, just as a
mother needs to give birth to her baby. False art answers only to profit.
You [may] not sell your talent, your genius; as soon as you do, you are a prostitute. You [may] sell your
work, but not your soul.
John Ruskin, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), August 31
Until they throw the money changers out of the temple of art, it will never be a real temple.
Soldiers who stand idle in a shelter during a battle as reinforcements will try to involve themselves in almost
any activity in order to distract themselves from the impending danger. It seems to me that people who want
to save themselves from life behave like these soldiers: some distract themselves with vanity, some with
cards, politics, laws, women, gambling, horses, hunting, wine, or state affairs.
Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), September 1
The closer people are to the truth, the more tolerant they are of the mistakes of others.
Goodness lies in constantly striving for perfection.

The further you progress, the higher the ideal of perfection toward which you strive rises.
The strongest proof that in the name of “science” we pursue unworthy and sometimes even harmful things is
the existence of a science of punishment.
People jump back and forth in pursuit of pleasures only because they see the emptiness of their lives more
clearly than they do the emptiness of whichever new entertainment attracts them.
Pascal, cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), September 6
A misconception remains a misconception, even when it is shared by the majority of people.

There is a condition in which a person feels himself the architect of his life. It occurs when he concentrates
all his efforts and all his intellect on the present moment.
Science fulfills its purpose, not when it explains the reasons for the dark spots on the sun, but when it
understands and explains the laws of our own life, and the consequences of violating these laws.
John Ruskin, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), September 9
No matter how great our knowledge may be, it cannot help us fulfill our life’s major purpose—our moral
perfection.
The love of great wealth commands you, “Bring me your soul as a sacrifice,” and people do so.
Saint John Chrysostom, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), September 12
624
Excessive dress prevents the body from moving freely. Excessive wealth interferes with the movements of
our soul.
You should treat your thoughts the way you treat yourself, and treat your wishes the way you treat your
children.
Tolstoy, “Chinese Wisdom,” A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), September 13
The more upset a person is with other people, and with circumstances, and the more satisfied he is with
himself, the further he is from wisdom.
Our life would become wonderful if we could see all the disgusting things which exist in it.
Thoreau, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), September 14
In real life illusions can only transform our life for a moment, but in the domain of thoughts and the intellect,
misconceptions may be accepted as truth for thousands of years, and make a laughingstock of whole nations,
mute the noble wishes of mankind, make slaves from people and lie to them. These misconceptions are the
enemies with which the wisest men in the history of mankind try to struggle. The force of truth is great, but
its victory is difficult.
Schopenhauer, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), September 15
A person cries out from pain when he takes up hard physical work after a period of idleness. Any rest from
the struggle for spiritual improvement brings the same pain.
We cannot prevent birds from flying over our heads, but we can keep them from making nests on top of our
heads. Similarly, bad thoughts sometimes appear in our mind, but we can choose whether we allow them to
live there, to create a nest for themselves, and to breed evil deeds.
Martin Luther, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), September 21
Do not fear the lack of knowledge, but truly fear unnecessary knowledge which is acquired only to please
vanity.
It is not enough to be a hardworking person. Think: what do you work at?

Thoreau, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), September 25
All thinking beings have the same basic intellect. Therefore, all wise men share the same idea of perfection.
Marcus Aurelius, cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), September 26
If you see that you are not behaving according to your inner desires, but because of some outer influence,
stop and consider whether what drives you is good or bad.
A sage ... is afraid of only one thing—to pretend to know the things which he does not know.
Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), October 1
Wealth will no give you satisfaction. The more your wealth grows, the more your requirements grow with it.
It is difficult if not impossible to find some reasonable limit for acquiring more and more property.
Schopenhauer, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), October 3
There are two ways not to suffer from poverty. The first is to acquire more wealth. The second is to limit
your requirements. The first is not always within our power, but the second is always in our power.
625
Your spirit must constantly assert itself because your body is constantly exerting itself.
People are taught how to speak, but their major concern should be how to keep silent.
Let your tongue become accustomed to the words “I do not know.”

Tolstoy, “Eastern Wisdom,” A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), October 14
Who am I? What should I do? What should I believe in? What should I hope for? All of philosophy is in
these questions, said the philosopher Lichtenberg. But among all these questions, the most important one is
that which is in the middle. If a person knows what de should do, he will understand everything which he
should know.
Compassion expressed in response to rage is the same as water for fire. When you are in a rage, try to feel
compassion for the other person, and then your rage will disappear.
Tolstoy, “After Arthur Schopenhauer” A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), October 24
A king asked a holy man, “Do you remember about me?” The holy man answered, “Yes, I think about you
when I forget about God.”
Muslih-ud-din Saadi, cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), October 25
Those who do not think independently are under the influence of somebody else who thinks for them. If you
give your thoughts to somebody else, it is a more shameful slavery than if you give you body to someone to
possess.
People say that God created mankind after his image. This means that man created God after his image.
Lichtenberg, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), October 31
The first and most difficult obstruction to the fulfillment of the law of God is that fact that our society’s
existing laws are completely opposed to this law.
Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), November 3
The more urgently you want to speak, the more likely it is that you will say something foolish.
Those who are lighthearted remind me of death.

Tolstoy, “Buddhist Wisdom,” A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), November 5
There are many people who claim to be teachers of others who should themselves be taught first of all.
Tolstoy, “Eastern Wisdom,” A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), November 9
The most important thing in life is the path to perfection, and what kind of perfection can exist if a person is
proud and satisfied with himself?
Outer consequences are not in our power to control; it is only possible to make an effort, and inner
consequences always follow from our effort.
The first rule of achieving goodness is this: think only about self-perfection.
Tolstoy, “Chinese wisdom,” A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), November 13
626
It is harmful to eat if you are not hungry. it is even worse to have sex if you lack desire. But even more
harmful is to try to think when you do not wish to, or to be engaged in meaningless intellectual
activity. Many people do so when they want to improve their position.
What is important in knowledge is not quantity, but quality. It is important to know what knowledge is
significant, what is less so, and what is trivial.
Why should a person be rich? Why should he have expensive horses, rich clothes, wonderful rooms, and the
leisure to visit public places of entertainment? Because he does not have enough thoughts to accompany his
intellect. Give this person the inner work of his intellect, and he will be happier than the richest man.
Emerson, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), November 15
It is not a virtue, but a kind of deceitful similitude, to fulfill our duty for the purpose of its reward.
Cicero, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), November 18
Persecution is precious because it reveals whether a person lives with real faith.
Your whole life should be lived as a heroic deed.

I am the tool with which God works. My virtue is to participate in this work, and I can do so if I keep the
instrument which is given to me, namely my soul, in immaculate condition.
It is as wrong for one person to rule many as for many to rule one.
Vladimir Chertkov, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), November 22
Our soul’s perfection is our life’s purpose; any other purpose, keeping death in mind, has no substance.
Until such time as people reject the power of government to govern, to legislate, and to punish, war will
never stop.
Just as one candle lights another and can light thousands of other candles, so one heart illuminates another
heart and can illuminate thousands of other hearts.
Beware of those who want to convince you that it is impossible to strive for good just because it is
impossible to reach perfection.
John Ruskin, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), November 26
What is important is not the length of life, but the depth of life. What is important is not to make life longer,
but to take your soul out of time, as every sublime act does.
People who try to force circumstances become their slaves.

The Talmud, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), November 30
Emerson said that music helps people to find the greatness in their souls. The same can be said about
any form of art.
Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), December 3
627
Religion and law try to escape from criticism, religion by saying that it is divine and law by showing
that it is powerful.
Kant, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), December 5
Ignorance cannot lead to evil, misconceptions lead to evil. It is not what people do know, it’s what they
pretend they do.
Rousseau, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), December 6
Every misconception is a poison: there are no harmless misconceptions.

Schopenhauer, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), December 6
To feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to visit the ill in the hospital—these are acts of mercy, but there is
one charitable deed which cannot be compared to them: to free your brother from misconception.
One of the major obstacles impeding any positive future change in our lives is that we are too busy with our
current work or activity.
John Ruskin, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), December 10
False shame ... is even worse than false pride. Pride can support evil, but false shame stops goodness.
John Ruskin, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), December 10
Only misconceptions need to be supported by elaborate arguments. Truth can always stand alone.
All goodness is as nothing compared to the goodness of truth; all sweets are an nothing compared to the
sweetness of truth. The bliss of truth surpasses all other joys in the world.
Tolstoy, “Buddhist Wisdom,” A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), December 15
They who have decided to dedicate their lives to spiritual perfection will never be dissatisfied or unhappy,
because all that they want is in their power.
Pascal, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), December 19
At the highest level of consciousness, an individual is alone. Such solitude can seem strange, unusual, even
difficult. Foolish people try to escape it by means of various dissipations in order to get away from this high
point, to some lower point, but wise people remain at this high point, with the help of prayer.
Path of Life (1909)

Genuine religion is not about speculating about God or the soul or about what happened in the past or will
happen in the future; it cares only about one thing—finding out exactly what should or should not be done in
this lifetime.
Tolstoy, “Based on Kant,” Path of Life, M. Cote, trans. (2002), p. 3
If a religion teaches that we have to reject this life to receive an eternal life, it is a pseudo-religion. We
should not reject this life for eternal life, because eternal life is already in this life.
Hindu Vamana Purana, as cited in Tolstoy, Path of Life, M. Cote, trans. (2002), p. 3
It is terrible when people do not know God, but it is worse when people identify as God what is not God.
Tolstoy, Path of Life, M. Cote, trans. (2002), p. 5
When a person will not reject a belief he has always held, because he is afraid to make a mistake, he
resembles a person who ties himself to a stake to avoid getting lost.
Lucy Mallory, as cited in Tolstoy, Path of Life, M. Cote, trans. (2002), p. 8
628
Until we know what is “within” us, what good does it do to know what is external to us? How can we know
the world, if we do not know ourselves? Can someone who is blind in his own home be observant in
someone else’s house?
Skovoroda, as cited in Tolstoy, Path of Life, M. Cote, trans. (2002), p. 10
We measure the earth, sun, stars, and ocean depths. We burrow into the depths of the earth for gold. We
search for rivers and mountains on the moon. We discover new stars and know their magnitudes. We sound
the depths of gorges and build clever machines. Each day brings a new invention. What don’t we think of!
What can’t we do! But there is something else, the most important thing of all, that we are missing. We do
not know exactly what it is. We are like a small child who knows he does not feel well but cannot explain
why. We are uneasy, because we know a lot of superfluous facts; but we do not know what is really
important—ourselves.
Tolstoy, “based on G. Skovoroda,” Path of Life, M. Cote, trans. (2002), p. 10
Saying that what we call our “selves” consist only of our bodies and that reason, soul, and love arise only
from the body, is like saying that what we call our body is equivalent to the food that feeds the body. It is
true that my body is only made up of digested food and that my body would not exist without food, but my
body is not the same as food. Food is what the body needs for life, but it is not the body itself. The same
thing is true of my soul. It is true that without my body there would not be that which I call my soul, but my
soul is not my body. The soul may need the body, but the body is not the soul.
Someone who looks for good outside himself is like a shepherd who searches the fold for the lamb in his
arms.
Hindu Vamana Purana, as cited in Tolstoy, Path of Life, M. Cote, trans. (2002), p. 13
All our problems are caused by forgetting what lives within us, and we sell our souls for the “bowl of
stew” of bodily satisfactions.
You worldly-minded people are most unfortunate! You are surrounded with sorrows and troubles overhead
and underfoot and to the right and to the left, and you are enigmas even to yourselves.
Division of labor is a justification for sloth.

It is this humiliating transformation of men into machines [caused by the “division of labor”] that causes
workers to dumbly, destructively, and vainly fight for a freedom whose essence they themselves do not
understand. Their hatred of wealth and the ruling classes is not evoked by the pangs of hunger nor by the
pinpricks of offended pride. ... It is not that people do not have enough to eat, but that they do not get any
satisfaction out of the work they do to earn their bread. Therefore, they regard money as the only means of
achieving satisfaction. It is not that people suffer from the contempt of the upper classes, but that they cannot
stand their own self-contempt based on their feeling that the work to which they are condemned denigrates
and deforms them into something less than human.
John Ruskin, as cited in Tolstoy, Path of Life, M. Cote, trans. (2002), p. 79
People run here and there seeking amusement, because they sense the emptiness of their lives; but they do
not see the emptiness of their latest amusement.
Pascal, as cited in Tolstoy, Path of Life, M. Cote, trans. (2002), p. 81
No one has yet added up all the heavy, stress-filled workdays as well as the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
lives that are wasted to produce the world’s amusements. It is for this reason that “amusements” are not so
amusing.
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Honest work is much better than a mansion.
There were two brothers. One served a king, and the other fed himself by manual labor. The rich brother said
to the poor one: “Why don’t you come work for the king; you won’t have to do any more hard work.” The
poor one answered: “Why don’t you take up hard word; you won’t have to endure the king’s insults or be at
his beck and call.” Wise men have said, “It is better to serenely eat the bread you have earned yourself than
to wear fine clothes and be subservient.” Better to get your hands covered in mortar and mud than fold them
on your chest as a sign of servility.
Saadi, as cited in Tolstoy, Path of Life, M. Cote, trans. (2002), p. 82
Giving alms is only a virtuous deed when you give money that you yourself worked to get.
Wealth is a great sin in the eyes of God. Poverty is a great sin in the eyes of man.
Proverb, cited in Tolstoy, Path of Life, M. Cote, trans. (2002), p. 86
Wealth brings a heavy purse; poverty, a light spirit.

Proverb, cited in Tolstoy, Path of Life, M. Cote, trans. (2002), p. 88
Wealth trains people to be vain, cruel, complacently ignorant, and dissolute.

Puissier, as cited in Tolstoy, Path of Life, M. Cote, trans. (2002), p. 88
The compassionate are not rich; therefore, the rich are not compassionate.
Manchurian saying, as cited in Tolstoy, Path of Life, M. Cote, trans. (2002), p. 89
If a poor person envies a rich person, he is no better than the rich person.
When a person inflates his own importance, he does not see his own sins; and his sins get bigger right along
with him.
It is often better for a person to recognize a sin than to do a good deed. Recognizing a sin makes a person
humble. Doing a good deed often can feed a person’s pride.
When a person is haughty, he distances himself from other people and thereby deprives himself of one of
life’s biggest pleasures—open, joyful communication with everyone.
An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a
person’s main task in life—becoming a better person.
“He who exalts himself shall be humbled; and he who humbles himself shall be exalted.” (Matthew 23:12)
The person who exalts himself ... will be humbled, because a person who considers himself to be good,
intelligent, and kind will not even try to become better, smarter, kinder. The humble person will be exalted,
because he considers himself bad and will try to become better, kinder, and more reasonable.
The most important person is the one you are with in this moment.
In life, in true life, there can be nothing better than what is. Wanting something different than what is, is
blasphemy.
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Memento mori—remember death! These are important words. If we kept in mind that we will soon inevitably
die, our lives would be completely different. If a person knows that he will die in a half hour, he certainly
will not bother doing trivial, stupid, or, especially, bad things during this half hour. Perhaps you have half a
century before you die—what makes this any different from a half hour?
People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest
thing—refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.
Our habitual thoughts give a certain cast to everything we encounter. If our thoughts are false, they will turn
even the noblest truths into lies. Our habitual thoughts create a dwelling for us that is even more impregnable
than our homes. We carry it everywhere we go like a snail carries the shell it lives in.
Lucy Mallory, as cited in Tolstoy, Path of Life, M. Cote, trans. (2002), p. 227
Miscellaneous Letters and Essays

http://books.google.com/books?id=Nx9JAAAAMAAJ
There is one common and chief feature of a good life,—it is the striving after perfection in love.
Tolstoy, “Thoughts on Education” (1901), L. Wiener, trans. (1905)
For the education of children to be successful, the educators must continue to educate themselves and aid one
another more and more to realize that toward which they are striving. There may be very many means for
that, besides the chief internal means,—the labour of every man over his own soul.
Only with complete freedom can the best pupils be brought to the limits which they can reach, and not be
kept back for the sake of the weak pupils, and it is these best pupils that are needed most. Only with freedom
can we avoid the usual phenomenon,—the dislike for subjects which in their proper time and with freedom
of instruction would be liked; only under freedom is it possible to determine for what specialty a pupil has an
inclination; it is only freedom that does not impair the educative influence. Or else I shall be telling the pupil
that violence must not be used in life, and shall be exerting most grievous mental violence against him.
The following article by Carpenter on modern science can be of especial use in our Russian society, in which
more than in any other European society there exists the wide-spread and deep-rooted superstition according
to which it is thought that for the good of humanity there is no need whatever of the diffusion of religious
and moral knowledge, but only of the study of the experimental sciences, and that the knowledge of these
sciences satisfies all the spiritual demands of humanity.
Tolstoy, Preface to Carpenter’s article, “Modern Science” (1898), L. Wiener, trans. (1905)
Carpenter points out to us the fact that the method of science, which consists in the explanation of
phenomena that are near and important to us by more remote phenomena, which are a matter of indifference
to us, is a false method, which can never lead us to the desired results.
Men have to live. To live, they must know how to live. And all men—whether ill or well—have always
found this out, and, in conformity with this knowledge, have lived and moved on, and this knowledge of how
men should live has since the days of Solomon, Moses, Confucius, always been regarded as science, as the
science of the sciences. It is only in our day that the science as to how to live is not at all a science, and that
only experimental science, which begins with mathematics and ends with sociology, is the real science.
A simple, clever working man … assumes that if there are people who study all their lives, and who, in
consideration of their being fed and supported by him, do his thinking for him, these men are no doubt busy
631
studying what people need, and he expects science to solve for him those questions on which depend his
good and the good of all men. He waits for science to teach him how to live, how to treat the members of his
family, his neighbours, people of other nations, how to struggle with his passions, what to believe in and
what not to believe in, and many other things. And what does science say to all these questions of his?
It announces to him triumphantly how many millions of miles it is from the sun to the earth, with what
rapidity light passes through space, how many millions of vibrations the ether makes for light and how many
vibrations air makes for sound; it tells him about the chemical composition of the Milky Way, about the new
element, helium, about microcosms and their evacuations, about those points in the arm where electricity is
centred, about X-rays, and such things.
“But I do not need any of these things,” says the simple, sensible man. “ I want to know how to live.”
“What do I care what you want to know?” science replies to this. “What you ask about belongs to
sociology. But before answering sociological questions, we have to answer zoological, botanical,
physiological, in general biological, questions, but to answer these questions we must first solve physical,
then chemical questions, and we have to come to an agreement as to what is the form of the infinitely small
atoms, and in what manner the imponderable and inelastic ether transmits motion.”
And people, especially those who sit on other men's backs, and who, therefore, find it convenient to wait,
are satisfied with such answers, and sit “flapping their eyes “ in expectation of what is promised; but a
simple, sensible working man, on whose back are sitting those men who busy themselves with science, the
whole vast mass of men, all humanity, cannot be satisfied with such answers, and naturally asks in
perplexity, “When shall that be? We have no time to wait. You yourselves say that you will find it out in a
few generations. But we live now: today we are alive, and tomorrow we shall die, and so we must know how
to live the life we are now in. Teach us.”
“Foolish, ignorant man,” science answers him. “He does not understand that science does not serve utility,
but science studies what is subject to investigation, and cannot choose its subjects for study. Science studies
everything. Such is the property of science.”
And the men of science are actually convinced that the property of busying oneself with trifles, neglecting
that which is more essential and important, is not their property, but the property of science; but the simple,
sensible man begins to suspect that this property does not belong to science, but to men who are inclined to
busy themselves with trifles, ascribing an important significance to these trifles.
“Science studies everything” say the men of science. But everything is too much; everything is the infinite
number of objects,—it is impossible to study everything at once. As a lantern cannot at once illumine
everything, but illumines only the one spot toward which it is directed, or that direction in which the bearer
carries it, so also science cannot study everything, but inevitably studies only that toward which its attention
is directed. And as a lantern illumines most powerfully the nearest spot to it and less and less well the objects
more and more removed from it, and does not at all illumine those to which the light does not reach, even so
human science, no matter what it may be, has always investigated in the most thorough manner what to the
investigators seems to be most important, less thoroughly what represents itself to them as less important,
and entirely neglects the remaining infinite number of objects.
In connection with a science which does not take its object to be the study of how men should live, but the
study of what is, and so is preeminently busy investigating dead bodies and leaves the structure of human
society such as it is, no improvements, no victories over Nature can improve the condition of men.
632
The structure of our life is such that not only children, but even the majority of adults, through bad food,
injurious labour above their strength, bad housing, insufficient clothing, and want, do not live one-half of the
years which they ought to live; the structure of life is such that infantile diseases, consumption, syphilis,
alcoholism are taking possession of an ever greater number of men, that a great portion of men's labours is
taken from them for preparations for war, that every ten or twenty years millions of men are destroyed by
war,—and all this is due to the fact that science, instead of spreading among men correct religious, moral,
and social ideas, in consequence of which all these calamities may naturally be averted, busies itself, on the
one hand, with the justification of the existing order, and, on the other, with toys; and in proof of the
fruitfulness of science we are told that it cures one thousandth part of those diseased who fall sick for the
very reason that science does not perform its proper work.
If only a small portion of those efforts, of that attention, and of that labour, which science wastes on those
trifles with which it busies itself, were directed by it upon the establishment among men of regular religious,
moral, social, even hygienic ideas, there would not be even one hundredth part of those diphtherias, diseases
of the womb, hunchbacks, on the cure of which science prides itself so much, effecting these cures in its
clinics, the luxury of whose establishment cannot be diffused among all men.
It is the same as though men, who had ploughed a field badly and sowed bad seed in it, should walk
through this field and cure the broken stalks, which grew up among the sickly ears, all the time treading
down all the other stalks, and should adduce this their art of curing the sickly stalks as a proof of their
knowledge of agriculture.
For our science to become science and to be truly useful, it must first of all renounce its experimental
method, according to which it regards as its business only the study of what is, and should return to the one
rational and fruitful comprehension of science, according to which the object of its study is, how men should
live. In this does the purpose and meaning of science consist; but the study of what is can be the object of
science only to the extent to which this study contributes to the comprehension of how men should live, and
if a nice little sin of our own is needed, such as would redeem the sin of those who sin against us, none is
found. But this museum ought to be kept in order, so that we may find at once what is needed, when it is
needed, and all the objects, the sins, ought to be kept separately, so that they should not cover one another,
but may appear in the most impressive form. We must not forget, but remember, always remember our sins,
in order by means of them to mitigate the condemnation of others. I think that the chief difference between a
good and a bad man is this, that the good man remembers all the evil which he has done,
The most terrible consequence of intoxicating liquors is that liquor dims men's reason and conscience: the
use of liquor makes people coarser, more stupid, and more evil.
Tolstoy, “God or Mammon?” (1895), L. Wiener, trans. (1905)
Above all, repentance; not wholesale repentance: “I have sinned, father, I have sinned,” or, still worse, the
admission that I am wholly in sin, that I was born in sin, that every step of mine is sin. This admission,
collecting, compacting all the sins in one heap, seems to separate them from me and deprives me of that
inevitable spiritual use, which by the mercy of God is attached to every sin. ... We have a terrible habit of
forgetting,—of forgetting our evil, our sins. And there is no more radical means for forgetting our sins, than
wholesale repentance. All the sins are boiled down, as it were, into one impermeable mass, with which
nothing can be done.
Tolstoy, “Three phases of life,” L. Wiener, trans. (1905)
God forfend that we dissemble, pretending to love and pity, when we do not. That is worse than hatred.
Tolstoy, “Three phases of life,” L. Wiener, trans. (1905)
633
War and Peace (1869)
http://www.literature.org/authors/tolstoy-leo/war-and-peace/index.html
Anna Pavlovna greeted him with the nod she accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing room. But in
spite of this lowest-grade greeting, a look of anxiety and fear, as at the sight of something too large and
unsuited to the place, came over her face when she saw Pierre enter. Though he was certainly rather bigger
than the other men in the room, her anxiety could only have reference to the clever though shy, but observant
and natural, expression which distinguished him from everyone else in that drawing room.
Tolstoy, War and Peace (1869), L. and A. Maude, trans. (1922) , Chapter 2
Pierre now committed a reverse act of impoliteness. First he had left a lady before she had finished speaking
to him, and now he continued to speak to another who wished to get away.
Tolstoy, War and Peace (1869), L. and A. Maude, trans. (1922), Chapter 2
Anna Pavlovna ... resumed her duties as hostess and continued to listen and watch, ready to help at any point
where the conversation might happen to flag. As the foreman of a spinning mill, when he has set the hands to
work, goes round and notices here a spindle that has stopped or there one that creaks or makes more noise
than it should, and hastens to check the machine or set it in proper motion, so Anna Pavlovna moved about
her drawing room, approaching now a silent, now a too-noisy group, and by a word or slight rearrangement
kept the conversational machine in steady, proper, and regular motion.
Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at Anna Pavlovna's was the first he had attended in
Russia. He knew that all the intellectual lights of Petersburg were gathered there and, like a child in a
toyshop, did not know which way to look, afraid of missing any clever conversation that was to be heard.
Seeing the self-confident and refined expression on the faces of those present he was always expecting to
hear something very profound.
Pierre, not knowing whom to answer, looked at them all and smiled. His smile was unlike the half-smile of
other people. When he smiled, his grave, even rather gloomy, look was instantaneously replaced by another-
a childlike, kindly, even rather silly look, which seemed to ask forgiveness.
Even in the best, most friendly and simplest relations of life, praise and commendation are essential, just as
grease is necessary to wheels that they may run smoothly.
Anna Karenina (1873-1877)

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1399/1399.txt
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 1, p. 5
Stepan Arkadyevitch was a truthful man in his relations with himself. He was incapable of deceiving himself
and persuading himself that he repented of his conduct.
There was no solution, but that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex
and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day—that is, forget oneself. To forget
himself in sleep was impossible now, at least till nighttime; … so he must forget himself in the dream of
daily life.
634
Stepan Arkadyevitch took in and read a liberal paper, not an extreme one, but one advocating the views held
by the majority. And in spite of the fact that science, art, and politics had no special interest for him, he
firmly held those views on all these subjects which were held by the majority and by his paper, and he only
changed them when the majority changed them—or, more strictly speaking, he did not change them, but they
imperceptibly changed of themselves within him.
Stephan Arkadievich chose neither his attitudes nor his opinions, no, the attitudes and opinions came to him
on their own, just as he chose neither the style of his hat nor of his coats but got what people were wearing.
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Part 1, Chapter 3
Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views; these political opinions and
views had come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but
simply took those that were being worn. And for him, living in a certain society—owing to the need,
ordinarily developed at years of discretion, for some degree of mental activity—to have views was just as
indispensable as to have a hat. If there was a reason for his preferring liberal to conservative views, which
were held also by many of his circle, it arose not from his considering liberalism more rational, but from its
being in closer accordance with his manner of life. The liberal party said that in Russia everything is wrong,
and certainly Stepan Arkadyevitch had many debts and was decidedly short of money. The liberal party said
that marriage is an institution quite out of date, and that it needs reconstruction; and family life certainly
afforded Stepan Arkadyevitch little gratification, and forced him into lying and hypocrisy, which was so
repulsive to his nature. The liberal party said, or rather allowed it to be understood, that religion is only a
curb to keep in check the barbarous classes of the people; and Stepan Arkadyevitch could not get through
even a short service without his legs aching from standing up, and could never make out what was the object
of all the terrible and high-flown language about another world when life might be so very amusing in this
world. And with all this, Stepan Arkadyevitch, who liked a joke, was fond of puzzling a plain man by saying
that if he prided himself on his origin, he ought not to stop at Rurik and disown the first founder of his
family—the monkey. And so Liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch's.
Stepan Arkadyevitch … liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it
diffused in his brain.
Levin had been the friend and companion of his early youth. They were fond of one another in spite of the
difference of their characters and tastes, as friends are fond of one another who have been together in early
youth. But in spite of this, each of them—as is often the way with men who have selected careers of
different kinds—though in discussion he would even justify the other's career, in his heart despised it. It
seemed to each of them that the life he led himself was the only real life, and the life led by his friend was a
mere phantasm.
Tolstoy, Levin and Oblonsky in Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 5, p. 19
Levin suddenly blushed, not as grown men blush, slightly, without being themselves aware of it, but as boys
blush, feeling that they are ridiculous through their shyness, and consequently ashamed of it and blushing
still more.
It was in the Shtcherbatskys' house that he saw for the first time that inner life of an old, noble, cultivated,
and honorable family of which he had been deprived by the death of his father and mother. All the members
of that family, especially the feminine half, were pictured by him, as it were, wrapped about with a
mysterious poetical veil, and he not only perceived no defects whatever in them, but under the poetical veil
that shrouded them he assumed the existence of the loftiest sentiments and every possible perfection.
Tolstoy, Levin in Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 6, p. 23
635
The childishness of her expression, together with the delicate beauty of her figure, made up her special
charm, and that he fully realized. But what always struck him in her as something unlooked for, was the
expression of her eyes, soft, serene, and truthful, and above all, her smile, which always transported Levin to
an enchanted world, where he felt himself softened and tender, as he remembered himself in some days of
his early childhood.
Tolstoy, Levin’s thoughts about Kitty, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 9, p. 30
It was not that Levin was not in good spirits; he was ill at ease. With what he had in his soul, he felt sore
and uncomfortable in the restaurant, in the midst of private rooms where men were dining with ladies, in all
this fuss and bustle; the surroundings of bronzes, looking glasses, gas, and waiters—all of it was offensive to
him. He was afraid of sullying what his soul was brimful of.
“I? Yes, I am; but besides, all this bothers me,” he said. “You can't conceive how queer it all seems to a
country person like me, as queer as that gentleman's nails I saw at your place...”
“Yes, I saw how much interested you were in poor Grinevitch's nails,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
laughing.
“It's too much for me,” responded Levin. “Do try, now, and put yourself in my place, take the point of
view of a country person. We in the country try to bring our hands into such a state as will be most
convenient for working with. So we cut our nails; sometimes we turn up our sleeves. And here people
purposely let their nails grow as long as they will, and link on small saucers by way of studs, so that they can
do nothing with their hands.”
Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled gaily.
“Oh, yes, that's just a sign that he has no need to do coarse work. His work is with the mind...”
“Maybe. But still it's queer to me, just as at this moment it seems queer to me that we country folks try to
get our meals over as soon as we can, so as to be ready for our work, while here are we trying to drag out our
meal as long as possible, and with that object eating oysters...”
“Why, of course,” objected Stepan Arkadyevitch. “But that's just the aim of civilization—to make
everything a source of enjoyment.”
“Well, if that's its aim, I'd rather be a savage.” …
“How do you explain the sudden way in which you vanished from Moscow? The Shtcherbatskys were
continually asking me about you, as though I ought to know. The only thing I know is that you always do
what no one else does.”
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 10, pp. 36-37
“Everything is before you.”

“Why, is it over for you already?”
“No; not over exactly, but the future is yours, and the present is mine, and the present—well, it's not all
that it might be.”
Tolstoy, Oblonsky and Levin, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 10, p. 37
“Every girl's proud of an offer.”

“Yes, every girl, but not she.”
Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. He so well knew that feeling of Levin's, that for him all the girls in the world
were divided into two classes: one class—all the girls in the world except her, and those girls with all sorts of
human weaknesses, and very ordinary girls: the other class—she alone, having no weaknesses of any sort
and higher than all humanity.
Tolstoy, Oblonsky and Levin speaking of Kitty, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 10, p. 38
636
“I went away, you see, because I made up my mind that it could never be, you understand, as a happiness
that does not come on earth; but I've struggled with myself, I see there's no living without it. And it must be
settled.”
“What did you go away for?” …
“You know the feeling ... it's awful that we—old—with a past ... not of love, but of sins ... are brought all
at once so near to a creature pure and innocent; it's loathsome, and that's why one can't help feeling oneself
unworthy.”
Tolstoy, Levin and Oblonsky, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 10, p. 39
Now his whole soul was full of remorse that he had begun this conversation with Stepan Arkadyevitch. A
feeling such as his was profaned by talk of the rivalry of some Petersburg officer, of the suppositions
and the counsels of Stepan Arkadyevitch.
Tolstoy, Levin and Oblonsky, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 11, p. 40
“I've never seen exquisite fallen beings, and I never shall see them, but such creatures as that painted
Frenchwoman at the counter with the ringlets are vermin to my mind, and all fallen women are the same. …
You're afraid of spiders, and I of these vermin. Most likely you've not made a study of spiders and don't
know their character; and so it is with me.”
Tolstoy, Levin in Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 11, p. 41
“I'll tell you that I don't believe there was any tragedy about it. And this is why. To my mind, love ... both
the sorts of love, which you remember Plato defines in his Banquet, serve as the test of men. Some men only
understand one sort, and some only the other. And those who only know the non-platonic love have no need
to talk of tragedy. In such love there can be no sort of tragedy. 'I'm much obliged for the gratification, my
humble respects'—that's all the tragedy. And in platonic love there can be no tragedy, because in that love
all is clear and pure.” …
“You're very much all of a piece. That's your strong point and your failing. You have a character that's all
of a piece, and you want the whole of life to be of a piece too—but that's not how it is. You despise public
official work because you want the reality to be invariably corresponding all the while with the aim—and
that's not how it is. You want a man's work, too, always to have a defined aim, and love and family life
always to be undivided—and that's not how it is. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made
up of light and shadow.” …
And suddenly both of them felt that though they were friends, though they had been dining and drinking
together, which should have drawn them closer, yet each was thinking only of his own affairs, and they had
nothing to do with one another. Oblonsky had more than once experienced this extreme sense of aloofness,
instead of intimacy, coming on after dinner, and he knew what to do in such cases.
“Bill!” he called, and he went into the next room where he promptly came across an aide-de-camp of his
acquaintance and dropped into conversation with him about an actress and her protector. And at once in the
conversation with the aide-de-camp Oblonsky had a sense of relaxation and relief after the conversation with
Levin, which always put him to too great a mental and spiritual strain.
Tolstoy, Levin and Oblonsky in Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 11, p. 42
The princess for her part, going round the question in the manner peculiar to women, maintained that Kitty
was too young, that Levin had done nothing to prove that he had serious intentions, that Kitty felt no great
attraction to him, and other side issues; but she did not state the principal point, which was that she looked
for a better match for her daughter, and that Levin was not to her liking, and she did not understand him. …
She disliked in Levin his strange and uncompromising opinions and his shyness in society, founded, as she
supposed, on his pride and his queer sort of life, as she considered it, absorbed in cattle and peasants.
637
Princess Shtcherbatskaya … saw that of late years much was changed in the manners of society, that a
mother's duties had become still more difficult. She saw that girls of Kitty's age formed some sort of clubs,
went to some sort of lectures, mixed freely in men's society; drove about the streets alone, many of them did
not curtsey, and, what was the most important thing, all the girls were firmly convinced that to choose their
husbands was their own affair, and not their parents'. “Marriages aren't made nowadays as they used to be,”
was thought and said by all these young girls, and even by their elders. But how marriages were made now,
the princess could not learn from any one. The French fashion—of the parents arranging their children's
future—was not accepted; it was condemned. The English fashion of the complete independence of girls
was also not accepted, and not possible in Russian society. The Russian fashion of match-making by the
offices of intermediate persons was for some reason considered unseemly; it was ridiculed by every one, and
by the princess herself. But how girls were to be married, and how parents were to marry them, no one
knew. Everyone with whom the princess had chanced to discuss the matter said the same thing: “Mercy on
us, it's high time in our day to cast off all that old-fashioned business. It's the young people have to marry;
and not their parents; and so we ought to leave the young people to arrange it as they choose.” It was very
easy for anyone to say that who had no daughters, but the princess realized that in the process of getting to
know each other, her daughter might fall in love, and fall in love with someone who did not care to marry her
or who was quite unfit to be her husband. And, however much it was instilled into the princess that in our
times young people ought to arrange their lives for themselves, she was unable to believe it, just as she would
have been unable to believe that, at any time whatever, the most suitable playthings for children five years
old ought to be loaded pistols.
When she mused on the past, she dwelt with pleasure, with tenderness, on the memories of her relations with
Levin. The memories of childhood and of Levin's friendship with her dead brother gave a special poetic
charm to her relations with him. His love for her, of which she felt certain, was flattering and delightful to
her; and it was pleasant for her to think of Levin. In her memories of Vronsky there always entered a certain
element of awkwardness, though he was in the highest degree well-bred and at ease, as though there were
some false note—not in Vronsky, he was very simple and nice, but in herself, while with Levin she felt
perfectly simple and clear. But, on the other hand, directly she thought of the future with Vronsky, there
arose before her a perspective of brilliant happiness; with Levin the future seemed misty.
Countess Nordston … had often met Levin at the Shtcherbatskys' early in the winter, and she had always
disliked him. Her invariable and favorite pursuit, when they met, consisted in making fun of him.
“I do like it when he looks down at me from the height of his grandeur, or breaks off his learned
conversation with me because I'm a fool, or is condescending to me. I like that so; to see him condescending!
I am so glad he can't bear me,” she used to say of him.
She was right, for Levin actually could not bear her, and despised her for what she was proud of and
regarded as a fine characteristic—her nervousness, her delicate contempt and indifference for everything
coarse and earthly.
The Countess Nordston and Levin got into that relation with one another not seldom seen in society, when
two persons, who remain externally on friendly terms, despise each other to such a degree that they cannot
even take each other seriously, and cannot even be offended by each other.
The Countess Nordston pounced upon Levin at once.
“Ah, Konstantin Dmitrievitch! So you've come back to our corrupt Babylon,” she said, giving him her
tiny, yellow hand, and recalling what he had chanced to say early in the winter, that Moscow was a Babylon.
“Come, is Babylon reformed, or have you degenerated?” she added, glancing with a simper at Kitty.
“It's very flattering for me, countess, that you remember my words so well,” responded Levin, who had
succeeded in recovering his composure, and at once from habit dropped into his tone of joking hostility to the
Countess Nordston. “They must certainly make a great impression on you.”
638
There are people who, on meeting a successful rival, no matter in what, are at once disposed to turn their
backs on everything good in him, and to see only what is bad. There are people, on the other hand, who
desire above all to find in that lucky rival the qualities by which he has outstripped them, and seek with a
throbbing ache at heart only what is good. Levin belonged to the second class.
The conversation fell upon table-turning and spirits, and Countess Nordston began to describe the marvels
she had seen. …
“You, Konstantin Dmitrievitch, do you believe in it?” she asked Levin.
“Why do you ask me? You know what I shall say.”
“But I want to hear your opinion.”
“My opinion,” answered Levin, “is only that this table-turning simply proves that educated society—so
called—is no higher than the peasants. They believe in the evil eye, and in witchcraft and omens, while
we...”
“Oh, then you don't believe in it?”
“I can't believe in it, countess.”
“But if I've seen it myself?”
“The peasant women too tell us they have seen goblins.”
“Then you think I tell a lie?”
And she laughed a mirthless laugh.
As for this little Petersburg swell, they're turned out by machinery, all on one pattern, and all precious
rubbish.
Tolstoy, Prince Shcherbatsky describing Vronsky, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 15, p. 54
Although he said nothing to her that he could not have said before everybody, he felt that she was
becoming more and more dependent upon him, and the more he felt this, the better he liked it, and the
tenderer was his feeling for her. He did not know that his mode of behavior in relation to Kitty had a definite
character, that it is courting young girls with no intention of marriage, and that such courting is one of the
evil actions common among brilliant young men such as he was. It seemed to him that he was the first who
had discovered this pleasure, and he was enjoying his discovery.
If he could have heard what her parents were saying that evening, if he could have put himself at the point
of view of the family and have heard that Kitty would be unhappy if he did not marry her, he would have
been greatly astonished, and would not have believed it. He could not believe that what gave such great and
delicate pleasure to him, and above all to her, could be wrong. Still less could he have believed that he ought
to marry.
Marriage had never presented itself to him as a possibility. He not only disliked family life, but a family,
and especially a husband was, in accordance with the views general in the bachelor world in which he lived,
conceived as something alien, repellant, and, above all, ridiculous.
But though Vronsky had not the least suspicion what the parents were saying, he felt on coming away
from the Shtcherbatskys' that the secret spiritual bond which existed between him and Kitty had grown so
much stronger that evening that some step must be taken. But what step could and ought to be taken he could
not imagine.
Tolstoy, Vronsky’s thoughts, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 16, pp. 55-56
“What is so exquisite is that not a word has been said by me or by her, but we understand each other so well
in this unseen language of looks and tones, that this evening more clearly than ever she told me she loves me.
And how secretly, simply, and most of all, how trustfully! I feel myself better, purer. I feel that I have a
heart, and that there is a great deal of good in me. Those sweet, loving eyes!”
Tolstoy, Vronsky’s thoughts, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 16, p. 56
639
He did not in his heart respect his mother, and without acknowledging it to himself, he did not love her,
though in accordance with the ideas of the set in which he lived, and with his own education, he could not
have conceived of any behavior to his mother not in the highest degree respectful and obedient, and the more
externally obedient and respectful his behavior, the less in his heart he respected and loved her.
Tolstoy, Vronsky’s sentiments, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 17, p. 59
With the insight of a man of the world, from one glance at this lady's appearance Vronsky classified her as
belonging to the best society. He begged pardon, and was getting into the carriage, but felt he must glance at
her once more; not that she was very beautiful, not on account of the elegance and modest grace which were
apparent in her whole figure, but because in the expression of her charming face, as she passed close by him,
there was something peculiarly caressing and soft. As he looked round, she too turned her head. Her shining
gray eyes, that looked dark from the thick lashes, rested with friendly attention on his face, as though she
were recognizing him, and then promptly turned away to the passing crowd, as though seeking someone. In
that brief look Vronsky had time to notice the suppressed eagerness which played over her face, and flitted
between the brilliant eyes and the faint smile that curved her red lips. It was as though her nature were so
brimming over with something that against her will it showed itself now in the flash of her eyes, and now in
her smile. Deliberately she shrouded the light in her eyes, but it shone against her will in the faintly
perceptible smile.
Tolstoy, Vronky’s reaction to Anna, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 18, p. 59
“You are one of those delightful women in whose company it's sweet to be silent as well as to talk.”
Tolstoy, Countess Vronsky, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 18, p. 60
He saw out of the window how she went up to her brother, put her arm in his, and began telling him
something eagerly, obviously something that had nothing to do with him, Vronsky, and at that he felt
annoyed.
“I saw Stiva when he was in love with you. I remember the time when he came to me and cried, talking of
you, and all the poetry and loftiness of his feeling for you, and I know that the longer he has lived with you
the loftier you have been in his eyes. You know we have sometimes laughed at him for putting in at every
word: 'Dolly's a marvelous woman.' You have always been a divinity for him, and you are that still, and this
has not been an infidelity of the heart.”
Tolstoy, Anna to Dolly, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 19, p. 67
Kitty felt that Anna was perfectly simple and was concealing nothing, but that she had another higher world
of interests inaccessible to her, complex and poetic.
“I’d so love to know her whole romance,” thought Kitty, recalling the unpoetical appearance of Alexei
Alexandrovich, her husband.
Tolstoy, Kitty thinking of Anna, Anna Karenina, R. Pevar, trans. (London: 2000), Part 1, Chapter 20, p. 73
Levin … remembered how his brother, while at the university, and for a year afterwards, had, in spite of
the jeers of his companions, lived like a monk, strictly observing all religious rites, services, and fasts, and
avoiding every sort of pleasure, especially women. And afterwards, how he had all at once broken out: he
had associated with the most horrible people, and rushed into the most senseless debauchery. …
Levin remembered that when Nikolay had been in the devout stage, the period of fasts and monks and
church services, when he was seeking in religion a support and a curb for his passionate temperament,
everyone, far from encouraging him, had jeered at him, and he, too, with the others. They had teased him,
called him Noah and Monk; and, when he had broken out, no one had helped him, but everyone had turned
away from him with horror and disgust.
640
He began to see what had happened to him in quite a different light. He felt himself, and did not want to be
any one else. All he wanted now was to be better than before. In the first place he resolved that from that
day he would give up hoping for any extraordinary happiness, such as marriage must have given him, and
consequently he would not so disdain what he really had.
Anna Arkadyevna read and understood, but it was distasteful to her to read, that is, to follow the reflection of
other people's lives. She had too great a desire to live herself. If she read that the heroine of the novel was
nursing a sick man, she longed to move with noiseless steps about the room of a sick man; if she read of a
member of Parliament making a speech, she longed to be delivering the speech; if she read of how Lady
Mary had ridden after the hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had surprised everyone by her
boldness, she too wished to be doing the same. Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York:
2003), Part 1, Chapter 29, p. 94
The hero of the novel was already almost reaching his English happiness, a baronetcy and an estate, and
Anna was feeling a desire to go with him to the estate, when she suddenly felt that he ought to feel ashamed,
and that she was ashamed of the same thing. But what had he to be ashamed of? “What have I to be
ashamed of?” she asked herself in injured surprise. She laid down the book and sank against the back of the
chair, tightly gripping the paper cutter in both hands. There was nothing. She went over all her Moscow
recollections. All were good, pleasant. She remembered the ball, remembered Vronsky and his face of
slavish adoration, remembered all her conduct with him: there was nothing shameful. And for all that, at the
same point in her memories, the feeling of shame was intensified, as though some inner voice, just at the
point when she thought of Vronsky, were saying to her, “Warm, very warm, hot.” “Well, what is it?” she
said to herself resolutely, shifting her seat in the lounge. “What does it mean? Am I afraid to look it straight
in the face? Why, what is it? Can it be that between me and this officer boy there exist, or can exist, any
other relations than such as are common with every acquaintance?”
Anna ... almost laughed aloud at the feeling of delight that all at once without cause came over her. She felt
as though her nerves were strings being strained tighter and tighter on some sort of screwing peg. She felt her
eyes opening wider and wider, her fingers and toes twitching nervously, something within oppressing her
breathing, while all shapes and sounds seemed in the uncertain half-light to strike her with unaccustomed
vividness.
In spite of the shadow in which he was standing, she saw, or fancied she saw, both the expression of his face
and his eyes. It was again that expression of reverential ecstasy which had so worked upon her the day
before.
He had said what her soul longed to hear, though she feared it with her reason.
Tolstoy, Anna’s thoughts upon Vronsky’s declaration that he has come specifically with the intent of seeing her, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans.
(New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 30, p. 96
Though she could not recall her own words or his, she realized instinctively that the momentary conversation
had brought them fearfully closer; and she was panic-stricken and blissful at it.
Tolstoy, Anna, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 30, p. 97
An unpleasant sensation gripped at her heart when she met his obstinate and weary glance, as though she had
expected to see him different. She was especially struck by the feeling of dissatisfaction with herself that she
experienced on meeting him. That feeling was an intimate, familiar feeling, like a consciousness of
hypocrisy, which she experienced in her relations with her husband. But hitherto she had not taken note of
the feeling, now she was clearly and painfully aware of it.
Tolstoy, Anna and Karenin, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 30, p. 97
641
“Yes, as you see, your tender spouse, as devoted as the first year after marriage, burned with impatience to
see you,” he said in his deliberate, high-pitched voice, and in that tone which he almost always took with her,
a tone of jeering at anyone who should say in earnest what he said.
He felt that all his forces, hitherto dissipated, wasted, were centered on one thing, and bent with fearful
energy on one blissful goal.
Tolstoy, Vronsky’s thoughts about Anna, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 31, p. 98
He paused near his compartment, waiting for her to get out. “Once more,” he said to himself, smiling
unconsciously, “once more I shall see her walk, her face; she will say something, turn her head, glance,
smile, maybe.” But before he caught sight of her, he saw her husband, whom the station-master was
deferentially escorting through the crowd. “Ah, yes! The husband.” Only now for the first time did
Vronsky realize clearly the fact that there was a person attached to her, a husband. He knew that she had a
husband, but had hardly believed in his existence, and only now fully believed in him, with his head and
shoulders, and his legs clad in black trousers; especially when he saw this husband calmly take her arm with
a sense of property.
Seeing Alexey Alexandrovitch with his Petersburg face and severely self-confident figure, in his round
hat, with his rather prominent spine, he believed in him, and was aware of a disagreeable sensation, such as a
man might feel tortured by thirst, who, on reaching a spring, should find a dog, a sheep, or a pig, who has
drunk of it and muddied the water. Alexey Alexandrovitch's manner of walking, with a swing of the hips
and flat feet, particularly annoyed Vronsky. He could recognize in no one but himself an indubitable right to
love her.
Tolstoy, Vronsky’s thoughts of Anna and Karenin, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 31, p. 98
“You set off with the mother and you return with the son,” he said, articulating each syllable, as though each
were a separate favor he was bestowing.
Most fortunate,” he said to his wife, dismissing Vronsky altogether, “that I should just have half an hour to
meet you, so that I can prove my devotion,” he went on in the same jesting tone.
“You lay too much stress on your devotion for me to value it much,” she responded in the same jesting
tone.
Her son, like her husband, aroused in Anna a feeling akin to disappointment. She had imagined him better
than he was in reality. She had to let herself drop down to the reality to enjoy him as he really was.
Countess Lidia Ivanovna, though she was interested in everything that did not concern her, had a habit of
never listening to what interested her.
Tolstoy, Lidia Ivanovna, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 32, p. 101
“I'm beginning to be weary of fruitlessly championing the truth.”

“It was all the same before, of course; but why was it I didn't notice it before?” Anna asked herself. “Or has
she been very much irritated today? It's really ludicrous; her object is doing good; she a Christian, yet she's
always angry; and she always has enemies, and always enemies in the name of Christianity and doing good.”
Every minute of Alexey Alexandrovitch's life was portioned out and occupied. And to make time to get
through all that lay before him every day, he adhered to the strictest punctuality. “Unhasting and unresting,”
was his motto.
642
Anna ... knew, too, that in spite of his official duties, which swallowed up almost the whole of his time, he
considered it his duty to keep up with everything of note that appeared in the intellectual world. She knew,
too, that he was really interested in books dealing with politics, philosophy, and theology, that art was utterly
foreign to his nature; but, in spite of this, or rather, in consequence of it, Alexey Alexandrovitch never passed
over anything in the world of art, but made it his duty to read everything. She knew that in politics, in
philosophy, in theology, Alexey Alexandrovitch often had doubts, and made investigations; but on questions
of art and poetry, and, above all, of music, of which he was totally devoid of understanding, he had the most
distinct and decided opinions.
“He's a good man; truthful, good-hearted, and remarkable in his own line,” Anna said to herself going back
to her room, as though she were defending him to someone who had attacked him and said that one could not
love him.
Tolstoy, Anna thinking of her husband, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 1, Chapter 33, p. 105
Vronsky heard with pleasure this light-hearted prattle of a pretty woman, agreed with her, gave her half-
joking counsel, and altogether dropped at once into the tone habitual to him in talking to such women. In his
Petersburg world all people were divided into utterly opposed classes. One, the lower class, vulgar, stupid,
and, above all, ridiculous people, who believe that one husband ought to live with the one wife whom he has
lawfully married; that a girl should be innocent, a woman modest, and a man manly, self-controlled, and
strong; that one ought to bring up one's children, earn one's bread, and pay one's debts; and various similar
absurdities. This was the class of old-fashioned and ridiculous people. But there was another class of
people, the real people. To this class they all belonged, and in it the great thing was to be elegant, generous,
plucky, gay, to abandon oneself without a blush to every passion, and to laugh at everything else.
At first Anna sincerely believed that she was displeased with him for daring to pursue her. Soon after her
return from Moscow, on arriving at a soiree where she had expected to meet him, and not finding him there,
she realized distinctly from the rush of disappointment that she had been deceiving herself, and that this
pursuit was not merely not distasteful to her, but that it made the whole interest of her life.
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 2, Chapter 4, p.
Though his conviction that jealousy was a shameful feeling and that one ought to feel confidence had not
broken down, he felt that he was standing face to face with something illogical and irrational, and did not
know what was to be done. Alexey Alexandrovitch was standing face to face with life, with the possibility of
his wife's loving someone other than himself, and this seemed to him very irrational and incomprehensible
because it was life itself. All his life Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived and worked in official spheres,
having to do with the reflection of life. And every time he had stumbled against life itself he had
shrunk away from it. Now he experienced a feeling akin to that of a man who, wile calmly crossing a
precipice by a bridge, should suddenly discover that the bridge is broken, and that there is a chasm
below. That chasm was life itself, the bridge that artificial life in which Alexey Alexandrovitch had
lived.
There, looking at her table, with the malachite blotting case lying at the top and an unfinished letter, his
thoughts suddenly changed. He began to think of her, of what she was thinking and feeling. For the first time
he pictured vividly to himself her personal life, her ideas, her desires, and the idea that she could and should
have a separate life of her own seemed to him so alarming that he made haste to dispel it. It was the chasm
which he was afraid to peep into. To put himself in thought and feeling in another person's place was a
spiritual exercise not natural to Alexey Alexandrovitch. He looked on this spiritual exercise as a harmful and
dangerous abuse of the fancy.
643
“The question of her feelings, of what has passed and may be passing in her soul, that's not my affair; that's
the affair of her conscience, and falls under the head of religion,” he said to himself, feeling consolation in
the sense that he had found to which division of regulating principles this new circumstance could be
properly referred.
Tolstoy, Karenin in Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 2, Chapter 8, p. 135
She looked at him so simply, so brightly, that anyone who did not know her as her husband knew her could
not have noticed anything unnatural, either in the sound or the sense of her words. But to him, knowing her,
knowing that whenever he went to bed five minutes later than usual, she noticed it, and asked him the reason;
to him, knowing that every joy, every pleasure and pain that she felt she communicated to him at once; to
him, now to see that she did not care to notice his state of mind, that she did not care to say a word about
herself, meant a great deal. He saw that the inmost recesses of her soul, that had always hitherto lain open
before him, were closed against him. More than that, he saw from her tone that she was not even perturbed at
that, but as it were said straight out to him: “Yes, it's shut up, and so it must be, and will be in future.” Now
he experienced a feeling such as a man might have, returning home and finding his own house locked up.
Tolstoy, Anna and Karenin in Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 2, Chapter 9, p. 137
“Perhaps I am mistaken, but believe me, what I say, I say as much for myself as for you. I am your
husband, and I love you.”
For an instant her face fell, and the mocking gleam in her eyes died away; but the word love threw her into
revolt again. She thought: “Love? Can he love? If he hadn't heard there was such a thing as love, he would
never have used the word. He doesn't even know what love is.”
Tolstoy, Karenin and Anna in Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 2, Chapter 9, p. 138
He felt what a murderer must feel, when he sees the body he has robbed of life. That body, robbed by him
of life, was their love, the first stage of their love. There was something awful and revolting in the memory of
what had been bought at this fearful price of shame. Shame at their spiritual nakedness crushed her and
infected him. But in spite of all the murderer's horror before the body of his victim, he must hack it to pieces,
hide the body, must use what he has gained by his murder.
And with fury, as it were with passion, the murderer falls on the body, and drags it and hacks at it; so he
covered her face and shoulders with kisses.
Tolstoy, Vronsky and Anna, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 2, Chapter 11, p. 140
In addition to his farming, which called for special attention in spring, and in addition to reading, Levin had
begun that winter a work on agriculture, the plan of which turned on taking into account the character of the
laborer on the land as one of the unalterable data of the question, like the climate and the soil, and
consequently deducing all the principles of scientific culture, not simply from the data of soil and climate,
but from the data of soil, climate, and a certain unalterable character of the laborer.
Spring is the time of plans and projects. And, as he came out into the farmyard, Levin, like a tree in spring
that knows not what form will be taken by the young shoots and twigs imprisoned in its swelling buds,
hardly knew what undertakings he was going to begin upon now in the farm work that was so dear to him.
The bailiff listened attentively, and obviously made an effort to approve of his employer's projects. But
still he had that look Levin knew so well that always irritated him, a look of hopelessness and despondency.
That look said: “That's all very well, but as God wills.”
Nothing mortified Levin so much as that tone. But it was the tone common to all the bailiffs he had ever
had. They had all taken up that attitude to his plans, and so now he was not angered by it, but mortified, and
felt all the more roused to struggle against this, as it seemed, elemental force continually ranged against him,
for which he could find no other expression than “as God wills.”
644
“Come, this is life! How splendid it is! This is how I should like to live!”
“Why, who prevents you?” said Levin, smiling.
“No, you're a lucky man! You've got everything you like. You like horses—and you have them; dogs—
you have them; shooting—you have it; farming—you have it.”
“Perhaps because I rejoice in what I have, and don't fret for what I haven't.”
“Woman, don't you know, is such a subject that however much you study it, it's always perfectly new.”
“Well, then, it would be better not to study it.”
“No. Some mathematician has said that enjoyment lies in the search for truth, not in the finding it.”
Levin smiled contemptuously. “I know,” he thought, “that fashion not only in him, but in all city people,
who, after being twice in ten years in the country, pick up two or three phrases and use them in season and
out of season, firmly persuaded that they know all about it. 'Timber, run to so many yards the acre.' He says
those words without understanding them himself.”
“I wouldn't attempt to teach you what you write about in your office,” said he, “and if need arose, I should
come to you to ask about it. But you're so positive you know all the lore of the forest. It's difficult. Have
you counted the trees?”
“Your honors have been diverting yourselves with the chase? What kind of bird may it be, pray?” added
Ryabinin, looking contemptuously at the snipe: “a great delicacy, I suppose.” And he shook his head
disapprovingly, as though he had grave doubts whether this game were worth the candle.
“Would you like to go into my study?” Levin said in French to Stepan Arkadyevitch, scowling morosely.
“Go into my study; you can talk there.”
“Quite so, where you please,” said Ryabinin with contemptuous dignity, as though wishing to make it felt
that others might be in difficulties as to how to behave, but that he could never be in any difficulty about
anything.
On entering the study Ryabinin looked about, as his habit was, as though seeking the holy picture, but
when he had found it, he did not cross himself. He scanned the bookcases and bookshelves, and with the
same dubious air with which he had regarded the snipe, he smiled contemptuously and shook his head
disapprovingly, as though by no means willing to allow that this game were worth the candle.
Kitty was not married, but ill, and ill from love for a man who had slighted her. This slight, as it were,
rebounded upon him. Vronsky had slighted her, and she had slighted him, Levin. Consequently Vronsky had
the right to despise Levin, and therefore he was his enemy. But all this Levin did not think out. He vaguely
felt that there was something in it insulting to him.
“Still, how you do treat him!” said Oblonsky. “You didn't even shake hands with him. Why not shake
hands with him?”
“Because I don't shake hands with a waiter, and a waiter's a hundred times better than he is.”
Tolstoy, Oblonsky and Levin speaking about Ryabinin, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 2, Chapter 17, p. 159
645
“You talk of his being an aristocrat. But allow me to ask what it consists in, that aristocracy of Vronsky or of
anybody else, beside which I can be looked down upon? You consider Vronsky an aristocrat, but I don't. A
man whose father crawled up from nothing at all by intrigue. ... No, excuse me, but I consider myself
aristocratic, and people like me, who can point back in the past to three or four honorable generations of their
family, of the highest degree of breeding (talent and intellect, of course that's another matter), and have never
curried favor with anyone, never depended on anyone for anything, like my father and my grandfather. And
I know many such. ... We are aristocrats, and not those who can only exist by favor of the powerful of this
world.
Tolstoy, Oblonsky and Levin speaking about Ryabinin, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 2, Chapter 17, p. 161
This elder son, too, was displeased with his younger brother. He did not distinguish what sort of love his
might be, big or little, passionate or passionless, lasting or passing, but he knew that this love affair was
viewed with displeasure by those whom it was necessary to please, and therefore he did not approve of his
brother's conduct.
Tolstoy, describing the Vronky brothers, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 2, Chapter 18, p. 163
Vronsky had several times already, though not so resolutely as now, tried to bring her to consider their
position, and every time he had been confronted by the same superficiality and triviality with which she met
his appeal now. It was as though there were something in this which she could not or would not face, as
though directly she began to speak of this, she, the real Anna, retreated somehow into herself, and another
strange and unaccountable woman came out, whom he did not love, and whom he feared, and who was in
opposition to him.
“Tell him everything, and leave him.”

“Very well, let us suppose I do that,” she said. “Do you know what the result of that would be? I can tell
you it all beforehand,” and a wicked light gleamed in her eyes, that had been so soft a minute before. “'Eh,
you love another man, and have entered into criminal intrigues with him?'“ (Mimicking her husband, she
threw an emphasis on the word “criminal,” as Alexey Alexandrovitch did.) “'I warned you of the results in
the religious, the civil, and the domestic relation. You have not listened to me. Now I cannot let you
disgrace my name, —'“ “and my son,” she had meant to say, but about her son she could not jest, —
”'disgrace my name, and'—and more in the same style,” she added. “In general terms, he'll say in his official
manner, and with all distinctness and precision, that he cannot let me go, but will take all measures in his
power to prevent scandal. And he will calmly and punctually act in accordance with his words. That's what
will happen. He's not a man, but a machine, and a spiteful machine when he's angry,” she added, recalling
Alexey Alexandrovitch as she spoke, with all the peculiarities of his figure and manner of speaking, and
reckoning against him every defect she could find in him, softening nothing for the great wrong she herself
was doing him. …
Vronsky could not understand how she, with her strong and truthful nature, could endure this state of
deceit, and not long to get out of it. But he did not suspect that the chief cause of it was the word—son,
which she could not bring herself to pronounce. When she thought of her son, and his future attitude to his
mother, who had abandoned his father, she felt such terror at what she had done, that she could not face it;
but, like a woman, could only try to comfort herself with lying assurances that everything would remain as it
always had been.
Tolstoy, Vronsky and Anna, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 2, Chapter 23, pp. 176-177
646
In his attitude to her there was a shade of vexation, but nothing more. “You would not be open with me,” he
seemed to say, mentally addressing her; “so much the worse for you. Now you may beg as you please, but I
won't be open with you. So much the worse for you!” he said mentally, like a man who, after vainly
attempting to extinguish a fire, should fly in a rage with his vain efforts and say, “Oh, very well then! you
shall burn for this!” This man, so subtle and astute in official life, did not realize all the senselessness of
such an attitude to his wife. He did not realize it, because it was too terrible to him to realize his actual
position, and he shut down and locked and sealed up in his heart that secret place where lay hid his feelings
towards his family.
If anyone had had the right to ask Alexey Alexandrovitch what he thought of his wife's behavior, the mild
and peaceable Alexey Alexandrovitch would have made no answer, but he would have been greatly angered
with any man who should question him on that subject. For this reason there positively came into Alexey
Alexandrovitch's face a look of haughtiness and severity whenever anyone inquired after his wife's health.
Alexey Alexandrovitch did not want to think at all about his wife's behavior, and he actually succeeded in
not thinking about it at all.
He did not want to see, and did not see, that many people in society cast dubious glances on his wife; he
did not want to understand, and did not understand, why his wife had so particularly insisted on staying at
Tsarskoe, where Betsy was staying, and not far from the camp of Vronsky's regiment. He did not allow
himself to think about it, and he did not think about it; but all the same though he never admitted it to
himself, and had no proofs, not even suspicious evidence, in the bottom of his heart he knew beyond all
doubt that he was a deceived husband, and he was profoundly miserable about it.
How often during those eight years of happy life with his wife Alexey Alexandrovitch had looked at other
men's faithless wives and other deceived husbands and asked himself: “How can people descend to that?
how is it they don't put an end to such a hideous position?” But now, when the misfortune had come upon
himself, he was so far from thinking of putting an end to the position that he would not recognize it at all,
would not recognize it just because it was too awful, too unnatural.
She watched his progress towards the pavilion, saw him now responding condescendingly to an ingratiating
bow, now exchanging friendly, nonchalant greetings with his equals, now assiduously trying to catch the eye
of some great one of this world, and taking off his big round hat that squeezed the tips of his ears. All these
ways of his she knew, and all were hateful to her. “Nothing but ambition, nothing but the desire to get on,
that's all there is in his soul,” she thought; “as for these lofty ideals, love of culture, religion, they are only so
many tools for getting on.”
Tolstoy, Anna watching her husband, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 2, Chapter 28, p. 192
647
The adjutant-general expressed his disapproval of races. Alexey Alexandrovitch replied defending them.
Anna heard his high, measured tones, not losing one word, and every word struck her as false, and stabbed
her ears with pain. … She was in an agony of terror for Vronsky, but a still greater agony was the never-
ceasing, as it seemed to her, stream of her husband's shrill voice. …
“I'm a wicked woman, a lost woman,” she thought; “but I don't like lying, I can't endure falsehood, while
as for him (her husband) it's the breath of his life—falsehood. He knows all about it, he sees it all; what does
he care if he can talk so calmly? If he were to kill me, if he were to kill Vronsky, I might respect him. No, all
he wants is falsehood and propriety,” Anna said to herself, not considering exactly what it was she wanted of
her husband, and how she would have liked to see him behave. She did not understand either that Alexey
Alexandrovitch's peculiar loquacity that day, so exasperating to her, was merely the expression of his inward
distress and uneasiness. As a child that has been hurt skips about, putting all his muscles into movement to
drown the pain, in the same way Alexey Alexandrovitch needed mental exercise to drown the thoughts of his
wife that in her presence and in Vronsky's, and with the continual iteration of his name, would force
themselves on his attention. And it was as natural for him to talk well and cleverly, as it is natural for a child
to skip about.
Mademoiselle Varenka … always seemed absorbed in work about which there could be no doubt, and so it
seemed she could not take interest in anything outside it. It was just this contrast with her own position that
was for Kitty the great attraction of Mademoiselle Varenka. Kitty felt that in her, in her manner of life, she
would find an example of what she was now so painfully seeking: interest in life, a dignity in life—apart
from the worldly relations of girls with men, which so revolted Kitty, and appeared to her now as a shameful
hawking about of goods in search of a purchaser.
Kitty made the acquaintance of Madame Stahl too, and this acquaintance, together with her friendship with
Varenka, did not merely exercise a great influence on her, it also comforted her in her mental distress. She
found this comfort through a completely new world being opened to her by means of this acquaintance, a
world having nothing in common with her past, an exalted, noble world, from the height of which she could
contemplate her past calmly. It was revealed to her that besides the instinctive life to which Kitty had given
herself up hitherto there was a spiritual life. This life was disclosed in religion, but a religion having nothing
in common with that one which Kitty had known from childhood, and which found expression in litanies and
all-night services at the Widow's Home, where one might meet one's friends, and in learning by heart
Slavonic texts with the priest. This was a lofty, mysterious religion connected with a whole series of noble
thoughts and feelings, which one could do more than merely believe because one was told to, which one
could love.
The views of the prince and of the princess on life abroad were completely opposed. The princess thought
everything delightful, and in spite of her established position in Russian society, she tried abroad to be like a
European fashionable lady, which she was not—for the simple reason that she was a typical Russian
gentlewoman; and so she was affected, which did not altogether suit her. The prince, on the contrary,
thought everything foreign detestable, got sick of European life, kept to his Russian habits, and purposely
tried to show himself abroad less European than he was in reality.
The news of Kitty's friendship with Madame Stahl and Varenka, and the reports the princess gave him of
some kind of change she had noticed in Kitty, troubled the prince and aroused his habitual feeling of jealousy
of everything that drew his daughter away from him, and a dread that his daughter might have got out of the
reach of his influence into regions inaccessible to him.
648
“What is a Pietist, papa?” asked Kitty, dismayed to find that what she prized so highly in Madame Stahl had
a name.
She felt that the heavenly image of Madame Stahl, which she had carried for a whole month in her heart, had
vanished, never to return, just as the fantastic figure made up of some clothes thrown down at random
vanishes when one sees that it is only some garment lying there. All that was left was a woman with short
legs, who lay down because she had a bad figure, and worried patient Varenka for not arranging her rug to
her liking. And by no effort of the imagination could Kitty bring back the former Madame Stahl.
Everyone was good humored, but Kitty could not feel good humored, and this increased her distress. She felt
a feeling such as she had known in childhood, when she had been shut in her room as a punishment, and had
heard her sisters' merry laughter outside.
“It serves me right, because it was all sham; because it was all done on purpose, and not from the heart. ...”
“A sham! with what object?” said Varenka gently. …
“To seem better to people, to myself, to God; to deceive everyone. No! now I won't descend to that. I'll
be bad; but anyway not a liar, a cheat. … I can't act except from the heart, and you act from principle. I
liked you because I liked you, but you probably only wanted to save me, to improve me.”
“You are unjust,” said Varenka.
With her father's coming all the world in which she had been living was transformed for Kitty. She did not
give up everything she had learned, but she became aware that she had deceived herself in supposing she
could be what she wanted to be. Her eyes were, it seemed, opened; she felt all the difficulty of maintaining
herself without hypocrisy and self-conceit on the pinnacle to which she had wished to mount.
Tolstoy, describing Kitty, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 2, Chapter 35, p. 218
Konstantin Levin regarded his brother as a man of immense intellect and culture, as generous in the highest
sense of the word, and possessed of a special faculty for working for the public good. But in the depths of
his heart, the older he became, and the more intimately he knew his brother, the more and more frequently
the thought struck him that this faculty of working for the public good, of which he felt himself utterly
devoid, was possibly not so much a quality as a lack of something—not a lack of good, honest, noble desires
and tastes, but a lack of vital force, of what is called heart, of that impulse which drives a man to choose
some one out of the innumerable paths of life, and to care only for that one. The better he knew his brother,
the more he noticed that Sergey Ivanovitch, and many other people who worked for the public welfare, were
not led by an impulse of the heart to care for the public good, but reasoned from intellectual considerations
that it was a right thing to take interest in public affairs, and consequently took interest in them. Levin was
confirmed in this generalization by observing that his brother did not take questions affecting the public
welfare or the question of the immortality of the soul a bit more to heart than he did chess problems, or the
ingenious construction of a new machine.
Konstantin Levin did not like talking and hearing about the beauty of nature. Words for him took away the
beauty of what he saw.
You are altogether, as the French say, too primesautière a nature; you must have intense, energetic action, or
nothing.
649
Darya Alexandrovna had done her hair, and dressed with care and excitement. In the old days she had
dressed for her own sake to look pretty and be admired. Later on, as she got older, dress became more and
more distasteful to her. She saw that she was losing her good looks. But now she began to feel pleasure and
interest in dress again. Now she did not dress for her own sake, not for the sake of her own beauty, but
simply that as the mother of those exquisite creatures she might not spoil the general effect. And looking at
herself for the last time in the looking-glass she was satisfied with herself. She looked nice. Not nice as she
would have wished to look nice in old days at a ball, but nice for the object which she now had in view.
“I got a note from Stiva that you were here.”

“From Stiva?” Darya Alexandrovna asked with surprise.
“Yes; he writes that you are here, and that he thinks you might allow me to be of use to you,” said Levin,
and as he said it he became suddenly embarrassed, and, stopping abruptly, he walked on in silence by the
wagonette, snapping off the buds of the lime trees and nibbling them. He was embarrassed through a sense
that Darya Alexandrovna would be annoyed by receiving from an outsider help that should by rights have
come from her own husband. Darya Alexandrovna certainly did not like this little way of Stepan
Arkadyevitch's of foisting his domestic duties on others. And she was at once aware that Levin was aware of
this. It was just for this fineness of perception, for this delicacy, that Darya Alexandrovna liked Levin.
The children knew Levin very little, and could not remember when they had seen him, but they experienced
in regard to him none of that strange feeling of shyness and hostility which children so often experience
towards hypocritical, grown-up people, and for which they are so often and miserably punished. Hypocrisy
in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of
children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised. Whatever faults Levin
had, there was not a trace of hypocrisy in him, and so the children showed him the same friendliness that
they saw in their mother's face.
Levin, to turn the conversation, explained to Darya Alexandrovna the theory of cow-keeping, based on the
principle that the cow is simply a machine for the transformation of food into milk, and so on. …
“Yes, but still all this has to be looked after, and who is there to look after it?” Darya Alexandrovna
responded, without interest.
She had by now got her household matters so satisfactorily arranged, thanks to Marya Philimonovna, that
she was disinclined to make any change in them; besides, she had no faith in Levin's knowledge of farming.
General principles, as to the cow being a machine for the production of milk, she looked on with suspicion. It
seemed to her that such principles could only be a hindrance in farm management. It all seemed to her a far
simpler matter.
“That pride you so despise makes any thought of Katerina Alexandrovna out of the question for me,—you
understand, utterly out of the question.”
“I will only say one thing more: you know that I am speaking of my sister, whom I love as I love my own
children. I don't say she cared for you, all I meant to say is that her refusal at that moment proves nothing.”
“I don't know!” said Levin, jumping up. “If you only knew how you are hurting me. It's just as if a child
of yours were dead, and they were to say to you: He would have been like this and like that, and he might
have lived, and how happy you would have been in him. But he's dead, dead, dead!...”
650
“What have you come for, Tanya?” she said in French to the little girl who had come in.
“Where's my spade, mamma?”
“I speak French, and you must too.”
The little girl tried to say it in French, but could not remember the French for spade; the mother prompted
her, and then told her in French where to look for the spade. And this made a disagreeable impression on
Levin.
Everything in Darya Alexandrovna's house and children struck him now as by no means so charming as a
little while before. “And what does she talk French with the children for?” he thought; “how unnatural and
false it is! And the children feel it so: Learning French and unlearning sincerity,” he thought to himself,
unaware that Darya Alexandrovna had thought all that over twenty times already, and yet, even at the cost of
some loss of sincerity, believed it necessary to teach her children French in that way.
The whole meadow and distant fields all seemed to be shaking and singing to the measures of this wild
merry song with its shouts and whistles and clapping. Levin felt envious of this health and mirthfulness; he
longed to take part in the expression of this joy of life. But he could do nothing, and had to lie and look on
and listen. When the peasants, with their singing, had vanished out of sight and hearing, a weary feeling of
despondency at his own isolation, his physical inactivity, his alienation from this world, came over Levin.
Some of the very peasants who had been most active in wrangling with him over the hay, some whom he
had treated with contumely, and who had tried to cheat him, those very peasants had greeted him
goodhumoredly, and evidently had not, were incapable of having any feeling of rancor against him, any
regret, any recollection even of having tried to deceive him. All that was drowned in a sea of merry common
labor. God gave the day, God gave the strength. And the day and the strength were consecrated to labor, and
that labor was its own reward. For whom the labor? What would be its fruits? These were idle
considerations—beside the point.
In the coach was an old lady dozing in one corner, and at the window, evidently only just awake, sat a
young girl holding in both hands the ribbons of a white cap. With a face full of light and thought, full of a
subtle, complex inner life. … At the very instant when this apparition was vanishing, the truthful eyes
glanced at him. She recognized him, and her face lighted up with wondering delight.
He could not be mistaken. There were no other eyes like those in the world. There was only one creature
in the world that could concentrate for him all the brightness and meaning of life. It was she. It was Kitty.
Tolstoy, Levin and Kitty, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 3, Chapter 12, p. 259
“I made a mistake in linking my life to hers; but there was nothing wrong in my mistake, and so I cannot be
unhappy. It's not I that am to blame,” he told himself.
Tolstoy, Karnein in Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 3, Chapter 2, p. 261
Though in passing through these difficult moments he had not once thought of seeking guidance in religion,
yet now, when his conclusion corresponded, as it seemed to him, with the requirements of religion, this
religious sanction to his decision gave him complete satisfaction, and to some extent restored his peace of
mind.
Tolstoy, Karenin in Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 3, Chapter 13, p. 264
She repeated continually, “My God! my God!” But neither “God” nor “my” had any meaning to her. The
idea of seeking help in her difficulty in religion was as remote from her as seeking help from Alexey
Alexandrovitch himself, although she had never had doubts of the faith in which she had been brought up.
She knew that the support of religion was possible only upon condition of renouncing what made up for her
the whole meaning of life.
Tolstoy, Anna in Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 3, Chapter 15, pp. 269-270
651
She began to feel alarm at the new spiritual condition, never experienced before, in which she found herself.
She felt as though everything were beginning to be double in her soul, just as objects sometimes appear
double to over-tired eyes.
Tolstoy, Anna in Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 3, Chapter 15, p. 270
“He's right!” she said; “of course, he's always right; he's a Christian, he's generous! Yes, vile, base creature!
And no one understands it except me, and no one ever will; and I can't explain it. They say he's so religious,
so high-principled, so upright, so clever; but they don't see what I've seen. They don't know how he has
crushed my life for eight years, crushed everything that was living in me—he has not once even thought that
I'm a live woman who must have love. … He's doing just what's characteristic of his mean character. He'll
keep himself in the right, while me, in my ruin, he'll drive still lower to worse ruin yet.”
Tolstoy, Anna thinking of Karenin, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 3, Chapter 16, p. 273
He knows that I can't repent that I breathe, that I love; he knows that it can lead to nothing but lying and
deceit; but he wants to go on torturing me. I know him; I know that he's at home and is happy in deceit, like
a fish swimming in the water.
Tolstoy, Anna thinking of Karenin, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 3, Chapter 16, p. 273
These two ladies were the chief representatives of a select new Petersburg circle, nicknamed, in imitation of
some imitation, les sept merveilles du monde.
I can't stay very long with you. I'm forced to go on to old Madame Vrede. I've been promising to go for a
century,” said Anna, to whom lying, alien as it was to her nature, had become not merely simple and natural
in society, but a positive source of satisfaction.
Liza now is one of those naïve natures that, like children, don't know what's good and what's bad. Anyway,
she didn't comprehend it when she was very young. And now she's aware that the lack of comprehension
suits her. Now, perhaps, she doesn't know on purpose.
Tolstoy, Betsy, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 3, Chapter 17, p. 278
There was something in her higher than what surrounded her. There was in her the glow of the real
diamond among glass imitations. This glow shone out in her exquisite, truly enigmatic eyes. The
weary, and at the same time passionate, glance of those eyes, encircled by dark rings, impressed one by
its perfect sincerity. Everyone looking into those eyes fancied he knew her wholly, and knowing her,
could not but love her.
Tolstoy, Anna’s thoughts about Liza, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 3, Chapter 13, p. 280
Vronsky's life was particularly happy in that he had a code of principles, which defined with unfailing
certitude what he ought and what he ought not to do. This code of principles covered only a very small circle
of contingencies, but then the principles were never doubtful, and Vronsky, as he never went outside that
circle, had never had a moment's hesitation about doing what he ought to do. These principles laid down as
invariable rules: that one must pay a cardsharper, but need not pay a tailor; that one must never tell a lie to a
man, but one may to a woman; that one must never cheat anyone, but one may a husband; that one must
never pardon an insult, but one may give one and so on. These principles were possibly not reasonable and
not good, but they were of unfailing certainty, and so long as he adhered to them, Vronsky felt that his heart
was at peace and he could hold his head up.
What the laborer wanted was to work as pleasantly as possible, with rests, and above all, carelessly and
heedlessly, without thinking. ... All they wanted was to work merrily and carelessly, and his interests were
not only remote and incomprehensible to them, but fatally opposed to their most just claims.
652
Sviazhsky was one of those people, always a source of wonder to Levin, whose convictions, very logical
though never original, go one way by themselves, while their life, exceedingly definite and firm in its
direction, goes its way quite apart and almost always in direct contradiction to their convictions.
If it had not been a characteristic of Levin's to put the most favorable interpretation on people, Sviazhsky's
character would have presented no doubt or difficulty to him: he would have said to himself, “a fool or a
knave,” and everything would have seemed clear. But he could not say “a fool,” because Sviazhsky was
unmistakably clever, and moreover, a highly cultivated man, who was exceptionally modest over his culture.
There was not a subject he knew nothing of. But he did not display his knowledge except when he was
compelled to do so. Still less could Levin say that he was a knave, as Sviazhsky was unmistakably an
honest, good-hearted, sensible man, who worked good-humoredly, keenly, and perseveringly at his work; he
was held in high honor by everyone about him, and certainly he had never consciously done, and was indeed
incapable of doing, anything base.
Levin tried to understand him, and could not understand him, and looked at him and his life as at a living
enigma.
Levin and he were very friendly, and so Levin used to venture to sound Sviazhsky, to try to get at the very
foundation of his view of life; but it was always in vain. Every time Levin tried to penetrate beyond the
outer chambers of Sviazhsky's mind, which were hospitably open to all, he noticed that Sviazhsky was
slightly disconcerted; faint signs of alarm were visible in his eyes, as though he were afraid Levin would
understand him, and he would give him a kindly, good-humored repulse.
The landowner unmistakably spoke his own individual thought—a thing that very rarely happens—and a
thought to which he had been brought not by a desire of finding some exercise for an idle brain, but a thought
which had grown up out of the conditions of his life, which he had brooded over in the solitude of his village,
and had considered in every aspect.
“Come, tell us how does your land do—does it pay?” said Levin, and at once in Sviazhsky's eyes he detected
that fleeting expression of alarm which he had noticed whenever he had tried to penetrate beyond the outer
chambers of Sviazhsky's mind.
And in the happiest frame of mind Sviazhsky got up and walked off, apparently supposing the conversation
to have ended at the very point when to Levin it seemed that it was only just beginning.
The landowner, like all men who think independently and in isolation, was slow in taking in any other
person's idea, and particularly partial to his own.
Sviazhsky, once more checking Levin in his inconvenient habit of peeping into what was beyond the outer
chambers of his mind, went to see his guests out.
He wondered, as he heard Sviazhsky: “What is there inside of him? And why, why is he interested in the
partition of Poland?” When Sviazhsky had finished, Levin could not help asking: “Well, and what then?”
But there was nothing to follow. It was simply interesting that it had been proved to be so and so. But
Sviazhsky did not explain, and saw no need to explain why it was interesting to him.
653
“But how do schools help matters?”
“They give the peasant fresh wants.”
“Well, that's a thing I've never understood,” Levin replied with heat. “In what way are schools going to
help the people to improve their material position? You say schools, education, will give them fresh wants.
So much the worse, since they won't be capable of satisfying them. And in what way a knowledge of
addition and subtraction and the catechism is going to improve their material condition, I never could make
out. The day before yesterday, I met a peasant woman in the evening with a little baby, and asked her where
she was going. She said she was going to the wise woman; her boy had screaming fits, so she was taking
him to be doctored. I asked, 'Why, how does the wise woman cure screaming fits?' 'She puts the child on the
hen-roost and repeats some charm....' “
“Well, you're saying it yourself! What's wanted to prevent her taking her child to the hen-roost to cure it
of screaming fits is just...” Sviazhsky said, smiling good-humoredly.
“Oh, no!” said Levin with annoyance; “that method of doctoring I merely meant as a simile for doctoring
the people with schools. The people are poor and ignorant—that we see as surely as the peasant woman sees
the baby is ill because it screams. But in what way this trouble of poverty and ignorance is to be cured by
schools is as incomprehensible as how the hen-roost affects the screaming. What has to be cured is what
makes him poor.”
But there was a gleam of alarm in Sviazhsky's eyes. ... Levin saw that he was not to discover the connection
between this man's life and his thoughts. Obviously he did not care in the least what his reasoning led him
to; all he wanted was the process of reasoning. And he did not like it when the process of reasoning brought
him into a blind alley. That was the only thing he disliked, and avoided by changing the conversation to
something agreeable and amusing. ... This dear good Sviazhsky, keeping a stock of ideas simply for social
purposes, and obviously having some other principles hidden from Levin, while with the crowd, whose name
is legion, he guided public opinion by ideas he did not share.
Let us try to look upon the labor force not as an abstract force, but as the Russian peasant with his instincts,
and we shall arrange our system of culture in accordance with that. Imagine ... that you have found means of
making your laborers take an interest in the success of the work.
Tolstoy, Levin’s thoughts, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 3, Chapter 28, p. 315
Another difficulty lay in the invincible disbelief of the peasant that a landowner's object could be anything
else than a desire to squeeze all he could out of them. They were firmly convinced that his real aim
(whatever he might say to them) would always be in what he did not say to them. And they themselves, in
giving their opinion, said a great deal but never said what was their real object. ... Talking to the peasants and
explaining to them all the advantages of the plan, Levin felt that the peasants heard nothing but the sound of
his voice, and were firmly resolved, whatever he might say, not to let themselves be taken in.
“I mean that I'm acting for my own advantage. It's all the better for me if the peasants do their work
better.”
“Well, whatever you do, if he's a lazy good-for-nought, everything'll be at sixes and sevens. If he has a
conscience, he'll work, and if not, there's no doing anything.”
“Oh, come, you say yourself Ivan has begun looking after the cattle better.”
“All I say is,” answered Agafea Mihalovna, evidently not speaking at random, but in strict sequence of
idea, “that you ought to get married, that's what I say.”
The chief reason why the prince was so particularly disagreeable to Vronsky was that he could not help
seeing himself in him. And what he saw in this mirror did not gratify his self-esteem.
654
She was, every time she saw him, making the picture of him in her imagination (incomparably superior,
impossible in reality) fit with him as he really was.
These fits of jealousy, which of late had been more and more frequent with her, horrified him, and however
much he tried to disguise the fact, made him feel cold to her, although he knew the cause of her jealousy was
her love for him. How often he had told himself that her love was happiness; and now she loved him as a
woman can love when love has outweighed for her all the good things of life—and he was much further from
happiness than when he had followed her from Moscow. Then he had thought himself unhappy, but
happiness was before him; now he felt that the best happiness was already left behind. She was utterly
unlike what she had been when he first saw her. Both morally and physically she had changed for the worse.
She had broadened out all over, and in her face at the time when she was speaking of the actress there was an
evil expression of hatred that distorted it. He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered,
with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it.
“If you want him defined, here he is: a prime, well-fed beast such as takes medals at the cattle shows, and
nothing more,” he said, with a tone of vexation that interested her.
“No; how so?” she replied. “He's seen a great deal, anyway; he's cultured?”
“It's an utterly different culture—their culture. He's cultivated, one sees, simply to be able to despise
culture, as they despise everything but animal pleasures.”
Tolstoy, Vronky and Anna discussing the visiting Prince, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 4, Chapter 3, p. 336
“I know him, the falsity in which he's utterly steeped?... Could one, with any feeling, live as he is living with
me? He understands nothing, and feels nothing. Could a man of any feeling live in the same house with his
unfaithful wife? Could he talk to her, call her 'my dear'? ... He's not a man, he's an official machine. He
doesn't understand that I'm your wife, that he's outside, that he's superfluous.”
Tolstoy, Anna speaking about Karenin, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 4, Chapter 3, p. 337
The new commission for the inquiry into the condition of the native tribes in all its branches had been formed
and dispatched to its destination with an unusual speed and energy inspired by Alexey Alexandrovitch.
Within three months a report was presented. The condition of the native tribes was investigated in its
political, administrative, economic, ethnographic, material, and religious aspects. To all these questions
there were answers admirably stated, and answers admitting no shade of doubt, since they were not a
product of human thought, always liable to error, but were all the product of official activity. The
answers were all based on official data furnished by governors and heads of churches, and founded on the
reports of district magistrates and ecclesiastical superintendents, founded in their turn on the reports of
parochial overseers and parish priests; and so all of these answers were unhesitating and certain. All such
questions as, for instance, of the cause of failure of crops, of the adherence of certain tribes to their ancient
beliefs, etc.—questions which, but for the convenient intervention of the official machine, are not, and
cannot be solved for ages—received full, unhesitating solution.
“It cannot be denied that the influence of the classical authors is in the highest degree moral, while,
unfortunately, with the study of the natural sciences are associated the false and noxious doctrines which are
the curse of our day.” ...
“One must allow that to weigh all the advantages and disadvantages of classical and scientific studies is a
difficult task, and the question which form of education was to be preferred would not have been so quickly
and conclusively decided if there had not been in favor of classical education, as you expressed it just now,
its moral—disons le mot—anti-nihilist influence.”
Tolstoy, Karenin and Sergey Ivanovich Levin Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 4, Chapter 10, p. 361
655
Levin had often noticed in discussions between the most intelligent people that after enormous efforts, and
an enormous expenditure of logical subtleties and words, the disputants finally arrived at being aware that
what they had so long been struggling to prove to one another had long ago, from the beginning of the
argument, been known to both, but that they liked different things, and would not define what they liked for
fear of its being attacked. He had often had the experience of suddenly in a discussion grasping what it was
his opponent liked and at once liking it too, and immediately he found himself agreeing, and then all
arguments fell away as useless. Sometimes, too, he had experienced the opposite, expressing at last what he
liked himself, which he was devising arguments to defend, and, chancing to express it well and genuinely, he
had found his opponent at once agreeing and ceasing to dispute his position. He tried to say this.
She knitted her brow, trying to understand. But directly he began to illustrate his meaning, she understood
at once.
“I know: one must find out what he is arguing for, what is precious to him, then one can...”
She had completely guessed and expressed his badly expressed idea. Levin smiled joyfully; he was struck
by this transition from the confused, verbose discussion with Pestsov and his brother to this laconic, clear,
almost wordless communication of the most complex ideas.
They arrived at the meeting. Levin heard the secretary hesitatingly read the minutes which he obviously did
not himself understand; but Levin saw from this secretary's face what a good, nice, kind-hearted person he
was. This was evident from his confusion and embarrassment in reading the minutes. Then the discussion
began. They were disputing about the misappropriation of certain sums and the laying of certain pipes, and
Sergey Ivanovitch was very cutting to two members, and said something at great length with an air of
triumph; and another member, scribbling something on a bit of paper, began timidly at first, but afterwards
answered him very viciously and delightfully. And then Sviazhsky (he was there too) said something too,
very handsomely and nobly. Levin listened to them, and saw clearly that these missing sums and these pipes
were not anything real, and that they were not at all angry, but were all the nicest, kindest people, and
everything was as happy and charming as possible among them. They did no harm to anyone, and were all
enjoying it. What struck Levin was that he could see through them all today, and from little, almost
imperceptible signs knew the soul of each, and saw distinctly that they were all good at heart. And Levin
himself in particular they were all extremely fond of that day. That was evident from the way they spoke to
him, from the friendly, affectionate way even those he did not know looked at him.
Levin ... had thought his engagement would have nothing about it like others, that the ordinary conditions of
engaged couples would spoil his special happiness; but it ended in his doing exactly as other people did, and
his happiness being only increased thereby and becoming more and more special, more and more unlike
anything that had ever happened.
His confession of unbelief passed unnoticed. She was religious, had never doubted the truths of religion, but
his external unbelief did not affect her in the least. Through love she knew all his soul, and in his soul she
saw what she wanted, and that such a state of soul should be called unbelieving was to her a matter of no
account.
The nervous agitation of Alexey Alexandrovitch kept increasing, and had by now reached such a point that
he ceased to struggle with it. He suddenly felt that what he had regarded as nervous agitation was on the
contrary a blissful spiritual condition that gave him all at once a new happiness he had never known. He did
not think that the Christian law that he had been all his life trying to follow, enjoined on him to forgive and
love his enemies; but a glad feeling of love and forgiveness for his enemies filled his heart.
656
At his sick wife's bedside he had for the first time in his life given way to that feeling of sympathetic
suffering always roused in him by the sufferings of others, and hitherto looked on by him with shame as a
harmful weakness. And pity for her, and remorse for having desired her death, and most of all, the joy of
forgiveness, made him at once conscious, not simply of the relief of his own sufferings, but of a spiritual
peace he had never experienced before. He suddenly felt that the very thing that was the source of his
sufferings had become the source of his spiritual joy; that what had seemed insoluble while he was judging,
blaming, and hating, had become clear and simple when he forgave and loved.
Alexey Alexandrovitch ... felt that besides the blessed spiritual force controlling his soul, there was another, a
brutal force, as powerful, or more powerful, which controlled his life, and that this force would not allow him
that humble peace he longed for.
Never had the impossibility of his position in the world's eyes, and his wife's hatred of him, and altogether
the might of that mysterious brutal force that guided his life against his spiritual inclinations, and exacted
conformity with its decrees and change in his attitude to his wife, been presented to him with such
distinctness as that day. He saw clearly that all the world and his wife expected of him something, but what
exactly, he could not make out. He felt that this was rousing in his soul a feeling of anger destructive of his
peace of mind and of all the good of his achievement. ... He felt helpless; he knew beforehand that every one
was against him, and that he would not be allowed to do what seemed to him now so natural and right, but
would be forced to do what was wrong, though it seemed the proper thing to them.
He attempted to look at it all as an empty custom, having no sort of meaning, like the custom of paying calls.
But he felt that he could not do that either. Levin found himself, like the majority of his contemporaries, in
the vaguest position in regard to religion. Believe he could not, and at the same time he had no firm
conviction that it was all wrong. And consequently, not being able to believe in the significance of what he
was doing nor to regard it with indifference as an empty formality, during the whole period of preparing for
the sacrament he was conscious of a feeling of discomfort and shame at doing what he did not himself
understand, and what, as an inner voice told him, was therefore false and wrong.
Vronsky was startled and annoyed by the nervous irascibility with which Golenishtchev talked of the subject
that engrossed him. As he went on talking, his eyes glittered more and more angrily; he was more and more
hurried in his replies to imaginary opponents, and his face grew more and more excited and worried.
Remembering Golenishtchev, a thin, lively, good-natured and well-bred boy, always at the head of the class,
Vronsky could not make out the reason of his irritability, and he did not like it. What he particularly disliked
was that Golenishtchev, a man belonging to a good set, should put himself on a level with some scribbling
fellows, with whom he was irritated and angry. Was it worth it?
Anna, in that first period of her emancipation and rapid return to health, felt herself unpardonably happy and
full of the joy of life. The thought of her husband's unhappiness did not poison her happiness. On one side
that memory was too awful to be thought of. On the other side her husband's unhappiness had given her too
much happiness to be regretted. The memory of all that had happened after her illness: her reconciliation
with her husband, its breakdown, the news of Vronsky's wound, his visit, the preparations for divorce, the
departure from her husband's house, the parting from her son—all that seemed to her like a delirious dream,
from which she had waked up alone with Vronsky abroad. The thought of the harm caused to her husband
aroused in her a feeling like repulsion, and akin to what a drowning man might feel who has shaken off
another man clinging to him. That man did drown. It was an evil action, of course, but it was the sole means
of escape, and better not to brood over these fearful facts.
657
The realization of his desires gave him no more than a grain of sand out of the mountain of happiness he had
expected. It showed him the mistake men make in picturing to themselves happiness as the realization of
their desires. For a time after joining his life to hers, and putting on civilian dress, he had felt all the delight
of freedom in general of which he had known nothing before, and of freedom in his love,—and he was
content, but not for long. He was soon aware that there was springing up in his heart a desire for desires—
ennui. Without conscious intention he began to clutch at every passing caprice, taking it for a desire and an
object.
Tolstoy, describing Vronsky, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 5, Chapter 8, p. 431
He had a ready appreciation of art, and probably, with a taste for imitating art, he supposed himself to have
the real thing essential for an artist, and after hesitating for some time which style of painting to select—
religious, historical, realistic, or genre painting—he set to work to paint. He appreciated all kinds, and could
have felt inspired by any one of them; but he had no conception of the possibility of knowing nothing at all
of any school of painting, and of being inspired directly by what is within the soul, without caring whether
what is painted will belong to any recognized school. Since he knew nothing of this, and drew his
inspiration, not directly from life, but indirectly from life embodied in art, his inspiration came very quickly
and easily, and as quickly and easily came his success in painting something very similar to the sort of
painting he was trying to imitate.
Tolstoy, describing Vronsky, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 5, Chapter 8, p. 432
“I have met him. But he's a queer fish, and quite without breeding. You know, one of those uncouth new
people one's so often coming across nowadays, one of those free-thinkers you know, who are reared d'emblée
in theories of atheism, scepticism, and materialism. In former days,” said Golenishtchev, not observing, or
not willing to observe, that both Anna and Vronsky wanted to speak, “in former days the free-thinker was a
man who had been brought up in ideas of religion, law, and morality, and only through conflict and struggle
came to free-thought; but now there has sprung up a new type of born free-thinkers who grow up without
even having heard of principles of morality or of religion, of the existence of authorities, who grow up
directly in ideas of negation in everything, that is to say, savages. Well, he's of that class. He's the son, it
appears, of some Moscow butler, and has never had any sort of bringing-up. When he got into the academy
and made his reputation he tried, as he's no fool, to educate himself. And he turned to what seemed to him
the very source of culture—the magazines. In old times, you see, a man who wanted to educate himself—a
Frenchman, for instance—would have set to work to study all the classics and theologians and tragedians and
historians and philosophers, and, you know, all the intellectual work that came in his way. But in our day he
goes straight for the literature of negation, very quickly assimilates all the extracts of the science of negation,
and he's ready. And that's not all—twenty years ago he would have found in that literature traces of conflict
with authorities, with the creeds of the ages; he would have perceived from this conflict that there was
something else; but now he comes at once upon a literature in which the old creeds do not even furnish
matter for discussion, but it is stated baldly that there is nothing else—evolution, natural selection, struggle
for existence—and that's all."
He had sketched this new pose, when all at once he recalled the face of a shopkeeper of whom he had bought
cigars, a vigorous face with a prominent chin, and he sketched this very face, this chin on to the figure of the
man. He laughed aloud with delight. The figure from a lifeless imagined thing had become living, and such
that it could never be changed. That figure lived, and was clearly and unmistakably defined. The sketch
might be corrected in accordance with the requirements of the figure, the legs, indeed, could and must be put
differently, and the position of the left hand must be quite altered; the hair too might be thrown back. But in
making these corrections he was not altering the figure but simply getting rid of what concealed the figure.
He was, as it were, stripping off the wrappings which hindered it from being distinctly seen. Each new
feature only brought out the whole figure in all its force and vigor.
658
He only remembered his face as he remembered all the faces he had ever seen; but he remembered, too, that
it was one of the faces laid by in his memory in the immense class of the falsely consequential and poor in
expression.
Tolstoy, Mihailov’s recollection of Golenishtchev, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 5, Chapter 11, p. 437
They talked of Mihailov and his pictures. The word talent, by which they meant an inborn, almost physical,
aptitude apart from brain and heart, and in which they tried to find an expression for all the artist had gained
from life, recurred particularly often in their talk, as though it were necessary for them to sum up what they
had no conception of, though they wanted to talk of it.
Mihailov ... knew that Vronsky could not be prevented from amusing himself with painting; he knew that he
and all dilettanti had a perfect right to paint what they liked, but it was distasteful to him. A man could not
be prevented from making himself a big wax doll, and kissing it. But if the man were to come with the doll
and sit before a man in love, and begin caressing his doll as the lover caressed the woman he loved, it would
be distasteful to the lover. Just such a distasteful sensation was what Mihailov felt at the sight of Vronsky's
painting: he felt it both ludicrous and irritating, both pitiable and offensive.
As soon as she opened her mouth, a stream of reproach, of senseless jealousy, of all that had been torturing
her during that half hour which she had spent sitting motionless at the window, burst from her. It was only
then, for the first time, that he clearly understood what he had not understood when he led her out of the
church after the wedding. He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he
ended and she began. ... He was offended for the first instant, but the very same second he felt that he could
not be offended by her, that she was himself. He felt for the first moment as a man feels when, having
suddenly received a violent blow from behind, he turns round, angry and eager to avenge himself, to look for
his antagonist, and finds that it is he himself who has accidentally struck himself, that there is no one to be
angry with, and that he must put up with and try to soothe the pain.
Tolstoy, Kitty and Levin, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 5, Chapter 11, p. 446
His work, both on the land and on the book, in which the principles of the new land system were to be laid
down, had not been abandoned; but just as formerly these pursuits and ideas had seemed to him petty and
trivial in comparison with the darkness that overspread all life, now they seemed as unimportant and petty in
comparison with the life that lay before him suffused with the brilliant light of happiness.
“Of course she's not to blame,” he told himself. But it is hard for anyone who is dissatisfied not to blame
someone else, and especially the person nearest of all to him, for the ground of his dissatisfaction.
Tolstoy, Levin, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 5, Chapter 11, p. 450
There had come back into his face the stern, reproachful expression of the dying man's envy of the living.
But Kitty thought, and felt, and acted quite differently. On seeing the sick man, she pitied him. And pity in
her womanly heart did not arouse at all that feeling of horror and loathing that it aroused in her husband, but
a desire to act, to find out all the details of his state, and to remedy them. And since she had not the slightest
doubt that it was her duty to help him, she had no doubt either that it was possible, and immediately set to
work. The very details, the mere thought of which reduced her husband to terror, immediately engaged her
attention.
659
“Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.” So Levin
thought about his wife as he talked to her that evening.
Levin thought of the text, not because he considered himself “wise and prudent.” He did not so consider
himself, but he could not help knowing that he had more intellect than his wife and Agafea Mihalovna, and
he could not help knowing that when he thought of death, he thought with all the force of his intellect. He
knew too that the brains of many great men, whose thoughts he had read, had brooded over death and yet
knew not a hundredth part of what his wife and Agafea Mihalovna knew about it.
On getting back from the sick-room to their own two rooms for the night, Levin sat with hanging head not
knowing what to do. Not to speak of supper, of preparing for bed, of considering what they were going to
do, he could not even talk to his wife; he was ashamed to. Kitty, on the contrary, was more active than usual.
She was even livelier than usual. She ordered supper to be brought, herself unpacked their things, and
herself helped to make the beds, and did not even forget to sprinkle them with Persian powder. She showed
that alertness, that swiftness of reflection which comes out in men before a battle, in conflict, in the
dangerous and decisive moments of life—those moments when a man shows once and for all his value, and
that all his past has not been wasted but has been a preparation for these moments.
Levin knew his brother and the workings of his intellect: he knew that his unbelief came not from life being
easier for him without faith, but had grown up because step by step the contemporary scientific interpretation
of natural phenomena crushed out the possibility of faith; and so he knew that his present return was not a
legitimate one, brought about by way of the same working of his intellect, but simply a temporary, interested
return.
There was evidently coming over him that revulsion that would make him look upon death as the goal of his
desires, as happiness. Hitherto each individual desire, aroused by suffering or privation, such as hunger,
fatigue, thirst, had been satisfied by some bodily function giving pleasure. But now no physical craving or
suffering received relief, and the effort to relieve them only caused fresh suffering. And so all desires were
merged in one—the desire to be rid of all his sufferings and their source, the body. But he had no words to
express this desire of deliverance, and so he did not speak of it, and from habit asked for the satisfaction of
desires which could not now be satisfied.
Tolstoy, Levin’s brother, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 5, Chapter 20, p. 466
“A man's strength has its limits, countess, and I have reached my limits. The whole day I have had to be
making arrangements, arrangements about household matters arising” (he emphasized the word arising)
“from my new, solitary position. The servants, the governess, the accounts. ... These pinpricks have stabbed
me to the heart, and I have not the strength to bear it.
Tolstoy, Karenin, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 5, Chapter 20, p. 471
Alexey Alexandrovitch, like Lidia Ivanovna indeed, and others who shared their views, was completely
devoid of vividness of imagination, that spiritual faculty in virtue of which the conceptions evoked by the
imagination become so vivid that they must needs be in harmony with other conceptions, and with actual
fact.
Alexey Alexandrovitch ... saw nothing impossible and inconceivable in the idea that death, though existing
for unbelievers, did not exist for him, and that, as he was possessed of the most perfect faith, of the measure
of which he was himself the judge, therefore there was no sin in his soul, and he was experiencing complete
salvation here on earth.
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For Alexey Alexandrovitch it was a necessity to think in that way; it was such a necessity for him in his
humiliation to have some elevated standpoint, however imaginary, from which, looked down upon by all, he
could look down on others, that he clung, as to his one salvation, to his delusion of salvation.
Passing through rows of ironical eyes, he was drawn as naturally to her loving glance as a plant to the sun.
Tolstoy, Karenin and Lidia Ivanova, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 5, Chapter 24, p. 478
Countess Lidia Ivanovna looked at him ecstatically, and tears of rapture at the greatness of his soul came into
her eyes.
Tolstoy, Lidia Ivanova and Karenin, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 5, Chapter 24, p. 479
This question always excited another question in him—whether they felt differently, did their loving and
marrying differently, these Vronskys and Oblonskys—these gentlemen of the bedchamber, with their fine
calves. And there passed before his mind a whole series of these mettlesome, vigorous, self-confident men,
who always and everywhere drew his inquisitive attention in spite of himself. He tried to dispel these
thoughts, he tried to persuade himself that he was not living for this transient life, but for the life of eternity.
Tolstoy, Karenin, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 5, Chapter 25, p. 481
The fact that he had in this transient, trivial life made, as it seemed to him, a few trivial mistakes tortured him
as though the eternal salvation in which he believed had no existence. But this temptation did not last long,
and soon there was reestablished once more in Alexey Alexandrovitch's soul the peace and the elevation by
virtue of which he could forget what he did not want to remember.
“Mihail Ivanitch, when is your birthday?” he asked all, of a sudden.

“You'd much better be thinking about your work. Birthdays are of no importance to a rational being. It's a
day like any other on which one has to do one's work.”
Seryozha looked intently at the teacher, at his scanty beard, at his spectacles, which had slipped down
below the ridge on his nose, and fell into so deep a reverie that he heard nothing of what the teacher was
explaining to him. He knew that the teacher did not think what he said; he felt it from the tone in which it
was said. “But why have they all agreed to speak just in the same manner always the dreariest and most
useless stuff? Why does he keep me off; why doesn't he love me?” he asked himself mournfully, and could
not think of an answer.
Alexey Alexandrovitch ... frowned, and began explaining what Seryozha had heard many times before and
never could remember, because he understood it too well, just as that “suddenly” is an adverb of manner of
action.
His father and his teacher were both displeased with Seryozha, and he certainly did learn his lessons very
badly. But still it could not be said he was a stupid boy. On the contrary, he was far cleverer than the boys
his teacher held up as examples to Seryozha. In his father's opinion, he did not want to learn what he
was taught. In reality he could not learn that. He could not, because the claims of his own soul were
more binding on him than those claims his father and his teacher made upon him. Those claims were in
opposition, and he was in direct conflict with his education. He was nine years old; he was a child; but he
knew his own soul, it was precious to him, he guarded it as the eyelid guards the eye, and without the key of
love he let no one into his soul. His teachers complained that he would not learn, while his soul was
brimming over with thirst for knowledge. And he learned from Kapitonitch, from his nurse, from Nadinka,
from Vassily Lukitch, but not from his teachers. The spring his father and his teachers reckoned upon to turn
their mill-wheels had long dried up at the source, but its waters did their work in another channel.
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The elder brother, who had always a respect for his younger brother's judgment, could not well tell whether
he was right or not till the world had decided the question.
Tolstoy, the Vronsky brothers, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 5, Chapter 28, p. 488
However many women and girls he thought of whom he knew, he could not think of a girl who united to
such a degree all, positively all, the qualities he would wish to see in his wife. She had all the charm and
freshness of youth, but she was not a child; and if she loved him, she loved him consciously as a woman
ought to love; that was one thing. Another point: she was not only far from being worldly, but had an
unmistakable distaste for worldly society, and at the same time she knew the world, and had all the ways of a
woman of the best society, which were absolutely essential to Sergey Ivanovitch's conception of the woman
who was to share his life. Thirdly: she was religious, and not like a child, unconsciously religious and good,
as Kitty, for example, was, but her life was founded on religious principles.
Tolstoy, Sergey Ivanovitch's thoughts about Varenka, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 6, Chapter 4, p. 521
They walked on for some steps in silence. Varenka saw that he wanted to speak; she guessed of what, and
felt faint with joy and panic. They had walked so far away that no one could hear them now, but still he did
not begin to speak. It would have been better for Varenka to be silent. After a silence it would have been
easier for them to say what they wanted to say than after talking about mushrooms. But against her own will,
as it were accidentally, Varenka said:
“So you found nothing? In the middle of the wood there are always fewer, though.” Sergey Ivanovitch
sighed and made no answer. He was annoyed that she had spoken about the mushrooms. ... After a pause of
some length, as though against his own will, he made an observation in response to her last words.
“I have heard that the white edible funguses are found principally at the edge of the wood, though I can't
tell them apart.”
Now or never it must be said—that Sergey Ivanovitch felt too. Everything in the expression, the flushed
cheeks and the downcast eyes of Varenka betrayed a painful suspense. Sergey Ivanovitch saw it and felt
sorry for her. He felt even that to say nothing now would be a slight to her. Rapidly in his own mind he ran
over all the arguments in support of his decision. He even said over to himself the words in which he meant
to put his offer, but instead of those words, some utterly unexpected reflection that occurred to him made him
ask:
“What is the difference between the 'birch' mushroom and the 'white' mushroom?”
Varenka's lips quivered with emotion as she answered:
“In the top part there is scarcely any difference, it's in the stalk.” And as soon as these words were uttered,
both he and she felt that it was over, that what was to have been said would not be said; and their emotion,
which had up to then been continually growing more intense, began to subside.
Levin and Kitty were particularly happy and conscious of their love that evening. And their happiness in
their love seemed to imply a disagreeable slur on those who would have liked to feel the same and could
not—and they felt a prick of conscience.
“It would be difficult to find two sons-in-law more unlike than yours,” he said with a subtle smile. “One all
movement, only living in society, like a fish in water; the other our Kostya, lively, alert, quick in everything,
but as soon as he is in society, he either sinks into apathy, or struggles helplessly like a fish on land.”
Tolstoy, Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 6, Chapter 6, p. 526
For the first minute she had been offended at his jealousy; she was angry that the slightest amusement, even
the most innocent, should be forbidden her; but now she would readily have sacrificed, not merely such
trifles, but everything, for his peace of mind, to save him from the agony he was suffering.
Tolstoy, Kitty and Levin, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 6, Chapter 7, p. 531
662
“Katya, I've been worrying you! Darling, forgive me! It's madness! Katya, I'm a criminal. And how
could you be so distressed at such idiocy?”
“Oh, I was sorry for you.”
“For me? for me? How mad I am!... But why make you miserable? It's awful to think that any outsider
can shatter our happiness.”
Tolstoy, Levin and Kitty, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 6, Chapter 7, p. 531
Oblonsky began telling them of a delightful shooting party at Malthus's, where he had stayed the previous
summer.
Malthus was a well-known capitalist, who had made his money by speculation in railway shares. Stepan
Arkadyevitch described what grouse moors this Malthus had bought in the Tver province, and how they were
preserved, and of the carriages and dogcarts in which the shooting party had been driven, and the luncheon
pavilion that had been rigged up at the marsh.
“I don't understand you,” said Levin, sitting up in the hay; “how is it such people don't disgust you? I can
understand a lunch with Lafitte is all very pleasant, but don't you dislike just that very sumptuousness? All
these people, just like our spirit monopolists in old days, get their money in a way that gains them the
contempt of everyone. They don't care for their contempt, and then they use their dishonest gains to buy off
the contempt they have deserved.”
“Perfectly true!” chimed in Vassenka Veslovsky. “Perfectly! Oblonsky, of course, goes out of bonhomie,
but other people say: 'Well, Oblonsky stays with them.'...”
“Not a bit of it.” Levin could hear that Oblonsky was smiling as he spoke. “I simply don't consider him
more dishonest than any other wealthy merchant or nobleman. They've all made their money alike—by their
work and their intelligence.”
“Oh, by what work? Do you call it work to get hold of concessions and speculate with them?”
“Of course it's work. Work in this sense, that if it were not for him and others like him, there would have
been no railways.”
“But that's not work, like the work of a peasant or a learned profession.”
“Granted, but it's work in the sense that his activity produces a result—the railways.”
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 6, Chapter11, p. 542
Running into the marsh among the familiar scents of roots, marsh plants, and slime, and the extraneous smell
of horse dung, Laska detected at once a smell that pervaded the whole marsh, the scent of that strong-
smelling bird that always excited her more than any other. Here and there among the moss and marsh plants
this scent was very strong, but it was impossible to determine in which direction it grew stronger or fainter.
To find the direction, she had to go farther away from the wind. Not feeling the motion of her legs, Laska
bounded with a stiff gallop, so that at each bound she could stop short, to the right, away from the wind that
blew from the east before sunrise, and turned facing the wind. Sniffing in the air with dilated nostrils, she
felt at once that not their tracks only but they themselves were here before her, and not one, but many. Laska
slackened her speed. They were here, but where precisely she could not yet determine. To find the very
spot, she began to make a circle, when suddenly her master's voice drew her off. “Laska! here?” he asked,
pointing her to a different direction. She stopped, asking him if she had better not go on doing as she had
begun. But he repeated his command in an angry voice, pointing to a spot covered with water, where there
could not be anything. She obeyed him, pretending she was looking, so as to please him, went round it, and
went back to her former position, and was at once aware of the scent again. Now when he was not hindering
her, she knew what to do, and without looking at what was under her feet, and to her vexation stumbling over
a high stump into the water, but righting herself with her strong, supple legs, she began making the circle
which was to make all clear to her. The scent of them reached her, stronger and stronger, and more and more
defined, and all at once it became perfectly clear to her that one of them was here, behind this tuft of reeds,
five paces in front of her. ... she breathed heavily but warily, and still more warily looked round, but more
with her eyes than her head, to her master. He was coming along with the face she knew so well, though the
eyes were always terrible to her. He stumbled over the stump as he came, and moved, as she thought,
extraordinarily slowly. She thought he came slowly, but he was running.
Tolstoy, Levin’s dog Laska, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 6, Chapter 13, p. 548
663
Just as Levin had disliked all the trivial preparations for his wedding, as derogatory to the grandeur of the
event, now he felt still more offensive the preparations for the approaching birth. ... The birth of a son (he
was certain it would be a son) which was promised him, but which he still could not believe in—so
marvelous it seemed—presented itself to his mind, on one hand, as a happiness so immense, and therefore so
incredible; on the other, as an event so mysterious, that this assumption of a definite knowledge of what
would be, and consequent preparation for it, as for something ordinary that did happen to people, jarred on
him as confusing and humiliating.
But the princess did not understand his feelings, and put down his reluctance to think and talk about it to
carelessness and indifference.
And again the light died away in his eyes. Again, as before, all of a sudden, without the slightest transition,
he felt cast down from a pinnacle of happiness, peace, and dignity, into an abyss of despair, rage, and
humiliation. Again everything and everyone had become hateful to him.
Kitty disliked the conversation, and she was disturbed both by the subject and the tone in which it was
conducted, and also by the knowledge of the effect it would have on her husband. But she was too simple
and innocent to know how to cut short this conversation, or even to conceal the superficial pleasure afforded
her by the young man's very obvious admiration. She wanted to stop it, but she did not know what to do.
Whatever she did she knew would be observed by her husband, and the worst interpretation put on it. And,
in fact, when she asked Dolly what was wrong with Masha, and Vassenka, waiting till this uninteresting
conversation was over, began to gaze indifferently at Dolly, the question struck Levin as an unnatural and
disgusting piece of hypocrisy.
On the bridge was a crowd of peasant women with coils of ties for the sheaves on their shoulders, gaily and
noisily chattering. They stood still on the bridge, staring inquisitively at the carriage. All the faces turned to
Darya Alexandrovna looked to her healthy and happy, making her envious of their enjoyment of life.
“They're all living, they're all enjoying life,” Darya Alexandrovna still mused when she had passed the
peasant women and was driving uphill again at a trot, seated comfortably on the soft springs of the old
carriage, “while I, let out, as it were from prison, from the world of worries that fret me to death, am only
looking about me now for an instant. They all live; those peasant women and my sister Natalia and Varenka
and Anna, whom I am going to see—all, but not I.
“And they attack Anna. What for? am I any better? I have, anyway, a husband I love—not as I should like
to love him, still I do love him, while Anna never loved hers. How is she to blame? She wants to live. God
has put that in our hearts. Very likely I should have done the same. Even to this day I don't feel sure I did
right in listening to her at that terrible time when she came to me in Moscow. I ought then to have cast off
my husband and have begun my life fresh. I might have loved and have been loved in reality. And is it any
better as it is? I don't respect him. He's necessary to me,” she thought about her husband, “and I put up with
him. Is that any better? At that time I could still have been admired, I had beauty left me still,” Darya
Alexandrovna pursued her thoughts, and she would have liked to look at herself in the looking glass. She
had a traveling looking glass in her handbag, and she wanted to take it out; but looking at the backs of the
coachman and the swaying counting house clerk, she felt that she would be ashamed if either of them were to
look round, and she did not take out the glass.
But without looking in the glass, she thought that even now it was not too late; and she thought of Sergey
Ivanovitch, who was always particularly attentive to her, of Stiva's good-hearted friend, Turovtsin, who had
helped her nurse her children through the scarlatina, and was in love with her. And there was someone else,
a quite young man, who—her husband had told her it as a joke—thought her more beautiful than either of
her sisters. And the most passionate and impossible romances rose before Darya Alexandrovna's
imagination. “Anna did quite right, and certainly I shall never reproach her for it. She is happy, she makes
664
another person happy, and she's not broken down as I am, but most likely just as she always was, bright,
clever, open to every impression,” thought Darya Alexandrovna,—and a sly smile curved her lips, for, as she
pondered on Anna's love affair, Darya Alexandrovna constructed on parallel lines an almost identical love
affair for herself, with an imaginary composite figure, the ideal man who was in love with her. She, like
Anna, confessed the whole affair to her husband. And the amazement and perplexity of Stepan Arkadyevitch
at this avowal made her smile.
Tolstoy, Dolly, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 6, Chapter 16, pp. 561-562
Anna was not embarrassed now. She was perfectly composed and at ease. Dolly saw that she had now
completely recovered from the impression her arrival had made on her, and had assumed that superficial,
careless tone which, as it were, closed the door on that compartment in which her deeper feelings and ideas
were kept.
I'm like a hungry beggar woman when a full dinner is set before her, and she does not know what to begin on
first. The dinner is you, and the talks I have before me with you, which I could never have with anyone else;
and I don't know which subject to begin upon first.
Tolstoy, Anna and Dolly, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 6, Chapter 15, p. 571
“He's one of those people who are very pleasant if one accepts them for what they try to appear to be.”
Tolstoy, Anna describing Tushkevitch, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 6, Chapter 19, p. 572
As a general principle, abstractly, Dolly approved of Anna's action; but to see the man for whose sake her
action had been taken was disagreeable to her. Moreover, she had never liked Vronsky. She thought him
very proud, and saw nothing in him of which he could be proud except his wealth. But against her own will,
here in his own house, he overawed her more than ever, and she could not be at ease with him. She felt with
him the same feeling she had had with the maid about her dressing jacket. Just as with the maid she had felt
not exactly ashamed, but embarrassed at her darns, so she felt with him not exactly ashamed, but
embarrassed at herself.
“Oh, it's a work of real importance!” said Sviazhsky. But to show he was not trying to ingratiate himself
with Vronsky, he promptly added some slightly critical remarks.
Darya Alexandrovna was interested by everything. She liked everything very much, but most of all she liked
Vronsky himself with his natural, simple-hearted eagerness. “Yes, he's a very nice, good man,” she thought
several times, not hearing what he said, but looking at him and penetrating into his expression, while she
mentally put herself in Anna's place. She liked him so much just now with his eager interest that she saw
how Anna could be in love with him.
“I see in Anna that she is happy, perfectly happy, she has had time to tell me so much already,” said Darya
Alexandrovna, smiling; and involuntarily, as she said this, at the same moment a doubt entered her mind
whether Anna really was happy.
Darya Alexandrovna noticed that at this point in his explanation he grew confused, and she did not quite
understand this digression, but she felt that having once begun to speak of matters near his heart, of which he
could not speak to Anna, he was now making a clean breast of everything, and that the question of his
pursuits in the country fell into the same category of matters near his heart, as the question of his relations
with Anna.
665
“I will talk to her. But how is it she does not think of it herself?” said Darya Alexandrovna, and for some
reason she suddenly at that point recalled Anna's strange new habit of half-closing her eyes. And she
remembered that Anna drooped her eyelids just when the deeper questions of life were touched upon. “Just
as though she half-shut her eyes to her own life, so as not to see everything,” thought Dolly.
The dinner, the dining room, the service, the waiting at table, the wine, and the food, were not simply in
keeping with the general tone of modern luxury throughout all the house, but seemed even more sumptuous
and modern. Darya Alexandrovna watched this luxury which was novel to her, and as a good housekeeper
used to managing a household—although she never dreamed of adapting anything she saw to her own
household, as it was all in a style of luxury far above her own manner of living—she could not help
scrutinizing every detail, and wondering how and by whom it was all done. Vassenka Veslovsky, her
husband, and even Sviazhsky, and many other people she knew, would never have considered this question,
and would have readily believed what every well-bred host tries to make his guests feel, that is, that all that is
well-ordered in his house has cost him, the host, no trouble whatever, but comes of itself. Darya
Alexandrovna was well aware that even porridge for the children's breakfast does not come of itself, and that
therefore, where so complicated and magnificent a style of luxury was maintained, someone must give
earnest attention to its organization. And from the glance with which Alexey Kirillovitch scanned the table,
from the way he nodded to the butler, and offered Darya Alexandrovna her choice between cold soup and hot
soup, she saw that it was all organized and maintained by the care of the master of the house himself. It was
evident that it all rested no more upon Anna than upon Veslovsky. She, Sviazhsky, the princess, and
Veslovsky, were equally guests, with light hearts enjoying what had been arranged for them.
Anna took a knife and fork in her beautiful white hands covered with rings, and began showing how the
machine worked. It was clear that she saw nothing would be understood from her explanation; but aware
that her talk was pleasant and her hands beautiful she went on explaining.
The company at dinner, with the exception of the doctor, the architect, and the steward, who remained
plunged in gloomy silence, kept up a conversation that never paused, glancing off one subject, fastening on
another, and at times stinging one or the other to the quick. Once Darya Alexandrovna felt wounded to the
quick, and got so hot that she positively flushed and wondered afterwards whether she had said anything
extreme or unpleasant.
It was strange to Darya Alexandrovna to hear how serenely confident he was of being right at his own table.
She thought how Levin, who believed the opposite, was just as positive in his opinions at his own table. But
she loved Levin, and so she was on his side.
Anna spoke lightly, but irritation could be discerned in her tone. Darya Alexandrovna, watching Anna and
Vronsky attentively, detected it instantly. She noticed, too, that as she spoke Vronsky's face had immediately
taken a serious and obstinate expression. Noticing this, and that Princess Varvara at once made haste to
change the conversation by talking of Petersburg acquaintances, and remembering what Vronsky had without
apparent connection said in the garden of his work in the country, Dolly surmised that this question of public
activity was connected with some deep private disagreement between Anna and Vronsky.
666
During the game Darya Alexandrovna was not enjoying herself. She did not like the light tone of raillery
that was kept up all the time between Vassenka Veslovsky and Anna, and the unnaturalness altogether of
grown-up people, all alone without children, playing at a child's game. But to avoid breaking up the party
and to get through the time somehow, after a rest she joined the game again, and pretended to be enjoying it.
All that day it seemed to her as though she were acting in a theater with actors cleverer than she, and that her
bad acting was spoiling the whole performance. She had come with the intention of staying two days, if all
went well. But in the evening, during the game, she made up her mind that she would go home next day.
The maternal cares and worries, which she had so hated on the way, now, after a day spent without them,
struck her in quite another light, and tempted her back to them.
It was positively disagreeable to her to think that Anna was coming to see her immediately. She longed to be
alone with her own thoughts.
Dolly was wanting to go to bed when Anna came in to see her, attired for the night. In the course of the
day Anna had several times begun to speak of matters near her heart, and every time after a few words she
had stopped: “Afterwards, by ourselves, we'll talk about everything. I've got so much I want to tell you,” she
said.
Now they were by themselves, and Anna did not know what to talk about. She sat in the window looking
at Dolly, and going over in her own mind all the stores of intimate talk which had seemed so inexhaustible
beforehand, and she found nothing. At that moment it seemed to her that everything had been said already.
The memories of home and of her children rose up in her imagination with a peculiar charm quite new to her,
with a sort of new brilliance. That world of her own seemed to her now so sweet and precious that she would
not on any account spend an extra day outside it, and she made up her mind that she would certainly go back
next day.
After a day spent together, both she [Darya Alexandrovna] and her hosts were distinctly aware that they did
not get on together, and that it was better for them to be apart. Only Anna was sad. She knew that now,
from Dolly's departure, no one again would stir up within her soul the feelings that had been roused by their
conversation. It hurt her to stir up these feelings, but yet she knew that that was the best part of her soul, and
that that part of her soul would quickly be smothered in the life she was leading.
Vronsky appreciated this desire not only to please, but to serve him, which had become the sole aim of her
existence, but at the same time he wearied of the loving snares in which she tried to hold him fast. As time
went on, and he saw himself more and more often held fast in these snares, he had an ever growing desire,
not so much to escape from them, as to try whether they hindered his freedom.
Everyone was kind and civil, but the point evaded seemed to crop up again in the end, and again to bar the
way. What was particularly trying, was that Levin could not make out with whom he was struggling, to
whose interest it was that his business should not be done. That no one seemed to know; the solicitor
certainly did not know. If Levin could have understood why, just as he saw why one can only approach the
booking office of a railway station in single file, it would not have been so vexatious and tiresome to him.
But with the hindrances that confronted him in his business, no one could explain why they existed.
But Levin had changed a good deal since his marriage; he was patient, and if he could not see why it was
all arranged like this, he told himself that he could not judge without knowing all about it, and that most
likely it must be so.
667
We live without making anything, as though we were ancient vestals set to keep in a fire.
A silence followed, during which Vronsky—since he had to look at something—looked at Levin, at his feet,
at his uniform, then at his face, and noticing his gloomy eyes fixed upon him, he said, sine he had to say
something: “How is it that you, living constantly in the country, are not a justice of the peace?”
Only by occupation in the day, by morphine at night, could she stifle the fearful thought of what would be if
he ceased to love her.
When Levin had changed his first hundred-rouble note to pay for liveries for his footmen and hall-porter he
could not help reflecting that these liveries were of no use to anyone—but they were indubitably necessary,
to judge by the amazement of the princess and Kitty when he suggested that they might do without
liveries,—that these liveries would cost the wages of two laborers for the summer. ... now the notes he
changed no longer aroused such reflections, and they flew off like little birds. Whether the labor devoted to
obtaining the money corresponded to the pleasure given by what was bought with it, was a consideration he
had long ago dismissed.
Levin thought that the clearness of Katavasov's conception of life was due to the poverty of his nature;
Katavasov thought that the disconnectedness of Levin's ideas was due to his lack of intellectual discipline;
but Levin enjoyed Katavasov's clearness, and Katavasov enjoyed the abundance of Levin's untrained ideas,
and they liked to meet and to discuss.
Levin ... tried to listen as attentively and conscientiously as possible. He tried not to let his attention be
distracted, and not to spoil his impression by looking at the conductor in a white tie, waving his arms, which
always disturbed his enjoyment of music so much, or the ladies in bonnets, with strings carefully tied over
their ears, and all these people either thinking of nothing at all or thinking of all sorts of things except the
music. He tried to avoid meeting musical connoisseurs or talkative acquaintances, and stood looking at the
floor straight before him, listening.
But the more he listened to the fantasia of King Lear the further he felt from forming any definite opinion
of it. There was, as it were, a continual beginning, a preparation of the musical expression of some feeling,
but it fell to pieces again directly, breaking into new musical motives, or simply nothing but the whims of the
composer, exceedingly complex but disconnected sounds. And these fragmentary musical expressions,
though sometimes beautiful, were disagreeable, because they were utterly unexpected and not led up to by
anything. Gaiety and grief and despair and tenderness and triumph followed one another without any
connection, like the emotions of a madman. And those emotions, like a madman's, sprang up quite
unexpectedly.
During the whole of the performance Levin felt like a deaf man watching people dancing, and was in a
state of complete bewilderment when the fantasia was over, and felt a great weariness from the fruitless
strain on his attention.
Levin said that the French had carried conventionality further than anyone, and that consequently they see a
great merit in the return to realism. In the fact of not lying they see poetry.
668
“I was just telling Anna Arkadyevna,” said Vorkuev, “that if she were to put a hundredth part of the
energy she devotes to this English girl to the public question of the education of Russian children, she would
be doing a great and useful work.”
“Yes, but I can't help it; I couldn't do it. Count Alexey Kirillovitch urged me ... to take up the school in the
village. I visited it several times. The children were very nice, but I could not feel drawn to the work. You
speak of energy. Energy rests upon love; and come as it will, there's no forcing it. I took to this child—I
could not myself say why.”
And she glanced again at Levin. And her smile and her glance—all told him that it was to him only she
was addressing her words, valuing his good opinion, and at the same time sure beforehand that they
understood each other.
“I quite understand that,” Levin answered. “It's impossible to give one's heart to a school or such
institutions in general, and I believe that's just why philanthropic institutions always give such poor results.”
She was silent for a while, then she smiled.
“Yes, yes,” she agreed; “I never could. Je n'ai pas le cœur assez large to love a whole asylum of horrid
little girls.”
While he followed this interesting conversation, Levin was all the time admiring her—her beauty, her
intelligence, her culture, and at the same time her directness and genuine depth of feeling. He listened and
talked, and all the while he was thinking of her inner life, trying to divine her feelings. And though he had
judged her so severely hitherto, now by some strange chain of reasoning he was justifying her and was also
sorry for her, and afraid that Vronsky did not fully understand her.
Tolstoy, Levin and Anna, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 7, Chapter 10, p. 646
Levin rapidly ran through mentally the day he had spent. All the events of the day were conversations,
conversations he had heard and taken part in. All the conversations were upon subjects which, if he had been
alone at home, he would never have taken up, but here they were very interesting. And all these
conversations were right enough, only in two places there was something not quite right. One was what he
had said about the carp, the other was something not “quite the thing” in the tender sympathy he was feeling
for Anna.
I wait, inventing amusements for myself—the English family, writing, reading—but it's all nothing but a
sham, it's all the same as morphine.
Though there was so little that was complex or artificial in Kitty's character in general, Levin was struck by
what was revealed now, when suddenly all disguises were thrown off and the very kernel of her soul shone in
her eyes. And in this simplicity and nakedness of her soul, she, the very woman he loved in her, was more
manifest than ever.
All he knew and felt was that what was happening was what had happened nearly a year before in the hotel
of the country town at the deathbed of his brother Nikolay. But that had been grief—this was joy. Yet that
grief and this joy were alike outside all the ordinary conditions of life; they were loop-holes, as it were, in
that ordinary life through which there came glimpses of something sublime. And in the contemplation of this
sublime something the soul was exalted to inconceivable heights of which it had before had no conception,
while reason lagged behind, unable to keep up with it.
“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”
Tolstoy, Anna, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 7, Chapter 24 p. 685
669
The physical organization, its decay, the indestructibility of matter, the law of the conservation of energy,
evolution, were the words which usurped the place of his old belief. These words and the ideas associated
with them were very well for intellectual purposes. But for life they yielded nothing, and Levin felt suddenly
like a man who has changed his warm fur cloak for a muslin garment, and going for the first time into the
frost is immediately convinced, not by reason, but by his whole nature that he is as good as naked.
Levin ... vaguely felt, too, that what he called his new convictions were not merely lack of knowledge, but
that they were part of a whole order of ideas, in which no knowledge of what he needed was possible. ...
He was in the position of a man seeking food in toy shops and tool shops. ...
What puzzled and distracted him above everything was that the majority of men of his age and circle had,
like him, exchanged their old beliefs for the same new convictions, and yet saw nothing to lament in this, and
were perfectly satisfied and serene. ...
The men who shared his views ... gave no explanation of the questions which he felt he could not live
without answering, but simply ignored their existence and attempted to explain other questions of no possible
interest to him.
He, an unbeliever, had fallen into praying, and at the moment he prayed, he believed. But that moment
had passed, and he could not make his state of mind at that moment fit into the rest of his life.
He could not admit that at that moment he knew the truth, and that now he was wrong; for as soon as he
began thinking calmly about it, it all fell to pieces. He could not admit that he was mistaken then, for his
spiritual condition then was precious to him, and to admit that it was a proof of weakness would have been to
desecrate those moments. He was miserably divided against himself, and strained all his spiritual forces to
the utmost to escape from this condition.
Since he had become convinced that he would find no solution in the materialists, he had read and re-read
thoroughly Plato, Spinoza, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, the philosophers who gave a non-
materialistic explanation of life.
Their ideas seemed to him fruitful when he was reading or was himself seeking arguments to refute other
theories, especially those of the materialists; but as soon as he began to read or sought for himself a solution
of problems, the same thing always happened. As long as he followed the fixed definition of obscure words
such as spirit, will, freedom, essence, purposely letting himself go into the snare of words the philosophers
set for him, he seemed to comprehend something. But he had only to forget the artificial train of reasoning,
and to turn from life itself to what had satisfied him while thinking in accordance with the fixed definitions,
and all this artificial edifice fell to pieces at once like a house of cards, and it became clear that the edifice
had been built up out of those transposed words, apart from anything in life.
“In infinite time, in infinite matter, in infinite space, is formed a bubble-organism, and that bubble lasts a
while and bursts, and that bubble is Me.”
When he had tried to do anything that would be good for all, for humanity, for Russia, for the whole village,
he had noticed that the idea of it had been pleasant, but the work itself had always been incoherent, that then
he had never had a full conviction of its absolute necessity, and that the work that had begun by seeming so
great, had grown less and less, till it vanished into nothing.
If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is
outside the chain of cause and effect.
670
Levin remembered a scene he had lately witnessed between Dolly and her children. The children, left to
themselves, had begun cooking raspberries over the candles and squirting milk into each other's mouths with
a syringe. Their mother, catching them at these pranks, began reminding them in Levin's presence of the
trouble their mischief gave to the grown-up people, and that this trouble was all for their sake, and that if
they smashed the cups they would have nothing to drink their tea out of, and that if they wasted the milk,
they would have nothing to eat, and die of hunger.
And Levin had been struck by the passive, weary incredulity with which the children heard what their
mother said to them. They were simply annoyed that their amusing play had been interrupted, and did not
believe a word of what their mother was saying. They could not believe it indeed, for they could not take in
the immensity of all they habitually enjoyed, and so could not conceive that what they were destroying was
the very thing they lived by.
“That all comes of itself,” they thought, “and there's nothing interesting or important about it because it
has always been so, and always will be so. And it's all always the same. We've no need to think about that,
it's all ready. But we want to invent something of our own, and new.” ...
“Isn't it just the same that we do, that I did, searching by the aid of reason for the significance of the forces
of nature and the meaning of the life of man?” he thought.
“And don't all the theories of philosophy do the same, trying by the path of thought, which is strange and
not natural to man, to bring him to a knowledge of what he has known long ago, and knows so certainly that
he could not live at all without it? Isn't it distinctly to be seen in the development of each philosopher's
theory, that he knows what is the chief significance of life beforehand, just as positively as the peasant
Fyodor, and not a bit more clearly than he, and is simply trying by a dubious intellectual path to come back
to what everyone knows?
“Now then, leave the children to themselves to get things alone and make their crockery, get the milk
from the cows, and so on. Would they be naughty then? Why, they'd die of hunger! Well, then, leave us
with our passions and thoughts, without any idea of the one God, of the Creator, or without any idea of what
is right, without any idea of moral evil.
“Just try and build up anything without those ideas!
“We only try to destroy them, because we're spiritually provided for. Exactly like the children!
“Whence have I that joyful knowledge, shared with the peasant, that alone gives peace to my soul?
Whence did I get it?
“Brought up with an idea of God, a Christian, my whole life filled with the spiritual blessings Christianity
has given me, full of them, and living on those blessings, like the children I did not understand them, and
destroy, that is try to destroy, what I live by. And as soon as an important moment of life comes, like the
children when they are cold and hungry, I turn to Him, and even less than the children when their mother
scolds them for their childish mischief, do I feel that my childish efforts at wanton madness are reckoned
against me.
Under every article of faith of the church could be put the faith in the service of truth instead of one's desires.
And each doctrine did not simply leave that faith unshaken, each doctrine seemed essential to complete that
great miracle, continually manifest upon earth, that made it possible for each man and millions of different
sorts of men, wise men and imbeciles, old men and children—all men, peasants, Lvov, Kitty, beggars and
kings to understand perfectly the same one thing, and to build up thereby that life of the soul which alone is
worth living, and which alone is precious to us.
“Your honor must keep to the right and mind that stump,” said the coachman, pulling the rein Levin held.
“Please don't touch and don't teach me!” said Levin, angered by this interference. Now, as always,
interference made him angry, and he felt sorrowfully at once how mistaken had been his supposition that his
spiritual condition could immediately change him in contact with reality.
671
And these words were enough to re-establish again between the brothers that tone—hardly hostile, but
chilly—which Levin had been so longing to avoid.
He was glad of a chance to be alone to recover from the influence of ordinary actual life, which had already
depressed his happy mood. He thought that he had already had time to lose his temper with Ivan, to show
coolness to his brother, and to talk flippantly with Katavasov.
Real life had only for a time overcast the spiritual peace he had found, but it was still untouched within him.
Just as the bees, whirling round him, now menacing him and distracting his attention, prevented him from
enjoying complete physical peace, forced him to restrain his movements to avoid them, so had the petty cares
that had swarmed about him from the moment he got into the trap restricted his spiritual freedom; but that
lasted only so long as he was among them. Just as his bodily strength was still unaffected, in spite of the
bees, so too was the spiritual strength that he had just become aware of.
“Yes, all the newspapers do say the same thing,” said the prince. “That's true. But so it is the same thing that
all the frogs croak before a storm. One can hear nothing for them.”
Tolstoy, Prince TBD, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 8, Chapter 16, p. 746
“My son-in-law, Stepan Arkadyevitch, you know him. He's got a place now on the committee of a
commission and something or other, I don't remember. Only there's nothing to do in it—why, Dolly, it's no
secret!—and a salary of eight thousand. You try asking him whether his post is of use, he'll prove to you that
it's most necessary. And he's a truthful man too, but there's no refusing to believe in the utility of eight
thousand roubles.”
Tolstoy, Prince TBD, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 8, Chapter 16, p. 746
Levin reddened with vexation, not at being defeated, but at having failed to control himself and being drawn
into argument.
“No, I can't argue with them,” he thought; “they wear impenetrable armor, while I'm naked.”
He could not admit that some dozens of men, among them his brother, had the right, on the ground of what
they were told by some hundreds of glib volunteers swarming to the capital, to say that they and the
newspapers were expressing the will and feeling of the people, and a feeling which was expressed in
vengeance and murder. He could not admit this, because he neither saw the expression of such feelings in
the people among whom he was living, nor found them in himself (and he could not but consider himself one
of the persons making up the Russian people).
All the theories of the significance of the Slav element in the history of the world seemed to him so trivial
compared with what was passing in his own soul, that he instantly forgot it all and dropped back into the
same frame of mind that he had been in that morning.
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 8, Chapter 18
The Death of Ivan Ilych (1886)

Ivan Ilych’s life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.
Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych, ch. 2
672
At school he had committed actions which had struck him beforehand as great vileness, and gave him a
feeling of loathing for himself at the very time he was committing them. But later on, perceiving that such
actions were committed also by men of good position, and were not regarded by them as base, he was able,
not to regard them as good, but to forget about them completely, and was never mortified by recollections of
them.
Even when he was at the School of Law he was just what he remained for the rest of his life: a capable,
cheerful, good-natured, and sociable man, though strict in the fulfillment of what he considered to be his
duty: and he considered his duty to be what was so considered by those in authority. Neither as a boy nor
as a man was he a toady, but from early youth was by nature attracted to people of high station as a fly is
drawn to the light, assimilating their ways and views of life and establishing friendly relations with them. All
the enthusiasms of childhood and youth passed without leaving much trace on him; he succumbed to
sensuality, to vanity, and latterly among the highest classes to liberalism, but always within limits which his
instinct unfailingly indicated to him as correct.
Most of the conversations between husband and wife, especially as to the children’s education, led to topics
which recalled former disputes, and these disputes were apt to flare up again at any moment. There remained
only those rare periods of amorousness which still came to them at times but did not last long. These were
islets at which they anchored for a while and then again set out upon that ocean of veiled hostility which
showed itself in their aloofness from one another. This aloofness might have grieved Ivan Ilych had he
considered that it ought not to exist, but he now regarded the position as normal, and even made it the goal at
which he aimed in family life. His aim was to free himself more and more from those unpleasantnesses and
to give them a semblance of harmlessness and propriety.
Ivan Ilych’s life continued to flow as he considered it should do—pleasantly and properly.
The result was charming not only in his eyes but to everyone who saw it. In reality it was just what is usually
seen in the houses of people of moderate means who want to appear rich, and therefore succeed only in
resembling others like themselves: there are damasks, dark wood, plants, rugs, and dull and polished
bronzes—all the things people of a certain class have in order to resemble other people of that class. His
house was so like the others that it would never have been noticed, but to him it all seemed to be quite
exceptional.
On the whole his life ran its course as he believed life should do: easily, pleasantly, and decorously.
In all this the thing was to exclude everything fresh and vital, which always disturbs the regular course of
official business, and to admit only official relations with people, and then only on official grounds.
Ivan Ilych’s chief pleasure was giving little dinners to which he invited men and women of good social
position, and just as his drawing-room resembled all other drawing-rooms so did his enjoyable little parties
resemble all other such parties.
The pleasures connected with his work were pleasures of ambition; his social pleasures were those of
vanity.
673
She began to wish he would die; yet she did not want him to die because then his salary would cease. And
this irritated her against him still more.
There was the usual waiting and the important air assumed by the doctor, with which he was so familiar
(resembling that which he himself assumed in court), and the sounding and listening, and the questions
which called for answers that were foregone conclusions and were evidently unnecessary, and the look of
importance which implied that “if only you put yourself in our hands we will arrange everything—we know
indubitably how it has to be done, always in the same way for everybody alike.” It was all just as it was in
the law courts. The doctor put on just the same air towards him as he himself put on towards an accused
person.
To Ivan Ilych only one question was important: was his case serious or not? But the doctor ignored that
inappropriate question. From his point of view it was not the one under consideration, the real question was
to decide between a floating kidney, chronic catarrh, or appendicitis.
All this was just what Ivan Ilych had himself brilliantly accomplished a thousand times in dealing with men
on trial. The doctor summed up just as brilliantly, looking over his spectacles triumphantly and even gaily at
the accused. From the doctor’s summing up Ivan Ilych concluded that things were bad, but that for the
doctor, and perhaps for everybody else, it was a matter of indifference.
One would have thought that it should have been clear to him that this exasperation with circumstances and
people aggravated his illness, and that he ought therefore to ignore unpleasant occurrences. But he drew the
very opposite conclusion: he said that he needed peace, and he watched for everything that might disturb it
and became irritable at the slightest infringement of it.
The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter’s Logic: “Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore
Caius is mortal,” had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to
himself. That Caius—man in the abstract—was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius,
not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others.
He tried to get back into the former current of thoughts that had once screened the thought of death
from him. But strange to say, all that had formerly shut off, hidden, and destroyed his consciousness of
death, no longer had that effect.
To save himself from this condition Ivan Ilych looked for consolations—new screens—and new screens
were found and for a while seemed to save him, but then they immediately fell to pieces or rather became
transparent.
“I lost my life over that curtain as I might have done when storming a fort. Is that possible? How terrible and
how stupid.”
674
What tormented Ivan Ilych most was the deception, the lie, which for some reason they all accepted, that he
was not dying but was simply ill, and that he only need keep quiet and undergo a treatment and then
something very good would result. … This deception tortured him—their not wishing to admit what they all
knew and what he knew, but wanting to lie to him concerning his terrible condition, and wishing and forcing
him to participate in that lie. Those lies—lies enacted over him on the eve of his death and destined to
degrade this awful, solemn act to the level of their visitings, their curtains, their sturgeon for dinner—were a
terrible agony for Ivan Ilych.
The awful, terrible act of his dying was, he could see, reduced by those about him to the level of a
casual, unpleasant, and almost indecorous incident (as if someone entered a drawing room defusing an
unpleasant odor) and this was done by that very decorum which he had served all his life long. He saw
that no one felt for him, because no one even wished to grasp his position
And in imagination he began to recall the best moments of his pleasant life. But strange to say none of those
best moments of his pleasant life now seemed at all what they had then seemed—none of them except the
first recollections of childhood. There, in childhood, there had been something really pleasant with which it
would be possible to live if it could return. But the child who had experienced that happiness existed no
longer. … As soon as the period began which had produced the present Ivan Ilych, all that had then seemed
joys now melted before his sight and turned into something trivial and often nasty. And the further he
departed from childhood and the nearer he came to the present the more worthless and doubtful were the
joys.
Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych, ch.9
Then all became confused and there was still less of what was good; later on again there was still less that
was good, and the further he went the less there was. … “It is as if I had been going downhill while I
imagined I was going up. And that is really what it was. I was going up in public opinion, but to the same
extent life was ebbing away from me. And now it is all done and there is only death.”
“Maybe I did not live as I ought to have done,” it suddenly occurred to him. “But how could that be, when I
did everything properly?” he replied, and immediately dismissed from his mind this, the sole solution of all
the riddles of life and death, as something quite impossible.
Why, and for what purpose, is there all this horror? But however much he pondered he found no answer. And
whenever the thought occurred to him, as it often did, that it all resulted from his not having lived as he ought
to have done, he at once recalled the correctness of his whole life and dismissed so strange an idea.
“Just as the pain went on getting worse and worse, so my life grew worse and worse,” he thought. “There is
one bright spot there at the back, at the beginning of life, and afterwards all becomes blacker and blacker and
proceeds more and more rapidly.” … Life, a series of increasing sufferings, flies further and further
towards its end—the most terrible suffering.
675
It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent
his life as he should have done, might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible
attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely
noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the
rest false. And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all
his social and official interests, might all have been false. He tried to defend all those things to himself
and suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending.
He lay on his back and began to pass his life in review in quite a new way. In the morning when he saw
first his footman, then his wife, then his daughter, and then the doctor, their every word and
movement confirmed to him the awful truth that had been revealed to him during the night. In them
he saw himself—all that for which he had lived—and saw clearly that it was not real at all, but a
terrible and huge deception which had hidden both life and death.
All you have lived for and still live for is falsehood and deception, hiding life and death from you.
EMILY DICKINSON (1830-1886)

The soul selects her own society,
Then shuts the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.
Unmoved, she notes the chariot's pausing

At her low gate;
Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
Upon her mat.
I've known her from an ample nation

Choose one;
Then close the valves of her attention
Like stone.
Emily Dickinson
Much madness is divinest sense

To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
’T is the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur,—you ’re straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.
Emily Dickinson
MARIE VON EBNER-ESCHENBACH (1830-1916)

Der Klügere gibt nach! Eine traurige Wahrheit, sie begründet die Weltherrschaft der Dummheit.
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach [ungeprüft]
676
Not what we experience, but how we perceive what we experience, determines our fate.
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach [unverified]
To be content with little is hard; to be content with much, impossible.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach [unverified]
Aphorisms (1880, 1884, 1890)

http://books.google.com/books?id=9dM5AAAAMAAJ
Ein Aphorismus ist der letzte Ring einer langen Gedankenkette.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Aphorismen (Berlin: 1893), s. 2
An aphorism is the last link in a long chain of thought.
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Aphorisms, D. Scrase and W. Mieder, trans. (Riverside, California: 1994), p. 19
Sag etwas, das sich von selbst versteht, zum ersten Mal und du bist unsterblich.
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Aphorismen (Berlin: 1893), #1
Be the first to say something obvious and achieve immortality.
Die jetzigen Menschen sind zum tadeln geboren. Vom ganzen Achilles sehen sie nur die Ferse.
Nowadays people are born to find fault. When they look at Achilles, they see only his heel.
Die glücklichen Pessimisten! Welche Freude empfinden sie, so oft sie bewiesen haben, daß es keine Freude
gibt.
Oh happy pessimists! What a joy it is to them to be able to prove again and again that there is no joy.
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Aphorisms, D. Scrase and W. Mieder, trans. (Riverside, California: 1994), p.19
Der Zufall ist die in Schleier gehüllte Notwendigkeit.

Chance is necessity hidden behind a veil.
Geduld mit der Streitsucht der Einfältigen! Es ist nicht leicht zu begreifen, dass man nicht begreift.
Be patient with the belligerence of the simple-minded. It is not easy to understand that one doesn’t
understand
Die einfachste und bekannteste Wahrheit erscheint uns augenblicklich neu und wunderbar, sobald wir
sie zum ersten Mal an uns selbst erleben.
The simplest and commonest truth seems new and miraculous the very moment we first experience it in
ourselves.
Der Verstandesmensch verhöhnt nichts so bitter als den Edelmut, dessen er sich nicht fähig fühlt.
Rational beings despise nothing so much as that magnanimity that they themselves feel incapable of.
Künstler, was du nicht schaffen mußt, das darfst du nicht schaffen wollen.
As an artist, you should not wish to create what you don’t feel you have to create.
677
Nichts wird so oft unwiederbringlich versäumt wie eine Gelegenheit, die sich täglich bietet.
Nothing is so often and so irrevocably missed as the opportunity which crops up daily
Wenn es einen Glauben gibt, der Berge versetzen kann, so ist es der Glaube an die eigene Kraft.
If there is a faith which can move mountains, then it is a faith in one’s own strength.
Raison annehmen kann niemand, der nicht schon welche hat.

To accept reason is impossible if you don’t already possess it.
Wenn man nur die Alten liest, ist man sicher, immer neu zu bleiben.
People who read only the classics are sure to remain up-to-date.
Wenn der Kunst kein Tempel mehr offen steht, dann flüchtet sie in die Werkstatt.
If art finds the temple closed, then it flees into the workshop.
Man muss das Gute tun, damit es in der Welt sei.

One has to do good in order for it to exist in the world.
Wir sollen immer verzeihen, dem Reuigen um seinetwillen, dem Reuelosen um unseretwillen.
We should always forgive. We should forgive the repentant for their sake, the unrepentant for our sake.
Auch die Tugend ist eine Kunst, und auch ihre Anhänger teilen sich in Ausübende und in bloße
Liebhaber.
Virtue is also an art, and its adherents can also be divided into the practicing artists and the mere fans.
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (my translation)
Das Alter verklärt oder versteinert.

Old age either transfigures or stultifies.
Es ist ein Unglück, daß ein braves Talent und ein braver Mann so selten zusammen kommen!
It is unfortunate that a good talent and a good man seldom come together.
Nicht jene, die streiten, sind zu fürchten, sondern jene, die ausweichen.
It is not those who argue who are to be feared but those who evade argument.
678
Unerreichbare Wünsche werden als »fromm« bezeichnet. Man scheint anzunehmen, dass nur die profanen in
Erfüllung gehen.
Wishes which cannot be fulfilled are said to be “pious.” It is assumed, apparently, that only profane wishes
are fulfilled.
Nichts ist weniger verheißend als Frühreife; die junge Distel sieht einem zukünftigen Baume viel ähnlicher
als die junge Eiche.
Nothing is less promising than precociousness; the young thistle looks much more like a future tree than the
young oak.
Für das Können gibt es nur einen Beweis: das Tun.

Wenn du einen vielbetretenen Weg lange gehst, so gehst du ihn endlich allein.
If you walk down a well-trodden path long enough, you eventually end up alone.
Es gibt Menschen mit leuchtendem und Menschen mit glänzendem Verstande. Die ersten erhellen ihre
Umgebung, die zweiten verdunkeln sie.
There are intellects that shine and there are those that sparkle. The former illuminate matters, the latter
obscure them.
In das Gute glauben nur die Wenigen, die es üben.

Only those few people who practice it believe in goodness.
Der am unrechten Orte vertraute, wird dafür am unrechten Orte mißtrauen.

Those who trusted at the wrong time and place will in turn mistrust at the wrong time and place.
Blessed is trust, for it blesses both those who have it to give and those who receive it.
Es stände besser um die Welt, wenn die Mühe, die man sich gibt, die subtilsten Moralgesetze auszuklügeln,
zur Ausübung der einfachsten angewendet würde.
The world would be in better shape if people would take the same pains in the practice of the simplest
moral laws as they exert in intellectualizing over the most subtle moral questions.
Verständnis des Schönen und Begeisterung für das Schöne sind Eins.
An understanding of beauty and enthusiasm for it are one and the same.
679
Zwei sehr verschiedene Tugenden können einander lange und scharf befehden; der Augenblick bleibt nicht
aus, in dem sie erkennen, daß sie Schwestern sind.
Two very different virtues can attack one another long and viciously. But the time will come when they
recognize that they are sisters.
Verschmähtes Erbarmen kann sich in Grausamkeit verwandeln, wie verschmähte Liebe in Haß.
Spurned pity can turn into cruelty just as spurned love turns into hate.
People who chase after ever greater wealth without taking the time to enjoy it are like hungry people who are
forever cooking but never sit down to eat.
Der eitle, schwache Mensch sieht in Jedem einen Richter, der stolze, starke hat keinen Richter als sich selbst.
The vain and weak see a judge in everyone; the proud and strong know no judge other than
themselves.
Merkmal großer Menschen ist, daß sie an andere weit geringere Anforderungen stellen als an sich selbst.
It is a characteristic of the great that they demand far less of other people than of themselves.
Die Eitelkeit weist jede gesunde Nahrung von sich, lebt ausschließlich von dem Gifte der Schmeichelei und
gedeiht dabei in üppigster Fülle.
Vanity rejects all healthy nourishment and lives exclusively on the poison of flattery.
Ein scheinbarer Widerspruch gegen ein Naturgesetz ist nur die selten vorkommende Betätigung eines andern
Naturgesetzes.
An apparent contradiction of a natural law is only the rarely occurring proof of another natural law.
Wer es versteht, den Leuten mit Anmut und Behagen Dinge auseinander zu setzen, die sie ohnehin wissen,
der verschafft sich am geschwindesten den Ruf eines gescheiten Menschen.
Whoever shows both charm and pleasure in explaining to people things that they already know soon gets a
reputation as an intelligent individual.
Was nennen die Menschen am liebsten dumm? Das Gescheite, das sie nicht verstehen.
What do people like to call stupid the most? Something sensible that they can’t understand.
Ein Gedanke kann nicht erwachen, ohne andere zu wecken.

680
Es gibt eine Menge kleiner Rücksichtslosigkeiten und Unarten, die an und für sich nichts bedeuten, aber
furchtbar sind als Kennzeichen der Beschaffenheit der Seele.
There are a host of bad habits and inconsiderate acts which mean nothing in themselves but which are
terrible as indicators of the true composition of a soul.
Gemeinverständlich, das heißt: auch den Gemeinen verständlich, und heißt überdies nicht selten: den Nicht
Gemeinen ungenießbar.
Commonly understood, that is to say: understood by common people, and beyond that it not seldom also
means: unpalatable to the un-common people.
Wenn Du durchaus nur die Wahl hast, zwischen einer Unwahrheit und einer Grobheit, dann wähle die
Grobheit. Wenn jedoch die Wahl getroffen werden muß zwischen einer Unwahrheit und einer Grausamkeit,
dann wähle die Unwahrheit.
When your absolutely only choice is between an untruth and rudeness, then choose rudeness; if, however,
your choice is between an untruth and cruelty, then choose untruth.
Verwöhnte Kinder sind die unglücklichsten; sie lernen schon in jungen Jahren die Leiden der Tyrannen
kennen.
Spoiled children … already get to know in early years the sufferings of the tyrant.
Der Verstand und das Herz stehen auf sehr gutem Fuße. Eines vertritt oft die Stelle des andern so
vollkommen, dass es schwer ist zu entscheiden, welches von beiden tätig war.
The intellect and the heart are on good terms with one another. One often represents the other so perfectly,
that it is hard to determine which of the two was at work.
Der Umgang mit einem Egoisten ist darum so verderblich, weil die Notwehr uns allmählich zwingt, in seine
Fehler zu verfallen.
Dealing with egotists is so corrupting because we gradually fall into their mistakes out of self-defense.
Der Maßstab, den wir an die Dinge legen, ist das Maß unseres eigenen Geistes.
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Aphorismen (Berlin: 1893)
The scale we measure things by is the measure of our own mind.
The world belongs to those who posses it, and is scorned by those to whom it should belong.
Wer die materiellen Genüsse des Lebens seinen idealen Gütern vorzieht, gleicht dem Besitzer eines Palastes,
der sich in den Gesindestuben einrichtet und die Prachtsäle leer stehen lässt.
Whoever prefers the material comforts of life over intellectual wealth is like the owner of a palace who
moves into the servants’ quarters and leaves the sumptuous rooms empty.
681
Dilettanten haben nicht einmal in einer sekundären Kunst etwas Bleibendes geleistet, sich aber verdient
gemacht um die höchste aller Wissenschaften, die Philosophie. Den Beweis dafür liefern: Montaigne, La
Rochefoucauld, Vauvenargues.
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Aphorismen (Berlin: 1893) #396
Dilettantes have not achieved anything lasting even in the applied arts. But they have rendered some
service to the highest of all disciplines: philosophy. Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, Vauvenargues are
proof of this.
Die größte Gleichmacherin ist die Höflichkeit, durch sie werden alle Standesunterschiede aufgehoben.
The greatest leveler is politeness; it removes all class distinctions.
Theorie und Praxis sind Eins wie Seele und Leib, und wie Seele und Leib liegen sie großenteils mit einander
in Streit.
Like body and soul theory and practice are one, and like body and soul they are for the most part at
loggerheads.
Niemand ist so beflissen, immer neue Eindrücke zu sammeln, als derjenige, der die alten nicht zu verarbeiten
versteht.
None are so eager to gain new experiences as those who don’t know how to make use of the old ones.
Translator unknown
No one is so keen to gather ever newer impressions as those who do not know how to process the old
ones.
Die Kleinen schaffen, der Große erschafft.

The insignificant labor, the great create.
Bis zu einem gewissen Grade selbstlos sollte man schon aus Selbstsucht sein.
One should be selfish enough to be selfless up to a certain point.
Vorurteil stützt die Throne, Unwissenheit die Altäre.

Prejudice supports thrones, ignorance altars.
Im Unglück finden wir meistens die Ruhe wieder, die uns durch die Furcht vor dem Unglück geraubt wurde.
In misfortune we usually regain the peace that we were robbed of through fear of that very misfortune.
Der Witzling ist der Bettler im Reich der Geister; er lebt von Almosen, die das Glück ihm zuwirft—von
Einfällen
Wags are beggars in the realm of the intellect; they live on alms tossed to them by fortune—on flashes of wit.
682
Alberne Leute sagen Dummheiten. Gescheite Leute machen sie.
Silly people say stupid things, clever people do them.
Das scheinbar am unnötigsten gebrachte, törichtste Opfer steht der absoluten Weisheit immer noch näher als
die klügste Tat der sogenannten berechtigten Selbstsucht.
The sacrifice which is seemingly most unnecessary and most foolish is still nearer to absolute wisdom than
the cleverest action of so-called legitimate egocentricity.
Es gibt wenig aufrichtige Freunde. Die Nachfrage ist auch gering.

There are very few honest friends—the demand is not particularly great.
Es ist schwer den, der uns bewundert, für einen Dummkopf zu halten.
It is difficult to see the person who admires us as stupid.
Dass soviel Ungezogenheit gut durch die Welt kommt, daran ist die Wohlerzogenheit schuld.
That bad manners are so prevalent in the world is the fault of good manners.
Was geschehen ist, so lange wie die Welt steht, braucht deshalb nicht zu geschehen, so lange sie noch stehen
wird.
What has happened for as long as the world has existed doesn’t necessarily have to continue to happen as
long as it still exists.
Wenn wir nur das Unrecht hassen und nicht Diejenigen, die es thun, werden wir unsere Kampfgenossen und
unsere Feinde lieben.
Hate only injustice and not those who commit it.
Ein armer wohlthätiger Mensch kann sich manchmal reich fühlen, ein geiziger Krösus nie.
A poor, charitable person can sometimes feel rich, a miserly Croesus never.
Immer wird die Gleichgültigkeit und die Menschenverachtung dem Mitgefühl und der Menschenliebe
gegenüber einen Schein von geistiger Ueberlegenheit annehmen können.
Indifference and contempt will always be able to take on an aura of intellectual superiority over sympathy
and love for others.
Enthusiasm does not always speak for whose who arouse it, but always for those who experience it.
One of the main goals of self-education is to eradicate that vanity in us without which we would never have
been educated.
683
Happy slaves are the bitterest enemies of freedom
Consider well before you immerse yourself in solitude whether your own company will be good for you.
Believe flatterers and you’re lost; believe your enemies—and you despair.
None are so inconsiderate as those who demand nothing of life other than their own personal comfort.
Do not consider yourself deprived because your dreams were not fulfilled; the truly deprived have
never dreamed.
However much you paid for a beautiful illusion, you got a bargain.
Misanthropy is a suit of armor lined with thorns.

Indifference of every kind is reprehensible, even indifference towards one’s self.

Nothing makes us more cowardly and unconscionable than the desire to be loved by everyone.
Public opinion is the whore among opinions.

A defeat borne with pride is also a victory.

The moral code which was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for our children.
ERNST HAECKEL (1834-1919)

The Wonders of Life
http://books.google.com/books?id=M7NRAAAAMAAJ
The history of philosophy describes for us the infinite variety of ideas that men have formulated during the
last three thousand years on the nature of the world and its phenomena. Überweg has given us, in his
excellent History of Philosophy, a thorough and impartial account of these various systems. Fritz Schultze
has published a clear and compendious “tabulated outline” of them in thirty tables in his genealogical tree of
philosophy, and at the same time shown the phylogeny of ideas. When we survey this enormous mass of
philosophic systems from the point of view of general biology, we find that we can divide them into two
main groups. The first and smaller group contains the monistic philosophy, which traces all the phenomena
of existence to one single common principle. The second and larger group, to which most philosophic
systems belong, constitutes the dualistic philosophy, according to which there are two totally distinct
principles in the universe. These are sometimes expressed as God and the world, sometimes as the spiritual
world and material world, sometimes as mind and matter, and so on. In my opinion, this antithesis of monism
and dualism is the most important in the whole history of philosophy. All other systems are only variations
of one or the other of these, or a more or less obscure combination of the two.
Ernst Haeckel, The Wonders of Life, J. McCabe, trans. (1904), p. 81
684
The moral bias of idealism against practical materialism (or pure selfishness and sensualism) is forthwith
transferred to theoretical materialism, which has nothing to do with it; and the strictures which are justly
urged against the one are most unjustifiably applied to the other. Hence it is important to distinguish very
carefully between these two meanings of materialism.
Ernst Haeckel, The Wonders of Life, J. McCabe, trans. (1904), p. 82
MARK TWAIN, a.k.a. SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS (1835-

1910)
The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin
to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.
Mark Twain
A little learning makes the whole world kin.

Mark Twain, “The Awful German Language”
The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.
Mark Twain
When some men discharge an obligation, you can hear the report for miles around.
Mark Twain
RAMAKRISHNA (1836-1886)
A boat may stay in water, but water should not stay in boat. A spiritual aspirant may live in the world, but the
world should not live within him.
Ramakrishna, Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 266
Knowledge and love of God are ultimately one and the same. There is no difference between pure knowledge
and pure love.
Ramakrishna, Râmakrishna: His Life and Sayings (1898), p. ix
His name is Intelligence; His abode is Intelligence too, and He, the Lord, is Intelligence Himself.
Ramakrishna, Râmakrishna: His Life and Sayings (1898), § 37, p. 106
WILLIAM DEAN HOWLEES (1837-1920)

The Man of Letters as a Man of Business (1893)
Every man ought to work for his living, without exception, and that when he has once avouched his
willingness to work, society should provide him with work and warrant him a living. I do not think any man
ought to live by an art. A man's art should be his privilege, when he has proven his fitness to exercise it, and
has otherwise earned his daily bread; and its results should be free to all. There is an instinctive sense of this,
even in the midst of the grotesque confusion of our economic being; people feel that there is something
profane, something impious, in taking money for a picture, or a poem, or a statue. Most of all, the artist
himself feels this. He puts on a bold front with the world, to be sure, and brazens it out as Business; but he
knows very well that there is something false and vulgar in it; and that the work which cannot be truly priced
in money cannot be truly paid in money.
William Dean Howells, The Man of Letters as a Man of Business (1893)
685
Literature is at once the most intimate and the most articulate of the arts. It cannot impart its effect through
the senses or the nerves as the other arts can; it is beautiful only through the intelligence; it is the mind
speaking to the mind.
Tennyson and Longfellow and Emerson sold the poems in which they couched the most mystical messages
their genius was charged to bear mankind. They submitted to the conditions which none can escape; but that
does not justify the conditions, which are none the less the conditions of hucksters because they are imposed
upon poets.
If the man of letters were wholly a business man this is what would happen; he would make his forty or fifty
thousand dollars a year, and be able to consort with bank presidents, and railroad officials, and rich
tradesmen, and other flowers of our plutocracy on equal terms. But, unfortunately, from a business point of
view, he is also an artist, and the very qualities that enable him to delight the public disable him from
delighting it uninterruptedly.
WILLIAM WINWOOD READE (1838–1875)

The Martyrdom of Man (1872)
If we look into ourselves we discover propensities which declare that our intellects have arisen from a lower
form; could our minds be made visible we should find them tailed.
William Winwood Reade, The Martyrdom of Man (1872), p. 314
Whoever improves his own nature, improves the universe of which he is a part.
As the saints and prophets were often forced to practise long vigils and fastings and prayers before
their ecstasies would fall upon them and their visions would appear, so Virtue in its purest and most
exalted form can only be acquired by means of severe and long continued culture of the mind. Persons
with feeble and untrained intellects may live according to their conscience; but the conscience itself
will be defective. … To cultivate the intellect is therefore a religious duty; and when this truth is fairly
recognized by men, the religion which teaches that the intellect should be distrusted and that it should
be subservient to faith, will inevitably fall.
A season of mental anguish is at hand, and through this we must pass in order that our posterity may rise.
The soul must be sacrificed; the hope in immortality must die. A sweet and charming illusion must be taken
from the human race, as youth and beauty vanish never to return.
WALTER PATER (1839-1894)

In the creation of philosophical literature, as in all other products of art, form, in the full signification of that
word, is everything.
Walter Pater, Plato and Platonism, p. 8
686
The Renaissance
The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit is to rouse, to startle it into sharp
and eager observation. … Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.
Walter Pater, The Renaissance, Conclusion
To maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. … Our failure is to form habits. … Habit is relative to a
stereotyped world, and … it is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two persons, things, situations,
seem alike.
Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the brilliancy of their
gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before
evening.
Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.

Art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they
pass.
With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of its awful brevity, gathering all we are into
one desperate effort to see and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we
see and touch. What we have to do is to be for ever curiously testing new opinions and courting new
impressions, never acquiescing in a facile orthodoxy.
Philosophical theories or ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather up what
might otherwise pass unregarded by us. “Philosophy is the microscope of thought.” The theory or idea or
system which requires of us the sacrifice of any part of this experience, in consideration of some
interest into which we cannot enter, or some abstract theory we have not identified with ourselves, or
what is only conventional, has no real claim upon us.
Rousseau … asked himself how he might make as much as possible of the interval that remained; and he was
not biassed by anything in his previous life when he decided that it must be by intellectual excitement, which
he found just then in the clear, fresh writings of Voltaire.
Of this wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for art’s sake, has most; for art comes
to you professing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and
simply for those moments’ sake.
687
OTTO PFLEIDERER (1839-1908)
“Evolution and Theology”
The fundamental error of the theologians of the new faith of the present day consists in this, that they think
one can without hesitation acknowledge the validity of the same scientific method in the realm of nature
which they refuse to apply to that of history. ... What consequence now will follow the application of the
doctrine of evolution to the theological consideration of history? First of all, it is evident that it excludes
miracles in every sense of the word—not merely the nature-miracle (this the men of the new faith drop
without pain) but also just as much the spirit-miracle, i.e. the intervention of a foreign power in the human
soul, whereby conditions are produced in it which do not result from the causal connection with antecedent
conditions. If it is the methodic cardinal proposition of the science of today that we have to explain every
condition as the causally determined development out of a preceding one, this excludes on principle the
appearance of a condition, event, action, or personality which is not explicable out of the factors of the
preceding conditions.
Otto Pfleiderer, “Evolution and Theology,” Evolution and Theology and Other Essays (1900), pp. 8-9
Here is the basis of the modern critical biblical science, which treats the documents of Christianity and
Judaism according to the same principles of historical investigation which are valid in all other historical
domains, particularly in that of the history of the ethnic religions.
The attempt has been crowned with brilliant success. Everywhere, where formerly miracles and oracles,
the activity of supernatural persons, and the appearance on the scene of supernatural beings were thought to
be discerned, there shows itself now a constant succession of events that are natural, i.e. in accord with the
universal laws of human experience. The prophets appear no longer as media of supernatural oracles, but as
men whose works and words are perfectly explicable from the character regarded in connection with the
conditions of their age and environment. They stand, indeed, in a certain respect above their contemporaries,
so far as they contest the modes of thought and action of the latter, and hold before them higher ideals of
purer piety and morality; yet these ideals were not communicated to them from without by supernatural
revelation, but sprang from their own spirit as products of an especially powerful and happy religious-moral
nature, which, under the influence of historical relations, had been so developed that they saw clearly what
was perverted in the mode of thought of others, and gave to the better a potent expression.
Otto Pfleiderer, “Evolution and Theology,” Evolution and Theology and Other Essays (1900), pp. 10-11
Especially do the evils of the times, the folly and blindness of the masses, the injustice of rulers, the
perversion of religion in unfruitful ceremonialism work upon the souls more finely attuned as a stimulus and
spur; the feeling of the evil stirs their moral judgment or conscience to the criticism of the existing situation,
and out of the criticism there grows for them the new ideal which impresses itself upon them as the truth that
has the power to save from the corruption of the time; and while they first raise themselves to this ideal, they
also win power and courage to draw others toward it. Thus they become the proclaimers of a higher truth
which, over against the antecedent error, appears as something wholly new, as a revelation from above, but
which is, indeed, nothing else than a higher development of the impulse toward truth and righteousness that
is a natural quality of the human mind.
Otto Pfleiderer, “Evolution and Theology,” Evolution and Theology and Other Essays (1900), p. 11
What has here been remarked in general of the prophets as the champions of religious progress is also true in
particular of him who as the most perfect blossom of the religious development of Israel constituted also the
essential force of the new Christian religion—Jesus of Nazareth. Against this logical conclusion of the
evolutionary view of history the representatives of the new faith present the most obstinate resistance.
The Christ of theirs is a being who is neither man nor God, who neither belongs to the earth—i.e. in actual
history, nor is at home in heaven—i.e. in the world of ideas.
688
The divine in Jesus does not denote a violent rupture of the course of human history with the exclusion of all
causal connection and all human personality, but it lies at the basis of all this history from beginning to end;
it dwells in it as the divine Logos, as the rational aptitude of human nature, as impulse to the true and good,
as God-consciousness. All progress in the development of mankind from the lowest grades upward, every
achievement of culture which makes rude nature the servant of reason, every formation of higher ethical
ideals, and every clarifying and deepening of the God-consciousness, is an effect and a revelation of the
divine Logos dwelling in our race.
It is a hyperbole excusable in poetic language, but not scientifically valid, when he [Jesus] is identified with
the ideal of humanity. The ideal is the unconditioned, the absolute, but every phenomenon in time and space
is conditioned and limited, and cannot therefore coincide with the ideal. This hyperbole of pious faith may
grow out of noble feelings, but for all that it remains essentially false, and is harmful when seriously
regarded as dogma.
The evolutionary view of history … teaches us to distinguish between that which in Jesus is the divine, true
and good, and that which is only the historically conditioned limitation of his personality. To the latter
belong the supernatural Messianism and the harsh, world-renouncing asceticism connected with it.
The apostle Paul … was conscious of the new in his apprehension of the gospel over against the primitive
Jewish-Christian Church, and based the right of his apostolic preaching not upon human tradition, but upon
the revelation of the Spirit of Christ in his heart.
The “Christ according to the Spirit,” as Paul preached him, was certainly not identical with the “Christ
according to the flesh,” as he lived in the recollection of the Primitive Church. For Paul had stripped off the
Jewish in this individual phenomenon, in order to bring forth and exalt as an object of faith to gentiles and
Jews alike the universal religious principle alone. His Christ is the ideal Son of God, i.e. the personification
of the religious idea as it lived in the soul of Jesus, of the love of God and men as it had been the impelling
principle of his life-work.
Paul abstracted this universal principle from the concrete phenomenon in the man Jesus, in whom it was
interlaced with Jewish presuppositions and strivings, which as such would have been a hindrance to the
universal and abiding effectiveness of that principle.
The grain of wheat must be sunken into the earth and die, in order that its entire fruit-bearing power might be
released. That the death of Jesus had just this significance, to free the Spirit of Christ from the fleshly husk of
his individual phenomenon and to exalt it to a dominant church-forming power—this Paul recognised as no
other had.
The religious principle of Jesus was thus certainly freed by Paul from its original Jewish and national husk,
but only to be immediately clothed again in a new supernaturalistic envelope, the origin of which likewise
lay in the historically given ideas of Hellenism and Pharisaism. Therefore the Pauline Christ can just as little
be for us a binding object of faith as the Jesus of history.
Not to return to the old … can be the task of our time, but to clothe the spirit of Christianity, its religious-
ethical principle, which lay as a compelling force at the basis of all preceding developments, in the fitting
and intelligible form for our age.
689
JOHN LANCASTER SPALDING (1840-1916)
Aphorisms and Reflections
http://books.google.com/books?id=hr8VR3jStagC
Each one fashions and bears his world with him, and that unless he himself become wise, strong and loving,
no change in his circumstances can make him rich or free or happy.
John Lancaster Spalding, Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), Introduction, p. 5
True readers ... are ready to go through a whole volume, if there be but hope of finding in it a single genuine
thought or the mere suggestion even of a truth which has some fresh application to life.
John Lancaster Spalding, Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), Introduction, p. 7
The multitude are matter-of-fact. They live in commonplace concerns and interests. Their problems are, how
to get more plentiful and better food and drink, more comfortable and beautiful clothing, more commodious
dwellings, for themselves and their children. When they seek relaxation from their labors for material things,
they gossip of the daily happenings, or they play games or dance or go to the theatre or club, or they travel or
they read story books, or accounts in the newspapers of elections, murders, peculations, marriages, divorces,
failures and successes in business; or they simply sit in a kind of lethargy. They fall asleep and awake to
tread again the beaten path. While such is their life, it is not possible that they should take interest or find
pleasure in religion, poetry, philosophy, or art. To ask them to read books whose life-breath is pure
thought and beauty is as though one asked them to read things written in a language they do not
understand and have no desire to learn. A taste for the best books, as a taste for whatever is best, is
acquired; and it can be acquired only by long study and practice. It is a result of free and disinterested
self-activity, of efforts to attain what rarely brings other reward than the consciousness of having loved and
striven for the best. But the many have little appreciation of what does not flatter or soothe the senses. Their
world, like the world of children and animals, is good enough for them; meat and drink, dance and song, are
worth more, in their eyes, than all the thoughts of all the literatures. A love tale is better than a great poem,
and the story of a bandit makes Plutarch seem tiresome. This is what they think and feel, and what, so long as
they remain what they are, they will continue to think and feel. We do not urge a child to read Plato—why
should we find fault with the many for not loving the best books?
John Lancaster Spalding, Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), pp. 11-12
The test of the worth of work is its effect on the worker. If it degrade him, it is bad; if it ennoble him, it is
good.
John Lancaster Spalding, Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), 12
In the world of thought a man’s rank is determined, not by his average work, but by his highest achievement.
John Lancaster Spalding, Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 13
It is held that one fulfils his whole duty when he is industrious in his business or vocation, observing also the
decencies of domestic, civil, and religious life. But activity of this kind stirs only the surface of our being,
leaving what is most divine to starve; and when it is made the one important thing, men lose sense for what is
high and holy, and become commonplace, mechanical, and hard. Science is valuable for them as a means to
comfort and wealth; morality, as an aid to success; religion, as an agent of social order. In their eyes those
who devote themselves to ideal aims and ends are as foolish as the alchemists, since the only real world is
that of business and politics, or of business simply, since politics is business.
690
Few know the joys that spring from a disinterested curiosity. It is like a cheerful spirit that leads us
through worlds filled with what is true and fair, which we admire and love because it is true and fair.
The fields and the flowers and the beautiful faces are not ours, as the stars and the hills and the sunlight are
not ours, but they give us fresh and happy thoughts.|
Passion is begotten of passion, and it easily happens, as with the children of great men, that the base is the
offspring of the noble.
Thy money, thy office, thy reputation are nothing; put away these phantom clothings, and stand like an
athlete stripped for the battle.
When the mind has grasped the matter, words come like flowers at the call of spring.
It is unpleasant to turn back, though it be to take the right way.

Though what we accept be true, it is a prejudice unless we ourselves have considered and understood why
and how it is true.
Taste, of which the proverb says there should be no dispute, is precisely the subject which needs discussion.
God has not made a world which suits all; how shall a sane man expect to please all?
We have lost the old love of work, of work which kept itself company, which was fair weather and
music in the heart, which found its reward in the doing, craving neither the flattery of vulgar eyes nor
the gold of vulgar men.
No sooner does a divine gift reveal itself in youth or maid than its market value becomes the decisive
consideration, and the poor young creatures are offered for sale, as we might sell angels who had
strayed among us.
As the visit of one we love makes the whole day pleasant, so is it illumined and made fair by a brave and
beautiful thought.
Friends humor and flatter us, they steal our time, they encourage our love of ease, they make us content with
ourselves, they are the foes of our virtue and our glory.
The important thing is how we know, not what or how much.

To clothe truth in fitting words is to feel a satisfaction like that which comes of doing good deeds.
691
In our thrifty populations of merchants, manufacturers, politicians, and professional men, there is little sense
for beauty, little pure thought, little genuine culture; but they are prosperous and self-satisfied.
The writers who accomplish most are those who compel thought on the highest and most profoundly
interesting subjects.
If thou need money, get it in an honest way—by keeping books, if thou wilt, but not by writing books.
Drunkards and sensualists have become heroes and saints; but sluggards have never risen to the significance
and worth of human beings. Sloth enfeebles the root of life, and degrades more surely, if less swiftly, than
the sins of passion.
The genius is childlike. Like children he looks into the world as into a new creation and finds there a
perennial source of wonder and delight.
We may outgrow the things of children, without acquiring sense and relish for those which become a man.
The world is a mirror into which we look, and see our own image.
The teacher does best, not when he explains, but when he impels his pupils to seek themselves the
explanation.
The doctrine of the utter vanity of life is a doctrine of despair, and life is hope.
It is not difficult to grasp and express thoughts that float on the stream of current opinion: but to think and
rightly utter what is permanently true and interesting, what shall appeal to the best minds a thousand years
hence, as it appeals to them to-day,—this is the work of genius.
The narrow-minded and petty sticklers for the formalities which hedge rank and office are the true
vulgarians, however observant they be of etiquette.
Beauty least adorned is most adorned

As our power over others increases, we become less free; for to retain it, we must make ourselves its
servants.
Love finds us young and keeps us so: immortal himself, he permits not age to enter the hearts where he
reigns.
They who truly know have had to unlearn hardly less than they have had to learn.
John Lancaster Spalding, Aphorisms and Reflections, p. 40
692
The best book is but the record of the best life.
They who no longer believe in principles still proclaim them, to conceal, both from themselves and others,
the selfishness of the motives by which they are dominated.
If we attempt to sink the soul in matter, its light is quenched.

O brave youth, how good for thee it were couldst thou be made to understand how infinitely precious are thy
school years—years when thou hast leisure to grow, when new worlds break in upon thee, and thou
fashionest thy being in the light of the ideals of truth and goodness and beauty! If now thou dost not fit
thyself to become free and whole, thou shalt, when the doors of this fair mother-house of the mind, close
behind thee, be driven into ways that lead to bondage, be compelled to do that which cripples and dwarfs; for
the work whereby men gain a livelihood involves mental and moral mutilation, unless it be done in the spirit
of religion and culture. Ah! well for thee, canst thou learn while yet there is time that it will profit thee
nothing to become the possessor of millions, if the price thou payest is thy manhood.
If a state should pass laws forbidding its citizens to become wise and holy, it would be made a byword
for all time. But this, in effect, is what our commercial, social, and political systems do. They compel
the sacrifice of mental and moral power to money and dissipation.
Faith, like love, unites; opinion, like hate, separates.

It is more profitable to be mindful of our own faults than of those of our age.
The zest of life lies in right doing, not in the garnered harvest.
When we have not the strength or the courage to grasp a new truth, we persuade ourselves that it is not a
truth at all.
We neglect the opportunities which are always present, and imagine that if those that are rare were offered,
we should put them to good use. Thus we waste life waiting for what if it came we should be unprepared for.
If thou wouldst be implacable, be so with thyself.

Make thyself perfect; others, happy.

Have as little suspicion as possible and conceal that.

Obedience is not servility. On the contrary the servile are never rightly obedient.
Liberty is more precious than money or office; and we should be vigilant lest we purchase wealth or
place at the price of inner freedom.
693
The study of law is valuable as a mental discipline, but the practice of pleading tends to make one petty,
formal, and insincere. To be driven to look to legality rather than to equity blurs the view of truth and justice.
There are faults which show heart and win hearts, while the virtue in which there is no love, repels.
The exercise of authority is odious, and they who know how to govern, leave it in abeyance as much as
possible.
The weak, when they have authority, surround themselves with the weak. It is, indeed, a vice of rulers that
men who have exceptional ability and worth are offensive to them, since they whose greatness is due to their
position find it difficult to love those whom inner power makes great.
Those subjects have the greatest educational value, which are richest in incentives to the noblest self-activity.
If thou hast sought happiness and missed it, but hast found wisdom instead, thou art fortunate.
What matter that the man stands for much I cannot love—the moment he touches the realms of truth
he enters my world and is my friend.
They who can no longer unlearn have lost the power to learn.
Education would be a divine thing, if it did nothing more than help us to think and love great thoughts
instead of little thoughts.
Let not what thou canst not prevent, though it be the ruin of thy home or country, draw thee from thy proper
work.
Rules of grammar can not give us a mastery of language, rules of rhetoric can not make us eloquent, rules of
conduct can not make us good.
To view an object in the proper light we must stand away from it. The study of the classical literatures gives
the aloofness which cultivates insight. In learning to live with peoples and civilizations that have long ceased
to be alive, we gain a vantage point, acquire an enlargement and elevation of thought, which enable us to
study with a more impartial and liberal mind the condition of the society around us.
Solitude is unbearable for those who can not bear themselves.

They who see through the eyes of others are controlled by the will of others.
The common man is impelled and controlled by interests; the superior, by ideas.
694
The will—the one thing it is most important to educate—we neglect.
Place before thyself the ideal of perfection, not that of happiness, for by doing what makes thee wiser and
better, thou shalt find the peace and joy in which happiness consists.
When pleasure is made a business, it ceases to be pleasure.

Work, mental or manual, is the means whereby attention is compelled, it is the instrument of all knowledge
and virtue, the root whence all excellence springs.
Moral education is the development of individuality, and individuality can not be developed by formulas and
mechanical processes: it is the work of the master who brings to his task a genuine and loving interest in the
individual.
To love the perfection with which we do our work, or the company of those with whom we work, is the
secret of learning to love the work itself.
What purifies the heart refines language.

If thou wouldst help others deal with them as though they were what they should be
The first requisite of a gentleman is to be true, brave and noble, and to be therefore a rebuke and scandal to
venal and vulgar souls.
Language should be pure, noble and graceful, as the body should be so: for both are vestures of the Soul.
If there are but few who interest thee, why shouldst thou be disappointed if but few find thee interesting?
We may avoid much disappointment and bitterness of soul by learning to understand how little necessary to
our joy and peace are the things the multitude most desire and seek.
Since the mass of mankind are too ignorant or too indolent to think seriously, if majorities are right it is by
accident.
Whom little things occupy and keep busy, are little men.
The ploughman knows how many acres he shall upturn from dawn to sunset: but the thinker knows not what
a day may bring forth.
695
Houses and fields in which we lived and played in childhood and youth with those we loved, grow to be part
of our being. The sight of them in later years touches us with mystic charm. It is like a vision from beyond
the tomb or a memory of a lost Paradise. But little by little their power over us grows less and the light that
falls on them becomes more like the common day. Their sacredness diminishes, their beauty fades. The
young birds have flown, the old are dead, the leaves and blossoms have fallen and but the empty nest is left
among the naked boughs; and looking on the desolation we feel that we have no abiding place on earth, since
the home itself loses its consecration.
As they are the bravest who require no witnesses to their deeds of daring, so they are the best who do right
without thinking whether or not it shall be known.
They who admire and reverence noble and heroic men are akin to them.
The able have no desire to appear to be so, and this is part of their ability.
A principal aim of education is to give students a taste for literature, for the books of life and power,
and to accomplish this, it is necessary that their minds be held aloof from the babblement and
discussions of the hour, that they may accustom themselves to take interest in the words and deeds of
the greatest men, and so make themselves able and worthy to shape a larger and nobler future; but if their
hours of leisure are spent over journals and reviews, they will, in later years, become the helpless victims of
the newspaper habit.
If science were nothing more than the best means of teaching the love of the simple fact, the indispensable
need of verification, of careful and accurate observation and statement, its value would be of the highest
order.
Break not the will of the young, but guide it to right ends.
Conversation injures more than it benefits. Men talk to escape from themselves, from sheer dread of silence.
Reflection makes them uncomfortable, and they find distraction in a noise of words. They seek not the
company of those who might enlighten and improve them, but that of whoever can divert and amuse them.
Thus the intercourse which ought to be a chief means of education, is for the most part, the occasion of
mental and moral enfeeblement.
If thou wouldst be interesting, keep thy personality in the background, and be great and strong in and through
thy subject.
No occupation is more tiresome or depressing than that of killing time. It is the cause of lifeweariness, the
punishment the soul inflicts upon itself when reduced to passiveness and servitude.
Beauty lies not in the things we see, but in the soul.

When guests enter the room their entertainers rise to receive them; and in all meetings men should ascend
into their higher selves, imparting to one another only the best they know and love.
696
There are few things it is more important to learn than how to live on little and be therewith content:
for the less we need what is without, the more leisure have we to live within.
Perfection is beyond our reach, but they who earnestly strive to become perfect, acquire excellences and
virtues of which the multitude have no conception.
As display is vulgar, so fondness for jewelry is evidence of an uncultivated mind.

We are made ridiculous less by our defects than by the affectation of qualities which are not ours.
The highest strength is acquired not in overcoming the world, but in overcoming one’s self. Learn to be cruel
to thyself, to withstand thy appetites, to bear thy sufferings, and thou shalt become free and able.
The noblest are they who turning from the things the vulgar crave, seek the source of a blessed life in worlds
to which the senses do not lead.
If thy words are wise, they will not seem so to the foolish: if they are deep the shallow will not appreciate
them. Think not highly of thyself, then, when thou art praised by many.
Unless we consent to lack the common things which men call success, we shall hardly become heroes or
saints, philosophers or poets.
Great deeds and utterances are now so diluted with printer’s ink that we can no longer find a sage or saint.
Our worthiest men are exhibited and bewritten until they are made as uninteresting as clowns.
If truth make us not truthful, what service can it render us?

It is difficult to be sure of our friends, but it is possible to be certain of our loyalty to them.
It is not worth while to consider whether a truth be useful—it is enough that it is a truth.
Mercenary is whoever thinks less of his work than of the money he receives for doing it; and social
conditions which impose tasks that make this inevitable are barbarous.
No pure delight cheers the farmer whose mind is intent on the price he shall get for his crops rather than on
the joy there is in tilling them and seeing them grow and ripen: for such an one does not love the land nor his
home nor any of the most beautiful and sacred things, but tends to become like the brute that eats and sleeps
and dies. His thoughts are with what feeds the animal, and that which nourishes the human is hidden from
him.
Say not thou lackest talent. What talent had any of the greatest, but passionate faith in the efficacy of work?
697
If we learn from those only, of whose lives and opinions we altogether approve, we shall have to turn from
many of the highest and profoundest minds.
Altruism is a barbarism. Love is the word.

To how much lying, extravagance, hypocrisy and servilism does not the fear of ridicule lead? Human respect
makes us cowards and slaves. It may deter from evil, but much oftener it drives to baseness. “We are too
much afraid,” said Cato, “of death, exile and poverty.”
When we know and love the best we are content to lack the approval of the many.
Philosophers and theologians, like the vulgar, prefer contradiction to enlightenment. They refute one another
more gladly than they learn from one another, as though man lived by shunning error and not by loving truth.
Accept their formulas and they sink back into their easy chairs and comfortably doze.
John Lancaster Spalding, Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 171-172
The power of free will is developed and confirmed by increasing the number of worthy motives which
influence conduct.
States of soul rightly expressed, as the poet expresses them in moments of pure inspiration, retain forever the
power of creating like states. It is this that makes genuine literature a vital force.
The mind perceives ... that it is higher than institutions, which are but the woof and web of its thought
and will, which it weaves and outgrows, and weaves again.
If thou canst not hold the golden mean, say and do too little rather than too much.
Dislike of another’s opinions and beliefs neither justifies our own nor makes us more certain of them: and to
transfer the repugnance to the person himself is a mark of a vulgar mind.
The common prejudice against philosophy is the result of the incapacity of the multitude to deal with the
highest problems.
The lover of education labors first of all to educate himself.

What is greatly desired, but long deferred, gives little pleasure, when at length it is ours, for we have lived
with it in imagination until we have grown weary of it, having ourselves, in the meanwhile, become other.
If ancient descent could confer nobility, the lower forms of life would possess it in a greater degree than man.
The seeking for truth is better than its loveless possession.

698
The smaller the company, the larger the conversation.
How is it possible not to strive to know what the awakening minds of the young are eager to learn from us? It
is little less than criminal that we should put them off with foolish speech or lies.
When we have attained success, we see how inferior it is to the hope, yearning and enthusiasm with which
we started forth in life’s morning.
The pessimist writes over the gates of life what the poet has inscribed on the portals of hell—”Abandon
hope, ye who enter here.”
Not to be able to utter one’s thought without giving offence, is to lack culture.
Nothing requires so little mental effort as to narrate or follow a story. Hence everybody tells stories and the
readers of stories outnumber all others.
To secure approval one must remain within the bounds of conventional mediocrity. Whatever lies beyond,
whether it be greater insight and virtue, or greater stolidity and vice, is condemned. The noblest men, like the
worst criminals, have been done to death.
Culture makes the whole world our dwelling place; our palace in which we take our ease and find ourselves
at one with all things.
Base thy life on principle, not on rules.

Reform the world within thyself, which is thy proper world.

The happiness of the ignorant is but an animal’s paradise.

We truly know only what we have taught ourselves.

Insight makes argument ridiculous.

A great man, who lives intimately with his admirers, with difficulty escapes being made ridiculous.
What we acquire with joy, we possess with indifference.

It is a large part of learning to know what one wants, and where it may be found in its most authentic form.
699
Be watchful lest thou lose the power of desiring and loving what appeals to the soul—this is the miser’s
curse—this the chain and ball the sensualist drags.
There are who mistake the spirit of pugnacity for the spirit of piety, and thus harbor a devil instead of an
angel.
A gentleman does not appear to know more or to be more than those with whom he is thrown into company.
The innocence which is simply ignorance is not virtue.

When one sense has been bribed the others readily bear false witness.
When the crowd acclaims its favorites it applauds itself.

What we enjoy, not what we possess, is ours, and in labouring for the possession of many things, we
lose the power to enjoy the best.
In giving us dominion over the animal kingdom God has signified His will that we subdue the beast within
ourselves.
It is the tendency of the study of science to make us patient, humble and attentive to the smallest things. Is
not this part of religion?
The disinterested love of truth which culture fosters is akin to the unselfishness which is a characteristic of
the good.
If our opinions rest upon solid ground, those who attack them do not make us angry, but themselves
ridiculous.
Folly will run its course and it is the part of wisdom not to take it too seriously.
As we can not love what is hateful, let us accustom ourselves neither to think nor to speak of disagreeable
things and persons.
To think of education as a means of preserving institutions however excellent, is to have a superficial notion
of its end and purpose, which is to mould and fashion men who are more than institutions, who create,
outgrow, and re-create them.
He who leaves school, knowing little, but with a longing for knowledge, will go farther than one who quits,
knowing many things, but not caring to learn more.
700
Each individual bears within himself an ideal man, and to bring him forth in perfect form is his divinely
imposed life-work.
More inspiring and interesting teaching alone can make progress in education possible: for such teaching
alone has power to produce greater self-activity, greater concentration of mind, greater desire to learn not
only how to get a living, but how to live.
There is some lack either of sense or of character in one who becomes involved in difficulties with the
worthless or the vicious.
As a brave man goes into fire or flood or pestilence to save a human life, so a generous mind follows after
truth and love, and is not frightened from the pursuit by danger or toil or obloquy.
The test of the worth of a school is not the amount of knowledge it imparts, but the self-activity it calls forth.
It is the business of culture to make us able to consider with intelligent interest all real opinions, even those
we do not and can not accept.
To think profoundly, to seek and speak truth, to love justice and denounce wrong is to draw upon one’s self
the ill will of many.
We shrink from the contemplation of our dead bodies, forgetting that when dead they are no longer ours, and
concern us as little as the hairs that have fallen from our heads.
The aim of education is to strengthen and multiply the powers and activities of the mind rather than to
increase its possessions.
Where it is the chief aim to teach many things, little education is given or received.
In education, as in religion and love, compulsion thwarts the purpose for which it is employed.
What a wise man knows seems so plain and simple to himself that he easily makes the mistake of thinking it
to be so for others.
Inferior thinking and writing will make a name for a man among inferior people, who in all ages and
countries, are the majority.
One may speak Latin and have but the mind of a peasant.
A liberal education is that which aims to develop faculty without ulterior views of profession or other
means of gaining a livelihood. It considers man an end in himself and not an instrument whereby
something is to be wrought. Its ideal is human perfection.
701
Believe in no triumph which is won by the deadening of human faculty or the dwarfing of human life. Strive
for truth and love, not for victory.
We do not find it hard to bear with ourselves, though we are full of faults. Why then may we not learn to be
tolerant of others?
Exercise of body and exercise of mind are supplementary, and both may be made recreative and educative.
We have no sympathy with those who are controlled by ideas and passions which we neither understand nor
feel. Thus they who live to satisfy the appetites do not believe it possible to live in and for the soul.
To cultivate the memory we should confide to it only what we understand and love: the rest is a useless
burden; for simply to know by rote is not to know at all.
If we fail to interest, whether because we are dull and heavy, or because our hearers are so, we teach in vain.
They whom trifles distract and nothing occupies are but children.
As the savages whom we have instructed are ready when left to themselves to return to their ancestral mode
of life, so our young people quickly forget what they have learned at school, and sink back into the
commonplace existence from which a right education would have saved them.
The study of science, dissociated from that of philosophy and literature, narrows the mind and
weakens the power to love and follow the noblest ideals: for the truths which science ignores and must
ignore are precisely those which have the deepest bearing on life and conduct.
It is the business of the teacher ... to fortify reason and to make conscience sovereign.
Thought from which no emotion springs is sterile. The knowledge that has no bearing on the conduct of life
is vain.
We do not see rightly until we learn to eliminate what we expect or wish to see from what we really see.
As children must have the hooping cough, the college youth must pass through the stage of conceit in which
he holds in slight esteem the wisdom of the best.
A hobby is the result of a distorted view of things. It is putting a planet in the place of a sun.
The more we live with what we imagine others think of us, the less we live with truth.
If we are disappointed that men give little heed to what we utter is it for their sake or our own?
702
If thy friends tire of thee, remember that it is human to tire of everything.
Be content that others have position, if thou hast ability: that others have riches, if thou hast virtue.
They who think they know all, learn nothing.

If the young are watched too closely, if they are kept habitually under surveillance, the spring of action is
weakened, the power of initiative is destroyed, and they become mediocre, commonplace, mechanical men
and women, from whom nothing excellent or distinguished may be expected. Parents and teachers ... must so
deal with the young as to bring them little by little under the control of reason and conscience; and in this,
nothing thwarts more surely than excessive supervision, for it draws attention from the inner view and voice
to the eyes of the watchers. It may cultivate a love of decency and propriety, but not the creative feeling that
we live with God and that righteousness is life.
John Lancaster Spalding, Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 257-258
Agitators and declaimers may heat the blood, but they do not illumine the mind.
Wouldst thou bestow some precious gift upon thy fellows, make thyself a noble man.
The best money can procure for thee is freedom to live in thy true self. It is more apt however to enslave than
to liberate. It is good also when thou makest it a means to help thy fellow men; but here too it is easier to
harm than to benefit: for the money thou givest another is useful to him only when it stimulates him to self-
activity.
The value of a mind is measured by the nature of the objects it habitually contemplates. They whose thoughts
are of trifles are trifling: they who dwell with what is eternally true, good and fair, are like unto God.
It is the expensiveness of our pleasures that makes the world poor and keeps us poor in ourselves. If we
could but learn to find enjoyment in the things of the mind, the economic problems would solve
themselves.
John Lancaster Spalding, Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)
A Wise man knows that much of what he says and does is commonplace and trivial. His thoughts are not all
solemn and sacred in his own eyes. He is able to laugh at himself and is not offended when others make him
a subject whereon to exercise their wit.
We are not masters of the truth which is borne in upon us: it overpowers us.
What we think out for ourselves forms channels in which other thoughts will flow.
It is a common error to imagine that to be stirring and voluble in a worthy cause is to be good and to do good.
When with all thy heart thou strivest to live with truth and love, couldst thou do anything better? ... If this be
thy life, thou shalt not deem it a misfortune to lack the things men most crave and toil for.
703
WILFRID BLUNT (1840-1922)
When I set
The world before me and survey its range,
Its mean ambitions, its scant fantasies,
The shreds of pleasure which for lack of change
Men wrap around them and call happiness, ...
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, With Esther
... when I keep

Calmly the count of my own life and see
On what poor stuff my manhood's dreams were fed
Till I too learn'd what dole of vanity
Will serve a human soul for daily bread, ...
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, With Esther
WILLIAM JAMES (1842-1910)

The entire modern deification of survival per se, survival returning to itself, survival naked and abstract, with
the denial of any substantive excellence in what survives, except the capacity for more survival still, is surely
the strangest intellectual stopping-place ever proposed by one man to another.
William James, review of Clifford’s Lectures and Essays, Collected Essays and Reviews (1920), p. 143 (1879)
Consciousness ... is the name of a nonentity. ... Those who cling to it are clinging to a mere echo, the faint
rumor left behind by the disappearing ‘soul’ upon the air of philosophy.
[opposition] William James, “Does Consciousness Exist?”
Is not blessedness a fragile fiction? Is not your joy in it a very vulgar glee, not much unlike the snicker of any
rogue at his success?
William James
[Habit is] the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us
all within the bounds of ordinance and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. It
alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread
therein. ... It dooms us all to fight out the battle of life upon the lines of our nurture or our early choice, and
to make the best of a pursuit that disagrees, because there is no other for which we are fitted, and it is too late
to begin again.
[opposition] William James, Sketches of Moral Philosophy
[Healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine] because the evil facts which it refuses
positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life’s
significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.
William James
704
The Gospel of Relaxation
http://des.emory.edu/mfp/jgospel.html
By regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the
feeling, which is not.
Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up
cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such
conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can. So to feel brave, act as if
we were brave, use all our will to that end, and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear. Again, in
order to feel kindly toward a person to whom we have been inimical, the only way is more or less
deliberately to smile, to make sympathetic inquiries, and to force ourselves to say genial things. One hearty
laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward
wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling. To wrestle with a bad feeling only pins our
attention on it, and keeps it still fastened in the mind: whereas, if we act as if from some better feeling, the
old bad feeling soon folds its tent.
William James, “The Gospel of Relaxation”
That blessed internal peace and confidence, that acquiescentia in seipso, as Spinoza used to call it, that wells
up from every part of the body of a muscularly well-trained human being, and soaks the indwelling soul of
him with satisfaction, is, quite apart from every consideration of its mechanical utility, an element of spiritual
hygiene of supreme significance.
William James, “The Gospel of Relaxation”
The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

http://books.google.com/books?id=Qi4XAAAAIAAJ
A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is, after all, a chain.
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), p.133
705
Does it not appear as if one who lived more habitually on one side of the pain-threshold might need a
different sort of religion from one who habitually lived on the other? This question, of the relativity of
different types of religion to different types of need, arises naturally at this point, and will became a serious
problem ere we have done. But before we confront it in general terms, we must address ourselves to the
unpleasant task of hearing what the sick souls, as we may call them in contrast to the healthy-minded, have to
say of the secrets of their prison-house, their own peculiar form of consciousness. Let us then resolutely turn
our backs on the once-born and their sky-blue optimistic gospel; let us not simply cry out, in spite of all
appearances, "Hurrah for the Universe!—God's in his Heaven, all's right with the world." Let us see rather
whether pity, pain, and fear, and the sentiment of human helplessness may not open a profounder view and
put into our hands a more complicated key to the meaning of the situation.
To begin with, how can things so insecure as the successful experiences of this world afford a stable
anchorage? A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain. In the healthiest and most
prosperous existence, how many links of illness, danger, and disaster are always interposed? Unsuspectedly
from the bottom of every fountain of pleasure, as the old poet said, something bitter rises up: a touch of
nausea, a falling dead of the delight, a whiff of melancholy, things that sound a knell, for fugitive as they
may be, they bring a feeling of coming from a deeper region and often have an appalling convincingness.
The buzz of life ceases at their touch as a piano-string stops sounding when the damper falls upon it.
Of course the music can commence again;—and again and again—at intervals. But with this the healthy-
minded consciousness is left with an irremediable sense of precariousness. It is a bell with a crack; it draws
its breath on sufferance and by an accident.
Even if we suppose a man so packed with healthy-mindedness as never to have experienced in his own
person any of these sobering intervals, still, if he is a reflecting being, he must generalize and class his own
lot with that of others; and, doing so, he must see that his escape is just a lucky chance and no essential
difference. He might just as well have been born to an entirely different fortune. And then indeed the hollow
security! What kind of a frame of things is it of which the best you can say is, "Thank God, it has let me off
clear this time!" Is not its blessedness a fragile fiction? Is not your joy in it a very vulgar glee, not much
unlike the snicker of any rogue at his success?
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), pp.133-134
The method of averting one's attention from evil, and living simply in the light of good is splendid as long as
it will work. It will work with many persons; it will work far more generally than most of us are ready to
suppose; and within the sphere of its successful operation there is nothing to be said against it as a religious
solution. But it breaks down impotently as soon as melancholy comes; and even though one be quite free
from melancholy one's self, there is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical
doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and
they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the
deepest levels of truth.
Some years ago I myself made some observations on this aspect of nitrous oxide intoxication, and reported
them in print. One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever
since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is
but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie
potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their
existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite
types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of
the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.
706
PAUL LAFARGUE (1842-1911)
The Right to Be Lazy (1883)
http://books.google.com/books?id=2AUWAAAAYAAJ
When, in our civilized Europe, we would find a trace of the native beauty of man, we must go seek it in the
nations where economic prejudices have not yet uprooted the hatred of work. ... The Greeks in their era of
greatness had only contempt for work: their slaves alone were permitted to labor: the free man knew only
exercises for the body and mind. ... The philosophers of antiquity taught contempt for work, that degradation
of the free man, the poets sang of idleness, that gift from the Gods.
Paul Lafargue, The Right to Be Lazy (1883), H. Kerr, trans. (1907), pp. 11-12
Jehovah ... have his worshippers the supreme example of ideal laziness; after six days of work, he rests for all
eternity.
Paul Lafargue, The Right to Be Lazy (1883), H. Kerr, trans. (1907), pp. 12-13
AMBROSE BIERCE (1842-1914)

Epigrams
http://books.google.com/books?id=ImlKAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA343
To Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil.

Ambrose Bierce, Epigrams, The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce (1911), Volume 8, p. 343
There was never a genius who was not thought a fool until he disclosed himself; whereas he is a fool then
only.
Strive not for singularity in dress; Fools have the more and men of sense the less. To look original is not
worth while, But be in mind a little out of style.
To be comic is merely to be playful, but wit is a serious matter. To laugh at it is to confess that you do not
understand.
If you would be accounted great by your contemporaries, be not too much greater than they.
O proud philanthropist, your hope is vain To get by giving what you lost by gain.
“There's no free will," says the philosopher; "To hang is most unjust."
"There is no free will," assents the officer; "We hang because we must."
The game of discontent has its rules, and he who disregards them cheats. It is not permitted to you to wish to
add another's advantages or possessions to your own; you are permitted only to wish to be another.
If you want to read a perfect book there is only one way: write it.
When lost in a forest go always down hill. When lost in a philosophy or doctrine go upward.
707
We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a
posture of respect.
A popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites them to think something else.
The virtues chose Modesty to be their queen.

"I did not know that I was a virtue," she said. "Why did you not choose Innocence?"
"Because of her ignorance," they replied. "She knows nothing but that she is a virtue."
The only distinction that democracies reward is a high degree of conformity.

Slang is the speech of him who robs the literary garbage carts on their way to the dumps.
The palmist looks at the wrinkles made by closing the hand and says they signify character. The philosopher
reads character by what the hand most loves to close upon.
The money-getter who pleads his love of work has a lame defense, for love of work at money-getting is a
lower taste than love of money.
A man is the sum of his ancestors; to reform him you must begin with a dead ape and work downward
through a million graves. He is like the lower end of a suspended chain; you can sway him slightly to the
right or the left, but remove your hand and he falls into line with the other links.
He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity.

Along the road of life are many pleasure resorts, but think not that by tarrying in them you will take more
days to the journey. The day of your arrival is already recorded.
The most offensive egotist is he that fears to say "I" and "me." "It will probably rain "—that is dogmatic. "I
think it will rain"—that is natural and modest. Montaigne is the most delightful of essayists because so great
is his humility that he does not think it important that we see not Montaigne. He so forgets himself that he
employs no artifice to make us forget him.
Convictions are variable; to be always consistent is to be sometimes dishonest.

The most intolerant advocate is he who is trying to convince himself.

The poor man's price of admittance to the favor of the rich is his self-respect.
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.
708
Slang is a foul pool at which every dunce fills his bucket, and then sets up as a fountain.
Happiness is lost by criticizing it; sorrow by accepting it.

When prosperous the fool trembles for the evil that is to come; in adversity the philosopher smiles for the
good that he has had.
“Who art thou?”

“Friendship.”
“I am love; let us travel together.”
“Yes—for a day’s journey; then thou arrivest at thy grave.”
“And thou?”
“I go as far as the grave of Advantage.”
Men were singing the praises of Justice.

“Not so loud,” said an angel; “if you wake her she will put you all to death.”
Age, with his eyes in the back of his head, thinks it wisdom to see the bogs through which he has floundered.
Ambrose Bierce, Epigrams, The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce (1911), Volume 8, pp. 372-373
Wisdom is known only by contrasting it with folly; by shadow only we perceive that all visible objects are
not flat. Yet Philanthropos would abolish evil!
To the eye of failure success is an accident.

Having given out all the virtues that He had made, God made another.
"Give us that also," said His children.
"Nay," He replied, "if I give you that you will slay one another till none is left. You shall have only its name,
which is Justice."
"That is a good name," they said; "we will give it to a virtue of our own creation."
So they gave it to Revenge.
While you have a future do not live too much in contemplation of your past: unless you are content to walk
backward the mirror is a poor guide.
Self-denial is indulgence of a propensity to forego.

709
The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)
1906 edition (The Cynic’s Wordbook) http://books.google.com/books?id=CboOAAAAIAAJ
1911 edition http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/972
In controversy with the facile tongue—

That bloodless warfare of the old and young—
So seek your adversary to engage
That on himself he shall exhaust his rage,
And, like a snake that's fastened to the ground,
With his own fangs inflict the fatal wound.
You ask me how this miracle is done?
Adopt his own opinions, one by one,
And taunt him to refute them; in his wrath
He'll sweep them pitilessly from his path.
Advance then gently all you wish to prove,
Each proposition prefaced with, "As you've
So well remarked," or, "As you wisely say,
And I cannot dispute," or, "By the way,
This view of it which, better far expressed,
Runs through your argument." Then leave the rest
To him, secure that he'll perform his trust
And prove your views intelligent and just.
Conmore Apel Brune, as recorded in The Cynics Wordbook (1911)
Mammon, n.: The god of the world's leading religion.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
Politeness, n.: The most acceptable hypocrisy.

Politics, n.: Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.

Conversation , n. A fair for the display of the minor mental commodities, each exhibitor being too intent
upon the arrangement of his own wares to observe those of his neighbor.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for securing individual profit without individual responsibility.
Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave-driver.
Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise, and disguises from the foolish, their lack of understanding.
Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one’s own opinion.
Admiration, n.: Our polite recognition of another’s resemblance to ourselves.

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)
710
Future, n.: That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.
Learning, n.: A kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.

Conservative: a statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from a Liberal who wishes to
replace them with others.
Ambrose Bierce
Cynic: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
Ambrose Bierce
Optimism: The doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.
Ambrose Bierce
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.

Ambrose Bierce
Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
Ambrose Bierce
Egotist: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.

Ambrose Bierce
Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.

Ambrose Bierce
PETER KROPOTKIN (1842-1921)

While the necessary instinct of self-preservation leads man to egotism, nature has supplied a corrective to it
by providing man with another instinct—that of sociability
Peter Kropotkin
Laws, he wrote, are not a product of the wisdom of our ancestors: they are the product of their passions, their
timidity, their jealousies and their ambition. The remedy they offer is worse than the evils they pretend to
cure.
Peter Kropotkin paraphrasing Godwin
I take it for granted that you have a mind free from the superstition which your teachers have sought to force
upon you; that you don’t fear the devil, and that you do not go to hear parsons and ministers rant. More, that
you are not one of the fops, sad products of a society in decay, who display their well-cut trousers and their
monkey faces in the park, and who even at their early age have only an insatiable longing for pleasure at any
price...I assume on the contrary that you have a warm heart, and for this reason I talk to you.
Peter Kropotkin
Let us first try to understand what you seek in devoting yourself to science. Is it only the pleasure—doubtless
immense—which we derive from the study of nature and the exercise of our intellectual faculties? In that
case I ask you in what respect does the philosopher, who pursues science in order that he may pass life
pleasantly to himself, differ from that drunkard there, who only seeks the immediate gratification that gin
affords him? The philosopher has, past all question, chosen his enjoyment more wisely, since it affords him a
pleasure far deeper and more lasting than that of the toper. But that is all! Both one and the other have the
same selfish end in view, personal gratification.
Peter Kropotkin
711
More than a century has passed since science laid down sound propositions as to the origins of the universe,
but how many have mastered them or possess the really scientific spirit of criticism? A few thousands at the
outside, who are lost in the midst of hundreds of millions still steeped in prejudices and superstitions worthy
of savages, who are consequently ever ready to serve as puppets for religious impostors.
Peter Kropotkin
Or again, will you call for the enforcement of the law against this man who, badly brought up and ill-used
from his childhood, has arrived at man’s estate without having heard one sympathetic word, and completes
his career by murdering his neighbor in order to rob him of a shilling? Will you demand his execution, or—
worse still—that he should be imprisoned for twenty years, when you know very well that he is rather a
madman than a criminal, and in any case, that his crime is the fault of our entire society?
Peter Kropotkin
GEORG BRANDES (1842-1927)

Sometimes it was not Hegelianism itself that seemed the main thing. The main thing was that I was learning
to know a world-embracing mind; I was being initiated into an attempt to comprehend the universe which
was half wisdom and half poetry; I was obtaining an insight into a method which, if scientifically
unsatisfying, and on that ground already abandoned by investigators, was fruitful and based upon a clever,
ingenuous, highly intellectual conception of the essence of truth; I felt myself put to school to a great
intellectual leader, and in this school I learnt to think
Georg Brandes
“An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism” (1889)

Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. A.G. Chater (London: 1914)
The fact of having learnt much and knowing much is, as [Nietzsche] points out, neither a necessary means to
culture nor a sign of culture; it accords remarkably well with barbarism, that is to say, with want of style or a
motley hotchpotch of styles.
Georg Brandes, “An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism,” Friedrich Nietzsche, p. 6
Nietzsche asks how it has come about that so prodigious a contradiction can exist as that between the lack of
true culture and the self-satisfied belief in actually possessing the only true one and he finds the answer in the
circumstance that a class of men has come to the front which no former century has known, and to which (in
1873) he gave the name of “Culture-Philistines.”
The Culture-Philistine … everywhere meets with educated people of his own sort, and since schools,
universities and academies are adapted to his requirements and fashioned on the model corresponding to his
cultivation. Since he finds almost everywhere the same tacit conventions with respect to religion, morality
and literature, with respect to marriage, the family, the community and the state, he considers it demonstrated
that this imposing homogeneity is culture. It never enters his head that this systematic and well-organised
philistinism, which is set up in all high places and installed at every editorial desk, is not by any means made
culture just because its organs are in concert. It is not even bad culture, says Nietzsche; it is barbarism
fortified to the best of its ability, but entirely lacking the freshness and savage force of original barbarism;
and he has many graphic expressions to describe Culture-Philistinism as the morass in which all weariness is
stuck fast, and in the poisonous mists of which all endeavour languishes.
What is public opinion? It is private indolence.

712
On entering life, then, young people meet with various collective opinions, more or less narrow-minded.
The more the individual has it in him to become a real personality, the more he will resist following a herd.
But even if an inner voice says to him; “Become thyself! Be thyself!” he hears its appeal with despondency.
Has he a self? He does not know; he is not yet aware of it. He therefore looks about for a teacher, an
educator, one who will teach him, not something foreign, but how to become his own individual self.
We had in Denmark a great man who with impressive force exhorted his contemporaries to become
individuals. But Søren Kierkegaard’s appeal was not intended to be taken so unconditionally as it sounded.
For the goal was fixed. They were to become individuals, not in order to develop into free personalities, but
in order by this means to become true Christians. Their freedom was only apparent; above them was
suspended a “Thou shalt believe!” and a “Thou shalt obey!” Even as individuals they had a halter round their
necks, and on the farther side of the narrow passage of individualism, through which the herd was driven, the
herd awaited them again one flock, one shepherd.
It is not with this idea of immediately resigning his personality again that the young man in our day desires
to become himself and seeks an educator. He will not have a dogma set up before him, at which he is
expected to arrive.
Georg Brandes, “An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism,” Friedrich Nietzsche, pp. 9-10
Nietzsche says that as soon as he had read a single page of Schopenhauer, he knew he would read every page
of him and pay heed to every word, even to the errors he might find. Every intellectual aspirant will be able
to name men whom he has read in this way.
The society of the Culture-Philistines makes life a burden to exceptional men.

We need only think of the number of talented men who sooner or later make their apologies and concessions
to philistinism, so as to be permitted to exist.
The great man is not the child of his age but its step-child.
Georg Brandes, paraphrasing Nietzsche, “An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism” (1889) trans. A.G. Chater, (London: 1914) p. 11
The educator shall help the young to educate themselves in opposition to the age.
It appears to [Nietzsche] that the modern age has produced for imitation three types of man … First,
Rousseau’s man, the Titan who raises himself … and in his need calls upon holy nature. Then Goethe’s man
… a spectator of the world … [Third] Schopenhauer’s man … voluntarily takes upon himself the pain of
telling the truth.
Georg Brandes, “An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism,” Friedrich Nietzsche, p. 11-12
When does a state of culture prevail? When the men of a community are steadily working for the production
of single great men. From this highest aim all the others follow. And what state is farthest removed from a
state of culture? That in which men energetically and with united forces resist the appearance of great men,
partly by preventing the cultivation of the soil required for the growth of genius, partly by obstinately
opposing everything in the shape of genius that appears amongst them. Such a state is more remote from
culture than that of sheer barbarism.
Forgetfulness, the unhistorical, is … the atmosphere, in which alone life can come into being. In order to
understand it, let us imagine a youth who is seized with a passion for a woman, or a man who is swayed by a
passion for his work. In both cases what lies behind them has ceased to exist and yet this state (the most
unhistorical that can be imagined) is that in which every action, every great deed is conceived and
accomplished.
713
History, in [Nietzsche’s] view, belongs to him who is fighting a great fight, and who needs examples,
teachers and comforters, but cannot find them among his contemporaries. Without history the mountain
chain of great men’s great moments, which runs through millennia, could not stand clearly and vividly before
me.
The historian is looked upon as objective when he measures the past by the popular opinions of his
own time, as subjective when he does not take these opinions for models. That man is thought best
fitted to depict a period of the past, who is not in the least affected by that period. But only he who has a
share in building up the future can grasp what the past has been, and only when transformed into a work of
art can history arouse or even sustain instincts.
Greatness has nothing to do with results or with success.

Georg Brandes, “An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism,” p. 19
Why you exist, says Nietzsche with Søren Kierkegaard, nobody in the world can tell you in advance;
but since you do exist, try to give your existence a meaning by setting up for yourself as lofty and noble
a goal as you can.
The masses are only to be regarded as one of three things: either as copies of great personalities, bad copies,
clumsily produced in a poor material, or as foils to the great, or finally as their tools
What has set the mass in motion for any length of time is then called great. It is given the name of a historical
power. When, for example, the vulgar mob has appropriated or adapted to its needs some religious idea, has
defended it stubbornly and dragged it along for centuries, then the originator of that idea is called great.
There is the testimony of thousands of years for it, we are told. But this is Nietzsche’s and Kierkegaard’s idea
the noblest and highest does not affect the masses at all, either at the moment or later. Therefore the
historical success of a religion, its toughness and persistence, witness against its founder’s greatness
rather than for it.
[Nietzsche inveighs] against every sort of historical optimism; but he energetically repudiates the ordinary
pessimism, which is the result of degenerate or enfeebled instincts of decadence. He preaches with youthful
enthusiasm the triumph of a tragic culture, introduced by an intrepid rising generation, in which the spirit of
ancient Greece might be born again. He rejects the pessimism of Schopenhauer, for he already abhors all
renunciation; but he seeks a pessimism of healthiness, one derived from strength, from exuberant power, and
he believes he has found it in the Greeks.
But what of the voice and judgment of conscience? The difficulty is that we have a conscience behind our
conscience, an intellectual one behind the moral. … We can see quite well that our opinions of what is
noble and good, our moral valuations, are powerful levers where action is concerned; but we must begin by
refining these opinions and independently creating for ourselves new tables of values.
Instead of trying to educate the human race, they should imitate the pedagogues of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, who concentrated their efforts on the education of a single person.
714
He who feels that in his inmost being he cannot be compared with others, will be his own lawgiver. For
one thing is needful: to give style to one’s character. This art is practised by him who, with an eye for
the strong and weak sides of his nature, removes from it one quality and another, and then by daily
practice and acquired habit replaces them by others which become second nature to him; in other
words, he puts himself under restraint in order by degrees to bend his nature entirely to his own law.
Only thus does a man arrive at satisfaction with himself, and only thus does he become endurable to others.
For the dissatisfied and the unsuccessful as a rule avenge themselves on others. They absorb poison from
everything, from their own incompetence as well as from their poor circumstances, and they live in a
constant craving for revenge on those in whose nature they suspect harmony. Such people ever have
virtuous precepts on their lips; the whole jingle of morality, seriousness, chastity, the claims of life; and their
hearts ever burn with envy of those who have become well [harmonious] and can therefore enjoy life.
Since fresh examples and proofs could always be found of the alleged relation between guilt and
punishment: if you behave in such and such a way, it will go badly with you. Now, as it generally does
go badly, the allegation was constantly confirmed; and thus popular morality, a pseudo- science on a
level with popular medicine, continually gained ground.
Georg Brandes, “An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism,” Friedrich Nietzsche, p. 26 (cf. Daybreak, § 11)
The oldest definition [of “good”] was this: the noble, the mightier, higher-placed and high-minded held
themselves and their actions to be good of the first rank in contradistinction to everything low and low-
minded. Noble, in the sense of the class-consciousness of a higher caste, is the primary concept from which
develops good in the sense of spiritually aristocratic. The lowly are designated as bad (not evil). Bad does not
acquire its unqualified depreciatory meaning till much later. In the mouth of the people it is a laudatory word;
the German word schlecht is identical with schlicht (cf. schlechtweg and schlechterdings).
In opposition to the aristocratic valuation (good = noble, beautiful, happy, favoured by the gods) the slave
morality then is this: The wretched alone are the good; those who suffer and are heavy laden, the sick and the
ugly, they are the only pious ones. On the other hand, you, ye noble and rich, are to all eternity the evil, the
cruel, the insatiate, the ungodly, and after death the damned. Whereas noble morality was the manifestation
of great self-esteem, a continual yea-saying, slave morality is a continual Nay, a Thou shall not, a negation.
To the noble valuation good bad (bad = worthless) corresponds the antithesis of slave morality, good evil.
And who are the evil in this morality of the oppressed? Precisely the same who in the other morality were the
good.
What [Nietzsche] calls slave morality is to him purely spite-morality; and this spite-morality gave new names
to all ideals. Thus impotence, which offers no reprisal, became goodness; craven baseness became humility;
submission to him who was feared became obedience; inability to assert one’s self became reluctance to
assert one’s self, became forgiveness, love of one’s enemies. Misery became a distinction
Those [Christians] had left to love on earth were then: brothers and sisters in hatred, whom they called then:
brothers and sisters in love.
For long ages, too, no notice whatever was taken of the criminal’s “sin”; he was regarded as harmful, not
guilty, and looked upon as a piece of destiny; and the criminal on his side took his punishment as a piece of
destiny which had overtaken him, and bore it with the same fatalism ... In general we may say that
punishment tames the man, but does not make him “better.”
715
Nietzsche proposes the following brilliant hypothesis: The bad conscience is the deep-seated morbid
condition that declared itself in man under the stress of the most radical change he has ever experienced
when he found himself imprisoned in perpetuity within a society which was inviolable. All the strong and
savage instincts such as adventurousness, rashness, cunning, rapacity, lust of power, which till then had not
only been honoured, but actually encouraged, were suddenly put down as dangerous, and by degrees branded
as immoral and criminal. Creatures adapted to a roving life of war and adventure suddenly saw all their
instincts classed as worthless, nay, as forbidden. An immense despondency, a dejection without parallel, then
took possession of them. And all these instincts that were not allowed an outward vent, turned inwards on the
man himself feelings of enmity, cruelty, … violence, persecution, destruction and thus the bad conscience
originated.
What has here happened is that the instinct of cruelty, which has turned inwards, has become self-torture, and
all man’s animal instincts have been reinterpreted as guilt towards God. Every Nay man utters to his nature,
to his real being, he flings out as a Yea, an affirmation of reality applied to God’s sanctity
Under the dominion of the priests our earth became the ascetic planet; a squalid den careering through space,
peopled by discontented and arrogant creatures, who were disgusted with life, abhorred their globe as a vale
of tears, and who in their envy and hatred of beauty and joy did themselves as much harm as possible.
The ascetic priest … keeps the whole herd of dejected, faint-hearted, despairing and unsuccessful creatures
fast to life. The very fact that he himself is sick makes him their born herdsman. If he were healthy, he would
turn away with loathing from all this eagerness to re-label weakness, envy, Pharisaism and false morality as
virtue. But, being himself sick, he is called upon to be an attendant in the great hospital of sinners the
Church. He … teaches the patient that the guilty cause of his pain is himself. Thus he diverts the rancour of
the abortive man and makes him less harmful, by letting a great part of his resentment recoil on himself.
…He mitigates suffering and invents consolations of every kind, both narcotics and stimulants.
[Nietzsche] attributes to himself an extremely vivid and sensitive instinct of cleanliness. At the first contact
the filth lying at the base of another’s nature is revealed to him. The unclean are therefore ill at ease hi his
presence
Georg Brandes, Friedrich Nietzsche, pp. 112-113
The loathing of mankind is a force that surprises and overwhelms one, fed by hundreds of springs concealed
his subconsciousness. One only detects its presence after having long entertained it unawares.
Georg Brandes, Friedrich Nietzsche, pp. 113
Correspondence between Friedrich Nietzsche and Georg Brandes

Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. A.G. Chater (London: 1914)
Finally and this probably does most to make my books obscure there is in me a distrust of dialectics, even of
reasons. What a person already holds “true” or has not yet acknowledged as true, seems to me to depend
mainly on his courage, on the relative strength of his courage (I seldom have the courage for what I really
know).
Nietzsche, Letter to Georg Brandes, December 2, 1887
Most non-German writers have been obliged to force themselves into a certain discipline of style, which no
doubt makes the latter clearer and more plastic, but necessarily deprives it of all profundity and compels the
writer to keep to himself his most ultimate and best individuality
Georg Brandes, Letter to Nietzsche, December 17, 1887
716
I am of opinion that the institution of marriage, which may have been very useful in taming brutes, causes
more misery to mankind than even the Church has done. Church, monarchy, marriage, property, these are to
my mind four old venerable institutions which mankind will have to reform from the foundations in order to
be able to breathe freely.
Georg Brandes, Letter to Nietzsche, March 7, 1888
I am even more hated now than I was seventeen years ago; this is not pleasant in itself, though it is gratifying
in so far as it proves to me that I have not yet lost my vigor nor come to terms on any point with sovereign
mediocrity.
Georg Brandes, Letter to Nietzsche, March 7, 1888
HENRY JAMES (1843-1916)

Life never bribed him to look at anything but the soul.
Henry James, describing Emerson
A writer is someone on whom nothing is lost.

Henry James
717
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS (1844-1889)
Elected Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.
Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:

It is the shut, the curfew sent
From there where all surrenders come
Which only makes you eloquent.
Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark

And find the uncreated light:
This ruck and reel which you remark
Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.
Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,

Desire not to be rinsed with wine:
The can must be so sweet, the crust
So fresh that come in fasts divine!
Nostrils, your careless breath that spend

Upon the stir and keep of pride,
What relish shall the censers send
Along the sanctuary side!
O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet

That want the yield of plushy sward,
But you shall walk the golden street
And you unhouse and house the Lord.
And, Poverty, be thou the bride

And now the marriage feast begun,
And lily-coloured clothes provide
Your spouse not laboured-at nor spun.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The Habit of Perfection”
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (1844-1900)

German: file:////H:/eBooks/Nietzsche - KSA.pdf
English: http://www.davemckay.co.uk/philosophy/nietzsche/
Unverified
Man verdirbt einen Jüngling am sichersten, wenn man ihn anleitet, den Gleichdenkenden höher zu achten als
den Andersdenkenden.
Nietzsche
Im echten Manne ist ein Kind versteckt: das will spielen.

Nietzsche
718
Tanzen-können mit den Füßen, mit den Begriffen, mit den Worten.
Nietzsche
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
Nietzsche
Art is the proper task of life.

Nietzsche
It is the sign of a higher humanity to respect “the mask” and not, in the wrong places, indulge in psychology
and psychological curiosity.
Nietzsche
He that does not wish to see what is great in a man has the sharpest eye for what is low and superficial in
him, and so gives away himself.
Nietzsche
The greatest ideas are the greatest events.

Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, § 285
Science is totally dependent upon philosophical opinions for all of its goals and methods, though it easily
forgets this.
Nietzsche
Jesus died too soon. If he had lived to my age he would have repudiated his doctrine.
Nietzsche
Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

Nietzsche
He desires the agreeable life-preserving consequences of truth, but he is indifferent to pure knowledge, which
has no consequences; he is even hostile to possibly damaging and destructive truths
Nietzsche
Unclassified Nietzsche
Es stehen noch große Umwälzungen bevor, wenn die Menge erst begriffen hat, dass das ganze Christentum
sich auf Annahmen gründet; die Existenz Gottes, Unsterblichkeit, Bibelautorität, Inspiration und anderes
werden immer Probleme bleiben. Ich habe alles zu leugnen versucht; o niederreißen ist leicht, aber aufbauen!
(…) Vielleicht ist in ähnlicher Weise, wie der Geist nur die unendlich kleinste Substanz, das Gute nur die
subtilste Entwicklung des Bösen aus sich heraus sein kann, der freie Wille nichts als die höchste Potenz des
Fatums. Weltgeschichte ist dann Geschichte der Materie, wenn man die Bedeutung dieses Wortes unendlich
weit nimmt. Denn es muss noch höhere Prinzipien geben, vor denen alle Unterschiede in einer großen
Einheitlichkeit zusammenfließen, vor denen alles Entwicklung, Stufenfolge ist, alles einem ungeheuren
Ozeane zuströmt, wo sich alle Entwicklungshebel der Welt wieder finden, verschmolzen, all-eins. (…)
Sobald es aber möglich wäre, durch einen starken Willen die ganze Weltvergangenheit umzustürzen, sofort
träten wir in die Reihe der unabhängigen Götter, und Weltgeschichte hieße dann für uns nichts als ein
träumerisches Selbstentrücktsein; der Vorhang fällt, und der Mensch findet sich wieder, wie ein Kind mit
Welten spielend, wie ein Kind, das beim Morgenglühen aufwacht und sich lachend die furchtbaren Träume
von der Stirn streicht.
Nietzsche, „Fatum und Geschichte“ (1862)
Gegen den Positivismus, welcher bei den Phänomenen stehn bleibt „es giebt nur Thatsachen", würde ich
sagen: nein, gerade Thatsachen giebt es nicht, nur Interpretationen.
Nietzsche, Der Wille zur Macht, § 481
719
Freier Wille ohne Fatum ist ebenso wenig denkbar, wie Geist ohne Reelles, Gutes ohne Böses.
Nietzsche, „Fatum und Geschichte,“ April 1862
Free will without fate is no more conceivable than spirit without matter, good without evil.
Nietzsche, “Fatum und Geschichte,” April 1862
The incomparable art of reading well, the prerequisite for all systematic knowledge
Nietzsche, as cited in Bernard Williams, Truth and Truthfulness (2002)
Health as such does not exist. It is your goal that determines what health ought to mean even for your body.
... The concept of normal health ... must be given up.
Nietzsche, Kleinoktavausgabe 5:159, as cited in Jaspers, Nietzsche, p. 112
I found that all prevailing valuations … could be traced back to the judgment of exhausted people.
Nietzsche, cited in P.E. More, Nietzsche (1912), p. 59
I am, … no less than Wagner, a child of this age, that is, a decadent: but I comprehended this, I resisted it.
Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner, cited in W. Kaufmann, Nietzsche, p. 73
Es stehen noch große Umwälzungen bevor, wenn die Menge erst begriffen hat, dass das ganze Christentum
sich auf Annahmen gründet; die Existenz Gottes, Unsterblichkeit, Bibelautorität, Inspiration und anderes
werden immer Probleme bleiben. Ich habe alles zu leugnen versucht; o niederreißen ist leicht, aber aufbauen!
(…) Vielleicht ist in ähnlicher Weise, wie der Geist nur die unendlich kleinste Substanz, das Gute nur die
subtilste Entwicklung des Bösen aus sich heraus sein kann, der freie Wille nichts als die höchste Potenz des
Fatums. Weltgeschichte ist dann Geschichte der Materie, wenn man die Bedeutung dieses Wortes unendlich
weit nimmt. Denn es muss noch höhere Prinzipien geben, vor denen alle Unterschiede in einer großen
Einheitlichkeit zusammenfließen, vor denen alles Entwicklung, Stufenfolge ist, alles einem ungeheuren
Ozeane zuströmt, wo sich alle Entwicklungshebel der Welt wieder finden, verschmolzen, all-eins.
Sobald es aber möglich wäre, durch einen starken Willen die ganze Weltvergangenheit umzustürzen, sofort
träten wir in die Reihe der unabhängigen Götter, und Weltgeschichte hieße dann für uns nichts als ein
träumerisches Selbstentrücktsein; der Vorhang fällt, und der Mensch findet sich wieder, wie ein Kind mit
Welten spielend, wie ein Kind, das beim Morgenglühen aufwacht und sich lachend die furchtbaren Träume
von der Stirn streicht.
By resolutely overthrowing, as soon as possible, the entire past of the world, we should at once join the
ranks of independent gods. … World history would then be nothing for us but a dreamlike trance; the
curtain falls, and man once more finds himself, … like a child waking up in the glow of the morning
and laughingly wiping the frightful dream from his forehead.
Nietzsche, cited in Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche (Baltimore: 1997), pp. 56-57
As soon as it becomes possible, by dint of a strong will, to overthrow the entire past of the world, then, in a
single moment, we will join the ranks of independent gods. World history for us will then be nothing but a
dream-like otherworldly being. The curtain falls, and man once more finds himself a child playing with
whole worlds—a child, awoken by the first glow of morning, who laughingly wipes the frightful dreams
from his brow.
Nietzsche, “Fate and history,” my translation
Die größten Ideen sind die, welche die heftigste und längste Begierde geschaffen hat.
Nietzsche, KSA 12.559
Es ist leicht die Dinge zu denken, aber schwer sie zu sein.

It is splendid to contemplate things, terrible to be them.
Ortega’s paraphrase of Nietzsche, cited in J. Stern, introduction to Untimely Meditations (1991), p. xxiv
720
Das modernwissenschaftliche Seitenstück zum Glauben an Gott ist der Glaube an das All als Organismus:
Davor ekelt mir. Also das ganz seltene, unsäglich Abgeleitete, das Organische, das wir nur auf der Kruste der
Erde wahrnehmen zum wesentlichen allgemeinen Ewigen machen! Dies ist immer noch Vermenschung der
Natur!
Nietzsche, KSA 9,11 [201]
The modern scientific counterpart to belief in God is the belief in the universe as an organism: this
disgusts me. This is to make what is quite rare and extremely derivative, the organic, which we
perceive only on the surface of the earth, into something essential, universal, and eternal! This is still
an anthropomorphizing of nature!
Nietzsche, KSA 9,11 [201]
Do not flatter your benefactor.

Nietzsche, GS 142, cf. Buddha
[Man is utterly consumed with] deception, flattering, lying and cheating, talking behind the back, posing,
living in borrowed splendor, being masked, the disguise of convention, acting a role before others and before
oneself... almost nothing is more incomprehensible than how an honest and pure urge for truth could make its
appearance among men.
Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lie in an Extramoral Sense”
[Heraclitus] did not require humans or their sort of knowledge, since everything into which one may inquire
he despises as history, in contrast to inward-turning wisdom ().
Nietzsche, The Pre-Platonic Philosophers, Ch. 10 “Heraclitus” p. 55
The people are the farthest away from socialism as a doctrine of reform in the acquisition of property: and
should they ever have access to the taxation screw through their parliaments large majorities, they will
assault the principality of capitalists, businessmen and stock exchanges with progressive taxation, thus in fact
slowly creating a middle class which may forget about socialism as it would a disease it has recovered from
Nietzsche, Works (Kröner, Leipzig) Vol. 3, p. 352, cited by Lukács
Unnatural morality, i.e., nearly every morality that has been hitherto inculcated, venerated and preached, is
aimed, conversely, directly against the vital instincts—it is a condemnation, sometimes clandestine and
sometimes loud and bold, of these instincts.
Nietzsche, Works (Kröner, Leipzig)Vol. 8, p. 88, cited by Lukács
In our civilized world we are almost solely acquainted with the stunted criminal, weighed down by society’s
curse and contempt, mistrusting himself, often belittling and calumniating his own deed, a failed criminal
type; and we find it repugnant to think that all great men were criminals (but in the grand manner, not
miserably) and that crime belongs to greatness
Nietzsche, Works (Kröner, Leipzig) Vol. 16, p. 184, cited by Lukács
Christianity ... is after all the best piece of idealism with which I have really become familiar: since
childhood I have pursued it into many nooks and crannies, and I believe I have never dealt it an unfair blow
at heart
Nietzsche, Letter to Peter Gast, 21 July 1881
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you
will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning
yourself.
Nietzsche (?)
721
Sehr populärer Irrthum: den Muth zu seiner Überzeugung haben—aber den Muth zum Angriff auf seine
Überzeugung haben!!!
Nietzsche
A very popular error: having the courage of one’s convictions; rather, it is a matter of having the courage for
an attack on one’s convictions!!!
Nietzsche, Werke XVI p. 318 = 14 [159] = KSA 13.344
All that is straight lies. All truth is crooked; time itself is a circle.
Nietzsche
How good bad music and bad reasons sound when one marches against an enemy!
Nietzsche
Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt
of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.
Nietzsche
At the bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique human being, only once on this earth; and by
no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put
together a second time.
Nietzsche
One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.
Nietzsche
What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives, acts, and experiences
otherwise than we do…?
Nietzsche
The overman...Who has organized the chaos of his passions, given style to his character, and become
creative. Aware of life’s terrors, he affirms life without resentment.
Nietzsche
Der „Übermensch” kann das Chaos der Leidenschaften integrieren, indem er ihm in seinem Lebenswerk
kreativen Ausdruck verleiht.
Paraphrase von Nietzsche
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you
will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning
yourself.
Nietzsche
The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.
Nietzsche
It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!
Nietzsche
The will to a system: in a philosopher, morally speaking, a subtle corruption, a disease of the character;
amorally speaking, his will to appear more stupid than he is
Nietzsche, Fall 1887 9 [188]
Against positivism, which halts at phenomena [and says] “there are only facts,” I would say: no, facts is
precisely what there is not, only interpretations.
Nietzsche, Summer 1886-Fall 1887 7 [60]
722
I am not bigoted enough for a system—and not even for my system.
Nietzsche, Fall 1887 10 [146]
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, § 483
I am impassioned for independence; I sacrifice all for it … and am tortured more by the smallest strings than
others are by chains.
Nietzsche, Werke XXI, 88
Every true faith is infallible inasmuch as it accomplishes what the person who has the faith hopes to find in
it; but faith does not offer the least support for a proof of objective truth. Here the ways of men part: if you
wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth [ein Jünger der
Wahrheit], then inquire.
Nietzsche, Letter to his Sister, June 11, 1865
He desires the agreeable life-preserving consequences of truth, but he is indifferent to pure knowledge, which
has no consequences; he is even hostile to possibly damaging and destructive truths
Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lie in an Extramoral Sense”
Orient und Occident sind Kreidestriche

Nietzsche KSA 1.339
Verbrecher werden von den moralischen Menschen als Zubehör zur Verkörperung Einer einzigen That
behandelt—und sie selber behandeln sich so, je mehr diese Eine That die Ausnahme ihres Wesens war: sie
wirkt wie der Kreidestrich um die Henne.—Es giebt in der moralischen Welt sehr viel Hypnotismus.
Nietzsche KSA 10.64
Is man only a blunder of God’s, or God only a blunder of Man’s?

Nietzsche
Rendering oneself unarmed when one has been the best-armed, out of a height of feeling—that is the means
to real peace, which must always rest on a peace of mind; whereas the so-called armed peace, as it now exists
in all countries, is the absence of peace of mind. One trusts neither oneself nor one’s neighbor and, half from
hatred, half from fear, does not lay down arms. Rather perish than hate and fear, and twice rather perish than
make oneself hated and feared—this must some day become the highest maxim
Nietzsche, Der Wanderer und sein Schatten, § 292, cited in Kaufmann, Nietzsche, p. 187
Why does he [the philosopher] value “truth” more highly than appearance? ... Answer: the true is more
useful.
Nietzsche, Werke, XIV, pp. 12f.
The will to a system: in a philosopher. morally speaking, a subtle corruption, a disease of the character;
amorally speaking, his will to appear more stupid than he is. … I am not bigoted enough for a system—and
not even for my system.
Nietzsche, Werke, XIV, 313, cited in Kaufmann, Nietzsche, p. 180
Der Fall Wagner

http://books.google.com/books?id=CuksAAAAYAAJ
The more one becomes a musician the more one is also a philosopher.
Nietzsche, Der Fall Wagner, § 1
Die Krankheit selbst kann ein Stimulans des Lebens sein: nur muss man gesund genug für dies
Stimulans sein!
723
Sickness itself can be a stimulus to life: only one must be healthy enough for this stimulus.
Man macht heute nur Geld mit kranker Musik.

Only sick music makes money today.
Letters
Band 1: http://books.google.com/books?id=hnIXAAAAYAAJ
Jetzt wage ich es, der Weisheit selber nachzugehen und selber Philosoph zu sein; früher verehrte ich die
Philosophen.
Nietzsche, Brief an Dr. Carl Fuchs, Juni 1878, Gesammelte Briefe, Band 1, S. 426
Now I dare to pursue wisdom itself and to be myself a philosopher; formerly I worshipped the
philosophers.
Nietzsche, Letter to Fuchs, June 1878, cited in Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche (Baltimore: 1997), p. 46
I now myself live, in every detail, striving for wisdom, while I formerly merely worshipped and idolized
the wise.
Nietzsche, Letter to Mathilde Mayer, July 16, 1878, cited in Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche (Baltimore: 1997), p. 46
Um alles in der Welt keinen Schritt zur Akkommodation! Man kann den großen Erfolg nur haben, wenn man
sich selbst treu bleibt.
Nietzsche, Brief an Dr. Carl Fuchs, Juni 1878, Gesammelte Briefe, Band 1, S. 426
Not one step toward accommodation, not for anything in the world! Great success can be gained only by
remaining faithful to one’s self.
Nietzsche, Letter to Gersdorff, July 16, 1878, cited in Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche (Baltimore: 1997), p. 63
If you should ever come round to writing about me ... be sensible enough—as nobody has been till now—to
characterize me, to ‘describe,’ but not to ‘evaluate.’ ... It is not necessary at all—nor even desirable—that
you should argue in my favor; on the contrary, a dose of curiosity, as in the presence of a foreign plant, with
an ironic resistance, would seem to me an incomparably more intelligent attitude.
Nietzsche, letter to Carl Fuchs, July 29, 1888
One actually becomes a very exacting type of person if one’s life is sanctioned by his work: that is, one
therewith loses the knack of pleasing people. One is too serious, and they feel it.
Nietzsche, letter to Gast, April 7, 1888, cited in Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche, C. Walraff and F. Schmitz, trans. (Baltimore: 1997), p. 84
I found … again and again some odd form of that type of ‘raging stupidity’ which is so eager to be
worshipped as virtue.
Nietzsche, letter to Overbeck, August 31, 1885, cited in Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche, C. Walraff and F. Schmitz, trans. (Baltimore: 1997), p. 85
From childhood until now, I have found nobody who could have the same distress of heart and conscience
that I have.
Nietzsche, letter to his sister, May 20, 1885, cited in Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche, C. Walraff and F. Schmitz, trans. (Baltimore: 1997), p. 85
… such depths of happiness in which what is most painful and gloomy does not appear as contrast but as
something necessary, something demanded, as a needed color with such a superfluity of light; all happens
voluntarily but as in a storm of a feeling of freedom, of absoluteness of power, of divinity.
Nietzsche, cited in Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche, C. Walraff and F. Schmitz, trans. (Baltimore: 1997), p. 94
724
Die Geburt der Tragödie (The Birth of Tragedy) (1872)
Der schöne Schein der Traumwelten, in deren Erzeugung jeder Mensch voller Künstler ist, ist die
Voraussetzung aller bildenden Kunst.
Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie, § 1, ¶ 3
The beautiful appearance of dream worlds, in the creation of which each man is a truly an artist, is the
prerequisite of all the fine arts.
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, § 1, ¶ 3
Wir geniessen im unmittelbaren Verständnisse der Gestalt, alle Formen sprechen zu uns, es giebt nichts
Gleichgültiges und Unnöthiges. Bei dem höchsten Leben dieser Traumwirklichkeit haben wir doch noch die
durchschimmernde Empfindung ihres Scheins. … Der philosophische Mensch hat sogar das Vorgefühl, dass
auch unter dieser Wirklichkeit, in der wir leben und sind, eine zweite ganz andre verborgen liege, dass also
auch sie ein Schein sei; und Schopenhauer bezeichnet geradezu die Gabe, dass Einem zu Zeiten die
Menschen und alle Dinge als blosse Phantome oder Traumbilder vorkommen, als das Kennzeichen
philosophischer Befähigung. Wie nun der Philosoph zur Wirklichkeit des Daseins, so verhält sich der
künstlerisch erregbare Mensch zur Wirklichkeit des Traumes.
In our dreams we delight in the immediate apprehension of form; all forms speak to us; none are
unimportant, none are superfluous. But, when this dream reality is most intense, we still have, glimmering
through it, the sensation that it is mere appearance. … The philosophic man even has a presentiment that
underneath this reality in which we live and have our being, is concealed another and quite different reality.
… Schopenhauer actually indicates as the criterion of philosophical ability the occasional ability to view men
and things as mere phantoms or dream images. Thus the aesthetically sensitive man stands in the same
relation to the reality of dreams as the philosopher does to the reality of existence.
So möchte von Apollo in einem excentrischen Sinne das gelten, was Schopenhauer von dem im Schleier
der Maja befangenen Menschen sagt: (Welt als Wille und Vorstellung I, s. 416) „Wie auf dem tobenden
Meere, das, nach allen Seiten unbegränzt, heulend Wellenberge erhebt und senkt, auf einem Kahn ein
Schiffer sitzt, dem schwachen Fahrzeug vertrauend; so sitzt, mitten in einer Welt von Qualen, ruhig der
einzelne Mensch, gestützt und vertrauend auf das principium individuationis”. Ja es wäre von Apollo zu
sagen, dass in ihm das unerschütterte Vertrauen auf jenes principium und das ruhige Dasitzen des in ihm
Befangenen seinen erhabensten Ausdruck bekommen habe, und man möchte selbst Apollo als das herrliche
Götterbild des principii individuationis bezeichnen, aus dessen Gebärden und Blicken die ganze Lust und
Weisheit des„Scheines”, sammt seiner Schönheit, zu uns spräche.
An derselben Stelle hat uns Schopenhauer das ungeheure Grausen geschildert, welches den Menschen
ergreift, wenn er plötzlich an den Erkenntnissformen der Erscheinung irre wird, indem der Satz vom Grunde,
in irgend einer seiner Gestaltungen, eine Ausnahme zu erleiden scheint. Wenn wir zu diesem Grausen die
wonnevolle Verzückung hinzunehmen, die bei demselben Zerbrechen des principii individuationis aus dem
innersten Grunde des Menschen, ja der Natur emporsteigt, so thun wir einen Blick in das Wesen des
Dionysischen, das uns am nächsten noch durch die Analogie des Rausches gebracht wird. Entweder durch
den Einfluss des narkotischen Getränkes, von dem alle ursprünglichen Menschen und Völker in Hymnen
sprechen, oder bei dem gewaltigen, die ganze Natur lustvoll durchdringenden Nahen des Frühlings erwachen
jene dionysischen Regungen, in deren Steigerung das Subjective zu völliger Selbstvergessenheit
hinschwindet. Auch im deutschen Mittelalter wälzten sich unter der gleichen dionysischen Gewalt immer
wachsende Schaaren, singend und tanzend, von Ort zu Ort: in diesen Sanct-Johann- und Sanct-Veittänzern
erkennen wir die bacchischen Chöre der Griechen wieder, mit ihrer Vorgeschichte in Kleinasien, bis hin zu
Babylon und den orgiastischen Sakäen. Es giebt Menschen, die, aus Mangel an Erfahrung oder aus
Stumpfsinn, sich von solchen Erscheinungen wie von „Volkskrankheiten”, spöttisch oder bedauernd im
Gefühl der eigenen Gesundheit abwenden: die Armen ahnen freilich nicht, wie leichenfarbig und
gespenstisch eben diese ihre „Gesundheit” sich ausnimmt, wenn an ihnen das glühende Leben dionysischer
Schwärmer vorüberbraust.
725
Unter dem Zauber des Dionysischen schließt sich nicht nur der Bund zwischen Mensch und Mensch
wieder zusammen: auch die entfremdete, feindliche oder unterjochte Natur feiert wieder ihr Versöhnungsfest
mit ihrem verlorenen Sohne, dem Menschen.
We might apply to Apollo the words of Schopenhauer when he speaks of the man wrapped in the veil of
Maya: “Just as in a stormy sea, unbounded in every direction, rising and falling with howling mountainous
waves, a sailor sits in a boat and trusts in his frail barque: so in the midst of a world of sorrows the individual
sits quietly, supported by and trusting in his principium individuationis.” In fact, we might say of Apollo,
that in him the unshaken faith in this principium and the calm repose of the man wrapped therein receive
their sublimest expression; and we might consider Apollo himself as the glorious divine image of the
principium individuationis, whose gestures and expression tell us of all the joy and wisdom of “appearance,”
together with its beauty.
In the same work Schopenhauer has depicted for us the terrible awe which seizes man when he is
suddenly unable to account for the cognitive forms of a phenomenon, when the principle of reason in some
one of its manifestations seems to admit of an exception. If we add to this awe the blissful ecstasy which
rises from the innermost depths of man, aye, of nature, at this very collapse of the principium individuationis,
we shall gain an insight into the nature of the Dionysian, which is brought home to us most intimately
perhaps by the analogy of drunkenness. It is either under the influence of the narcotic draught, which we hear
of in the songs of all primitive men and peoples, or with the potent coming of spring penetrating all nature
with joy, that these Dionysian emotions awake, which, as they intensify, cause the subjective to vanish into
complete self-forgetfulness.
Under the charm of the Dionysian not only is the union between man and man reaffirmed, but Nature
which has become estranged, hostile, or subjugated celebrates once more her reconciliation with her prodigal
son, man.
Der staatenbildende Apollo auch der Genius des principii individuationis ist.
The state-builder Apollo is also the genius of the principium indivuationis.
Only as an aesthetic phenomenon are life and the world justified eternally.
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 5.24, cited in Kaufmann, Nietzsche, p. 123
Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen [Untimely Meditations] (1876)

English: http://www.archive.org/stream/worksofnietzsche04nietuoft/worksofnietzsche04nietuoft_djvu.txt
German: http://www.nietzschesource.org/texts/eKGWB/DS
German: file:////H:/eBooks/Nietzsche - KSA.pdf S. 119
David Strauss: der Bekenner und der Schriftsteller [David Strauss: the Confessor and the Writer]
Mag wohl die Verwechselung in jenem Wahne des Bildungsphilisters daher rühren, dass er überall das
gleichförmige Gepräge seiner selbst wiederfindet und nun aus diesem gleichförmigen Gepräge aller
„Gebildeten” auf eine Stileinheit der deutschen Bildung, kurz auf eine Kultur schliesst.
Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen, „David Strauss” § 1.2, KS 1.165
The confusion underlying the Culture-Philistine’s [Bildungsphilisters] error may arise from the fact that,
since he comes into contact everywhere with creatures cast in the same mould as himself, he concludes that
this uniformity among all “scholars” must point to a certain uniformity in German education—hence to
culture.
Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations (A. Ludovici trans.), “David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer,” § 1.2
726
Eine unglückliche Verdrehung muss im Gehirne des gebildeten Philisters vor sich gegangen sein: er hält
gerade das, was die Kultur verneint, für die Kultur.
Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen, „David Strauss” § 1.2, KSA 1.166
The mind of the cultured Philistine must have become sadly unhinged; for precisely what culture repudiates
he regards as culture itself.
Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations (A. Ludovici trans.), § 1.2
Nobody, however, is more disliked by [the Culture-Philistine] than the man who regards him as a Philistine,
and tells him what he is—namely, the barrier in the way of all powerful men and creators, the labyrinth for
all who doubt and go astray, the swamp for all the weak and the weary, the fetters of those who would run
towards lofty goals, the poisonous mist that chokes all germinating hopes, the scorching sand to all those
German thinkers who seek for, and thirst after, a new life. For the mind of Germany is seeking; and you hate
it because it is seeking, and because it will not accept your word when you declare that you have found what
it is seeking.
What does our Culture-Philistinism say of these seekers? It regards them simply as discoverers, and seems to
forget that they themselves only claimed to be seekers.
Was urtheilt aber unsere Philisterbildung über diese Suchenden? Sie nimmt sie einfach als Findende und
scheint zu vergessen, dass jene selbst sich nur als Suchende fühlten. Wir haben ja unsere Kultur, heisst es
dann, denn wir haben ja unsere „Klassiker”, das Fundament ist nicht nur da, nein auch der Bau steht schon
auf ihm gegründet—wir selbst sind dieser Bau. Dabei greift der Philister an die eigene Stirn.
Um aber unsere Klassiker so falsch beurtheilen und so beschimpfend ehren zu können, muss man sie gar
nicht mehr kennen: und dies ist die allgemeine Thatsache. Denn sonst müsste man wissen, dass es nur Eine
Art giebt, sie zu ehren, nämlich dadurch, dass man fortfährt, in ihrem Geiste und mit ihrem Muthe zu suchen
und dabei nicht müde wird. Dagegen ihnen das so nachdenkliche Wort „Klassiker” anzuhängen und sich von
Zeit zu Zeit einmal an ihren Werken zu „erbauen”, das heisst, sich jenen matten und egoistischen Regungen
überlassen, die unsere Concertsäle und Theaterräume jedem Bezahlenden versprechen, auch wohl Bildsäulen
stiften und mit ihrem Namen Feste und Vereine bezeichnen—das alles sind nur klingende Abzahlungen,
durch die der Bildungsphilister sich mit ihnen auseinandersetzt, um im Uebrigen sie nicht mehr zu kennen,
und um vor allem nicht nachfolgen und weiter suchen zu müssen. Denn: es darf nicht mehr gesucht werden;
das ist die Philisterlosung.
Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen, , „David Strauss” § 1.2, KSA 1.167-168
In order to be able thus to misjudge, and thus to grant left-handed veneration to our classics, people must
have ceased to know them. This, generally speaking, is precisely what has happened. For, otherwise, one
ought to know that there is only one way of honoring them, and that is to continue seeking with the
same spirit and with the same courage, and not to weary of the search. But to foist the doubtful title of
“classics” upon them, and to “edify” oneself from time to time by reading their works, means to yield to
those feeble and selfish emotions which all the paying public may purchase at concert-halls and theatres.
Even the raising of monuments to their memory, and the christening of feasts and societies with their
names—all these things are but so many ringing cash payments by means of which the Culture-Philistine
discharges his indebtedness to them, so that in all other respects he may be rid of them, and, above all, not
bound to follow in their wake and prosecute his search further. For henceforth inquiry is to cease: that is the
Philistine watchword.
Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations (A. Ludovici trans.), § 1.2 cf. Lichtenberg, Sudelbücher A23
[The Philistine] opposed the restless creative spirit that animates the artist, by means of a certain smug
ease—the ease of self-conscious narrowness, tranquility, and self-sufficiency. His tapering finger pointed,
without any affectation of modesty, to all the hidden and intimate incidents of his life, to the many touching
and ingenuous joys which sprang into existence in the wretched depths of his uncultivated existence.
Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, A. Ludovici, trans., “David Strauss,” § 1.2
727
These smug ones [The Philistines] now once and for all sought to escape from the yoke of these dubious
classics and the command which they contained—to seek further and to find.
Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, A. Ludovici, trans., “David Strauss,” § 1.2, p. 16
Mit solchen Bilderbüchern der Wirklichkeit in den Händen suchten die Behaglichen nun auch ein für alle
mal ein Abkommen mit den bedenklichen Klassikern und den von ihnen ausgehenden Aufforderungen zum
Weitersuchen zu finden; sie erdachten den Begriff des Epigonen-Zeitalters, nur um Ruhe zu haben und bei
allem unbequemen Neueren sofort mit dem ablehnenden Verdikt „Epigonenwerk” bereit sein zu können.
Eben diese Behaglichen bemächtigten sich zu demselben Zwecke, um ihre Ruhe zu garantiren, der
Geschichte, und suchten alle Wissenschaften, von denen etwa noch Störungen der Behaglichkeit zu erwarten
waren, in historische Disciplinen umzuwandeln, zumal die Philosophie und die klassische Philologie. Durch
das historische Bewusstsein retteten sie sich vor dem Enthusiasmus—denn nicht mehr diesen sollte die
Geschichte erzeugen, wie doch Goethe vermeinen durfte: sondern gerade die Abstumpfung ist jetzt das Ziel
dieser unphilosophischen Bewunderer des nil admirari, wenn sie alles historisch zu begreifen suchen.
Während man vorgab, den Fanatismus und die Intoleranz in jeder Form zu hassen, hasste man im Grunde
den dominirenden Genius und die Tyrannis wirklicher Kulturforderungen; und deshalb wandte man alle
Kräfte darauf hin, überall dort zu lähmen, abzustumpfen oder aufzulösen, wo etwa frische und mächtige
Bewegungen zu erwarten standen.
Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen, „David Strauss” § 1.2, KSA 1.169
[The Philistines] only devised the notion of an epigone-age in order to secure peace for themselves, and to be
able to reject all the efforts of disturbing innovators summarily as the work of epigones. With the view of
ensuring their own tranquility, these smug ones even appropriated history, and sought to transform all
sciences that threatened to disturb their wretched ease into branches of history... No, in their desire to
acquire an historical grasp of everything, stultification became the sole aim of these philosophical admirers
of “nil admirari.” While professing to hate every form of fanaticism and intolerance, what they really
hated, at bottom, was the dominating genius and the tyranny of the real claims of culture.
Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations (A. Ludovici trans.), “David Strauss,” § 1.2
In this way, a philosophy which veiled the Philistine confessions of its founder beneath neat twists and
flourishes of language proceeded further to discover a formula for the canonization of the commonplace. It
expatiated upon the rationalism of all reality, and thus ingratiated itself with the Culture-Philistine, who also
loves neat twists and flourishes, and who, above all, considers himself real, and regards his reality as the
standard of reason for the world. From this time forward he began to allow every one, and even himself, to
reflect, to investigate, to aestheticise, and, more particularly, to make poetry, music, and even
pictures—not to mention systems of philosophy; provided, of course, that ... no assault were made
upon the “reasonable” and the “real”—that is to say, upon the Philistine.
[Here Nietzsche is talking about David Strauss, but he later applies essentially the same criticism to the British empiricists]
[The Philistine] strictly separates “the earnestness of life” (under which term he understands his
calling, his business, and his wife and child) from ... trivialities, and among the latter he includes all
things which have any relation to culture. Therefore, woe to the art that takes itself seriously, that has
a notion of what it may exact, and that dares to endanger his income, his business, and his habits!
Er benutzte aber die Gelegenheit, mit jener Verschmitztheit geringerer Naturen, das Suchen überhaupt zu
verdächtigen und zum bequemen Finden aufzufordern.
Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen, “David Strauss,” § 1.6
[The Philistine] availed himself of the opportunity... to throw suspicion even upon the seeking spirit, and to
invite people to join in the more comfortable pastime of finding.
Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations (A. Ludovici trans.), “David Strauss,” § 1.6
What good at all is science if it has no time for culture?

Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, “David Strauss,” § 1.8, cited in Kauffman, Nietzsche, p. 135
728
Between two vices, virtue does not always dwell, but often, but all too often only weakness and lame
impotence.
Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, “David Strauss,” § 1.11, cited in Kauffman, Nietzsche, p. 136
Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben [On the uses and disadvantages of history for
life]
Der Wahrheit dienen wenige in Wahrheit, weil nur wenige den reinen Willen haben gerecht zu sein und
selbst von diesen wieder die wenigsten die Kraft, gerecht sein zu können.
Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen, Zweites Stück, Kapitel 6
Nein, das Ziel der Menschheit kann nicht am Ende liegen, sondern nur in ihren höchsten Exemplaren.
Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen, Zweites Stück, Kapitel 9
„Uebrigens ist mir Alles verhasst, was mich bloss belehrt, ohne meine Thätigkeit zu vermehren, oder
unmittelbar zu beleben”. Dies sind Worte Goethes, mit denen, als mit einem herzhaft ausgedrückten Ceterum
censeo, unsere Betrachtung über den Werth und den Unwerth der Historie beginnen mag. In derselben soll
nämlich dargestellt werden, warum Belehrung ohne Belebung, warum Wissen, bei dem die Thätigkeit
erschlafft, warum Historie als kostbarer Erkenntniss-Ueberfluss und Luxus uns ernstlich, nach Goethes Wort,
verhasst sein muss—deshalb, weil es uns noch am Nothwendigsten fehlt, und weil das Ueberflüssige der
Feind des Nothwendigen ist.
Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen, „Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben” Vorwort, § 2.0, KSA 1.245
“I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity.” These
words are from Goethe and they may stand as a sincere ceterum censeo at the beginning of our meditation on
the value of history. For its intention is to show why instruction without invigoration, why knowledge not
attended by action, why history as a costly superfluity and luxury, must, to use Goethe's word, be seriously
hated by us—hated because we still lack even the things we need and the superfluous is the enemy of the
necessary.
Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, “On the uses and disadvantages of history for life,” Preface, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), § 2.0, p. 59
Gewiss, wir brauchen die Historie, aber wir brauchen sie anders, als sie der verwöhnte Müssiggänger im
Garten des Wissens braucht, mag derselbe auch vornehm auf unsere derben und anmuthlosen Bedürfnisse
und Nöthe herabsehen. Das heisst, wir brauchen sie zum Leben und zur That, nicht zur bequemen Abkehr
vom Leben und von der That oder gar zur Beschönigung des selbstsüchtigen Lebens und der feigen und
schlechten That. Nur soweit die Historie dem Leben dient, wollen wir ihr dienen: aber es giebt einen Grad,
Historie zu treiben und eine Schätzung derselben, bei der das Leben verkümmert und entartet.
We need history, certainly, but we need it for reasons different from those for which the idler in the garden of
knowledge needs it, even though he may look nobly down on our rough and charmless needs and
requirements. We need it, that is to say, for the sake of life and action, not so as to turn comfortably away
from life and action, let alone for the purpose of extenuating the self seeking life and the base and cowardly
action. We want to serve history only to the extent that history serves life: for it is possible to value the study
of history to such a degree that life becomes stunted and degenerate.
Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, “On the uses and disadvantages of history for life,” Preface, R.
Hollingdale, trans. (1983), § 2.0, p. 59
Ich wüsste nicht, was die classische Philologie in unserer Zeit für einen Sinn hätte, wenn nicht den, in ihr
unzeitgemäss—das heisst gegen die Zeit und dadurch auf die Zeit und hoffentlich zu Gunsten einer
kommenden Zeit—zu wirken.
I do not know what meaning classical studies could have for our time if they were not untimely—that
is to say, acting counter to our time and thereby acting on our time and, let us hope, for the benefit of a
time to come.
Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, “On the uses and disadvantages of history for life,” Preface, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), § 2.0, p. 60
729
So hat vielleicht kein Philosoph mehr Recht als der Cyniker: denn das Glück des Thieres, als des vollendeten
Cynikers, ist der lebendige Beweis für das Recht des Cynismus.
Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen, „Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben” § 2.1
KSA 1.249-250
Perhaps no philosopher is more correct than the cynic. The happiness of the animal, that thorough cynic, is
the living proof of cynicism.
Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, § 2.1, cited in Critique of Cynical Reason (1987), p. ix
Nun betrachte man aber gar den historischen Studenten, den Erben einer allzufrühen, fast im Knabenalter
schon sichtbar gewordenen Blasirtheit. Jetzt ist ihm die „Methode” zu eigener Arbeit, der rechte Griff und
der vornehme Ton nach des Meisters Manier zu eigen geworden; ein ganz isolirtes Capitelchen der
Vergangenheit ist seinem Scharfsinn und der erlernten Methode zum Opfer gefallen; er hat bereits producirt,
ja mit stolzerem Worte, er hat „geschaffen”, er ist nun Diener der Wahrheit durch die That und Herr im
historischen Weltbereiche geworden. War er schon als Knabe „fertig”, so ist er nun bereits überfertig: man
braucht an ihm nur zu schütteln, so fällt einem die Weisheit mit Geprassel in den Schooss; doch die Weisheit
ist faul und jeder Apfel hat seinen Wurm. Glaubt es mir: wenn die Menschen in der wissenschaftlichen
Fabrik arbeiten und nutzbar werden sollen, bevor sie reif sind, so ist in Kurzem die Wissenschaft ebenso
ruinirt, wie die allzuzeitig in dieser Fabrik verwendeten Sclaven. Ich bedaure, dass man schon nöthig hat,
sich des sprachlichen Jargons der Sclavenhalter und Arbeitgeber zur Bezeichnung solcher
Verhältnisse zu bedienen, die an sich frei von Utilitäten, enthoben der Lebensnoth gedacht werden
sollten: aber unwillkürlich drängen sich die Worte „Fabrik, Arbeitsmarkt, Angebot,
Nutzbarmachung”—und wie all die Hülfszeitwörter des Egoismus lauten—auf die Lippen, wenn man
die jüngste Generation der Gelehrten schildern will. Die gediegene Mittelmässigkeit wird immer
mittelmässiger, die Wissenschaft im ökonomischen Sinne immer nutzbarer. Eigentlich sind die allerneuesten
Gelehrten nur in Einem Punkte weise, darin freilich weiser als alle Menschen der Vergangenheit, in allen
übrigen Punkten nur unendlich anders—vorsichtig gesprochen—als alle Gelehrten alten Schlags. Trotzdem
fordern sie Ehren und Vortheile für sich ein, als ob der Staat und die öffentliche Meinung verpflichtet wären,
die neuen Münzen für eben so voll zu nehmen wie die alten. Die Kärrner haben unter sich einen
Arbeitsvertrag gemacht und das Genie als überflüssig decretirt—dadurch dass jeder Kärrner zum Genie
umgestempelt wird: wahrscheinlich wird es eine spätere Zeit ihren Bauten ansehen, dass sie
zusammengekarrt, nicht zusammengebaut sind. Denen, die unermüdlich den modernen Schlacht- und
Opferruf „Theilung der Arbeit! In Reih' und Glied!” im Munde führen, ist einmal klärlich und rund
zu sagen: wollt ihr die Wissenschaft möglichst schnell fördern, so werdet ihr sie auch möglichst schnell
vernichten; wie euch die Henne zu Grunde geht, die ihr künstlich zum allzuschnellen Eierlegen zwingt. Gut,
die Wissenschaft ist in den letzten Jahrzehnten erstaunlich schnell gefördert worden: aber seht euch nun auch
die Gelehrten, die erschöpften Hennen an. Es sind wahrhaftig keine „harmonischen” Naturen: nur gackern
können sie mehr als je, weil sie öfter Eier legen: freilich sind auch die Eier immer kleiner (obzwar die
Bücher immer dicker) geworden.
Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen, „Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben” § 2.7 KSA 1.300-301
Consider the historical student, the heir of a blasé indifference which appears all too soon, almost in his
boyhood. Now he has acquired the “method” for his own work, the correct technique and the refined tone in
the manner of his master; a quite isolated little chapter of the past has fallen victim to his acuteness and the
method he has learned; he has already produced or, to use a prouder word, he has “created”, he has now
become a servant of truth in deed and lord of the world of history. If he was “done” already as a boy, then he
is now overdone: you only need to shake him and wisdom will fall into your lap with great rattling; yet the
wisdom is rotten and every apple has its worm. Believe me: if men are to labour and become useful in the
scientific factory before they are ripe, science will soon be ruined as well as the slaves put to use all too soon
in this factory. I regret that one is already required to use the linguistic jargon of slaveholders and
employers in order to describe such conditions which ought to be thought basically free of utilities and
exempted from the struggle for survival; but the words 'factory‘, 'labour market', 'offer' ,
'utilization'—and all the rest of the auxiliary verbs of egoism—involuntarily throng to one's lips if one
wants to describe the youngest generation of scholars. Sterling mediocrity becomes ever more mediocre
730
and science ever more useful in the economic sense. Actually the newest scholars are wise in only one
respect and in this admittedly wiser than all men of the past, in all other respects only infinitely different—to
put it carefully—from all scholars of the old type. Nevertheless they demand honours and advantages for
themselves, as though the state and public opinion were obligated to take the new coin just as seriously as the
old. The carters have entered into a labour contract with each other and decreed the genius to be
superfluous—for every carter is being stamped a genius; probably a later age will be able to tell that their
structures have been carted together, not joined together. Those who tirelessly use the modern cry of battle
and sacrifice “Division of labour! Fall into line!” are for once to be told clearly and bluntly: if you
want to further science as quickly as possible you will destroy it as quickly as possible; as the hen will
perish if artificially forced to lay eggs too quickly. Granted, science has been furthered surprisingly quickly
in the last decades: but just look at the scholars, the exhausted hens. They truly are no “harmonious” natures;
they can only cackle more than ever because they lay eggs more often: of course, the eggs have become ever
smaller (even if the books ever bigger).
Nietzsche, On The Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life, P. Preuss, trans. (1980) § 7
… den modernen Schlacht- und Opferruf „Theilung der Arbeit! In Reih' und Glied!”
Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen, „Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben” § 2.7 KSA 1.301
.... the modern cry of battle and sacrifice “Division of labor! Fall into line!”
Nietzsche, On The Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life, P. Preuss, trans. (1980) § 7
Schopenhauer als Erzieher [Schopenhauer as Educator]
Im Grunde weiß jeder Mensch recht wohl, daß er nur einmal, als ein Unikum, auf der Welt ist und daß kein
noch so seltsamer Zufall zum zweitenmal ein so wunderlich buntes Mancherlei zum Einerlei, wie er es ist,
zusammenschütteln wird: er weiß es, aber verbirgt es wie ein böses Gewissen – weshalb? Aus Furcht vor
dem Nachbar, welcher die Konvention fordert und sich selbst mit ihr verhüllt. Aber was ist es, was den
einzelnen zwingt, den Nachbar zu fürchten, herdenmäßig zu denken und zu handeln und seiner selbst nicht
froh zu sein? Schamhaftigkeit vielleicht bei einigen und seltnen. Bei den allermeisten ist es Bequemlichkeit,
Trägheit, kurz jener Hang zur Faulheit, von dem der Reisende sprach. Er hat Recht: die Menschen sind noch
fauler als furchtsam und fürchten gerade am meisten die Beschwerden, welche ihnen eine unbedingte
Ehrlichkeit und Nacktheit aufbürden würde. Die Künstler allein hassen dieses lässige Einhergehen in
erborgten Manieren und übergehängten Meinungen und enthüllen das Geheimnis, das böse Gewissen von
jedermann, den Satz, daß jeder Mensch ein einmaliges Wunder ist.
Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen, „Schopenhauer als Erzieher“
In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that
no imaginable chance will for a second time gather together into a unity so strangely variegated an
assortment as he is: he knows it but he hides it like a bad conscience—why? From fear of his neighbor,
who demands conventionality and cloaks himself with it. But what is it that constrains the individual to
fear his neighbor, to think and act like a member of a herd, and to have no joy in himself? Modesty, perhaps,
in a few rare cases. With the great majority it is indolence, inertia. ... Men are even lazier than they are timid,
and fear most of all the inconveniences with which unconditional honesty and nakedness would burden them.
Artists alone hate this sluggish promenading in borrowed fashions and appropriated opinions and they reveal
everyone’s secret bad conscience, the law that every man is a unique miracle.
Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, “Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.1, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), p. 127
When the great thinker despises mankind, he despises its laziness: for it is on account of their laziness that
men seem like factory products.
A man who would not belong in the mass needs only to cease being comfortable with himself.
Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, § 3.1, cited in Kauffman, Nietzsche, p. 158
731
The man who does not wish to belong to the mass needs only to cease taking himself easily; let him follow
his conscience, which calls to him: “Be your self! All you are now doing, thinking, desiring, is not you
yourself.”
Es gibt kein öderes und widrigeres Geschöpf in der Natur als den Menschen, welcher seinem Genius
ausgewichen ist und nun nach rechts und nach links, nach rückwärts und überallhin schielt. Man darf einen
solchen Menschen zuletzt gar nicht mehr angreifen, denn er ist ganz Außenseite ohne Kern, ein anbrüchiges,
gemaltes, aufgebauschtes Gewand.
There exists no more repulsive and desolate creature in the world than the man who has evaded his
genius and who now looks furtively to left and right, behind him and all about him. ... He is wholly
exterior, without kernel, a tattered, painted bag of clothes.
Und wenn man mit Recht vom Faulen sagt, er töte die Zeit, so muß man von einer Periode, welche ihr Heil
auf die öffentlichen Meinungen, das heißt auf die privaten Faulheiten setzt, ernstlich besorgen, daß eine
solche Zeit wirklich einmal getötet wird: ich meine, daß sie aus der Geschichte der wahrhaften Befreiung des
Lebens gestrichen wird. Wie groß muß der Widerwille späterer Geschlechter sein, sich mit der
Hinterlassenschaft jener Periode zu befassen, in welcher nicht die lebendigen Menschen, sondern öffentlich
meinende Scheinmenschen regierten.
If it is true to say of the lazy that they kill time, then it is greatly to be feared that an era which sees its
salvation in public opinion, this is to say private laziness, is a time that really will be killed: I mean that it
will be struck out of the history of the true liberation of life. How reluctant later generations will be to have
anything to do with the relics of an era ruled, not by living men, but by pseudo-men dominated by public
opinion.
Wir haben uns über unser Dasein vor uns selbst zu verantworten; folglich wollen wir auch die wirklichen
Steuermänner dieses Daseins abgeben und nicht zulassen, daß unsre Existenz einer gedankenlosen
Zufälligkeit gleiche.
We are responsible to ourselves for our own existence; consequently we want to be the true helmsmen
of this existence and refuse to allow our existence to resemble a mindless act of chance.
I will make an attempt to attain freedom, the youthful soul says to itself; and is it to be hindered in this by the
fact that two nations happen to hate and fight one another, or that two continents are separated by an ocean,
or that all around it a religion is taught with did not yet exist a couple of thousand years ago. All that is not
you, it says to itself.
Niemand kann dir die Brücke bauen, auf der gerade du über den Fluß des Lebens schreiten mußt, niemand
außer dir allein.
No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one
but you yourself alone.
732
Es gibt in der Welt einen einzigen Weg, auf welchem niemand gehen kann, außer dir: wohin er führt? Frage
nicht, gehe ihn.
There exists in the world a single path along which no one can go except you: whither does it lead? Do not
ask, go along it.
Wie finden wir uns selbst wieder? Wie kann sich der Mensch kennen? Er ist eine dunkle und verhüllte
Sache; und wenn der Hase sieben Häute hat, so kann der Mensch sich sieben mal siebzig abziehn und wird
noch nicht sagen können: »das bist du nun wirklich, das ist nicht mehr Schale«.
How can a man know himself? He is a thing dark and veiled; and if the hare has seven skins, man can slough
off seventy times seven and still not be able to say: “this is really you, this is no longer outer shell.”
Und das ist das Geheimnis aller Bildung: sie verleiht nicht künstliche Gliedmaßen, wächserne Nasen,
bebrillte Augen – vielmehr ist das, was diese Gaben zu geben vermöchte, nur das Afterbild der Erziehung.
Sondern Befreiung ist sie, Wegräumung alles Unkrauts, Schuttwerks, Gewürms, das die zarten Keime der
Pflanzen antasten will.
That is the secret of all culture: it does not provide artificial limbs, wax noses or spectacles—that which can
provide these things is, rather, only sham education. Culture is liberation, the removal of all the weeds,
rubble and vermin that want to attack the tender buds of the plant.
Compare: Truth that has been merely learned is like an artificial limb, a false tooth, a waxen nose; at best, like a nose made out of another's flesh; it
adheres to us only because it is put on.—Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. 2, Ch. 22, § 261
I always believed that at some time fate would take from me the terrible effort and duty of educating
myself. I believed that, when the time came, I would discover a philosopher to educate me, a true
philosopher whom one could follow without any misgiving because one would have more faith in him than
one had in oneself. Then I asked myself: what would be the principles by which he would educate you?—and
I reflected on what he might say about the two educational maxims which are being hatched in our time. One
of them demands that the educator should quickly recognize the real strength of his pupil and then direct all
his efforts and energy and heat at them so as to help that one virtue to attain true maturity and fruitfulness.
The other maxim, on the contrary, requires that the educator should draw forth and nourish all the forces
which exist in his pupil and bring them to a harmonious relationship with one another. ...
But where do we discover a harmonious whole at all, a simultaneous sounding of many voice in one
nature, if not in such men as Cellini, men in whom everything, knowledge, desire, love, hate, strives towards
a central point, a root force, and where a harmonious system is constructed through the compelling
domination of this living centre? And so perhaps these two maxims are not opposites at all? Perhaps the one
simply says that man should have a center and the other than he should also have a periphery? That educating
philosopher of whom I dreamed would, I came to think, not only discover the central force, he would also
know how to prevent its acting destructively on the other forces: his educational task would, it seemed to me,
be to mould the whole man into a living solar and planetary system and to understand its higher laws of
motion.
Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, “Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.2, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), p. 130-131
Die gebildeten Stände und Staaten werden von einer großartig verächtlichen Geldwirtschaft fortgerissen.
Niemals war die Welt mehr Welt, nie ärmer an Liebe und Güte.
The civilized classes and nations are swept away by the grand rush for contemptible wealth. Never was the
world worldlier, never was it emptier of love and goodness.
Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, “Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.4
733
Nothing better or happier can befall a man than to be in the proximity of one of those victorious ones, who,
precisely because they have thought the most deeply, must love what is most alive and, as sages, incline in
the end to the beautiful. They speak truly, they do not stammer, and do not chatter about what they have
heard; they are active and live truly and not the uncanny masquerade men are accustomed to live: which is
why, in their proximity, we for once feel human and natural for once, and feel like exclaiming with Goethe:
“How glorious and precious is a living thing!”
Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans. Hollingdale, modified, “Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.2, p. 136
Where there have been powerful governments, societies, religions, public opinions, in short wherever
there has been tyranny, there the solitary philosopher has been hated; for philosophy offers an asylum
to a man into which no tyranny can force it way, the inward cave, the labyrinth of the heart.
Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans. Hollingdale, “Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.3, p. 139
These people who have fled inward for their freedom also have to live outwardly, become visible, let
themselves be seen; they are united with mankind through countless ties of blood, residence, education,
fatherland, chance, the importunity of others; they are likewise presupposed to harbour countless opinions
simply because these are the ruling opinions of the time; every gesture which is not clearly a denial counts as
agreement.
Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans. Hollingdale, “Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.3, p. 139
All that exists that can be denied deserves to be denied; and being truthful means: to believe in an existence
that can in no way be denied and which is itself true and without falsehood.
Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans. Hollingdale, “Schopenhauer as educator,” p. 153
The objective of all human arrangements is through distracting one’s thoughts to cease to be aware of life.
Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans. Hollingdale (1983), “Schopenhauer as educator,” p. 154
Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.

Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans. Hollingdale (1983), “Schopenhauer as educator,” p. 158
Neither riches nor honor, nor scholarship can raise the single one out of his profound discouragement over
the worthlessness of his existence … the striving for these goals only from a high and transfiguring overall
aim.
Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, § 3.3, cited in Kauffman, Nietzsche, pp. 160-161
... aus jener Hast, jenem athemlosen Erfassen des Augenblicks, jener Uebereile, die alle Dinge zu grün vom
Zweige bricht
Nietzsche, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen, „Schopenhauer als Erzieher” § 3.6 KSA 1.392
... the prevailing haste, the breathless grasping at every moment, the precipitousness that plucks all things
from the bough too soon
Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), modified, § 3.6, p. 168
Menschliches, allzu menschliches [Human, All Too Human] (1878, 1879, 1880)
German: http://books.google.com/books?id=hDDXAAAAMAAJ
English: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Human_All-Too-Human
Fundamental Insight: There is no pre-established harmony between the furthering of truth and the well-being
of humanity.
Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
734
Astrologie und Verwandtes.—Es ist wahrscheinlich, daß die Objekte des religiösen, moralischen und
aesthetischen Empfindens ebenfalls nur zur Oberfläche der Dinge gehören, während der Mensch gerne
glaubt, daß er hier wenigstens an das Herz der Welt rühre; er täuscht sich, weil jene Dinge ihn so tief
beseligen und so tief unglücklich machen, und zeigt also hier denselben Stolz wie bei der Astrologie. Denn
diese meint, der Sternenhimmel drehe sich um das Loos des Menschen; der moralische Mensch aber setzt
voraus, Das, was ihm wesentlich am Herzen liege, müsse auch Wesen und Herz der Dinge sein.
Nietzsche, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, Band 1, § 4
Astrology and what is related to it.— It is probable that the objects of the religious, moral and aesthetic
sensations belong only to the surface of things, while man likes to believe that here at least he is in touch
with the world’s heart; the reason he deludes himself is that these things produce in him such profound
happiness and unhappiness, and thus he exhibits here the same pride as in the case of astrology. For astrology
believes the starry firmament revolves around the fate of man; the moral man, however, supposes that what
he has essentially at heart must also constitute the essence and heart of things.
Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, R. J. Hollingdale, trans. (1996), § 4
A profession is the backbone of life.

Nietzsche, Human, all-too-Human
Wenn die Tugend geschlafen hat, wird sie frischer aufstehen.

When virtue has slept, she will get up more refreshed.
Nietzsche, Human, All-Too Human, § 83
It is the mark of a higher culture to esteem more highly the little, unapparent truths, established by strict
method, then the dazzling, happifying errors, which metaphysical and artistic epochs give rise to.
Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, § 3, cited in A. C. Danto, Nietzsche as Philosopher, p. 71
The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can
use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.
Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, R. J. Hollingdale, trans. (1996), § 137
Cult of the genius out of vanity.—Because we think well of ourselves, but nonetheless never suppose
ourselves capable of producing a painting like one of Raphael's or a dramatic scene like one of
Shakespeare's, we convince ourselves that the capacity to do so is quite extraordinarily marvellous, a wholly
uncommon accident, or, if we are still religiously inclined, a mercy from on high. Thus our vanity, our self-
love, promotes the cult of the genius: for only if we think of him as being very remote from us, as a
miraculum, does he not aggrieve us. ... To call someone 'divine' means: ‘here there is no need for us to
compete'.
Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1996), § 162
Everything finished and complete is regarded with admiration, everything still becoming is under-valued.
But no one can see in the work of the artist how it has become: that is its advantage, for wherever one can see
the act of becoming one grows somewhat cool. The finished and perfect art of representation repulses all
thinking as to how it has become; it tyrannizes as present completeness and perfection. That is why the
masters of the art of representation count above all as gifted with genius and why men of science do not. In
reality, this evaluation of the former and undervaluation of the latter is only a piece of childishness in the
realm of reason.
Mediocrity is the most appropriate mask the superior spirit can wear.
735
The misfortune suffered by clear-minded and easily understood writers is that they are taken for
shallow and thus little effort is expended on reading them: and the good fortune that attends the
obscure is that the reader toils at them and ascribes to them the pleasure he has in fact gained from his
own zeal.
Im Gebirge der Wahrheit kletterst du nie umsonst: entweder du kommst schon heute weiter hinauf oder du
übst deine Kräfte, um morgen höher steigen zu können.
In the mountains of truth you will never climb in vain. Either you will get up higher today, or you will
exercise your strength so as to be able to get up higher tomorrow.
Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, § 358
For men who always consider the higher utility of a matter, socialism, ...poses no problem of justice ... but
only a problem of power (“To what extent can one exploit its demands?”). So it is likewise the case of a
force of nature, for example steam—which is either pressed into service by man as god of the machine or, if
the machine is faulty (that is, if human calculation in its construction is faulty), blows the machine and man
with it to pieces. To solve this question of power, one must know how strong socialism is, and with what
modification it can still be used as a mighty lever within the existing play of political forces ... Whenever a
great force exists—even the most dangerous—mankind has to consider how to make of it an instrument for
the attainment of its own objectives
Nietzsche, Human, all too Human § 446 http://omnologos.wordpress.com/2008/01/17/marx-and-nietzsche-on-socialism-and-envy/
Socialism ... outdoes everything in the past by striving for the downright destruction of the individual,
who it sees as an unauthorized luxury of nature, and who it intends to improve into a useful organ of
the community.
Nietzsche, Human, all too Human, § 473
Socialism ... needs the most submissive subjugation of all citizens to the absolute state, the like of which has
never existed; and since it cannot even count any longer on the old religious piety towards the state, having
rather always to work automatically to eliminate piety—because it works on the elimination of all existing
states—, it can only hope to exist here and there for short periods of time by means of the most extreme
terrorism.
Nietzsche, Human, all too Human § 473
Socialism … drives the word “justice” like a nail into the heads of the half-educated masses, to create in
them a good conscience for the evil game that they are to play.
Socialism can serve to teach men most brutally and forcefully the danger of all accumulations of state
authority.
... as little State power as possible

Überzeugungen sind gefährlichere Feinde der Wahrheit als Lügen.

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Nietzsche, Human, all too Human, § 483
Mitfreude, nicht Mitleiden, macht den Freund.

Nietzsche, Menschliches Allzumenschliches, Band 1, § 499
Fellowship in joy, not sympathy in sorrow, is what makes friends.
Nietzsche, Human, All-too Human, § 499
736
To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to
escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.
Nietzsche, Human, All-too Human, § 551
Insofern das Genie jener Art die Gluth der Überzeugungen unterhält und Mißtrauen gegen den vorsichtigen
und bescheidenen Sinn der Wissenschaft weckt, ist es ein Feind der Wahrheit, und wenn es sich auch noch so
sehr als deren Freier glauben sollte.
Aus den Leidenschaften wachsen die Meinungen; die Trägheit des Geistes läßt diese zu Überzeugungen
erstarren.
Out of passions grow opinions, mental sloth lets these rigidify into convictions.
Nietzsche, Human, all-too-Human, § 637
Macht' ich's gut, so woll'n wir schweigen;

Macht' ich's schlimm —, so woll'n wir lachen
Und es immer schlimmer machen,
Schlimmer machen, schlimmer lachen,
Bis wir in die Grube steigen.
Nietzsche, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, Band 1, „Ein Nachspiel”
Lernt aus diesem Narrenbuche,

Wie Vernunft kommt—„zur Vernunft”!
Nietzsche, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, Band 1, „Ein Nachspiel”
Human, All Too Human II: Mixed Opinions and Maxims (1879)
Pilatus mit seiner Frage: was ist Wahrheit! wird jetzt gern als Advocat Christi eingeführt, um alles Erkannte
und Erkennbare als Schein zu verdächtigen und auf dem schauerlichen Hintergrunde des Nichts-wissen-
können das Kreuz aufzurichten.
Der Asket macht aus der Tugend eine Not.

Die Mutter der Ausschweifung ist nicht die Freude, sondern die Freudlosigkeit.
The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness.
Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human II: Mixed Opinions and Maxims, § 77
There is no book that contains in such abundance or expresses so faithfully all that man occasionally finds
salutary—ecstatic inward happiness, ready for sacrifice or death in the belief in and contemplation of his
truth—as the book that tells of Christ. From that book a clever man may learn all the means whereby a book
can be made into a world book, a vade-mecum for all, and especially that master means of representing
everything as discovered, nothing as future and uncertain. All influential books try to leave the same
impression, as if the widest intellectual horizon were circumscribed here and as if about the sun that shines
here every planet visible at present or in the future must revolve.
Nietzsche, Mixed Opinions and Maxims, § 98
Das Publikum verwechselt leicht den, welcher im Trüben fischt, mit dem, welcher aus der Tiefe schöpft.
The public easily confuses hw who fishes in murky waters with he who creates out of the depths.
Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human II: Mixed Opinions and Maxims, § 262
737
Morgenröthe [Daybreak] (1881)
German: http://books.google.com/books?id=wWMNAAAAYAAJ
German: file:////H:/eBooks/Nietzsche - KSA.pdf, S. 2464
I descended into the lowest depths, I searched to the bottom, I examined and pried into an old faith on which,
for thousands of years, philosophers had built as upon a secure foundation. The old structures came tumbling
down about me.
Nietzsche, Daybreak, Preface, H. L. Mencken, trans., cited in The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1908), p. 43
Man ist nicht umsonst Philologe gewesen, … das will sagen, ein Lehrer des langsamen Lesens.
Nietzsche, Morgenröthe
Sittlichkeit ist nichts Anderes (also namentlich nicht mehr!), als Gehorsam gegen Sitten.
Nietzsche, Morgenröthe, § 9
Morality is nothing other (therefore no more!) than obedience to customs.
Nietzsche, Daybreak, § 9
Morality is nothing other ... than the traditional way of behaving and evaluating.
Der freie Mensch ist unsittlich, weil er in Allem von sich und nicht von einem Herkommen abhängen will.
The free human being is immoral because in all things he is determined to depend upon himself and
not upon a tradition.
In allen ursprünglichen Zuständen der Menschheit bedeutet „böse” so viel wie „individuell”, „frei”,
„willkürlich”, „ungewohnt”, „unvorhergesehen”, „unberechenbar”.
‘Evil’ signifies the same thing as ‘individual’, ‘free’, ‘capricious’, ‘unusual’, ‘unforeseen’,
‘incalculable.’
If an action is performed not because tradition commands it but for other motives ... even indeed for
precisely the motives which once founded the tradition, it is called immoral.
Wer ist der Sittlichste? Einmal Der, welcher das Gesetz am häufigsten erfüllt: also, gleich dem Brahmanen,
das Bewusstsein desselben überallhin und in jeden kleinen Zeitteil trägt, sodass er fortwährend erfinderisch
ist in Gelegenheiten, das Gesetz zu erfüllen. Sodann Der, der es auch in den schwersten Fällen erfüllt. Der
Sittlichste ist Der, welcher am meisten der Sitte opfert: welches aber sind die größten Opfer? Nach der
Beantwortung dieser Frage entfalten sich mehrere unterschiedliche Moralen; aber der wichtigste Unterschied
bleibt doch jener, welcher die Moralität der häufigsten Erfüllung von der der schwersten Erfüllung trennt.
Man täusche sich über das Motiv jener Moral nicht, welche die schwerste Erfüllung der Sitte als Zeichen der
Sittlichkeit fordert! Die Selbstüberwindung wird nicht ihrer nützlichen Folgen halber, die sie für das
Individuum hat, gefordert, sondern damit die Sitte, das Herkommen herrschend erscheine, trotz allem
individuellen Gegengelüst und Vorteil: der Einzelne soll sich opfern,—so heischt es die Sittlichkeit der Sitte.
Who is the most moral man? First, he who obeys the law most frequently, who ... is continually inventive in
creating opportunities for obeying the law. Then, he who obeys it even in the most difficult cases. The
most moral man is he who sacrifices the most to custom.... Self-overcoming is demanded, not on account of
any useful consequences it may have for the individual, but so that hegemony of custom and tradition shall
be made evident.
Nietzsche, Daybreak, R. J. Hollingdale, trans. (1997) § 9
738
The moralists who, following in the footsteps of Socrates, offer the individual a morality of self-control and
temperance as a means to his own advantage, as his personal way to happiness, are the exceptions. ... They
take a new path under the highest disapprobation of all advocates of morality of custom—they cut
themselves off from the community, as immoral men, and are in the profoundest sense evil.
Every individual action, every individual mode of thought arouses dread; it is impossible to compute what
precisely the rarer, choicer, more original spirits in the whole course of history have had to suffer through
being felt as evil and dangerous, indeed through feeling themselves to be so. Under the dominion of the
morality of custom, originality of every kind has acquired a bad conscience.
Popular morality and popular medicine. The morality which prevails in a community is constantly being
worked at by everybody: most people produce example after example of the alleged relationship between
cause and effect between guilt and punishment, confirm it as well founded and strengthen their faith ... All,
however, are at one in the wholly crude, unscientific character of their activity ... both material and form are
worthless, as are the material and form of all popular medicine. Popular medicine and popular morality
belong together and ought not to be evaluated differently as they still are: both are the most dangerous
pseudosciences.
Men of application and goodwill, assist in this one work: to take the concept of punishment which has
overrun the whole world and root it out! There exists no more noxious weed!
Among barbarous peoples there exists a species of customs whose purpose appears to be [to support the idea
of] custom in general: minute and fundamentally superfluous stipulations ... which, however keep continually
in the consciousness the constant proximity of custom, the perpetual compulsion to practice customs: so as
the strengthen the mighty proposition with which civilization begins: any custom is better than no custom.
Nothing has been purchased more dearly than that little bit of human reason and feeling of freedom that now
constitutes our pride. It is this pride, however, which now makes it almost impossible for us to empathize
with those tremendous eras of ‘morality of custom’ which precede ‘world history’ as the actual and decisive
eras of history which determined the character of mankind: the eras in which suffering counted as virtue,
cruelty counted as virtue, dissembling counted as virtue, revenge counted as virtue ... Do you think all this
has altered and that mankind must therefore have changed its character?
Custom represents the experiences of men in earlier times, as to what they supposed to be useful and
harmful—but the sense for custom (morality) applies, not to these experiences as such, but to the age,
sanctity and indiscussability of the custom. And so this sense is a hindrance to the acquisition of new
experiences and the correction of customs; that is to say, morality is a hindrance to the creation of new and
better customs
Freedoers are at a disadvantage compared to freethinkers because people suffer more obviously from the
consequences of deeds than from those of thoughts. If one considers, however, that both one and the other
are in search of gratification, and that the in case of the freethinker the mere thinking thorough and
enunciation of forbidden things provides this gratification, both are on an equal footing with regard to motive
739
Whoever has overthrown an existing law of custom has hitherto always first been accounted a bad man: but
when, as did happen, the law could not afterwards be reinstantiated and this fact was accepted, the predicate
gradually changed—history treats almost exclusively of these bad men who subsequently became good men!
All institutions which accord to a passion belief in its endurance and responsibility for its endurance,
contrary to the nature of passion, have raised it to a new rank, and thereafter he who is assailed by such a
passion no longer believes himself debased or endangered by it, as he formerly did, but enhanced in his own
eyes and those of his peers. Think of institutions and customs which have created out of the fiery
abandonment of the moment perpetual fidelity, out of the enjoyment of anger perpetual vengeance, ... out of
a single and unpremeditated word perpetual obligation. This transformation has each time introduced a very
great deal of hypocrisy and lying into the world, but each time too, and at this cost, it has introduced a new
suprahuman concept which elevates mankind.
Here is a morality which rests entirely on the drive to distinction—do not think too highly of it! For what
kind of a drive is it, and what thought lies behind it? We want to make the sight of us painful to another and
to awaken in him the feeling of envy and of his own impotence and degradation... This person has become
humble and is now perfect in his humility—seek for those whom he has for long wished to torture with it!
You will find them soon enough! ... The chastity of the nun: with what punitive eyes it looks into the faces of
women who live otherwise! How much joy in revenge there is in those eyes! ...the morality of distinction is,
in its ultimate foundation, pleasure in refined cruelty.
During the prehistoric age of mankind, spirit was presumed to exist everywhere and was not held in
honor as a privilege of man. Because, on the contrary, ... one saw in the spirit that which unites us with
nature, not that which sunders us from it.
To suffer for the sake of morality and then be told that this kind of suffering is founded on an error: this
arouses indignation. For there is a unique consolation in affirming through one’s suffering a ‘profounder
world of truth’ ... and one would much rather suffer and thereby feel oneself exalted above reality (through
consciousness of having thus approached this ‘profounder world of truth’) than be without suffering but also
without this feeling that one is exalted. It is thus pride, and the customary manner in which pride is gratified,
which stands in the way of a new understanding of morality.
Under the pressure of superstitious fear, ... one spoils one’s sense of reality and one’s pleasure in it, and in
the end accords reality a value only insofar as it is capable of being a symbol.
Wherever a man’s feelings are exalted, that imaginary world is involved in some way. It is a sad fact, but for
the moment the man of science has to be suspicious of all higher feelings, so greatly are they nourished by
delusion and nonsense. It is not that they are thus in themselves, or must always remain thus, but of all the
gradual purifications awaiting mankind, the purification of the higher feelings will certainly be one of the
most gradual.
740
It is clear that moral feelings are transmitted in this way: children observe in adults inclinations for and
aversions to certain actions and, as born apes, imitate these inclinations and aversions; in later life they find
themselves full of these acquired and well-exercised affects and consider it only decent to try to account for
and justify them. This ‘accounting,’ however, has nothing to do with either the origin or the degree of
intensity of the feeling: all one is doing is complying with the rule that, as a rational being, one has to have
reasons for one’s For and Against, and that they have to adducible and acceptable reasons.
‘Trust your feelings!’—But feelings are nothing final or original; behind the feelings there stand
judgments and evaluations. ... The inspiration born of feeling is the grandchild of a judgment—and
often a false judgment! And in any event not a child of your own! To trust one’s feelings means to give
more obedience to one’s grandfather and grandmother and their grandparents than to the gods which
are in us: our reason and our experience.
Primitive mankind devised a word. … They had touched on a problem, and by supposing they had
solved it they had created a hindrance to its solution.—Now with every piece of knowledge one has to
stumble over dead, petrified words.
Men who enjoy moments of exaltation and ecstasy who, on account of the contrast other states present and
because of the way they have squandered their nervous energy, are ordinarily in a wretched and miserable
condition, regard these moments as their real ‘self’ and their wretchedness and misery as the effect of what is
‘outside the self’; and thus they harbor feelings of revengefulness towards their environment, their age, their
entire world.
The free spirit … counts the theory of the innocence of all opinions as being as well founded as the theory of
the innocence of all actions
The Christian church … always could, and it can still go wherever it pleases and it always found, and always
finds something … to which it can adapt itself and gradually impose upon it a Christian meaning. … One
may admire this power of causing the most various elements to coalesce, but one must not forget the
contemptible quality that adheres to this power: the astonishing crudeness and self-satisfiedness of the
church’s intellect … which permitted it to accept any food and to digest opposites like pebbles.
The [Christian] addition of Hell ... the novel teaching of eternal damnation ... was mightier than the idea of
definitive death, which thereafter faded away. It was only science which reconquered (?) it, as it had to do
when it at the same time rejected any other idea of death and of any life beyond it.
A proof of truth is not the same thing as a proof of truthfulness.

The passions become evil and malicious if they are regarded as evil and malicious.
Christianity has succeeded in transforming Eros and Aphrodite—great powers capable of idealisation—into
diabolical kobolds and phantoms.
741
Is it not dreadful to make necessary and regularly recurring sensations into a source of inner misery,
and in this way to want to make inner misery a necessary and regularly recurring phenomenon.
Must everything that one has to combat, that one has to keep within bounds or on occasion banish
totally from one’s mind, always have to be called evil! Is it not the way of common souls always to
think an enemy must be evil!
[With] the sexual sensations ... one person, by doing what pleases him, gives pleasure to another person—
such benevolent arrangements are not to be found so very often in nature! And to calumniate such an
arrangement and to ruin it through associating it with a bad conscience!
Everyone now exclaims loudly against torment inflicted by one person on the body of another ... But
we are still far from feeling so decisively and with such unanimity in regard to torments of the soul and
how dreadful it is to inflict them. Christianity has made use of them on an unheard-of scale and
continues to preach this species of torture
Misfortune and guilt—Christianity has placed these two things on a balance: so that, when misfortune
consequent on guilt is great, even now the greatness of the guilt itself is consequently measured by it. ... The
Greek tragedy, which speaks so much yet in so different a sense of misfortune and guilt, is a great liberator
of the spirit in a way in which the ancients themselves could not feel. They were still so innocent as not to
have established an ‘adequate relationship’ between guilt and misfortune. The guilt of their tragic heroes is,
indeed, the little stone over which they stumble ... It was reserved for Christianity to say, “Here is a great
misfortune and behind it must lie hidden a great, equally great, guilt, even though it may not be clearly
visible!
In antiquity there still existed actual misfortune, pure innocent misfortune; only in Christendom did
everything become punishment, well-deserved punishment.
With every misfortune, [the Christian] feels himself morally reprehensible and cast out. Poor mankind!
The Greeks have a word for indignation at another’s unhappiness: this affect was inadmissible among
Christian peoples and failed to develop, so they also lack a name for this more manly brother of pity.
God created all things except for sin alone: is it any wonder if he is ill-disposed towards it? But man
created sin—and is he to cast out this only child of his merely because it displeases God, the
grandfather of sin! Is that humane? ... Heart and duty ought to speak firstly for the child and only
secondarily for the honor of the grandfather!
Moralism ... is the euthanasia of Christianity.

742
Unsere Wertschätzungen.—Alle Handlungen gehen auf Wertschätzungen zurück, alle Wertschätzungen sind
entweder eigene oder angenommene,—letztere bei Weitem die meisten. Warum nehmen wir sie an? Aus
Furcht,—das heißt: wir halten es für ratsamer, uns so zu stellen, als ob sie auch die unsrigen wären—und
gewöhnen uns an diese Verstellung, sodass sie zuletzt unsere Natur ist. Eigene Wertschätzung: das will
besagen, eine Sache in Bezug darauf messen, wie weit sie gerade uns und niemandem Anderen Lust oder
Unlust macht,—etwas äußerst Seltenes!—Aber wenigstens muss doch unsre Wertschätzung des Anderen, in
der das Motiv dafür liegt, dass wir uns in den meisten Fällen seiner Wertschätzung bedienen, von uns
ausgehen, unsere eigene Bestimmung sein? Ja, aber als Kinder machen wir sie, und lernen selten wieder um;
wir sind meist zeitlebens die Narren kindlicher angewöhnter Urteile, in der Art, wie wir über unsre Nächsten
(deren Geist, Rang, Moralität, Vorbildlichkeit, Verwerflichkeit) urteilen und es nötig finden, vor ihren
Wertschätzungen zu huldigen.
Our evaluations—All actions may be traced back to evaluations; all evaluations are either original or
adopted—the latter being by far the most common. Why do we adopt them? From fear—that is, we
consider it more advisable to pretend they are our own—and accustom ourselves to this pretense, so
that at length it becomes our own nature. Original evaluation: that is to say, to assess a thing according
to the extent to which it pleases or displeases us alone and no one else—something excessively rare!—
But must our evaluation of another, in which there lies the motive for our generally availing ourselves
of his evaluation, at least not proceed from us, be our own determination? Yes, but we arrive at it as
children, and rarely learn to change our view; most of us are our while lives long the fools of the way
we acquired in childhood of judging our neighbors (their minds, rank, morality, whether they are
exemplary or reprehensible) and of finding it necessary to pay homage to their evaluations.
Nietzsche, Daybreak, § 104 (R. J. Hollingdale, trans.)
All our so-called consciousness is a more or less fantastic commentary on an unknown, perhaps unknowable,
but felt text.
Nietzsche, Dawn, § 119, cited in Kauffmann, Nietzsche, p. 182 and p. 268
Die moralischen Moden.—Wie sich die moralischen Gesammt-Urtheile verschoben haben! Diese grössten
Wunder der antiken Sittlichkeit, zum Beispiel Epiktet, wussten Nichts von der jetzt üblichen Verherrlichung
des Denkens an Andere, des Lebens für Andere; man würde sie nach unserer moralischen Mode geradezu
unmoralisch nennen müssen, denn sie haben sich mit allen Kräften für ihr ego und gegen die Mitempfindung
mit den Anderen (namentlich mit deren Leiden und sittlichen Gebrechen) gewehrt. Vielleicht dass sie uns
antworten würden: „habt ihr an euch selber einen so langweiligen oder hässlichen Gegenstand, so denkt doch
ja an Andere mehr, als an euch! Ihr thut gut daran!”
Etwas nicht wieder gut zu machen ist: die Vergeudung unserer Jugend, als unsre Erzieher jene
wissbegierigen, heißen und durstigen Jahre nicht dazu verwandten, uns der Erkenntnis der Dinge
entgegenzuführen, sondern der sogenannten “Klassischen Bildung”! Die Vergeudung unserer Jugend, als
man uns ein dürftiges Wissen um Griechen und Römer und deren Sprachen ebenso ungeschickt, als
quälerisch beibrachte und zuwider dem obersten Satze aller Bildung: dass man nur Dem, der Hunger
darnach hat, eine Speise gebe! Als man uns Mathematik und Physik auf eine gewaltsame Weise aufzwang,
anstatt uns erst in die Verzweiflung der Unwissenheit zu führen und unser kleines tägliches Leben, unsere
Hantierungen und Alles, was sich zwischen Morgen und Abend im Hause, in der Werkstatt, am Himmel, in
der Landschaft begibt, in Tausende von Problemen aufzulösen, von peinigenden, beschämenden,
aufreizenden Problemen,—um unsrer Begierde dann zu zeigen, dass wir ein mathematisches und
mechanisches Wissen zu allernächst nötig haben und uns dann das erste wissenschaftliche Entzücken an der
absoluten Folgerichtigkeit dieses Wissens zu lehren! Hätte man uns auch nur die Ehrfurcht vor diesen
Wissenschaften gelehrt, hätte man uns mit dem Ringen und Unterliegen und Wieder-Weiterkämpfen der
Großen, von dem Martyrium, welches die Geschichte der strengen Wissenschaft ist, auch nur Ein Mal die
Seele erzittern machen!
743
Something that can no longer be made good: the squandering of our youth when our educators failed to
employ those eager, hot and thirsty years to lead us toward knowledge of things, but used them for a so-
called ‘classical education’! The squandering of our youth when we had a meager knowledge of the Greeks
and Romans and their languages drummed into us in a way as clumsy as it was painful and one contrary to
the supreme principle of all education, that one should offer food only to him who hungers for it! When we
had mathematics and physics forced upon us instead of our being led into despair at our ignorance and
having our little daily life, our activities, and all that went on at home, in the workplace, in the sky, in the
countryside from morn to night, reduced to thousands of problems, to annoying, mortifying, irritating
problems—so as to show us that we needed a knowledge of mathematics and mechanics, and then to teach us
our first delight in science through showing us the absolute consistency of this knowledge! If only we had
been taught to revere these sciences, if only our souls had even once been made to tremble at the way in
which the great men of the past had struggled and been defeated and had struggled anew, at the martyrdom
which constitutes the history of rigorous science!
Nietzsche, Daybreak, R. Hollingdale, trans. (Cambridge: 1997), § 195
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those
who think differently.
Nietzsche, The Dawn, § 297
It is not enough to prove something, one has also to seduce or elevate people to it. That is why the man of
knowledge should learn how to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that it sounds like folly!
Wehe dem Denker, der nicht der Gärtner, sondern nur der Boden seiner Gewächse ist!
Woe to the thinker who is not the gardener but only the soil of the plants that grow in him.
Nietzsche, Morgenröthe, § 382 = KSA 3.248
So sicher man auch einzusehen vermag, dass diese in allen Fundamenten irrthümlich angelegt sind und ihr
Gebäude der Reparatur unfähig ist: ihre Verbindlichkeit muss von Tag zu Tage immer abnehmen, sofern nur
die Verbindlichkeit der Vernunft nicht abnimmt! Die Gesetze des Lebens und Handelns neu aufbauen,—zu
dieser Aufgabe sind unsere Wissenschaften der Physiologie, Medicin, Gesellschafts- und Einsamkeitslehre
ihrer selbst noch nicht sicher genug: und nur aus ihnen kann man die Grundsteine für neue Ideale (wenn auch
nicht die neuen Ideale selber) entnehmen.
Die fröhliche Wissenschaft [The Gay Science] (1882)

German: http://books.google.com/books?id=wDIPAAAAYAAJ
German: http://www.egs.edu/library/friedrich-nietzsche/articles/die-froehliche-wissenschaft/vorrede-zur-zweiten-ausgabe/
Nur Ein Gebot gilt dir.- sei rein!

Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1882), „Sternen-Mora“
Wir Furchtlosen aber wir geistigeren Menschen dieses Zeitalters, wir kennen unsern Vorteil gut genug, um
gerade als die Geistigeren in Hinsicht auf diese Zeit ohne Furcht zu leben
Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, § 379
Wo du stehst, grab tief hinein!

Drunten ist die Quelle!
Lass die dunklen Männer schrein:
„Stets ist drunten—Hölle!”
Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, „Scherz, List und Rache,” #3 „Unverzagt”
744
Leg ich mich aus so leg ich mich hinein
Ich kann nicht selbst mein Interprete sein.
Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1882), „Scherz, List und Rache,” #23 „Interpretation”
Meiner Weisheit A und O

Klang mir hier: was höre ich doch!
Jetzo klingt mir’s nicht mehr so,
Nur das ew’ge Ah! und oh!
Meiner Jugend hör ich noch
Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft
My youthful wisdom’s A and O
I heard again. What did I hear?
Words not of wisdom but of woe:
Only the endless Ah! and Oh!
Of youth lies heavy in my ear.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, “Joke, Cunning and Revenge” #36 “Jugendschriften”
Über sich selber lachen, wie man lachen müsste, um aus der ganzen Wahrheit heraus zu lachen, – dazu hatten
bisher die Besten nicht genug Wahrheitssinn und die Begabtesten viel zu wenig Genie! Es gibt vielleicht
auch für das Lachen noch eine Zukunft! Dann, wenn der Satz "die Art ist Alles, Einer ist immer Keiner" –
sich der Menschheit einverleibt hat und Jedem jederzeit der Zugang zu dieser letzten Befreiung und
Unverantwortlichkeit offen steht. Vielleicht wird sich dann das Lachen mit der Weisheit verbündet haben,
vielleicht gibt es dann nur noch "fröhliche Wissenschaft".
Die Allermeisten finden es nicht verächtlich, diess oder jenes zu glauben und darnach zu leben, ohne sich
vorher der letzten und sichersten Gründe für und wider bewusst worden zu sein und ohne sich auch nur die
Mühe um solche Gründe hinterdrein zu geben—die begabtesten Männer und die edelsten Frauen gehören
noch zu diesen „Allermeisten“. Was ist mir aber Gutherzigkeit, Feinheit und Genie, wenn der Mensch dieser
Tugenden schlaffe Gefühle im Glauben und Urtheilen bei sich duldet, wenn das Verlangen nach Gewissheit
ihm nicht als die innerste Begierde und tiefste Noth gilt—als Das, was die höheren Menschen von den
niederen scheidet!
Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1882), § 2
The intellectual conscience: … the great majority of people does not consider it contemptible to believe this
or that and to live accordingly without first having given themselves an account of the final and most certain
reasons pro and con, and without even troubling themselves about such reasons afterward: the most gifted
men and noblest women still belong to this “great majority.” But what is goodheartedness, refinement or
genius to me, when the person who has these virtues tolerates slack feelings in his faith and judgments and
when he does not account the desire for certainty as his inmost craving and deepest distress—as that which
separates the higher human beings from the lower.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, § 2, Kauffman trans.
Den Allermeisten fehlt das intellectuale Gewissen.

The great majority of people lack an intellectual conscience.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, § 2
Among some pious people I found a hatred of reason and was well disposed to them for that; for this at least
betrayed their bad intellectual conscience.
745
To stand in the midst of … this whole marvelous uncertainty and rich ambiguity in existence without
questioning, without trembling with the craving and the rapture of such questioning, … that is what I feel to
be contemptible, and this is the feeling for which I look first in everybody. Some folly keeps persuading me
that every human has this feeling just because he is human.
Den gemeinen Naturen erscheinen alle edlen, großmütigen Gefühle als unzweckmäßig und deshalb zu
allererst als unglaubwürdig: sie zwinkern mit den Augen, wenn sie von dergleichen hören, und scheinen
sagen zu wollen "es wird wohl irgend ein guter Vorteil dabei sein.
Common natures consider all noble, magnanimous feeling inexpedient and therefore first of all incredible.
They blink when they hear of such things and seem to feel like saying: “Surely there must be some advantage
…”
Werden sie [gemeinen Naturen] von der Abwesenheit selbstischer Absichten und Gewinnste allzu deutlich
überzeugt, so gilt ihnen der Edle als eine Art von Narren: sie verachten ihn in seiner Freude und lachen über
den Glanz seiner Augen.
When they [common natures] are irresistibly persuaded of the absence of selfish intentions and gains, they
see the noble person as a kind of fool; they despise him in his joy and laugh at his shining eyes.
Believing that they possess consciousness, men have not exerted themselves very much to acquire it.
What if pleasure and displeasure were so tied together that whoever wanted to have as much as possible of
one must also have as much as possible of the other—that whoever wanted to “jubilate up to the heavens”
must also be prepared for “depression unto death”?
You have a choice: either as little displeasure as possible … or as much displeasure as possible as the price
for the growth of an abundance of subtle pleasures and joys that have rarely been relished yet. If you decide
for the former and desire to diminish and lower the level of human pain, you also have to diminish and lower
the level of their capacity for joy.
For educational purposes and to lead men to incorporate virtuous habits one emphasizes effects of virtue that
make it appear as if virtue and private advantage were sisters. … That is how education always proceeds: one
tries to condition an individual by various attractions and advantages to adopt a way of thinking and
behaving that, once it has become a habit, instinct and passion, will dominate him to his own ultimate
disadvantage but “for the general good.”
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, § 21, Kauffman trans
How often I see that blindly raging industriousness does create wealth and honors while at the same
time depriving the organs of their subtlety, which alone would make possible the enjoyment of wealth
and honors.
Industriousness, … this chief antidote to boredom and the passions, … blunts the senses and leads the spirit
to resist new attractions.
746
The praise of the selfless, the self-sacrificial, the virtuous—that is, of those who do not apply their whole
strength and reason to their own preservation, development, elevation, promotion, and the expansion of their
power, but rather live, in relation to themselves, modestly and thoughtlessly, perhaps even with indifference
or irony—this praise certainly was not born from the spirit of selflessness. The “neighbor” praises
selflessness because it brings him advantages. If the neighbor himself were “selfless” in his thinking, he
would repudiate this diminution of strength, this mutilation for his benefit; he would work against the
development of such inclinations, and above all he would manifest his selflessness by not calling it good!
This indicates the fundamental contradiction in the morality that is very prestigious nowadays: the motives
of this morality stand opposed to its principle. What this morality considers its proof is refuted by its
criterion of what is moral. In order not to contravene its own morality, the demand “You shall renounce
yourself and sacrifice yourself” could be laid down only by those who thus renounced their own advantage
and perhaps brought about their own destruction through the demanded sacrifice of individuals. But as soon
as the neighbor (or society) recommends altruism for the sake of its utility, it applies the contradictory
principle. “You shall seek your advantage even at the expense of everything else”—and thus one preaches, in
the same breath, a “Thou shalt” and “Thou shalt not.”
To what extent can truth endure incorporation? That is the question; that is the experiment.
Überall, wo es einen Hof gab, hat er das Gesetz des Gut-Sprechens und damit auch das Gesetz des Stils für
alle Schreibenden gegeben. Die höfische Sprache ist aber die Sprache des Höflings, der kein Fach hat und
der sich selbst in Gesprächen über wissenschaftliche Dinge alle bequemen technischen Ausdrücke verbietet,
weil sie nach dem Fache schmecken; deshalb ist der technische Ausdruck und Alles, was den Spezialisten
verrät, in den Ländern einer höfischen Kultur ein Flecken des Stils.
Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1882), § 101 „Voltaire“
Gesundheit der Seele.— Die beliebte medicinische Moralformel (deren Urheber Ariston von Chios ist):
"Tugend ist die Gesundheit der Seele"—müsste wenigstens, um brauchbar zu sein, dahin abgeändert werden:
"deine Tugend ist die Gesundheit deiner Seele." Denn eine Gesundheit an sich giebt es nicht, und alle
Versuche, ein Ding derart zu definiren, sind kläglich missrathen. Es kommt auf dein Ziel, deinen Horizont,
deine Kräfte, deine Antriebe, deine Irrthümer und namentlich auf die Ideale und Phantasmen deiner Seele an,
um zu bestimmen, was selbst für deinen Leib Gesundheit zu bedeuten habe. Somit giebt es unzählige
Gesundheiten des Leibes; und je mehr man dem Einzelnen und Unvergleichlichen wieder erlaubt, sein Haupt
zu erheben, je mehr man das Dogma von der "Gleichheit der Menschen" verlernt, um so mehr muss auch der
Begriff einer Normal-Gesundheit, nebst Normal-Diät, Normal-Verlauf der Erkrankung unsern Medicinern
abhanden kommen. Und dann erst dürfte es an der Zeit sein, über Gesundheit und Krankheit der Seele
nachzudenken und die eigenthümliche Tugend eines Jeden in deren Gesundheit zu setzen: welche freilich bei
dem Einen so aussehen könnte wie der Gegensatz der Gesundheit bei einem Anderen. Zuletzt bliebe noch die
grosse Frage offen, ob wir der Erkrankung entbehren könnten, selbst zur Entwickelung unserer Tugend, und
ob nicht namentlich unser Durst nach Erkenntniss und Selbsterkenntniss der kranken Seele so gut bedürfe als
der gesunden: kurz, ob nicht der alleinige Wille zur Gesundheit ein Vorurtheil, eine Feigheit und vielleicht
ein Stück feinster Barbarei und Rückständigkeit sei.
747
The popular medical formulation of morality that goes back to Ariston of Chios, "virtue is the health of the
soul," would have to be changed to become useful, at least to read: "your virtue is the health of your soul."
For there is no health as such, and all attempts to define a thing that way have been wretched failures. Even
the determination of what is healthy for your body depends on your goal, your horizon, your energies, your
impulses, your errors, and above all on the ideals and phantasms of your soul. Thus there are innumerable
healths of the body; and the more we allow the unique and incomparable to raise its head again, and the more
we abjure the dogma of the "equality of men," the more must the concept of a normal health, along with a
normal diet and the normal course of an illness, be abandoned by medical men. Only then would the time
have come to reflect on the health and illness of the soul, and to find the peculiar virtue of each man in the
health of his soul.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882), § 120 “Health of the Soul,” W. Kauffman, trans. (1974)
Finally, the great question would still remain whether we can really dispense with illness—even for the sake
of our virtue—and whether our thirst for knowledge and self-knowledge in particular does not require the
sick soul as much as the healthy, and whether, in brief, the will to health alone, is not a prejudice, cowardice,
and perhaps a bit of very subtle barbarism and backwardness.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882), § 120 “Health of the Soul”
An die Lehrer der Selbstlosigkeit.—Man nennt die Tugenden eines Menschen gut, nicht in Hinsicht auf
die Wirkungen, welche sie für ihn selber haben, sondern in Hinsicht auf die Wirkungen, welche wir von
ihnen für uns und die Gesellschaft voraussetzen:—man ist von jeher im Lobe der Tugenden sehr wenig
„selbstlos”, sehr wenig „unegoistisch” gewesen! Sonst nämlich hätte man sehen müssen, dass die Tugenden
(wie Fleiss, Gehorsam, Keuschheit, Pietät, Gerechtigkeit) ihren Inhabern meistens schädlich sind, als Triebe,
welche allzu heftig und begehrlich in ihnen walten und von der Vernunft sich durchaus nicht im
Gleichgewicht zu den andern Trieben halten lassen wollen. Wenn du eine Tugend hast, eine wirkliche, ganze
Tugend (und nicht nur ein Triebchen nach einer Tugend!)—so bist du ihr Opfer! Aber der Nachbar lobt eben
desshalb deine Tugend! Man lobt den Fleissigen, ob er gleich die Sehkraft seiner Augen oder die
Ursprünglichkeit und Frische seines Geistes mit diesem Fleisse schädigt; man ehrt und bedauert den
Jüngling, welcher sich „zu Schanden gearbeitet hat”, weil man urtheilt: „Für das ganze Grosse der
Gesellschaft ist auch der Verlust des besten Einzelnen nur ein kleines Opfer! Schlimm, dass das Opfer Noth
thut! Viel schlimmer freilich, wenn der Einzelne anders denken und seine Erhaltung und Entwickelung
wichtiger nehmen sollte, als seine Arbeit im Dienste der Gesellschaft!” Und so bedauert man diesen
Jüngling, nicht um seiner selber willen, sondern weil ein ergebenes und gegen sich rücksichtsloses
Werkzeug—ein sogenannter „braver Mensch”—durch diesen Tod der Gesellschaft verloren gegangen ist.
Vielleicht erwägt man noch, ob es im Interesse der Gesellschaft nützlicher gewesen sein würde, wenn er
minder rücksichtslos gegen sich gearbeitet und sich länger erhalten hätte,—ja man gesteht sich wohl einen
Vortheil davon zu, schlägt aber jenen anderen Vortheil, dass ein Opfer gebracht und die Gesinnung des
Opferthiers sich wieder einmal augenscheinlich bestätigt hat, für höher und nachhaltiger an. Es ist also
einmal die Werkzeug-Natur in den Tugenden, die eigentlich gelobt wird, wenn die Tugenden gelobt werden,
und sodann der blinde in jeder Tugend waltende Trieb, welcher durch den Gesammt-Vortheil des
Individuums sich nicht in Schranken halten lässt, kurz: die Unvernunft in der Tugend, vermöge deren das
Einzelwesen sich zur Function des Ganzen umwandeln lässt. Das Lob der Tugenden ist das Lob von etwas
Privat-Schädlichem,—das Lob von Trieben, welche dem Menschen seine edelste Selbstsucht und die Kraft
zur höchsten Obhut über sich selber nehmen.—Freilich: zur Erziehung und zur Einverleibung tugendhafter
Gewohnheiten kehrt man eine Reihe von Wirkungen der Tugend heraus, welche Tugend und Privat-Vortheil
als verschwistert erscheinen lassen,—und es giebt in der That eine solche Geschwisterschaft! Der
blindwüthende Fleiss zum Beispiel, diese typische Tugend eines Werkzeuges, wird dargestellt als der Weg
zu Reichthum und Ehre und als das heilsamste Gift gegen die Langeweile und die Leidenschaften: aber man
verschweigt seine Gefahr, seine höchste Gefährlichkeit. Die Erziehung verfährt durchweg so: sie sucht den
Einzelnen durch eine Reihe von Reizen und Vortheilen zu einer Denk- und Handlungsweise zu bestimmen,
welche, wenn sie Gewohnheit, Trieb und Leidenschaft geworden ist, wider seinen letzten Vortheil, aber
„zum allgemeinen Besten” in ihm und über ihn herrscht. Wie oft sehe ich es, dass der blindwüthende Fleiss
zwar Reichthümer und Ehre schafft, aber zugleich den Organen die Feinheit nimmt, vermöge deren es einen
748
Genuss an Reichthum und Ehren geben könnte, ebenso, dass jenes Hauptmittel gegen die Langeweile und die
Leidenschaften zugleich die Sinne stumpf und den Geist widerspänstig gegen neue Reize macht. (Das
fleissigste aller Zeitalter—unser Zeitalter—weiss aus seinem vielen Fleisse und Gelde Nichts zu machen, als
immer wieder mehr Geld und immer wieder mehr Fleiss: es gehört eben mehr Genie dazu, auszugeben, als
zu erwerben!—Nun, wir werden unsere „Enkel” haben!) Gelingt die Erziehung, so ist jede Tugend des
Einzelnen eine öffentliche Nützlichkeit und ein privater Nachtheil im Sinne des höchsten privaten Zieles,—
wahrscheinlich irgend eine geistig-sinnliche Verkümmerung oder gar der frühzeitige Untergang: man erwäge
der Reihe nach von diesem Gesichtspuncte aus die Tugend des Gehorsams, der Keuschheit, der Pietät, der
Gerechtigkeit. Das Lob des Selbstlosen, Aufopfernden, Tugendhaften—also Desjenigen, der nicht seine
ganze Kraft und Vernunft auf seine Erhaltung, Entwickelung, Erhebung, Förderung, Macht-Erweiterung
verwendet, sondern in Bezug auf sich bescheiden und gedankenlos, vielleicht sogar gleichgültig oder
ironisch lebt,—dieses Lob ist jedenfalls nicht aus dem Geiste der Selbstlosigkeit entsprungen! Der „Nächste”
lobt die Selbstlosigkeit, weil er durch sie Vortheile hat! Dächte der Nächste selber „selbstlos”, so würde er
jenen Abbruch an Kraft, jene Schädigung zu seinen Gunsten abweisen, der Entstehung solcher Neigungen
entgegenarbeiten und vor Allem seine Selbstlosigkeit eben dadurch bekunden, dass er dieselbe nicht gut
nennte!—Hiermit ist der Grundwiderspruch jener Moral angedeutet, welche gerade jetzt sehr in Ehren steht:
die Motive zu dieser Moral stehen im Gegensatz zu ihrem Principe! Das, womit sich diese Moral beweisen
will, widerlegt sie aus ihrem Kriterium des Moralischen! Der Satz „du sollst dir selber entsagen und dich
zum Opfer bringen” dürfte, um seiner eigenen Moral nicht zuwiderzugehen, nur von einem Wesen decretirt
werden, welches damit selber seinem Vortheil entsagte und vielleicht in der verlangten Aufopferung der
Einzelnen seinen eigenen Untergang herbeiführte. Sobald aber der Nächste (oder die Gesellschaft) den
Altruismus um des Nutzens willen anempfiehlt, wird der gerade entgegengesetzte Satz „du sollst den
Vortheil auch auf Unkosten alles Anderen suchen” zur Anwendung gebracht, also in Einem Athem ein „Du
sollst” und „Du sollst nicht” gepredigt!
Musse und Müssiggang.—Es ist eine indianerhafte, dem Indianer-Bluthe eigenthümliche Wildheit in der Art,
wie die Amerikaner nach Gold trachten: und ihre athemlose Hast der Arbeit—das eigentliche Laster der
neuen Welt—beginnt bereits durch Ansteckung das alte Europa wild zu machen und eine ganz wunderliche
Geistlosigkeit darüber zu breiten. Man schämt sich jetzt schon der Ruhe; das lange Nachsinnen macht
beinahe Gewissensbisse. Man denkt mit der Uhr in der Hand, wie man zu Mittag isst, das Auge auf das
Börsenblatt gerichtet,—man lebt, wie Einer, der fortwährend Etwas „versäumen könnte”. „Lieber irgend
Etwas thun, als Nichts”—auch dieser Grundsatz ist eine Schnur, um aller Bildung und allem höheren
Geschmack den Garaus zu machen. Und so wie sichtlich alle Formen an dieser Hast der Arbeitenden zu
Grunde gehen: so geht auch das Gefühl für die Form selber, das Ohr und Auge für die Melodie der
Bewegungen zu Grunde. Der Beweis dafür liegt in der jetzt überall geforderten plumpen Deutlichkeit, in
allen den Lagen, wo der Mensch einmal redlich mit Menschen sein will, im Verkehre mit Freunden, Frauen,
Verwandten, Kindern, Lehrern, Schülern, Führern und Fürsten,—man hat keine Zeit und keine Kraft mehr
für die Ceremonien, für die Verbindlichkeit mit Umwegen, für allen esprit der Unterhaltung und überhaupt
für alles otium. Denn das Leben auf der Jagd nach Gewinn zwingt fortwährend dazu, seinen Geist bis zur
Erschöpfung auszugeben, im beständigen Sich-Verstellen oder Ueberlisten oder Zuvorkommen: die
eigentliche Tugend ist jetzt, Etwas in weniger Zeit zu thun, als ein Anderer. Und so giebt es nur selten
Stunden der erlaubten Redlichkeit: in diesen aber ist man müde und möchte sich nicht nur „gehen lassen”,
sondern lang und breit und plump sich hinstrecken. Gemäss diesem Hange schreibt man jetzt seine Briefe;
deren Stil und Geist immer das eigentliche „Zeichen der Zeit” sein werden. Giebt es noch ein Vergnügen an
Gesellschaft und an Künsten, so ist es ein Vergnügen, wie es müde-gearbeitete Sclaven sich zurecht machen.
Oh über diese Genügsamkeit der „Freude” bei unsern Gebildeten und Ungebildeten! Oh über diese
zunehmende Verdächtigung aller Freude! Die Arbeit bekommt immer mehr alles gute Gewissen auf ihre
Seite: der Hang zur Freude nennt sich bereits „Bedürfniss der Erholung” und fängt an, sich vor sich selber zu
schämen. „Man ist es seiner Gesundheit schuldig”—so redet man, wenn man auf einer Landpartie ertappt
wird. Ja, es könnte bald so weit kommen, dass man einem Hange zur vita contemplativa (das heisst zum
Spazierengehen mit Gedanken und Freunden) nicht ohne Selbstverachtung und schlechtes Gewissen
749
nachgäbe.—Nun! Ehedem war es umgekehrt: die Arbeit hatte das schlechte Gewissen auf sich. Ein Mensch
von guter Abkunft verbarg seine Arbeit, wenn die Noth ihn zum Arbeiten zwang. Der Sclave arbeitete unter
dem Druck des Gefühls, dass er etwas Verächtliches thue:—das „Thun” selber war etwas Verächtliches.
„Die Vornehmheit und die Ehre sind allein bei otium und bellum”: so klang die Stimme des antiken
Vorurtheils!
Leisure and idleness.—There is something of the American Indians, something of the ferocity peculiar to
the Indian blood, in the American lust for gold; and the breathless haste with which they work—the
distinctive vice of the new world—is already beginning to infect old Europe with its ferocity and is spreading
a lack of spirituality (Geistlosigkeit) like a blanket. Even now one is ashamed of resting, and prolonged
reflection almost gives people a bad conscience, One thinks with a watch in one’s hand, even as one eats
one’s midday meal while reading the latest news of the stock market; one lives as if one always ‘might miss
out on something.’ ‘Rather do anything than nothing’: this principle, too, is merely a string to throttle all
culture and good taste. Just as all forms are visibly perishing by the haste of the workers, the feeling for form
itself, the ear and eye for the melody of movements are also perishing. The proof of this may be found in the
universal demand for gross obviousness in all those situations in which human beings wish to be honest with
one another for once—in their associations with friends, women, relatives, children, teachers, pupils, leaders,
and princes: One no longer has time or energy for ceremonies, for being obliging in an indirect way, for
esprit in conversation, and for any otium at all. Living in a constant chase after gain compels people to
expend their spirit to the point of exhaustion in continual pretence and overreaching and anticipating others.
Virtue has come to consist of doing something in less time than someone else. Hours in which honesty is
permitted have become rare, and when they arrive one is tired and does not only want to ‘let oneself go’ but
actually wishes to stretch out as long and wide and ungainly as one happens to be. This is how people now
write letters, and the style and spirit of letters will always be the true ‘sign of the times.’
If sociability and the arts still offer any delight, it is the kind of delight that slaves, weary of their
work, devise for themselves. How frugal our educated—and uneducated—people have become
regarding ‘joy’! How they are becoming increasingly suspicious of all joy! More and more, work
enlists all good conscience on its side; the desire for joy already calls itself a ‘need to recuperate’ and is
beginning to be ashamed of itself. ‘One owes it to one’s health’—that is what people say when they are
caught on an excursion into the country. Soon we may well reach the point where people can no longer give
in to the desire for a vita contemplativa (that is, taking a walk with ideas and friends) without self-contempt
and a bad conscience.
Well, formerly it was the other way around: it was work that was afflicted with the bad conscience. A
person of good family used to conceal the fact that he was working in need compelled to work. Slaves used
to work, oppressed by the feeling that they were doing something contemptible: ‘doing’ itself was
contemptible. ‘Nobility and honour are attached solely to otium and bellum, that was the ancient prejudice.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, W. Kaufmann, trans. (New York: 1974), § 329
Die Festigkeit deines moralischen Urtheils könnte immer noch ein Beweis gerade von persönlicher
Erbärmlichkeit, von Unpersönlichkeit sein, deine „moralische Kraft” könnte ihre Quelle in deinem Eigensinn
haben—oder in deiner Unfähigkeit, neue Ideale zu schauen!
A “scientific” interpretation of the world, as you understand it, might therefore still be one of the most stupid
of all possible interpretations of the world, meaning that it would be one of the poorest in meaning...an
essentially mechanistic world would be an essentially meaningless world.
750
Looking for work in order to be paid: in civilized countries today almost all men are at one in doing
that. For all of them work is a means and not an end in itself. Hence they are not very refined in their
choice of work, if only it pays well. But there are, if only rarely, men who would rather perish than
work without any pleasure in their work. They are choosy, hard to satisfy, and do not care for ample
rewards, if the work itself is not to be the reward of rewards. Artists and contemplative men of all
kinds belong to this rare breed, but so do even those men of leisure who spend their lives hunting,
traveling, or in love affairs and adventures. All of these desire work and misery only if it is associated
with pleasure, and the hardest, most difficult work if necessary. Otherwise their idleness is resolute,
even if it spells impoverishment, dishonor, and danger to life and limb. They do not fear boredom as
much as work without pleasure.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, § 42, Kauffman trans., p. 108
For thinkers and all sensitive spirits, boredom is that disagreeable “windless calm” of the soul that precedes a
happy voyage and cheerful winds. They have to bear it and must wait for its effect on them.
The Christian resolve to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.
Parliamentarianism—that is, public permission to choose between five basic political opinions—flatters and
wins the favor of all those who would like to seem independent and individual, as if they fought for their
opinions. Ultimately, however, it is indifferent whether the herd is commanded to have one opinion or to
have five. Whoever deviates from the five public opinions and stands apart will always have the whole herd
against him.
Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings—always darker, emptier, and simpler.
Every habit gives our hand more wit but makes our wit less handy.
we got so far because we fancied at every point that we were at home.

What is timely will pass away with time, and untimeliness is the price of immortality.
Walter Kauffman paraphrasing Nietzsche, The Gay Science p. 218 note 67
What are man’s truths ultimately? Merely his irrefutable errors.

Das Geheimniss, um die grösste Fruchtbarkeit und den grössten Genuss vom Dasein einzuernten, heisst
gefährlich leben!
The secret to harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is to live
dangerously.
751
Unsere Luft.—Wir wissen es wohl: wer nur wie im Spazierengehen einmal einen Blick nach der
Wissenschaft hin thut, nach Art der Frauen und leider auch vieler Künstler: für den hat die Strenge ihres
Dienstes, diese Unerbittlichkeit im Kleinen wie im Grossen, diese Schnelligkeit im Wägen, Urtheilen,
Verurtheilen etwas Schwindel—und Furchteinflössendes. Namentlich erschreckt ihn, wie hier das Schwerste
gefordert, das Beste gethan wird, ohne dass dafür Lob und Auszeichnungen da sind, vielmehr, wie unter
Soldaten, fast nur Tadel und scharfe Verweise laut werden,—denn das Gutmachen gilt als die Regel, das
Verfehlte als die Ausnahme; die Regel aber hat hier wie überall einen Genügsamkeit um sich und in mich
hinein, sodass mich nach Anderem nicht verlangt, ohne dass ich zu vergleichen oder zu verachten oder zu
hassen hätte. Und eines Tages hat es seine Zeit gehabt: die gute Sache scheidet von mir, nicht als Etwas, das
mir nun Ekel einflösst—sondern friedlich und an mir gesättigt, wie ich an ihm, und wie als ob wir einander
dankbar sein müssten und uns so die Hände zum Abschied reichten. Und schon wartet das Neue an der Thüre
und ebenso mein Glaube—der unverwüstliche Thor und Weise!—diess Neue werde das Rechte, das letzte
Rechte sein. So geht es mir mit Speisen, Gedanken, Menschen, Städten, Gedichten, Musiken, Lehren,
Tagesordnungen, Lebensweisen.—Dagegen hasse ich die dauernden Gewohnheiten und meine, dass ein
Tyrann in meine Nähe kommt und dass meine Lebensluft sich verdickt, wo die Ereignisse sich so gestalten,
dass dauernde Gewohnheiten daraus mit Nothwendigkeit zu wachsen scheinen: zum Beispiel durch ein Amt,
durch ein beständiges Zusammensein mit den selben Menschen, durch einen festen Wohnsitz, durch eine
einmalige Art Gesundheit. Ja, ich bin allem meinem Elend und Kranksein, und was nur immer
unvollkommen an mir ist,—im untersten Grunde meiner Seele erkenntlich gesinnt, weil dergleichen mir
hundert Hinterthüren lässt, durch die ich den dauernden Gewohnheiten entrinnen kann.—Das Unerträglichste
freilich, das eigentlich Fürchterliche, wäre mir ein Leben ganz ohne Gewohnheiten, ein Leben, das
fortwährend die Improvisation verlangt:—diess wäre meine Verbannung und mein Sibirien.
In those who give to science only a passing glance, in the manner of women and, sadly, of most artists, the
strictness of its discipline, its inexorability in small matters as in great, its rapidity in weighing, judging,
rejecting, produce a feeling of dizziness and fright. The most difficult demand, the one which especially
frightens them, is that one’s best is to be done without reward or distinction, but rather as among soldiers. …
The severity of science is like the form and etiquette of the best society: it threatens the uninitiated. But he
who is accustomed to it may live nowhere else save in this light, transparent, powerful, and electric air, in the
manly air. … In this clear, strict element he has his power whole: here he can fly.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, § 293, cited in A. C. Danto, Nietzsche as Philosopher, pp. 70-71
Was man den Künstlern ablernen soll.—Welche Mittel haben wir, uns die Dinge schön, anziehend,
begehrenswerth zu machen, wenn sie es nicht sind?—und ich meine, sie sind es an sich niemals! Hier haben
wir von den Aerzten Etwas zu lernen, wenn sie zum Beispiel das Bittere verdünnen oder Wein und Zucker in
den Mischkrug thun; aber noch mehr von den Künstlern, welche eigentlich fortwährend darauf aus sind,
solche Erfindungen und Kunststücke zu machen. Sich von den Dingen entfernen, bis man Vieles von ihnen
nicht mehr sieht und Vieles hinzusehen muss, um sie noch zu sehen—oder die Dinge um die Ecke und wie in
einem Ausschnitte sehen—oder sie so stellen, dass sie sich theilweise verstellen und nur perspectivische
Durchblicke gestatten—oder sie durch gefärbtes Glas oder im Lichte der Abendröthe anschauen—oder ihnen
eine Oberfläche und Haut geben, welche keine volle Transparenz hat: das Alles sollen wir den Künstlern
ablernen und im Uebrigen weiser sein, als sie. Denn bei ihnen hört gewöhnlich diese ihre feine Kraft auf, wo
die Kunst aufhört und das Leben beginnt; wir aber wollen die Dichter unseres Lebens sein, und im Kleinsten
und Alltäglichsten zuerst.
752
How can we make things beautiful, attractive and desirable for us when they are not? And I rather think that
in themselves they never are. Here we could learn something … from artists who are really continually trying
to bring off such inventions and feats. Moving away from things until there is a good deal that one no longer
sees and there is much that our eye has to add if we are still to see them at all; or seeing things around a
corner and as cut out and framed; or to place them so that they partially conceal each other and grant us only
glimpses and architectural perspectives; or looking at them through tinted glass or in the light of the sunset;
or giving them a surface and skin that is not fully transparent—all this we should learn from artists while
being wiser than they are in other matters. For with them this subtle power usually comes to an end
where art ends and life begins; but we want to be poets of our life—first of all in the smallest, most
everyday matters.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, W. Kaufmann, trans. (New York: 1974), § 299
The call for help is secretly seductive, for our “own way” is too hard and demanding and too remote from the
love and gratitude of others, and we do not really mind escaping from it
Live in seclusion so that you can live for yourself. Live in ignorance of what seems most important to your
age. … The clamor of today, the noise of wars and revolutions should be a mere murmur for you.
Share not suffering but joy.

Folglich bedeutet »Wille zur Wahrheit« nicht »ich will mich nicht täuschen lassen«, sondern—es bleibt keine
Wahl—»ich will nicht täuschen, auch mich selbst nicht«;—und hiermit sind wir auf dem Boden der Moral. ...
Doch man wird es begriffen haben, worauf ich hinaus will, nämlich daß es immer noch ein metaphysischer
Glaube ist, auf dem unser Glaube an die Wissenschaft ruht—daß auch wir Erkennenden von heute, wir
Gottlosen und Antimetaphysiker, auch unser Feuer noch von dem Brande nehmen, den ein jahrtausendealter
Glaube entzündet hat, jener Christen-Glaube, der auch der Glaube Platos war, daß Gott die Wahrheit ist, daß
die Wahrheit göttlich ist.
"Will to truth" does not mean "I do not want to let myself be deceived" but—there is no alternative—"I will
not deceive, not even myself"; and with that we stand on moral ground. . . . You will have gathered what I
am getting at, namely, that it is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests—that even we
knowers of today, we godless anti-metaphysicians, still take our fire, too, from the flame lit by the
thousand-year-old faith, the Christian faith which was also Plato's faith, that God is truth; that truth is
divine.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882), B. Williams, ed. (2001), § 344
[Many historians of morality,] mostly Englishmen, … affirm some consensus of the nations, at least of the
tame nations, concerning certain principles of morals, and then they infer from this that these principles must
be unconditionally binding also for you and me; or, conversely, they see the truth that among different
nations moral valuations are necessarily different and then infer from this that no morality is at all binding.
Both procedures are equally childish.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, § 345, cited in Nehamas, Nietzsche, p. 36
Ein Glaubenssatz könnte ihm tausendfach widerlegt sein,—gesetzt, er hätte ihn nöthig, so würde er ihn auch
immer wieder für “wahr” halten.
An article of belief could be refuted before him a thousand times—if he needed it, he would consider it
“true” again and again…
753
Wo ein Mensch zu der Grundüberzeugung kommt, dass ihm befohlen werden muss, wird er “gläubig”
Once a human being reaches the fundamental conviction that he must be commanded, he becomes “a
believer.”
Sollte aber die Verkleidung der “moralischen Menschen,” ihre Verhüllung unter moralische Formeln und
Anstandsbegriffe, das ganze wohlwollende Verstecken unserer Handlungen unter die Begriffe Pflicht,
Tugend, Gemeinsinn, Ehrenhaftigkeit, Selbstverleugnung nicht seine ebenso guten Gründe haben? Nicht
dass ich vermeinte, hierbei sollte etwa die menschliche Bosheit und Niederträchtigkeit, kurz das schlimme
wilde Thier in uns vermummt werden; mein Gedanke ist umgekehrt, dass wir gerade als zahme Thiereschön
zu sein—.
Consider the way “moral man” … is veiled behind moral formulas and concepts of decency—the way our
actions are benevolently concealed by the concepts of duty, virtue, sense of community, honorableness, self-
denial. … I am not suggesting that all this is meant to mask human malice and villainy, the wild animal in us;
my idea is, on the contrary, that it is precisely as tame animals that we are a shameful sight and in need of the
moral disguise.
Nicht die Furchtbarkeit des Raubthiers findet eine moralische Verkleidung nöthig, sondern das Heerdenthier
mit seiner tiefen Mittelmässigkeit, Angst und Langenweile an sich selbst.
It is not the ferocity of the beast of prey that requires a moral disguise but the herd animal with its profound
mediocrity, timidity, and boredom with itself.
Der Mensch … denkt immerfort, aber weiss es nicht; das bewusst werdende Denken ist nur der kleinste Theil
davon, sagen wir: der oberflächlichste, der schlechteste Theil.
Man … thinks continually without knowing it. The thinking that rises to consciousness is only the smallest
part of this—the most superficial and worst part.
was versteht eigentlich das Volk unter Erkenntniss? was will es, wenn es “Erkenntniss” will? Nichts weiter
als dies: etwas Fremdes soll auf etwas Bekanntes zurückgeführt werden.
What is it that the common people take for knowledge? What do they want when they want “knowledge”?
Nothing more than this: something strange is to be reduced to something familiar.
754
Oh über diese Genügsamkeit der Erkennenden! man sehe sich doch ihre Principien und Welträthsel-
Lösungen darauf an! Wenn sie Etwas an den Dingen, unter den Dingen, hinter den Dingen wiederfinden, das
uns leider sehr bekannt ist, zum Beispiel unser Einmaleins oder unsre Logik oder unser Wollen und
Begehren, wie glücklich sind sie sofort! Denn was bekannt ist, ist “erkannt”: darin stimmen sie überein.
Auch die Vorsichtigsten unter ihnen meinen, zum Mindesten sei das Bekannte leichter erkennbar als das
Fremde; es sei zum Beispiel methodisch geboten, von der “inneren Welt,” von den “Thatsachen des
Bewusstseins” auszugehen, weil sie die uns bekanntere Welt sei! Irrthum der Irrthümer! Das Bekannte ist das
Gewohnte; und das Gewohnte ist am schwersten zu “erkennen,” das heisst als Problem zu sehen, das heisst
als fremd, als fern, als “ausser uns” zu sehn ... Die grosse Sicherheit der natürlichen Wissenschaften im
Verhältniss zur Psychologie und Kritik der Bewusstseins-Elemente—unnatürlichen Wissenschaften, wie man
beinahe sagen dürfte—ruht gerade darauf, dass sie das Fremde als Objekt nehmen
How easily these men of knowledge are satisfied! … When they find something in things…quite familiar to
us, such as … our willing and desiring—how happy they are right away! For “what is familiar is known”: on
this they are agreed. Even the most cautious among them suppose that what is familiar is at least more easily
knowable than what is strange, and that, for example, sound method demands that we start from the “inner
world,” from the “facts of consciousness”: because this world is more familiar to us. Error of errors! What is
familiar is what we are used to, and what we are used to is most difficult to “know”—that is, to see as a
problem. … The great certainty of the natural sciences in comparison with psychology … is due precisely to
the fact that they choose for their object what is strange.
Schopenhauer war als Philosoph der erste eingeständliche und unbeugsame Atheist, den wir Deutschen
gehabt haben... Die Ungöttlichkeit des Daseins galt ihm als etwas Gegebenes, Greifliches, Undiskutirbares;
er verlor jedes Mal seine Philosophen-Besonnenheit und gerieth in Entrüstung, wenn er Jemanden hier
zögern und Umschweife machen sah. An dieser Stelle liegt seine ganze Rechtschaffenheit: der unbedingte
redliche Atheismus ist eben die Voraussetzung seiner Problemstellung, als ein endlich und schwer
errungener Sieg des europäischen Gewissens, als der folgenreichste Akt einer zweitausendjährigen Zucht zur
Wahrheit, welche am Schlusse sich die Lüge im Glauben an Gott verbietet
As a philosopher, Schopenhauer was the first admitted and inexorable atheist among us Germans… The
ungodliness of existence was for him something given, palpable, indisputable; he always lost his
philosopher’s composure and became indignant when he saw anyone hesitate or mince matters at this point.
This is the locus of his whole integrity; unconditional and honest atheism is simply the presupposition of the
way he poses his problem, being a triumph achieved finally and with great difficulty by the European
conscience, being the most fateful act of two thousand years of discipline for truth that in the end forbids
itself the lie of faith in God.
Man sieht, was eigentlich über den christlichen Gott gesiegt hat: die christliche Moralität selbst, der immer
strenger genommene Begriff der Wahrhaftigkeit, die Beichtväter-Feinheit des christlichen Gewissens,
übersetzt und sublimirt zum wissenschaftlichen Gewissen, zur intellektuellen Sauberkeit um jeden Preis.
You see what it was that really triumphed over the Christian God: Christian morality itself, the
concept of truthfulness that was understood more rigorously, the father confessor’s refinement of the
Christian conscience, translated and sublimated into a scientific conscience, into intellectual
cleanliness at any price.
755
Die Bewusstheit nur ein Accidens der Vorstellung ist, nicht deren nothwendiges und wesentliches Attribut,
dass also das, was wir Bewusstsein nennen, nur einen Zustand unsrer geistigen und seelischen Welt ausmacht
(vielleicht einen krankhaften Zustand) und bei weitem nicht sie selbst
Consciousness is merely an accidens of experience, and not its necessary and essential attribute; that, in other
words, what we call consciousness constitutes only one state of our spiritual and psychic world
(perhaps a pathological state) and not by any means the whole of it.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, § 357, describing “Leibniz’s incomparable insight”
I have learned to distinguish the cause of acting from the cause of acting in a particular way, in a particular
direction, with a particular goal. The first kind of cause is a quantum of dammed-up energy that is waiting to
be used up somehow, for something, while the second kind is, compared to this energy, something quite
insignificant, for the most part a little accident in accordance with which this quantum of energy “discharges”
itself in one particular way—a match versus a ton of powder. … The usual view is different: people are
accustomed to consider the goal (purposes, vocations, etc.) as the driving force, in keeping with a very
ancient error; but it is merely the directing force—one has mistaken the helmsman for the steam. … Is the
“goal,” the “purpose” not often enough a pretext, a self-deception of vanity after the event …
Wie jeder, der einst Ketten trug,

Hört überall er—Kettenklirren
He who has once been burdened with chains
Hears the ringing of chains everywhere
Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, Vorspiel, “Der Unfreie” § 32, my translation
We have no dreams at all or interesting ones. We should learn to be awake the same way –not at all or in an
interesting manner.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science
Morality is herd instinct in the individual.

The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.
Also Sprach Zarathustra [Thus Spoke Zarathustra] (1883, 1885)

English: http://books.google.com/books?id=ooURAAAAYAAJ
German: http://books.google.com/books?id=DDMPAAAAYAAJ
German: file:////H:/eBooks/Nietzsche - KSA.pdf s. 3633
German: http://www.uni-potsdam.de/u/philosophie/texte/nietzsche/also.htm
Wirf den Helden in deiner Seele nicht weg! Halte heilig deine höchste Hoffnung!
Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra (1885)
To redeem the past, and to transform every “it was” into “thus would I have it”—that alone would be my
salvation.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
756
Zarathustras Vorrede [Zarathustra’s Prologue]
Wahrlich, ein schmutziger Strom ist der Mensch. Man muss schon ein Meer sein, um einen schmutzigen
Strom aufnehmen zu können, ohne unrein zu werden.
Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra (1885), „Zarathustras Vorrede“, § 3
Verily, a polluted stream is the human. One must be a veritable sea to absorb such a polluted stream without
becoming unclean..
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue, § 0.3
Was ist das Grösste, das ihr erleben könnt? Das ist die Stunde der grossen Verachtung. Die Stunde, in der
euch auch euer Glück zum Ekel wird und ebenso eure Vernunft und eure Tugend.
Die Stunde, wo ihr sagt: „Was liegt an meinem Glücke! Es ist Armuth und Schmutz, und ein erbärmliches
Behagen. Aber mein Glück sollte das Dasein selber rechtfertigen!“
Die Stunde, wo ihr sagt: „Was liegt an meiner Vernunft! Begehrt sie nach Wissen wie der Löwe nach
seiner Nahrung? Sie ist Armuth und Schmutz und ein erbärmliches Behagen!“
Die Stunde, wo ihr sagt: „Was liegt an meiner Tugend! Noch hat sie mich nicht rasen gemacht. Wie müde
bin ich meines Guten und meines Bösen! Alles das ist Armuth und Schmutz und ein erbärmliches Behagen!“
What is the greatest you could experience? It is the hour of the great despising. The hour in which even
your happiness disgusts you and likewise your reason and your virtue.
The hour when you say: “What good is my happiness! It is poverty and filth and wretched contentment.
But my happiness should justify existence itself!”
The hour when you say: “What good is my reason! Does it crave knowing and the lion craves its good? It
is poverty and filth and wretched contentment.”
The hour when you say: “What good is my virtue! It has yet to set me raging. How tired I am of my good
and my evil! All that is poverty and filth and wretched contentment.”
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue, § 0.3, G. Parkes, trans. (Oxford: 2005), pp. 12-13
Es kommt die Zeit, wo der Mensch nicht mehr den Pfeil seiner Sehnsucht über den Menschen.
Es kommt die Zeit des verächtlichsten Menschen, der sich selber nicht mehr verachten kann..
Seht! Ich zeige euch den letzten Menschen.

„Was ist Liebe? Was ist Schöpfung? Was ist Sehnsucht? Was ist Stern?“—so fragt der letzte Mensch und
blinzelt.
Die Erde ist dann klein geworden, und auf ihr hüpft der letzte Mensch, der Alles klein macht. Sein
Geschlecht ist unaustilgbar, wie der Erdfloh; der letzte Mensch lebt am längsten.
„Wir haben das Glück erfunden“—sagen die letzten Menschen und blinzeln..
Jeder will das Gleiche, Jeder ist gleich: wer anders fühlt, geht freiwillig in's Irrenhaus.
Once to sin against God was the most dreadful thing... but now the most dreadful thing is to sin against the
world and to esteem the entrails of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the world.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue, § 0.3 p. 124
I love him who does not want to have too many virtues. One virtue is more of a virtue than two.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue, § 0.4, p. 127
One no longer becomes poor or rich. Both are too burdensome. Who wants to rule? Who still wants to obey?
Both are too burdensome.
757
… the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself
Behold the good and the just! ... Behold the believers of all faiths! Whom do they hate most? The man who
breaks their tables of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker. Yet he is the creator.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 135, Prologue, § 0.9
I—Von den drei Verwandlungen [The Three Metamorphoses]
II—Von den Lehrstühlen der Tugend [The Academic Chairs of Virtue]
III—Von den Hinterweltlern [Backworldsmen]
Vieles krankhafte Volk gab es immer unter Denen, welche dichten und gottsüchtig sind; wüthend
hassen sie den Erkennenden und jene jüngste der Tugenden, welche heisst: Redlichkeit.
Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra (1885), „Von den Hinterweltlern“
Furiously do the sick people hate the lover of knowledge, and, that youngest among the virtues, which
we call “honesty.”
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On the Afterworldly”
Listen rather to the voice of the healthy body: that is a more honest and purer voice.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On the Afterworldly”
IV—Von den Verächtern des Leibes [The Despisers of the Body]
Soul is only a word for something about the body

Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 146 “On the Despisers of the Body”
The body laughs at the ego and its bold leaps. “What are these leaps and flights of thought to me?” it says to
itself. “A detour to my end. I am the leading strings of the ego and the prompter of its concepts.” The body
says to the ego “Feel pain here!” Then the ego suffers and thinks how it might suffer no more—and that is
why it is made to think. The body says to the ego “Feel pleasure here!” Then the ego is pleased and thinks
how it might often be pleased again—and that is why it is made to think.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On the Despisers of the Body”
758
V—Von den Freuden- und Leidenschaften [Joys and Passions]
Mein Bruder, wenn du eine Tugend hast, und es deine Tugend ist, so hast du sie mit Niemandem
gemeinsam.
Freilich, du willst sie bei Namen nennen und liebkosen; du willst sie am Ohre zupfen und Kurzweil
mit ihr treiben.
Und siehe! Nun hast du ihren Namen mit dem Volke gemeinsam und bist Volk und Heerde
geworden mit deiner Tugend!
Besser thätest du, zu sagen: “unaussprechbar ist und namenlos, was meiner Seele Qual und Süsse
macht und auch noch der Hunger meiner Eingeweide ist.”
Deine Tugend sei zu hoch für die Vertraulichkeit der Namen: und musst du von ihr reden, so schäme
dich nicht, von ihr zu stammeln.
So sprich und stammle: “Das ist mein Gutes, das liebe ich, so gefällt es mir ganz, so allein will ich
das Gute.
Nicht will ich es als eines Gottes Gesetz, nicht will ich es als eine Menschen-Satzung und -
Nothdurft: kein Wegweiser sei es mir für Über-Erden und Paradiese.
Eine irdische Tugend ist es, die ich liebe: wenig Klugheit ist darin und am wenigsten die Vernunft
Aller.
Aber dieser Vogel baute bei mir sich das Nest: darum liebe und herze ich ihn,—nun sitze er bei mir
auf seinen goldnen Eiern.”
So sollst du stammeln und deine Tugend loben.
Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra, “Von den Freuden- und Leidenschaften” KSA 4:43
If you have a virtue and she is your virtue, then you have her in common with nobody. But you want to call
her by her name and pet her ... and behold, now you have her in common with the people and have become
one of the herd with your virtue. You would do better to say “Inexpressible and nameless is that which gives
my soul agony and sweetness.”... May your virtue be too exalted for the familiarity of names, and if you
must speak of her, do not be ashamed to stammer.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 148 “On enjoying and suffering the passions”
Einst hattest du Leidenschaften und nanntest sie böse. Aber jetzt hast du nur noch deine Tugenden: die
wuchsen aus deinen Leidenschaften.
Du legtest dein höchstes Ziel diesen Leidenschaften an’s Herz: da wurden sie deine Tugenden und
Freudenschaften. ... Am Ende wurden alle deine Leidenschaften zu Tugenden und alle deine Teufel zu
Engeln.
Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra, “Von den Freuden- und Leidenschaften” KSA 4:43
Once you had passions and called them evil. But now you have only your virtues: they grew out of your
passions. You implanted your highest aim into the heart of those passions: then they became your virtues and
joys. … All your passions in the end became virtues, and all your devils angels.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, § 1.5 “Joys and Passions”
VI—Vom bleichen Verbrecher [The Pale Criminal]
VII—Vom Lesen und Schreiben [Reading and Writing]
Ich würde nur an einen Gott glauben, der zu tanzen verstünde.

Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra, „Vom Lesen und Schreiben“
759
VIII—Vom Baum am Berge [The Tree on the Hill]
IX—Von den Predigern des Todes [The Preachers of Death]
X—Vom Krieg und Kriegsvolke [War and Warriors]
If you cannot be saints of knowledge, at least be its warriors. They are the companions and forerunners of
such sainthood.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 159 “On War and Warriors”
You are ugly? Well then, my brothers, wrap the sublime around you, the cloak of the ugly.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 159 “On War and Warriors”
XI—Vom neuen Götzen [The New Idol]
Whoever possess little is possessed that much less.

Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 163 “On The New Idol”
Seht mir doch diese Ueberflüssigen! Sie stehlen sich die Werke der Erfinder und die Schätze der Weisen:
Bildung nennen sie ihren Diebstahl.
Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, § 1.11, „Vom neuen Götzen”
Behold the superfluous! They steal for themselves the works of creators and the treasures of the wise: they
call their theft “culture.”
Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, § 1.11 “On the New Idol”
Seht mir doch diese Überflüssigen! Krank sind sie immer, sie erbrechen ihre Galle und nennen es Zeitung.
Behold the superfluous! They are always sick; they vomit their gall and call it a newspaper.
Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, W. Kaufmann, trans. (1977) § 1.11 “On the New Idol”
Sie verschlingen einander und können sich nicht einmal verdauen.

XII—Von den Fliegen des Marktes [The Flies in the Market-place]
In the world even the best things amount to nothing without someone to make a show of them: “great men”
the people call these showmen. Little do the people comprehend the great—that is, the creating. But they
have a mind for all showmen and actors of great things. Around the inventors of new values the world
revolves: invisibly it revolves. But around the actors revolve people and fame.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 163 “On the Flies of the Market Place”
They punish you for all your virtues... their petty souls think “guilty is every great existence.”
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 165 “On the Flies of the Market Place”
Far from the marketplace and from fame happens all that is great: far from the market place and from fame,
the inventors of new values have always dwelt.
Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, W. Kaufmann, trans. (1954), § 12, “On the Flies of the Marketplace”
XIII—Von der Keuschheit [Chastity]
Wie artig weiss die Hündin Sinnlichkeit um ein Stück Geist zu betteln, wenn ihr ein Stück Fleisch versagt
wird.
Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, § 13 „Von der Keuschheit”
How nicely the bitch, sensuality, knows how to beg for a piece of spirit when denied a piece of meat.
Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, W. Kauffman, trans. (1954), § 1.13 “On Chastity”
760
Ihr habt mir zu grausame Augen und blickt lüstern nach Leidenden. Hat sich nicht nur eure Wollust
verkleidet und heisst sich Mitleiden?.
Your eyes are too cruel and you search lustfully for sufferers. Is it not merely your lust that has disguised
itself and now calls itself pity?
Nicht, wenn die Wahrheit schmutzig ist, sondern wenn sie seicht ist, steigt der Erkennende ungern in ihr
Wasser.
It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its
waters.
XIV—Vom Freunde [The Friend]
Immer ist für den Einsiedler der Freund der Dritte: der Dritte ist der Kork, der verhindert, dass das
Gespräch der Zweie in die Tiefe sinkt.
Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, § 14 „Von Freunde”
For the hermit the friend is always the third person: the third is the cork that prevents the conversation of the
two from sinking into the depths.
Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, W. Kauffman, trans. (1954), § 1.14 “On the Friend”
XV—Von tausend und Einem Ziele [The Thousand and One Goals]
Wahrlich, die Menschen gaben sich alles ihr Gutes und Böses. Wahrlich, sie nahmen es nicht, sie fanden
es nicht, nicht fiel es ihnen als Stimme vom Himmel.
Werthe legte erst der Mensch in die Dinge, sich zu erhalten, —er schuf erst den Dingen Sinn, einen
Menschen-Sinn!
Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, § 15 „Von tausend und Einem Ziele”
Verily, men gave themselves all their good and evil. Verily, they did not take it, they did not find it, nor did it
come to them as a voice from heaven. Only man placed values in things to preserve himself—he alone
created a meaning for things, a human meaning.
Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, W. Kauffman, trans. (1954), § 1.15 “On the Thousand and One Goals”
Schaffende waren erst Völker und spät erst Einzelne.

First, people were creators; and only in later times, individuals.
Nietzsche, describing the creation of values, Thus Spake Zarathustra, W. Kauffman, trans. (1954), § 1.15 “On the Thousand and One Goals”
Der Einzelne selber ist noch die jüngste Schöpfung.

The individual himself is still the most recent creation.
Älter ist an der Heerde die Lust, als die Lust am Ich: und so lange das gute Gewissen Heerde heisst, sagt nur
das schlechte Gewissen: Ich.
The delight in the herd is more ancient than delight in the I; and as long as the good conscience is identified
with the herd, only the bad conscience says: I.
761
XVI—Von der Nächstenliebe [Neighbour-Love]
Ihr flüchtet zum Nächsten vor euch selber und möchtet euch daraus eine Tugend machen: aber ich
durchschaue euer „Selbstloses”.
Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, § 16 „Von der Nächstenliebe”
You flee to the neighbor from yourselves and would like to make a virtue out of that: but I see through your
“selflessness.”
Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, W. Kauffman, trans. (1954), § 16 “On Love of the Neighbor”
Das Du ist älter als das Ich; das Du ist heilig gesprochen, aber noch nicht das Ich: so drängt sich der Mensch
hin zum Nächsten.
The you is older than the I; the you has been pronounced holy, but not yet the I: so man crowds towards his
neighbor.
Diess Gespenst, das vor dir herläuft, mein Bruder, ist schöner als du; warum giebst du ihm nicht dein Fleisch
und deine Knochen? Aber du fürchtest dich und läufst zu deinem Nächsten..
The ghost that runs [before] you, my brother, is more beautiful than you; why do you not give him your flesh
and bones?
Ihr haltet es mit euch selber nicht aus und liebt euch nicht genug: nun wollt ihr den Nächsten zur Liebe
verführen und euch mit seinem Irrthum vergolden..
You cannot endure yourselves and do not love yourselves enough: now you want to seduce your neighbor to
love, and hen gild yourselves with his error.
Ihr ladet euch einen Zeugen ein, wenn ihr von euch gut reden wollt; und wenn ihr ihn verführt habt, gut von
euch zu denken, denkt ihr selber gut von euch.
You invite a witness when you want to speak well of yourselves; and when you have seduced him to think
well of you of you, then you think well of yourselves.
Nicht nur Der lügt, welcher wider sein Wissen redet, sondern erst recht Der, welcher wider sein Nichtwissen
redet.
Not only are they liars who speak when they know better, but even more those who speak when they know
nothing.
Nicht den Nächsten lehre ich euch, sondern den Freund.

I teach you not the neighbor, but the friend.
762
XVII—Vom Wege des Schaffenden [The Way of the Creating One]
XVIII—Von alten und jungen Weiblein [Old and Young Women]
XIX—Vom Biss der Natter [The Bite of the Adder]
Wo findet sich die Gerechtigkeit, welche Liebe mit sehenden Augen ist?
Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, § 19 „Vom Biss der Natter”
Where is that justice which is love with open eyes?
Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, W. Kauffman, trans. (1954), § 19 “On the Adder’s Bite”
So erfindet mir doch die Gerechtigkeit, die Jeden freispricht, ausgenommen den Richtenden!
Would that you might invent for me the justice that acquits everyone, except him that judges!
So ihr aber einen Feind habt, so vergeltet ihm nicht Böses mit Gutem: denn das würde beschämen. Sondern
beweist, dass er euch etwas Gutes angethan hat.
If you have an enemy, do not requite him evil with good, for that would put him to shame. Rather prove that
he did you some good..
Und geschah euch ein grosses Unrecht, so thut mir geschwind fünf kleine dazu! Grässlich ist Der anzusehn,
den allein das Unrecht drückt.
Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, § 1.19 „Vom Biss der Natter”
If you have been done a great wrong, then quickly add five little ones: a gruesome sight is a person single-
mindedly obsesses by a wrong.
Ich mag eure kalte Gerechtigkeit nicht.

Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, § 1.19 „Vom Biss der Natter”
I do not like your cold justice
Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, § 19
It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right—especially when one is right.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, W. Kaufmann, trans. (1954), § 19, “On the Adder’s Bite”
XX—Von Kind und Ehe [Child and Marriage]
Wie ein Senkblei werfe ich diese Frage in deine Seele, dass ich wisse, wie tief sie sei.
Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, § 1.20 „Von Kind und Ehe “
I cast this question into your soul that I might know how deep it is.
Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, W. Kauffman, trans. (1954), § 20 “On Child and Marriage”
XXL—Vom freien Tode [Voluntary Death]
XXII—Von der schenkenden Tugend [The Bestowing Virtue]
Der Mensch der Erkenntniss muss nicht nur seine Feinde lieben, sondern auch seine Freunde hassen
können.
Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, “Von der schenkenden Tugend” § 3
The knight of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, A. Ludovici, trans.
763
Man vergilt einem Lehrer schlecht, wenn man immer nur der Schüler bleibt.
The man who remaineth a pupil requiteth his teacher but ill.
Ihr hattet euch noch nicht gesucht: da fandet ihr mich. So thun alle Gläubigen; darum ist es so wenig mit
allem Glauben.
Ye had not yet sought yourselves when ye found me. Thus do all believers; therefore is all believing worth
so little.
XXIII—Das Kind mit dem Spiegel [The Child with the Mirror]
XXIV—Auf den glückseligen Inseln [In the Happy Isles]
Gott ist eine Mutmaßung; aber ich will, daß euer Mutmaßen nicht weiter reiche, als euer schaffender Wille.
Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, “Auf den glückseligen Inseln”
God is an assumption; but I want your assuming to reach no further than your creative will.
Nietzsche, Zarathustra “Auf den glückseligen Inseln”
Gott ist eine Mutmaßung; aber ich will, daß euer Mutmaßen begrenzt sei in der Denkbarkeit.
Gott ist ein Gedanke, der macht alles Gerade krumm.

God is a thought that makes crooked all that is straight.
Nietzsche, Zarathustra “Auf den glückseligen Inseln” = KSA 4.111
Alles Unvergängliche—das ist nur ein Gleichnis.

XXV—Von den Mitleidigen [The Pitiful]
But to him who is possessed by the devil I whisper this word: “Better for you to rear up your devil! Even for
you there is still a way to greatness!”
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 201, “On the Pitying”
Worst of all, however, are petty thoughts. Verily, even evil deeds are better than petty thoughts. To be
sure, you say, “The pleasure in a lot of petty nastiness saves us from many a big evil deed.” But here one
should not wish to be saved. An evil deed is like a boil: it itches and irritates and breaks open—it speaks
honestly, “Behold, I am a disease.” ... But a petty thought is like a fungus. It seeps and creeps ... until the
whole body is rotten and withered.
[The Christian says “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” The creator says] I sacrifice myself to my passion, and
my neighbor as myself.
XXVI—Von den Priestern [The Priests]
XXVII—Von den Tugendhaften [The Virtuous]
Your virtue is yourself and not something foreign.

Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Portable Nietzsche, p. 206, “On the Virtuous”
764
Some who cannot see what is high in man call it virtue that they see all to clearly what is low in man. Thus
they call their evil eye a virtue.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 207, “On the Virtuous”
That you might grow weary of saying: what makes an act good is that it is unselfish ... That your self is in
your deed as the mother is in her child—let that be your word concerning virtue!
You who are virtuous still want to be paid!

cf. Spinoza, Ethics, Part 2, Prop. 49, Scholium (Dover 1955 p. 126)
XXVIIL—Vom Gesindel [The Rabble]
Alas, I often grew weary of spirit when I found that even the rabble had spirit.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 209, “On the Rabble”
I turned my back on those who rule when I saw what they now call ruling: haggling and haggling for
power—with the rabble.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 209, “On the Rabble”
XXIX—Von den Taranteln [The Tarantulas]
Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 212, “On the Tarantulas”
“And ‘will to equality’ shall henceforth be the name for virtue”... You preachers of equality ... your most
secret ambitions to be tyrants thus shroud themselves in words of virtue.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 212, “On the Tarantulas”
XXX—Von den berühmten Weisen [The Famous Wise Ones]
You have served the people and the superstition of the people, all you famous wise men—and not the
truth. And that is precisely why you were accorded respect.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 214, “On the Famous Wise Men”
But the free spirit, the enemy of fetters, the non-idolater who dwells in the woods, is hateful to the people ...
this is what people have always called “a sense of decency.”
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 214, “On the Famous Wise Men”
XXXI—Das Nachtlied [The Night-Song]
XXXII—Das Tanzlied [The Dance-Song]
XXXIIL—Das Grablied [The Grave-Song]
XXXIV—Von der Selbst-Überwindung [Self-Surpassing]
Let the value of all things be posited newly by you.

Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Portable Nietzsche, “On Self-Overcoming,” p. 226
765
XXXV—Von den Erhabenen [The Sublime Ones]
You tell me, my friends, that there is no disputing of taste? But all of life is a dispute over taste. Taste
is at the same time weight and scales and weigher. Woe unto a life that would live without disputes
over weight and scales and weighers!
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 229, “On Those Who Are Sublime”
I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 230, “On Those Who Are Sublime”
XXXVI—Vom Lande der Bildung [The Land of Culture]
XXXVIL—Von der unbefleckten Erkenntniss [Immaculate Perception]
XXXVIII—Von den Gelehrten [Scholars]
Ausgezogen bin ich aus dem Hause der Gelehrten, und die Thür habe ich noch hinter mir zugeworfen.
Zu lange sass meine Seele hungrig an ihrem Tische; nicht, gleich ihnen, bin ich auf das Erkennen
abgerichtet wie auf das Nüsseknacken.
Freiheit liebe ich und die Luft über frischer Erde; lieber noch will ich auf Ochsenhäuten schlafen, als auf
ihren Würden und Achtbarkeiten.
Ich bin zu heiss und verbrannt von eigenen Gedanken: oft will es mir den Athem nehmen. Da muss ich in's
Freie und weg aus allen verstaubten Stuben.
Aber sie sitzen kühl in kühlem Schatten: sie wollen in Allem nur Zuschauer sein und hüten sich, dort zu
sitzen, wo die Sonne auf die Stufen brennt.
Gleich Solchen, die auf der Strasse stehn und die Leute angaffen, welche vorübergehn: also warten sie
auch und gaffen Gedanken an, die Andre gedacht haben.
Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra (1883), § 38 “Von den Gelehrten”
I have departed from the house of the scholars, and the door have I also slammed behind me.
Too long did my soul sit hungry at their table: not like them have I got the knack of investigating, as the
knack of nut-cracking.
Freedom do I love, and the air over fresh soil; rather would I sleep on ox-skins than on their honours and
dignities.
I am too hot and scorched with mine own thought: often is it ready to take away my breath. Then have I to
go into the open air, and away from all dusty rooms.
But they sit cool in the cool shade: they want in everything to be merely spectators, and they avoid
sitting where the sun burneth on the steps.
Like those who stand in the street and gape at the passers-by: thus do they also wait, and gape at the
thoughts which others have thought.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, § 38, “Scholars”
Aber trotzdem wandle ich mit meinen Gedanken über ihren Köpfen; und selbst, wenn ich auf meinen eignen
Fehlern wandeln wollte, würde ich noch über ihnen sein und ihren Köpfen.
Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra (1883), § 38 “Von den Gelehrten”
I walk with my thoughts above their heads; and even should I walk on mine own errors, still would I
be above them and their heads.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, § 38, “Scholars”
766
XXXIX—Von den Dichtern [Poets]
XL—Von grossen Ereignissen [Great Events]
XLI—Der Wahrsager [The Soothsayer]
XLII—Von der Erlösung [Redemption]
XLIII—Von der Menschen-Klugheit [Manly Prudence]
In order that life may be good to look at, its play must be well acted; but for that good actors are needed. All
the vain are good actors: they act and they want people to enjoy looking at them; all their spirit is behind this
will. They enact themselves, they invent themselves. Near them, I love to look at life: that cures my
melancholy. Therefore I spare the vain, for they are the physicians of my melancholy, and keep me attached
to life, as to a play.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 255, “On Human Prudence”
Who could fathom the full depth of modesty in the vain man? ... It is from you that he wants to acquire his
faith in himself; he nourishes himself on your glances, he eats praise out of your hands. ... And, if the true
virtue is one that is unaware of itself—well, the vain man is unaware of his modesty.
Do not permit the sight of the evil to be spoiled by your timidity. I am delighted to see the wonders hatched
by a hot sun: tigers and palms and rattlesnakes. Among men too a hot sun hatches a beautiful breed. And
there are many wonderful things in those who are evil.
XLIV—Die stillste Stunde [The Stillest Hour]
XLV—Der Wanderer [The Wanderer]
Above your path is inscribed—Impossible!

Nietzsche, Zarathustra, “The Traveler”
XLVI—Vom Gesicht und Räthsel [The Vision and the Enigma]
XLVII—Von der Seligkeit wider Willen [Involuntary Bliss]
XLVIII—Vor Sonnen-Aufgang [Before Sunrise]
XLIX—Von der verkleinernden Tugend [The Bedwarfing Virtue]
Small people need small virtues ... I find it hard to accept that small people are needed.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 280, “On Virtue That Makes Small”
All those are my equals who give themselves their own will and reject all resignation.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 283, “On Virtue That Makes Small”
L—Auf dem Ülberge [On the Olive-Mount]
LI—Vom Vorübergehen [On Passing-by]
Here all great thoughts are boiled alive and cooked until they are small
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 288, “On Passing By”
767
LII—Von den Abtrünnigen [The Apostates]
Alas, there are always only a few whose hearts long to retain their courageous bearing and exuberance, and
whose spirits also remain patient.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 291, “On Apostates”
Those who are half-and-half spoil all that is whole.

Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 291, “On Apostates”
LIII—Die Heimkehr [The Return Home]
Everything is talked to pieces. What even yesterday was still too hard for the tooth of time hangs today,
spoiled by scraping and gnawing, out of the mouths of men.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 297, “The Return Home”
I sat among them, ready to mistake myself that I might endure them.
You could ring in your wisdom with bells: the shopkeepers in the marketplace would outjingle it with
pennies.
I reminded myself “Everything small is innocent of its smallness.”

Especially those who call themselves “the good” I find to be the most poisonous flies: they bite in all
innocence, they lie in all innocence...
LIV—Von den drei Bösen [The Three Evil Things]
Sham wisdom: ... the would-be wit of the servile and old and weary, and especially the whole wicked,
nitwitted, witless foolishness of priests.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 303, “On The Three Evils”
LV—Vom Geist der Schwere [The Spirit of Gravity]
We carry faithfully what one gives us to bear, on hard shoulders and over rough mountains. And should we
sweat, we are told “Yes, life is a grave burden.” But man is only a grave burden to himself! That is because
he carries on his shoulders too much that is alien to him. ... Especially the strong, reverent spirit that would
bear much: he loads too many alien grave words and values on himself.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 305, “On the Spirit of Gravity”
We are presented with grave words and values almost from the cradle: “good” and “evil” this gift is called.
For its sake we are forgiven for living.
He has discovered himself who says, “this is my good and evil.”

768
LVI—Von alten und neuen Tafeln [Old and New Tables]
Und verloren sei uns der Tag, wo nicht einmal getanzt wurde! Und falsch heiße uns jede Wahrheit, bei der es
nicht ein Gelächter gab!
Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, “Von alten und neuen Tafeln”, § 56.23
Every day is lost on which we have not danced at least once. And every truth false which was not
accompanied by at least one laugh.
Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, “Von alten und neuen Tafeln”, § 56.23
“Warum so hart!”—sprach zum Diamanten einst die Küchen-Kohle; “sind wir denn nicht Nah-
Verwandte?” —
Warum so weich? Oh meine Brüder, also frage ich euch: seid ihr denn nicht—meine Brüder?
Warum so weich, so weichend und nachgebend? Warum ist so viel Leugnung, Verleugnung in eurem
Herzen? So wenig Schicksal in eurem Blicke?
Und wollt ihr nicht Schicksale sein und Unerbittliche: wie könntet ihr mit mir—siegen?
Und wenn eure Härte nicht blitzen und scheiden und zerschneiden will: wie könntet ihr einst mit mir—
schaffen?
Die Schaffenden nämlich sind hart. Und Seligkeit muss es euch dünken, eure Hand auf Jahrtausende zu
drücken wie auf Wachs, —
—Seligkeit, auf dem Willen von Jahrtausenden zu schreiben wie auf Erz,—härter als Erz, edler als Erz.
Ganz hart ist allein das Edelste.
Diese neue Tafel, oh meine Brüder, stelle ich über euch: werdet hart! —
Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, § 56.29
“Why so hard?” the coal once said to the diamond, “after all, are we not close kin?”
Why so soft? O my brothers, thus I ask you, are you not after all my brothers?
Why so soft, so pliant and yielding? Why is there so much denial, self-denial, in your hearts? So
little destiny in your eyes?
And if you do not want to be destinies and inexorable ones, how can you one day triumph with me?
And if your hardness does not wish to flash and cut through, how can you one day create with me?
For all creators are hard. ... Only the noblest is altogether hard.
This new tablet, O my brothers, I place over you: Become hard!
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, § 56.29 “On Old and New Tablets”
When I came to men I found them sitting on an old conceit: the conceit that they have long known what is
good and evil for man. All talk of virtue seemed an old and weary matter to man; and whoever wanted to
sleep will still talked of good and evil before going to bed. I disturbed this sleepiness when I taught: what is
good and evil no one knows yet, unless it be he who creates. He, however, creates man’s goal and gives the
earth its meaning and future. That anything at all is good and evil—that is his creation.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 308, “On Old and New Tablets”
“And your own reason—you yourself should stifle and strangle it; for it is a reason of this world; thus you
will learn to renounce the world.” Break, break, O my brothers, these old tablets of the pious. Break the
maxims of those who slander the world.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, W. Kaufmann, trans. (1954), p. 317, “On Old and New Tablets” § 56.15
They learned badly, and the best things not at all, and everything too early, and everything too hastily...
Therefore they got upset stomachs. For verily, my friends, the spirit is a stomach. Life is a well of joy; but for
those out of whom an upset stomach speaks,... all wells are poisoned.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 318, “On Old and New Tablets” § 56.16
It is not enough to wield the sword; one must know against whom. And often there is more valor in
refraining and passing by, in order to save oneself for the worthier enemy. One should have only enemies
who are to be hated, not enemies to be despised: one must be proud of one’s enemies.
769
For the worthier enemy you shall save yourself. Therefore you must pass by much—especially the rabble
who raise a din in your ears about the people and about peoples. Keep your eyes undefiled by their pro and
con! There is much justice, and much injustice; and whoever looks on becomes angry. ... Go your own ways!
And let the people, and peoples, go theirs—dark ways, verily, on which not a single hope flashes anymore.
Who represents the greatest danger for man’s future? Is it not the “good” and the “just”, inasmuch as they
say, and feel in their hearts, “We already know what is good and just.”
LVII—Der Genesende [The Convalescent]
LVIII—Von der grossen Sehnsucht [The Great Longing]
LIX—Das andere Tanzlied [The Second Dance-Song]
LX—Die sieben Siegel [The Seven Seals]
LXI—Das Honig-Opfer [The Honey Sacrifice]
LXII—Der Nothschrei [The Cry of Distress]
LXIII—Gespräch mit den Königen [Talk with the Kings]
LXIV—Der Blutegel [The Leech]
LXV—Der Zauberer [The Magician]
LXVI—Ausser Dienst [Out of Service]
LXVII—Der hässlichste Mensch [The Ugliest Man]
LXVIII—Der freiwillige Bettler [The Voluntary Beggar]
LXIX—Der Schatten [The Shadow]
LXX—Mittags [Noon-tide]
LXXI—Die Begrüssung [The Greeting]
LXXII—Das Abendmahl [The Supper]
LXXIII—Vom höheren Menschen [The Higher Man]
LXXIV—Das Lied der Schwermuth [The Song of Melancholy]
LXXV—Von der Wissenschaft [Science]
LXXVI—Unter Töchtern der Wüste [Among Daughters of the Desert]
LXXVII—Die Erweckung [The Awakening]
LXXVIII—Das Eselsfest [The Ass-Festival]
770
LXXIX—Das trunkne Lied [The Drunken Song]
LXXX—Das Zeichen [The Sign]
Jenseits von Gut und Böse [Beyond Good and Evil] (1886)
German: http://books.google.com/books?id=YIURAAAAYAAJ
English: http://books.google.com/books?id=yas8AAAAYAAJ
English: http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4363/pg4363.html.utf8 (Zimmern)
English: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/n/nietzsche/friedrich/n67b/complete.html (Johnston)
Reife des Mannes: das heißt den Ernst wiedergefunden haben, den man als Kind hatte, beim Spiel.
Maturity consists in having rediscovered the seriousness one had as a child at play.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1886), § 94
What? The miracle merely an error of interpretation? A lack of philology?

Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Ernstlich geredet, es giebt gute Gründe zu der Hoffnung, dass alles Dogmatisiren in der Philosophie, so
feierlich, so end- und letztgültig es sich auch gebärdet hat, doch nur eine edle Kinderei und Anfängerei
gewesen sein möge; und die Zeit ist vielleicht sehr nahe, wo man wieder und wieder begreifen wird, was
eigentlich schon ausgereicht hat, um den Grundstein zu solchen erhabenen und unbedingten Philosophen-
Bauwerken abzugeben, welche die Dogmatiker bisher aufbauten,—irgend ein Volks-Aberglaube aus
unvordenklicher Zeit (wie der Seelen-Aberglaube, der als Subjekt- und Ich-Aberglaube auch heute noch
nicht aufgehört hat, Unfug zu stiften).
Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse (1886), Vorrede
The time is perhaps very close at hand, when people will again and again understand just how little has
sufficed to provide the foundation stones for such lofty and unconditional philosophical constructions of the
sort dogmatists have erected up to now—any popular superstition from unimaginably long ago (like the soul-
superstition, which today, in the form of the subject- and ego-superstition about, has still not stopped stirring
up mischief).
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, I. Johnston, trans., modified, Prologue
... der Seelen-Aberglaube, der als Subjekt- und Ich-Aberglaube auch heute noch nicht aufgehört hat, Unfug
zu stiften.
... the soul-superstition, which, in the form of subject- and ego-superstition, has not yet ceased doing
mischief
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Preface
771
Der Kampf gegen Plato, oder, um es verständlicher und für's „Volk” zu sagen, der Kampf gegen den
christlich-kirchlichen Druck von Jahrtausenden—denn Christenthum ist Platonismus für's „Volk”—hat in
Europa eine prachtvolle Spannung des Geistes geschaffen, wie sie auf Erden noch nicht da war: mit einem so
gespannten Bogen kann man nunmehr nach den fernsten Zielen schiessen. Freilich, der europäische Mensch
empfindet diese Spannung als Nothstand; und es ist schon zwei Mal im grossen Stile versucht worden, den
Bogen abzuspannen, einmal durch den Jesuitismus, zum zweiten Male durch die demokratische
Aufklärung:—als welche mit Hülfe der Pressfreiheit und des Zeitunglesens es in der That erreichen dürfte,
dass der Geist sich selbst nicht mehr so leicht als „Noth” empfindet! (Die Deutschen haben das Pulver
erfunden—alle Achtung! aber sie haben es wieder quitt gemacht—sie erfanden die Presse.) Aber wir, die wir
weder Jesuiten, noch Demokraten, noch selbst Deutsche genug sind, wir guten Europäer und freien, sehr
freien Geister—wir haben sie noch, die ganze Noth des Geistes und die ganze Spannung seines Bogens! Und
vielleicht auch den Pfeil, die Aufgabe, wer weiss? das Ziel.
The fight against Plato, or, to put the matter in a way more intelligible to “the people,” the fight against the
thousands of years of pressure from the Christian church—for Christianity is Platonism for “the people”—
created in Europe a splendid tension in the spirit, something unlike anything existing before on earth before.
With such a tensely arched bow, from now on we can shoot for the most distant targets. ... Already there
have been two attempts in the grand style to ease the tension in the bow—the first time with Jesuitism, the
second time with the democratic Enlightenment, through which, with the help of the freedom of the press and
reading newspapers, a state might, in fact, be attained in which the spirit itself is not so easily experienced as
“need”! ... But those of us who are neither Jesuits, nor Democrats, nor even German enough, we good
Europeans and free, very free spirits—we still have the need, the entire spiritual need and the total tension of
its bow!
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, I. Johnston, trans., Preface
“How could something arise out of its opposite? For example, truth out of error? Or the will to truth out of
the will to deception? Or selfless action out of self-seeking? Or the pure sunny look of the wise man out of
greed? ... Things of the highest value must have another origin peculiar to them. They cannot be derived
from this ephemeral, seductive, deceptive, trivial world, from this confusion of madness and desire! Their
basis must lie, by contrast, in the womb of being, in the immortal, in hidden gods, in ‘the thing in itself’—
their basis must lie there, and nowhere else!” This way of shaping an opinion creates the typical prejudice
which enables us to recognize once more the metaphysicians of all ages.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, I. Johnston, trans., § 2
Even the most careful among them [philosophers] has never had the idea of raising doubts right here on the
threshold, where such doubts are surely most essential, even when they promised themselves “de omnibus
dubitandum.”
Just as the act of birth merits little consideration in the procedures and processes of heredity, so there’s little
point in setting up “consciousness” in any significant sense as something opposite to what is instinctual—the
most conscious thinking of a philosopher is led on secretly and forced into particular paths by his instincts.
772
Was dazu reizt, auf alle Philosophen halb misstrauisch, halb spöttisch zu blicken, ist nicht, dass man wieder
und wieder dahinter kommt, wie unschuldig sie sind—wie oft und wie leicht sie sich vergreifen und verirren,
kurz ihre Kinderei und Kindlichkeit—sondern dass es bei ihnen nicht redlich genug zugeht: während sie
allesammt einen grossen und tugendhaften Lärm machen, sobald das Problem der Wahrhaftigkeit auch nur
von ferne angerührt wird. Sie stellen sich sämmtlich, als ob sie ihre eigentlichen Meinungen durch die
Selbstentwicklung einer kalten, reinen, göttlich unbekümmerten Dialektik entdeckt und erreicht hätten (zum
Unterschiede von den Mystikern jeden Rangs, die ehrlicher als sie und tölpelhafter sind—diese reden von
„Inspiration” —): während im Grunde ein vorweggenommener Satz, ein Einfall, eine „Eingebung”, zumeist
ein abstrakt gemachter und durchgesiebter Herzenswunsch von ihnen mit hinterher gesuchten Gründen
vertheidigt wird:—sie sind allesammt Advokaten, welche es nicht heissen wollen, und zwar zumeist sogar
verschmitzte Fürsprecher ihrer Vorurtheile, die sie „Wahrheiten” taufen—und sehr ferne von der Tapferkeit
des Gewissens, das sich dies, eben dies eingesteht, sehr ferne von dem guten Geschmack der Tapferkeit,
welche dies auch zu verstehen giebt, sei es um einen Feind oder Freund zu warnen, sei es aus Uebermuth und
um ihrer selbst zu spotten.
Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse (1886), § 5
They [philosophers] all pose as though their real opinions had been discovered and attained through the self-
evolving of a cold, pure, divinely indifferent dialectic (in contrast to all sorts of mystics, who, fairer and
foolisher, talk of “inspiration”), whereas, in fact, a prejudiced proposition, idea, or “suggestion,” which is
generally their heart’s desire abstracted and refined, is defended by them with arguments sought out after the
event. They are all advocates who do not wish to be regarded as such, generally astute defenders, also, of
their prejudices, which they dub “truths,”—and very far from having the conscience which bravely admits
this to itself, very far from having the good taste of the courage which goes so far as to let this be understood,
perhaps to warn friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Helen Zimmern trans., § 5
I do not believe that a “drive to knowledge” is the father of philosophy, but rather that another drive has, here
as elsewhere, employed understanding (and misunderstanding) as a mere instrument.
Anyone who considers the basic drives of man ... will find that all of them have done philosophy at some
time or other—and that every single one of them would like only too well to represent itself alone as the
ultimate purpose of existence and legitimate master of all the other drives.
A criminal is frequently not equal to his deed: he makes it smaller and slanders it.
“How are synthetic judgments a priori possible?” Kant asked himself—and what really is his answer? “By
virtue of a faculty.” … But is that—an answer? An explanation? Or is it not rather merely a repetition of the
question? How does opium induce sleep? “By virtue of a faculty,” namely the virtus dormitiva, replies the
doctor in Molière,
Quia est in eo virtus dormitiva,
Cujus est natura sensus assoupire.
But such replies belong in comedy, and it is high time to replace the Kantian question, “How are synthetic
judgments a priori possible?” by another question, “Why is belief in such judgments necessary?”—and to
comprehend that such judgments must be believed to be true, for the sake of the preservation of creatures like
ourselves; though they might, of course, be false judgments.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, W. Kauffman, trans. (New York: 1992), § 11
One must, first of all, give the finishing stroke to that ... calamitous atomism which Christianity has taught
best and longest: the soul atomism ... The way is open for new versions and refinements of the soul
hypothesis, and such conceptions as “mortal soul” and “soul as subjective multiplicity” and “soul as social
structure of the drives and affects” want henceforth to be admitted to science.
773
Eyes and fingers speak in its [Physics, insofar as it is based on belief in the senses] favor, visual evidence and
palpableness do, too: this strikes an age with fundamentally plebian tastes as fascinating, persuasive, and
convincing—after all, it follows instinctively the canon of truth of eternally popular sensualism. What is
clear, what is “explained”? Only what can be seen and felt—every problem has to be pursued to that point.
Conversely, the charm of the Platonic way of thinking, which was a noble way of thinking, consisted
precisely in resistance to obvious sense evidence—perhaps among men who enjoyed even stronger and more
demanding senses than our contemporaries, but who knew how to find a higher triumph in remaining masters
of their senses—and this by means of pale, cold, gray concept nets which they threw over the motley whirl of
the senses—the mob of the senses, as Plato said. … “Where man cannot find anything to see or to grasp, he
has no further business”—that is certainly an imperative different from the Platonic one, but it may be the
right imperative for a tough, industrious race of machinists and bridge-builders of the future, who have
nothing but rough work to do.
The external world is the work of our organs? But then our body, as a part of this external world, would be
the work of our organs! But then our organs themselves would be—the work of our organs!
When I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence, ‘I think,’ I find a whole series of daring
assertions, the argumentative proof of which would be difficult, perhaps impossible: for instance, that it is I
who think, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on
the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an ‘ego,’ and finally, that it is already
determined what is to be designated by thinking—that I know what thinking is. For if I had not already
decided within myself what it is, by what standard could I determine whether that which is just happening is
not perhaps ‘willing’ or ‘feeling’? In short, the assertion ‘I think,’ assumes that I compare my state at the
present moment with other states of myself which I know, in order to determine what it is; on account of this
retrospective connection with further ‘knowledge,’ it has, at any rate, no immediate certainty for me.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil § 16 (Helen Zimmern translation)
I shall never tire of pointing out ... that a thought comes when “it” wishes, not when “I” wish, so it is a
mistake to say that “I” is the subject that attaches to the predicate “think.” ... One infers here according to the
grammatical habit “thinking is an activity; every activity requires and agent; consequently—”
Willing seems to be above all something complicated, something that is a unit only as a word—and it is
precisely in this one word that the popular prejudice lurks, which has defeated the always inadequate caution
of philosophers.
Now let us notice what is strangest about the will ... we are at the same time the commanding and the
obeying party. As the obeying party we know the sensations of constraint, compulsion, pressure, resistance,
and motion, which usually begin immediately after the act of will; ... we are accustomed to disregarding this
duality, and to deceiving ourselves about it by the synthetic concept “I.” Consequently, a whole series of
erroneous conclusions and false evaluations has become attached to the act of willing.
Our body is but a social structure composed of many souls...what happens here is what happens in every
well-constructed commonwealth: the governing class identifies itself with the success of the commonwealth.
In all willing it is absolutely a question of commanding and obeying.
774
The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far, it is a sort of rape and perversion
of logic; but the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with just
this nonsense. The desire for “freedom of the will” in the superlative metaphysical sense, which still holds
sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated; the desire to bear the entire and ultimate
responsibility for one’s actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society
involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui, and, with more than Münchhausen’s audacity, to
pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness.
The “unfreedom of the will” is regarded as a problem from two entirely opposite standpoints, but always in a
profoundly personal manner: some will not give up their “responsibility,” their belief in themselves, the
personal right to their merits at any price (the vain races belong to this class). Others, on the contrary, do not
wish to be answerable for anything, or blamed for anything, and owing to an inward self-contempt, seek to
lay the blame for themselves somewhere else.
Take care, philosophers and friends of knowledge, and beware of martyrdom! Of suffering “for the truth’s
sake!”... As though “the truth” were such an innocuous and incompetent creature as to require protectors!
There might be a more laudable truthfulness in every little question mark that you place after your special
words and favorite doctrines (and even after yourselves) than in all the solemn gestures and conclusive
arguments...
Choose the good solitude, the free, playful, light solitude that gives you, too, the right to remain good. How
poisonous, how crafty, how bad, does every long war make one! ... The outcasts of society, the wickedly
persecuted ones... always become in the end, even under the most spiritual masquerade, and perhaps without
being themselves aware of it, sophisticated vengeance-seekers.
The stupidity of moral indignation, which is the unfailing sign in a philosopher that his philosophical sense
of humor has left him.
Every choice human being strives instinctively for a citadel and a secrecy where he is saved from the crowd,
the many, the great majority—where he may forget “men who are the rule,” being their exception—
excepting only the one case in which he is pushed straight to such men by a still stronger instinct, as a seeker
after in the great and exceptional sense. Anyone who, in intercourse with men, does not occasionally glisten
in all the colors of distress, green and gray with disgust, satiety, sympathy, gloominess, and loneliness, is
certainly not a man of elevated tastes.
The long and serious study of the average man—and consequently much disguise, self-overcoming,
familiarity, and bad intercourse (all intercourse is bad intercourse except with one’s equals):—that
constitutes a necessary part of the life-history of every philosopher; perhaps the most disagreeable, odious,
and disappointing part.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Helen Zimmern trans., § 26
Independence is for the very few ... Whoever attempts it ... enters into a labyrinth; he multiplies a thousand
fold the dangers which life brings. No one can see how and where he loses his way, becomes lonely, and is
torn to pieces by some minotaur of conscience. When one like that comes to grief, this happens in a realm so
remote from the comprehension of men that they neither understand nor sympathize. And he cannot go back
any longer.
775
Books for all the world are always foul-smelling books: the smell of small people clings to them.
When one is young one venerates and despises without that art of nuances that constitutes the best gain of
life... The wrathful and reverent attitudes of youth do not seem to permit themselves any rest until they have
forged men and things in such a way that these attitudes nay be vented on them. Later, when the young soul
... finally turns suspiciously against itself, still hot and wild... how it tears itself to pieces impatiently! How it
takes revenge for its long self-delusion... In this transition one punishes oneself with mistrust against one’s
own feelings; one tortures one’s own enthusiasm with doubts; indeed, one experiences even a good
conscience as a danger, as if it were a way of wrapping oneself in veils and the exhaustion of subtler
honesty—and above all one takes sides, takes sides on principle, against youth. Ten years later one
comprehends that all this, too, was still youth.
Es hilft nichts: man muss die Gefühle der Hingebung, der Aufopferung für den Nächsten, die ganze
Selbstentäusserungs-Moral erbarmungslos zur Rede stellen und vor Gericht führen: ebenso wie die Aesthetik
der „interesselosen Anschauung”, unter welcher sich die Entmännlichung der Kunst verführerisch genug
heute ein gutes Gewissen zu schaffen sucht. Es ist viel zu viel Zauber und Zucker in jenen Gefühlen des „für
Andere”, des „nicht für mich”, als dass man nicht nöthig hätte, hier doppelt misstrauisch zu werden und zu
fragen: „sind es nicht vielleicht—Verführungen?”—Dass sie gefallen—Dem, der sie hat, und Dem, der ihre
Früchte geniesst, auch dem blossen Zuschauer,— dies giebt noch kein Argument für sie ab, sondern fordert
gerade zur Vorsicht auf. Seien wir also vorsichtig!
We must mercilessly put in question and bring before the court feelings of devotion, sacrificing for one’s
neighbor, the entire morality of self-renunciation. ... There is much too much magic and sweetness in those
feelings “for others,” “not for myself,” for us not to find it necessary to grow doubly mistrustful here and to
ask, “Are these not perhaps—seductions?”—The fact that those feelings please—the person who has them
and the one who enjoys their fruits, as well as the one who merely looks on—this still provides no argument
for them. On the contrary, that demands immediate caution.
Wäre es nicht an der Zeit, dass die Philosophie dem Gouvernanten-Glauben absagte?
Might it not be time for philosophy to renounce faith in governesses?
Etwas dürfte wahr sein: ob es gleich im höchsten Grade schädlich und gefährlich wäre; ja es könnte selbst
zur Grundbeschaffenheit des Daseins gehören, dass man an seiner völligen Erkenntniss zu Grunde gienge,—
so dass sich die Stärke eines Geistes darnach bemässe, wie viel er von der „Wahrheit” gerade noch aushielte,
deutlicher, bis zu welchem Grade er sie verdünnt, verhüllt, versüsst, verdumpft, verfälscht nöthig hätte.
Something could well be true, although it is at the same time harmful and dangerous to the highest degree. In
fact, it could even be part of the fundamental composition of existence that people are destroyed when they
fully recognize this point—so that the strength of a spirit might be measured by how much it could still
endure of the “truth,” or put more clearly, by the degree it would have to have the truth diluted, sweetened,
muffled, or falsified.
A person who is concealed in this way, who from instinct uses speaking for silence and keeping quiet and
who is tireless in avoiding communication, wants and demands that, instead of him, a mask of him wanders
around in the hearts and heads of his friends.
776
Jeder tiefe Geist braucht eine Maske: mehr noch, um jeden tiefen Geist wächst fortwährend eine Maske,
Dank der beständig falschen, nämlich flachen Auslegung jedes Wortes, jedes Schrittes, jedes Lebens-
Zeichens, das er giebt.
Every profound spirit needs a mask ... owing to the constantly false, namely shallow, interpretation of every
step and every sign of life he gives.
Don’t get stuck on a science, not even if it tempts us with the most precious discoveries apparently reserved
explicitly for us.
Nicht an unsern eignen Tugenden hängen bleiben und als Ganzes das Opfer irgend einer Einzelheit an uns
werden
Don’t get stuck on our own virtues and let our totality become a sacrifice to some particular detail in us.
... our “hospitality,” the danger of dangers for lofty and rich souls, who spread themselves around lavishly,
almost indifferently, and push the virtue of liberality into a vice.
Man muss den schlechten Geschmack von sich abthun, mit Vielen übereinstimmen zu wollen. „Gut” ist nicht
mehr gut, wenn der Nachbar es in den Mund nimmt. Und wie könnte es gar ein „Gemeingut” geben! Das
Wort widerspricht sich selbst: was gemein sein kann, hat immer nur wenig Werth. Zuletzt muss es so stehn,
wie es steht und immer stand: die grossen Dinge bleiben für die Grossen übrig, die Abgründe für die Tiefen,
die Zartheiten und Schauder für die Feinen, und, im Ganzen und Kurzen, alles Seltene für die Seltenen.
One must shed the bad taste of wanting to agree with many. “Good” is no longer good when one’s neighbor
mouths it. And how should there be a “common good”! The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common
always has little value. In the end it must be as it always has been: great things remain for the great, abysses
for the profound, nuances and shudders for the refined, and, in brief, all that is rare for the rare.
They belong with the levellers, these falsely named “free spirits”— as eloquent and prolific writing slaves of
democratic taste and its “modern ideas”: collectively people without solitude, without their own solitude.
In vielen Ländern des Geistes zu Hause, mindestens zu Gaste gewesen; den dumpfen angenehmen Winkeln
immer wieder entschlüpft, in die uns Vorliebe und Vorhass, Jugend, Abkunft, der Zufall von Menschen und
Büchern, oder selbst die Ermüdungen der Wanderschaft zu bannen schienen; voller Bosheit gegen die
Lockmittel der Abhängigkeit, welche in Ehren, oder Geld, oder Ämtern, oder Begeisterungen der Sinne
versteckt liegen; dankbar sogar gegen Noth und wechselreiche Krankheit, weil sie uns immer von irgend
einer Regel und ihrem „Vorurtheil” losmachte … —eine solche Art Menschen sind wir, wir freien Geister!
Having been at home in many countries of the spirit, or at least a guest, having slipped away again and again
from the musty comfortable corners into which preference and prejudice, youth, descent, contingencies of
men and books, or even exhaustion from wandering around seem to have banished us, full of malice against
the enticement of dependency, which lies hidden in honors, or gold, or offices, or sensuous enthusiasm,
thankful even for poverty and richly changing sickness, because they always free us from some rule or other
and its “prejudice” ... —we are that kind of men, we free spirits!
777
Immer war es nicht der Glaube, sondern die Freiheit vom Glauben, jene halb stoische und lächelnde
Unbekümmertheit um den Ernst des Glaubens, was die Sklaven an ihren Herrn, gegen ihre Herrn empört hat.
Die „Aufklärung” empört: der Sklave nämlich will Unbedingtes, er versteht nur das Tyrannische, auch in der
Moral, er liebt wie er hasst, ohne Nuance, bis in die Tiefe, bis zum Schmerz, bis zur Krankheit,—sein vieles
verborgenes Leiden empört sich gegen den vornehmen Geschmack, der das Leiden zu leugnen scheint. Die
Skepsis gegen das Leiden, im Grunde nur eine Attitude der aristokratischen Moral.
It has always been not faith but the freedom from faith, that half-stoical and smiling unconcern with the
seriousness of faith, that enraged slaves in their masters—against their masters. “Enlightenment” enrages: for
the slave wants the unconditional; he understands only what is tyrannical, in morals, too; he loves as he
hates, without nuance, to the depths … his abundant concealed suffering is enraged against the noble taste
that seems to deny suffering.
Es scheint mir, dass zwar der religiöse Instinkt mächtig im Wachsen ist,—dass er aber gerade die theistische
Befriedigung mit tiefem Misstrauen ablehnt.
It seems to me that the religious instinct is, in fact, growing powerfully—but that it is rejecting, with
profound distrust, theistic satisfaction
Ehemals nämlich glaubte man an „die Seele”, wie man an die Grammatik und das grammatische Subjekt
glaubte: man sagte, „Ich” ist Bedingung, „denke” ist Prädikat und bedingt—Denken ist eine Thätigkeit, zu
der ein Subjekt als Ursache gedacht werden muss. Nun versuchte man, mit einer bewunderungswürdigen
Zähigkeit und List, ob man nicht aus diesem Netze heraus könne,—ob nicht vielleicht das Umgekehrte wahr
sei: „denke” Bedingung, „Ich” bedingt; „Ich” also erst eine Synthese, welche durch das Denken selbst
gemacht wird.
Formerly, that is, people believed in “the soul,” as they believed in grammar and the grammatical subject.
They said “I” is the condition, “think” is the predicate and conditioned—thinking is an activity for which a
subject must be thought of as cause. Now, people tried, with an admirable tenacity and trickery, to see
whether they could get out of this net, whether perhaps the opposite might not be true: “think” as the
condition, “I” the conditioned—thus “I” is only a synthesis which is itself created by thinking.
Hat man wohl beachtet, in wiefern zu einem eigentlich religiösen Leben (und sowohl zu seiner
mikroskopischen Lieblings-Arbeit der Selbstprüfung, als zu jener zarten Gelassenheit, welche sich „Gebet”
nennt und eine beständige Bereitschaft für das „Kommen Gottes” ist) der äussere Müssiggang oder Halb-
Müssiggang noth thut, ich meine der Müssiggang mit gutem Gewissen, von Alters her, von Geblüt, dem das
Aristokraten-Gefühl nicht ganz fremd ist, dass Arbeit schändet,—nämlich Seele und Leib gemein macht?
Und dass folglich die moderne, lärmende, Zeit-auskaufende, auf sich stolze, dumm-stolze Arbeitsamkeit,
mehr als alles Übrige, gerade zum „Unglauben” erzieht und vorbereitet?
Has it ever been really noted to what extent a genuinely religious life … requires a leisure class, or half-
leisure—I mean leisure with a good conscience, from way back, by blood, to which the aristocratic feeling
that work disgraces is not altogether alien—the feeling that it makes soul and body common. And that
consequently our modern, noisy, time-consuming industriousness, proud of itself, stupidly proud, educates
and prepares people, more than anything else does, precisely for “unbelief.”
778
I find people who hold to “freethinking” of various kinds and origins, but above all a majority of those whose
industriousness, from generation to generation, has dissolved the religious instincts, so that they have no idea
any more what purpose religions serve and take note of their presence in the world with, as it were, only a
kind of indifferent wonder. They already feel that generous demands are made of them, these good people,
whether from their businesses or from their pleasures, to say nothing of the “Fatherland” and the newspapers
and the “obligations to the family”: it seems that they have no time at all left over for religion; it is especially
unclear to them whether religion involves a new business or a new pleasure.
Man macht sich selten von Seiten frommer oder auch nur kirchlicher Menschen eine Vorstellung davon, wie
viel guter Wille, man könnte sagen, willkürlicher Wille jetzt dazu gehört, dass ein deutscher Gelehrter das
Problem der Religion ernst nimmt; von seinem ganzen Handwerk her (und, wie gesagt, von der
handwerkerhaften Arbeitsamkeit her, zu welcher ihn sein modernes Gewissen verpflichtet) neigt er zu einer
überlegenen, beinahe gütigen Heiterkeit gegen die Religion, zu der sich bisweilen eine leichte
Geringschätzung mischt, gerichtet gegen die „Unsauberkeit” des Geistes, welche er überall dort voraussetzt,
wo man sich noch zur Kirche bekennt. Es gelingt dem Gelehrten erst mit Hülfe der Geschichte (also nicht
von seiner persönlichen Erfahrung aus), es gegenüber den Religionen zu einem ehrfurchtsvollen Ernste und
zu einer gewissen scheuen Rücksicht zu bringen; aber wenn er sein Gefühl sogar bis zur Dankbarkeit gegen
sie gehoben hat, so ist er mit seiner Person auch noch keinen Schritt weit dem, was noch als Kirche oder
Frömmigkeit besteht, näher gekommen: vielleicht umgekehrt. Die praktische Gleichgültigkeit gegen
religiöse Dinge, in welche hinein er geboren und erzogen ist, pflegt sich bei ihm zur Behutsamkeit und
Reinlichkeit zu sublimiren, welche die Berührung mit religiösen Menschen und Dingen scheut; und es kann
gerade die Tiefe seiner Toleranz und Menschlichkeit sein, die ihn vor dem feinen Nothstande ausweichen
heisst, welchen das Toleriren selbst mit sich bringt.—Jede Zeit hat ihre eigene göttliche Art von Naivetät, um
deren Erfindung sie andre Zeitalter beneiden dürfen:—und wie viel Naivetät, verehrungswürdige, kindliche
und unbegrenzt tölpelhafte Naivetät liegt in diesem Überlegenheits-Glauben des Gelehrten, im guten
Gewissen seiner Toleranz, in der ahnungslosen schlichten Sicherheit, mit der sein Instinkt den religiösen
Menschen als einen minderwerthigen und niedrigeren Typus behandelt, über den er selbst hinaus, hinweg,
hinauf gewachsen ist,—er, der kleine anmaassliche Zwerg und Pöbelmann, der fleissig-flinke Kopf- und
Handarbeiter der „Ideen”, der „modernen Ideen”!
We rarely imagine how much good will—one could say how much arbitrary will—is involved nowadays
when a German scholar takes the problem of religion seriously. On the basis of his whole trade (and, as
mentioned, on the basis of the industriousness of the tradesman, which his modern conscience requires of
him) he inclines to a supercilious, almost kindly amusement towards religion, mixed now and then with a
slight contempt for the “uncleanliness” of the spirit which he assumes is present wherever people still profess
their faith in the church. The scholar succeeds only with the help of history (hence not from his own personal
experience) in bringing to religion a reverent seriousness and a certain timid consideration. But even if his
feelings about religion have managed to rise all the way to gratitude towards it, in his own person he hasn’t
yet come a step closer to what still constitutes church and piety: perhaps the reverse is the case. The practical
indifference about religious matters in which he was born and raised tends to sublimate itself in him to
caution and cleanliness, things which avoid contact with religious men and things. And it could well be the
very depth of his tolerance and humanity which tells him to stay out of the way of the complex crises which
tolerance brings with it. Every period has its own divine form of naïveté whose invention other ages may
envy:— and how much naïveté, respectful, childish, and boundlessly foolish naïveté lies in this belief of the
scholar in his own superiority, in the good conscience of his toleration, in the unsuspecting, unsophisticated
certainty with which his instinct treats religious people as a less worthy and lower type, above whom he
himself has grown up, out, and away from—the scholar, the small, presumptuous dwarf and member of the
rabble, the diligent and nimble head-and-hand-worker of “ideas,” “modern ideas”!
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, I. Johnston, trans., modified, § 58
779
It is the deep suspicious fear of an incurable pessimism which compels entire millennia to sink their teeth
into a religious interpretation of existence.
Piety, the “life of God,” seen in this way, would appear as the subtlest and final offspring of the fear of truth,
as an artist’s workshop and intoxication before the most consistent of all falsifications, as the will to
inversion of truth, to untruth at any price.
Religion has the same effect which an Epicurean philosophy has on sufferers of a higher rank: it is
refreshing, refining, makes, as it were, the most of suffering, and in the end even sanctifies and justifies.
One always pays dearly and terribly when religions do not want to be a means of education and cultivation in
the philosopher’s hand but insist on having their own sovereign way, when they themselves want to be
ultimate ends and not means among other means.
Love of one is a barbarism; for it is exercised at the expense of all others.

Love of one man is a barbarity: for it is practiced at the expense of all the rest. Also the love for God.
Anyone who despises himself nonetheless still respects himself as the one doing the despising.
It is dreadful to die of thirst in the sea. Must you then salt your truth so much that it can no longer—quench
your thirst?
“Pity for everyone”— that would hard and tyrannical for you, my neighbor.
In affability there is no hatred for humanity, but for that very reason there is too much contempt for
humanity.
Affability contains no hatred of men, but for that very reason too much contempt for men.
Maturity in a man: that means having found once again that seriousness which man had as a child, in play.
For someone to be ashamed of his immorality: that is a step on the staircase at the end of which he is also
ashamed of his morality
To be ashamed of one’s immorality—that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one’s
morality.
What? A great man? I always see only the actor of his own ideal.
780
For the free spirit, the “pious man of discovery”— the pia fraus is even more contrary to his taste (against his
“piety”) than the impia fraus.
Thanks to music the passions enjoy themselves.

There are no moral phenomena at all, but only moral interpretations of phenomena.
The lawyers defending a criminal are rarely artists enough to turn the beautiful terribleness of his deed to his
advantage.
Anyone who feels himself predestined to observe and not to believe finds all those who believe too noisy and
pushy
What someone is begins to show itself when his talent subsides—when he stops showing what he can do.
Talent is also finery, and finery is also a hiding place.
Behind a remarkable scholar one finds not infrequently a mediocre man, and behind a mediocre artist quite
often—a very remarkable man.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it he does not become a monster.

Seducing one’s neighbor to a good opinion and afterwards believing piously in this opinion—who could
equal women in this art?
“Where the tree of knowledge stands is always paradise”: that’s what the oldest and the most recent serpents
declare.
Objection, digression, a cheerful mistrust, the delight in mockery are signs of health: everything
unconditional belongs to pathology.
Insanity in individuals is something rare—but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
Jesus said to his Jews: “The law was for slaves—love god as I love him, as his son! What do we sons of
God have to do with morality!”
Ultimately one loves one’s desires and not the object one desires.
What philosophers called “a rational foundation for morality” and tried to supply was, seen in the
right light, merely a scholarly variation of the common faith in the prevalent morality; a new means of
expression for this faith.
781
Even apart from ascertaining the truth value of claims like the “categorical imperative,” one can still always
ask: what does such a claim tell us about the man who makes it? There are moralities which are meant to
justify their creator before other men. Other moralities are meant to calm their creator and lead him to be
satisfied with himself. With yet others he wants to crucify himself and humiliate himself. With others he
wants to wreak revenge, with others to conceal himself, with others to transfigure himself and place himself
way up, at a distance. One morality is used by its creator to forget, another to have others forget him or
something about him... Some others, perhaps including Kant, suggest with their morality: “What deserves
respect in me is that I can obey—and you ought not to be different from me.”
Some [moralists], perhaps even Kant as well, want us to understand with their morality: “What is respectable
about me is that I can obey—and things should be no different for you than they are for me”
For them [European thinkers] what was to emerge as the result of their strictest thinking was always already
clearly established.
What is essential … seems to be… that there should be obedience over a long period of time and in a single
direction: given that, something always develops, and always has developed, for whose sake it is worthwhile
to live on earth, for example, virtue, art, music, dance, reason, spirituality.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, § 188, cited in Nehamas, Nietzsche, p. 47
The industrious races complain a great deal about having to tolerate idleness: it was a masterpiece of the
English instinct to make Sunday so holy and so tedious, a form of cleverly invented and shrewdly introduced
fasting, that the Englishman, without being aware of the fact, became eager again for weekdays and
workdays. ... There must be fasts of several kinds, and in every place where powerful impulses and habits
rule, the lawgivers had to take care to insert extra days in the calendar in which such an impulse is placed in
chains and learns once again to go hungry. Seen from a higher viewpoint, the periods when entire races and
ages get afflicted with some moral fanaticism or other look like such imposed times of compulsion and
fasting, during which an impulse learns to cower down and abase itself, but also to cleanse itself and become
sharper. Individual philosophical sects (for example the Stoa in the midst of Hellenistic culture and its
lecherous air heavy with aphrodisiac scents) permit this sort of interpretation as well.
Socrates ... said to himself, “We must follow the instincts, but convince reason to assist in the process with
good reasons.” This was the real falsehood of that great ironist, so rich in secrets. He brought his conscience
to the point where it was satisfied with a kind of trick played on itself. ... Plato ... wanted to use all his
power—the greatest power which a philosopher up to that time had had at his command— to prove that
reason and instinct inherently move to a single goal, to the good, to “God.”
Lack of suspicion and of patience come first—our senses learn late, and never learn completely, to be subtle,
true, and cautious organs of discovery.
A reader nowadays hardly reads the individual words (let alone the syllables) on a page—he’s much more
likely to take about five words out of twenty at random and “guess” on the basis of these five words the
presumed sense they contain.
782
Die Unabhängigkeits-Erklärung des wissenschaftlichen Menschen, seine Emancipation von der Philosophie,
ist eine der feineren Nachwirkungen des demokratischen Wesens und Unwesens: die Selbstverherrlichung
und Selbstüberhebung des Gelehrten steht heute überall in voller Blüthe.
Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, § 204
The declaration of independence of the scientific man, his emancipation from philosophy, is one of the
subtler after-effects of democratic organisation and disorganisation: the self-glorification and self-
conceitedness of the learned man is now everywhere in full bloom.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, § 204 (Helen Zimmern trans.)
Nachdem sich die Wissenschaft mit glücklichstem Erfolge der Theologie erwehrt hat, deren „Magd” sie zu
lange war, ist sie nun in vollem Übermuthe und Unverstande darauf hin aus, der Philosophie Gesetze zu
machen und ihrerseits einmal den „Herrn”—was sage ich! den Philosophen zu spielen.
After science has, with the happiest results, resisted theology, whose “maid” it had been too long, it now
proposes in its wantonness and indiscretion to lay down laws for philosophy, and in its turn to play the
“master.”
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, § 204 (Helen Zimmern trans., modified)
Mein Gedächtniss—das Gedächtniss eines wissenschaftlichen Menschen, mit Verlaub!—strotzt von

Naivetäten des Hochmuths, die ich seitens junger Naturforscher und alter Ärzte über Philosophie und
Philosophen gehört habe.
My memory … teems with the naïvetés of insolence which I have heard about philosophy and philosophers
from young naturalists and old physicians
Es ist in Sonderheit der Anblick jener Mischmasch-Philosophen, die sich „Wirklichkeits-Philosophen” oder
„Positivisten” nennen, welcher ein gefährliches Misstrauen in die Seele eines jungen, ehrgeizigen Gelehrten
zu werfen im Stande ist: das sind ja besten Falls selbst Gelehrte und Spezialisten, man greift es mit
Händen!—das sind ja allesamt Überwundene und unter die Botmäßigkeit der Wissenschaft Zurückgebrachte,
welche irgendwann einmal mehr von sich gewollt haben, ohne ein Recht zu diesem „mehr” und seiner
Verantwortlichkeit zu haben—und die jetzt, ehrsam, ingrimmig, rachsüchtig, den Unglauben an die
Herrenaufgabe und Herrschaftlichkeit der Philosophie mit Wort und Tat repräsentieren.
Those hotch-potch philosophers, who call themselves “realists,” or “positivists,” … are persons who
have been vanquished and brought back again under the dominion of science, who at one time or
another claimed more from themselves, without having a right to the “more” and its responsibility—
and who now, creditably, rancorously, and vindictively, represent in word and deed, disbelief in the
master-task and supremacy of philosophy.
Those hodgepodge philosophers who call themselves “philosophers of reality” or “positivists” … represent,
in word and deed, honorably, resentfully, and vengefully, the unbelief in the masterly task and masterfulness
of philosophy.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, § 204 (Kauffman trans.) p. 313
783
Philosophie allmählich gesunken ist, dieser Rest Philosophie von heute, Misstrauen und Missmuth, wenn
nicht Spott und Mitleiden gegen sich rege macht. Philosophie auf „Erkenntnisstheorie” reduzirt, thatsächlich
nicht mehr als eine schüchterne Epochistik und Enthaltsamkeitslehre: eine Philosophie, die gar nicht über die
Schwelle hinweg kommt und sich peinlich das Recht zum Eintritt verweigert—das ist Philosophie in den
letzten Zügen, ein Ende, eine Agonie, Etwas, das Mitleiden macht. Wie könnte eine solche Philosophie—
herrschen!
Philosophy reduced to a “theory of knowledge,” no more in fact than a diffident science of epochs and
doctrine of forbearance, a philosophy that never even gets beyond the threshold, and rigorously denies itself
the right to enter—that is philosophy in its last throes, an end, an agony, something that awakens pity. How
could such a philosophy—rule!
Philosophy reduced to “theory of knowledge,” in fact no more than a … doctrine of abstinence—a

philosophy that never gets beyond the threshold, and takes pains to deny itself the right to enter—that is
philosophy in its last throes, an end, an agony, something inspiring pity. How could such a philosophy—
dominate!
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, § 204 (Kauffman trans.) p. 313
Der Umfang und der Thurmbau der Wissenschaften ist in’s Ungeheure gewachsen, und damit auch die
Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass der Philosoph schon als Lernender müde wird oder sich irgendwo festhalten und
„spezialisiren” lässt: so dass er gar nicht mehr auf seine Höhe, nämlich zum Überblick, Umblick, Niederblick
kommt. Oder er gelangt zu spät hinauf, dann, wenn seine beste Zeit und-Kraft schon vorüber ist; oder
beschädigt, vergröbert, entartet, so dass sein Blick, sein Gesammt-Werthurtheil wenig mehr bedeutet. Gerade
die Feinheit seines intellektuellen Gewissens lässt ihn vielleicht unterwegs zögern und sich verzögern; er
fürchtet die Verführung zum Dilettanten, zum Tausendfuss und Tausend-Fühlhorn, er weiss es zu gut, dass
Einer, der vor sich selbst die Ehrfurcht verloren hat, auch als Erkennender nicht mehr befiehlt, nicht mehr
führt: er müsste denn schon zum grossen Schauspieler werden wollen, zum philosophischen Cagliostro und
Rattenfänger der Geister, kurz zum Verführer.
The extent and towering structure of the sciences have increased enormously, and therewith also the
probability that the philosopher will grow tired even as a learner, or will attach himself somewhere and
“specialize”: so that he will no longer attain to his elevation, that is to say, to his superspection, his
circumspection, and his despection. Or he gets aloft too late, when the best of his maturity and strength is
past; or when he is impaired, coarsened, and deteriorated, so that his view, his general estimate of things, is
no longer of much importance. It is perhaps just the refinement of his intellectual conscience that makes him
hesitate and linger on the way; he dreads the temptation to become a dilettante, a millipede, a milleantenna;
he knows too well that as a discerner, one who has lost his self-respect no longer commands, no longer leads;
unless he should aspire to become a great play-actor, a philosophical Cagliostro and spiritual rat-catcher—in
short, a misleader.
784
In der That, die Menge hat den Philosophen lange Zeit verwechselt und verkannt, sei es mit dem
wissenschaftlichen Menschen und idealen Gelehrten, sei es mit dem religiös-gehobenen entsinnlichten
„entweltlichten” Schwärmer und Trunkenbold Gottes ; und hört man gar heute Jemanden loben, dafür, dass
er „weise” lebe oder „als ein Philosoph”, so bedeutet es beinahe nicht mehr, als „klug und abseits”. Weisheit:
das scheint dem Pöbel eine Art Flucht zu sein, ein Mittel und Kunststück, sich gut aus einem schlimmen
Spiele herauszuziehn; aber der rechte Philosoph—so scheint es uns, meine Freunde?—lebt
„unphilosophisch” und „unweise”, vor Allem unklug, und fühlt die Last und Pflicht zu hundert Versuchen
und Versuchungen des Lebens:—er risquirt sich beständig, er spielt das schlimme Spiel.
The philosopher has long been mistaken and confused by the multitude, either with the scientific man and
ideal scholar, or with the religiously elevated, desensualized, desecularized visionary and God-intoxicated
man; and even yet when one hears anybody praised, because he lives “wisely,” or “as a philosopher,” it
hardly means anything more than “prudently and apart.” Wisdom: that seems to the populace to be a kind of
flight, a means and artifice for withdrawing successfully from a bad game; but the genuine philosopher …
feels the obligation and burden of a hundred attempts and temptations of life—he risks himself constantly, he
plays this bad game.
In comparison with a genius, that is, with a being who either engenders or gives birth, taking both words in
their highest sense—the scholar, the average scientific man, always has something of the old maid about him,
for, like the old maid, he doesn’t understand the two most valuable things men do. For both scholars and old
maids we concede, as if by way of compensation, that they are respectable.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, I. Johnston, trans., modified, § 206
What is the scientific man? Firstly, a commonplace type of man, with commonplace virtues: that is to say, a
non-ruling, non-authoritative, and non-self-sufficient type of man.
The scientific man … requires … perpetual ratification of his value and usefulness, with which the inward
distrust which lies at the bottom of the heart of all dependent men and gregarious animals, has again and
again to be overcome.
The average scientific man ... has an instinct for people like him and for what people like him require ... that
sunshine of a good name, that constant stamp of approval of his value and his utility, which is necessary to
overcome again and again the inner suspicion at the bottom of the hearts of all dependent men and herd
animals.
... that Jesuitry of mediocrity, which spontaneously works for the destruction of the uncommon man
and seeks to break every arched bow or—even better!— to relax it.
The objective man ... is no “end in himself.” The objective man is, in fact, a mirror: accustomed to submit
before everything which wishes to be known, without any delight other than that available in knowing
and “mirroring back.” ... His mirror soul, always smoothing itself out, no longer knows how to affirm or to
deny.
785
What is still left of his [the objective man’s] “person” seems to him accidental, often a matter of chance, even
more often disruptive, so much has he become a conduit and reflection for strange shapes and experiences.
He reflects about “himself” with effort and is not infrequently wrong. He readily gets himself confused with
others. He makes mistakes concerning his own needs, and it is only here that he is coarse and careless.
Perhaps he gets anxious about his health or about the pettiness and stifling atmosphere of wife and friend or
about the lack of companions and society—indeed, he forces himself to think about his anxieties: but it’s no
use! His thoughts have already wandered off to some more general example, and tomorrow he knows as little
as he knew yesterday about how he might be helped. He has lost seriousness for himself—as well as time.
He [The objective man] is cheerful, not from any lack of need, but from a lack of fingers and handles
for his own needs.
The objective man is an instrument, an expensive, easily damaged and blunted tool for measurement and an
artful arrangement of mirrors, something we should take care of and respect. But he is no goal, no way out or
upward, no complementary human being in whom the rest of existence is justified.
The objective man, … the ideal man of learning in whom the scientific instinct blossoms forth fully after
a thousand complete and partial failures, is assuredly one of the most costly instruments that exist, but
his place is in the hand of one who is more powerful. He is only an instrument, we may say, he is a
mirror—he is no “purpose in himself.” The objective man is in truth a mirror accustomed to prostration
before everything that wants to be known, with such desires only as knowing or “reflecting” implies—he
waits until something comes, and then expands himself sensitively, so that even the light footsteps and
gliding-past of spiritual beings may not be lost on his surface and film. Whatever “personality” he still
possesses seems to him accidental, arbitrary, or still oftener, disturbing, so much has he come to regard
himself as the passage and reflection of outside forms and events. He calls up the recollection of “himself”
with an effort, and not infrequently wrongly, he readily confounds himself with other persons, he makes
mistakes with regard to his own needs, and here only is he unrefined and negligent. Perhaps he is troubled
about the health, or the pettiness and confined atmosphere of wife and friend, or the lack of companions and
society—indeed, he sets himself to reflect on his suffering, but in vain! His thoughts already rove away to the
more general case, and tomorrow he knows as little as he knew yesterday how to help himself. He does not
now take himself seriously and devote time to himself. He is serene, not from lack of trouble, but from lack
of capacity for grasping and dealing with his trouble.
As a human being he becomes all to easily the caput mortuum of these virtues.
Es will mir immer mehr so scheinen, dass der Philosoph als ein nothwendiger Mensch des Morgens und
Übermorgens sich jederzeit mit seinem Heute in Widerspruch befunden hat und befinden musste: sein Feind
war jedes Mal das Ideal von Heute. Bisher haben alle diese ausserordentlichen Förderer des Menschen,
welche man Philosophen nennt, und die sich selbst selten als Freunde der Weisheit, sondern eher als
unangenehme Narren und gefährliche Fragezeichen fühlten —, ihre Aufgabe, ihre harte, ungewollte,
unabweisliche Aufgabe, endlich aber die Grösse ihrer Aufgabe darin gefunden, das böse Gewissen ihrer Zeit
zu sein. Indem sie gerade den Tugenden der Zeit das Messer vivisektorisch auf die Brust setzten, verriethen
sie, was ihr eignes Geheimniss war: um eine neue Grösse des Menschen zu wissen, um einen neuen
ungegangenen Weg zu seiner Vergrösserung.
786
The philosopher, who is necessarily a man of tomorrow and the day after, has in every age found and had to
find himself in contradiction to his today: his enemy every time was the ideal of the day. Up to now all these
extraordinary promoters of humanity whom we call philosophers and who themselves seldom felt that they
were friends of wisdom but rather embarrassing fools and dangerous question marks have found their work,
their hard, unsought for, inescapable task—but finally the greatness of their work—was for them to be the
bad consciences of their age. By applying the knife of vivisection to the chest of the virtues of the day, they
revealed what their own secret was—to know a new greatness for man, to know a new untrodden path to
increasing his greatness.
Jedes Mal deckten sie auf, wie viel Heuchelei, Bequemlichkeit, Sich-gehen-lassen und Sichfallen-lassen, wie
viel Lüge unter dem bestgeehrten Typus ihrer zeitgenössischen Moralität versteckt, wie viel Tugend überlebt
sei
Philosophers ... exposed how much hypocrisy, laziness, letting oneself go, letting oneself fall, how many lies
lay hidden under the most highly honored type of their contemporary morality.
Angesichts einer Welt der „modernen Ideen”, welche Jedermann in eine Ecke und „Spezialität” bannen
möchte, würde ein Philosoph, falls es heute Philosophen geben könnte, gezwungen sein, die Grösse des
Menschen, den Begriff „Grösse” gerade in seine Umfänglichkeit und Vielfältigkeit, in seine Ganzheit im
Vielen zu setzen.
Faced with a world of “modern ideas” which would like to banish everyone into a corner and a
“specialty,” a philosopher, if there could be a philosopher these days, would be compelled to establish
the greatness of mankind, the idea of “greatness,” on the basis of his own particular extensive range
and multiplicity, his own totality in the midst of diversity.
Heute umgekehrt, wo in Europa das Heerdenthier allein zu Ehren kommt und Ehren vertheilt, wo die
„Gleichheit der Rechte” allzuleicht sich in die Gleichheit im Unrechte umwandeln könnte: ich will sagen in
gemeinsame Bekriegung alles Seltenen, Fremden, Bevorrechtigten, des höheren Menschen, der höheren
Seele, der höheren Pflicht, der höheren Verantwortlichkeit, der schöpferischen Machtfülle und
Herrschaftlichkeit.
Today, when the herd animal in Europe is the only one who attains and distributes honors, when “equality of
rights” all too easily can get turned around into equality of wrongs—what I mean is into a common war
against everything rare, strange, privileged, the higher man, the higher soul, the higher duty, the higher
responsibility, the creative fullness of power and mastery
… Herr seiner Tugenden

... lord of his virtues
Today the concept of “greatness” entails … wanting to be by oneself, being capable of being different,
standing alone.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Kauffman trans., § 212
… a common war on all that is rare, strange, or privileged, on the higher man, the higher soul, the higher
duty, the higher responsibility, and the abundance of creative power and masterfulness
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Kauffman trans., § 212
787
[Philosophers have always] uncovered how much hypocrisy … was concealed under the best honored type of
their contemporary morality.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, § 212, cited in Kauffman, Nietzsche, p. 371
[For most thinkers and scholars] thinking itself is considered something slow, hesitant, almost laborious, and
often enough “worth the sweat of the noble”— but under no circumstances something light, divine, closely
related to dancing and high spirits!
For a philosopher to arise, many generations must have done the preparatory work. Every single one of his
virtues must have been acquired, cared for, passed on, assimilated
Morality as a pose—that offends our taste nowadays. This is also a step forward, just as it was a step
forward for our fathers when religion as a pose finally offended their taste.
Es ist die Musik in unserm Gewissen, der Tanz in unserm Geiste, zu dem alle Puritaner-Litanei, alle Moral-
Predigt und Biedermännerei nicht klingen will.
It’s the music in our conscience, the dance in our spirit, which wants to make all Puritan litanies, all
moral sermons, and petty bourgeois respectability sound out of tune.
Let us be careful in dealing with those who attach great importance to being credited with moral tact and
subtlety in moral discernment! They never forgive us if they have once made a mistake before us.
The practice of judging and condemning morally, is the favorite revenge of the intellectually shallow on
those who are less so.
Lofty spirituality itself exists only as the ultimate product of moral qualities ... it is a synthesis of all qualities
attributed to the “merely moral” man ... lofty spirituality is precisely the spiritualizing of justice...
The greater part of what interests and charms higher natures, and more refined and fastidious tastes, seems
absolutely “uninteresting” to the average man—if, notwithstanding, he perceive devotion to these interests,
he calls it désintéresse, and wonders how it is possible to act “disinterestedly.” ... the naked and candidly
reasonable truth [is] that “disinterested” action is very interesting and “interested” action, provided that...
[The dot dot dot is in the original, so we can fill in for ourselves something like “provided that one has attained to the higher nature with its higher
interests”]
In so far as the most considerable part of human civilization hitherto has just been semi-barbarity, the
“historical sense” implies almost the sense and instinct for everything, the taste and tongue for everything:
whereby it immediately proves itself to be an ignoble sense.
Whether it be hedonism, pessimism, utilitarianism, or eudaemonism, all those modes of thinking which
measure the worth of things according to pleasure and pain, ... are plausible modes of thought and naïvetés,
which every one conscious of creative powers and an artist’s conscience will look down upon with scorn ...
we regard your seriousness as more dangerous than any kind of levity. ... Well-being, as you understand it—
is certainly not a goal; it seems to us ... a condition which at once renders man ludicrous and contemptible.
788
In man, creator and created are united; in man in the material, the fragment, the surplus, the clay, the mud,
the foolishness, the chaos; but in man also is the creator, the sculptor, the wielder of the hammer, the
beholder of divinity, the seventh day.
In man creature and creator are united: in man there is not only matter, shred, excess, clay, mire, folly,
chaos; but there is also the creator, the sculptor, the hardness of the hammer, the divinity of the spectator, and
the seventh day—do ye understand this contrast? And that your sympathy for the “creature in man” applies
to that which has to be fashioned, bruised, forged, stretched, roasted, annealed, refined—to that which must
necessarily suffer, and is meant to suffer?
Is not a moralist the opposite of a Puritan? That is to say, as a thinker who regards morality as questionable,
as worthy of interrogation, in short, as a problem?
Nietzsche, describing the English utilitarians, Beyond Good and Evil, § 228 (Helen Zimmern trans.)
The power of the spirit to appropriate foreign elements reveals itself in a strong tendency to assimilate the
new to the old, to simplify the manifold, to overlook or repudiate the absolutely contradictory; just as it
arbitrarily re-underlines, makes prominent, and falsifies for itself certain traits and lines in the foreign
elements, in every portion of the “outside world.” Its object thereby is the incorporation of new
“experiences,” the assortment of new things in the old arrangements—in short, growth; or more properly, the
feeling of growth, the feeling of increased power—is its object. This same will has at its service an
apparently opposed impulse of the spirit, a suddenly adopted preference of ignorance, of arbitrary shutting
out, a closing of windows, an inner denial of this or that, a prohibition to approach, a sort of defensive
attitude against much that is knowable, a contentment with obscurity, with the shutting-in horizon, an
acceptance and approval of ignorance: as that which is all necessary according to the degree of its
appropriating power, its “digestive power,” to speak figuratively (and in fact “the spirit” resembles a stomach
more than anything else).
If woman had been a thinking creature, she should certainly, as cook for thousands of years, have discovered
the most important physiological facts, and should likewise have got possession of the healing art! Through
bad female cooks—through the entire lack of reason in the kitchen—the development of mankind has been
longest retarded and most interfered with: even today matters are very little better.
This is age of the masses, who prostrate themselves before everything built on a massive scale.
Only a great idea confers greatness on an act or a cause.

In the depth of their souls they could not rid themselves of a cautious disgust with the anxiety, emptiness,
blaring, and devilish squabbling ...
Just as everything loves its own metaphorical likeness, so the German loves the clouds and everything
associated with a lack of clarity, with becoming, with twilight, with dampness: any kind of uncertainty,
shapelessness, shifting around, or developing he senses as something “profound.”
789
How crudely and naively people confused two masters of the art of prose with each other—one whose words
drip down, hesitant and cold, as if from the roof of a damp cavern—he’s relying on their dull sound and
echo—and the other who handles his language like a flexible sword and feels from his arm down to his toes
the dangerous joy in the excessively sharp, shimmering blade that wants to bite, hiss, and cut.
I, too, during a short and risky stay in a very infected region did not remain wholly free of this illness and,
like all the world, began to have ideas about things which were no concern of mine, the first sign of the
political infection.
In the struggle with the English mechanistic dumbing down of the world, Hegel and Schopenhauer (along
with Goethe) were unanimous.
What’s lacking in England, and what has always been missing— ... a real power of spirituality, a real
profundity of spiritual insight, in short, philosophy.
... the plebeian quality of modern ideas

Confronted with the raging stupidity and the noisy chattering of the democratic bourgeois, they keep their
ears plugged.
Every enhancement of the type “man” has so far been the work of an aristocratic society
The essential characteristic of a good and healthy aristocracy, however, is that it experiences itself not as a
function (whether of the monarchy or the commonwealth) but as their meaning and highest justification—
that it therefore accepts with a good conscience the sacrifice of untold human beings who, for its sake, must
be reduced and lowered to partial and incomplete human beings, to slaves, to instruments. Their fundamental
faith simply has to be that society must not exist for society’s sake but only as the foundation and scaffolding
on which a choice type of human being is able to raise itself to its higher task and to a higher state of being.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, § 258 (W. Kaufmann, trans.)
Distinctions of moral worth everywhere were first applied to men and later were established for actions.
The noble kind of man experiences himself as a person who determines value and does not need to have
other people’s approval. He makes the judgment “What is harmful to me is harmful in itself.” He understands
himself as something which in general first confers honor on things, as someone who creates values.
Whatever he recognizes in himself he honors. Such a morality is self-glorification. In the foreground stands
the feeling of fullness, the power which wants to overflow, the happiness of high tension, the consciousness
of riches which wants to give and deliver:— the noble man also helps the unfortunate, however not, or hardly
ever, from pity, but more in response to an impulse which the excess of power produces.
According to slave-morality, therefore, the “evil” man arouses fear; according to master-morality, it is
precisely the “good” man who arouses fear and seeks to arouse it, while the bad man is regarded as the
despicable being.
790
[The vain:] beings who seek to arouse a good opinion of themselves which they themselves do not possess—
and consequently also do not “deserve,”—and who yet believe in this good opinion afterwards.
[The noble man] will say, for instance: “I may be mistaken about my value, and on the other hand may
nevertheless demand that my value should be acknowledged by others precisely as I rate it:—that, however,
is not vanity (but self-conceit…)”
From time immemorial, in all social strata in any way dependent, the ordinary man was only that which he
passed for:—not being at all accustomed to fix values, he did not assign even to himself any other value than
that which his master assigned to him (it is the peculiar right of masters to create values). It may be looked
upon as the result of an extraordinary atavism, that the ordinary man, even at present, is still always waiting
for an opinion about himself, and then instinctively submitting himself to it; yet by no means only to a
“good” opinion, but also to a bad and unjust one
The vain person rejoices over every good opinion which he hears about himself (quite apart from the point of
view of its usefulness, and equally regardless of its truth or falsehood), just as he suffers from every bad
opinion: for he subjects himself to both, he feels himself subjected to both, by that oldest instinct of
subjection which breaks forth in him.
It is difficult to preach, this morality of mediocrity! It may never admit what it is and what it wants! It must
speak about restraint and worth and duty and love of one’s neighbor.
Die Feinheit, Güte und Höhe einer Seele wird gefährlich auf die Probe gestellt, wenn Etwas an ihr vorüber
geht, das ersten Ranges ist, aber noch nicht von den Schaudern der Autorität vor zudringlichen Griffen und
Plumpheiten gehütet wird: Etwas, das, unabgezeichnet, unentdeckt, versuchend, vielleicht willkürlich
verhüllt und verkleidet, wie ein lebendiger Prüfstein seines Weges geht.
The refinement, good, and loftiness of a soul are put to a dangerous test when something goes past in front of
it which is of the first rank, but which is not yet protected by the shudders of authority from prying clutches
and crudities: something that goes its way unmarked, undiscovered, tempting, perhaps arbitrarily disguised
and hidden.
Zu wessen Aufgabe und Übung es gehört, Seelen auszuforschen, der wird sich in mancherlei Formen gerade
dieser Kunst bedienen, um den letzten Werth einer Seele, die unverrückbare eingeborne Rangordnung, zu der
sie gehört, festzustellen: er wird sie auf ihren Instinkt der Ehrfurcht hin auf die Probe stellen.
The man whose task and practice is to investigate souls will use precisely this art in a number of different
forms in order to establish the ultimate value of a soul, the unalterable innate order of rank to which it
belongs: he will put it to the test for its instinct of reverence.
791
Es ist Viel erreicht, wenn der grossen Menge (den Flachen und Geschwind-Därmen aller Art) jenes Gefühl
endlich angezüchtet ist, dass sie nicht an Alles rühren dürfe; dass es heilige Erlebnisse giebt, vor denen sie
die Schuhe auszuziehn und die unsaubere Hand fern zu halten hat,—es ist beinahe ihre höchste Steigerung
zur Menschlichkeit. Umgekehrt wirkt an den sogenannten Gebildeten, den Gläubigen der „modernen Ideen”,
vielleicht Nichts so ekelerregend, als ihr Mangel an Scham, ihre bequeme Frechheit des Auges und der Hand,
mit der von ihnen an Alles gerührt, geleckt, getastet wird; und es ist möglich, dass sich heut im Volke, im
niedern Volke, namentlich unter Bauern, immer noch mehr relative Vornehmheit des Geschmacks und Takt
der Ehrfurcht vorfindet, als bei der zeitunglesenden Halbwelt des Geistes, den Gebildeten.
Much has been achieved when in the great mass of people (the shallow ones and all sorts of people with
diarrhea) that feeling has finally been cultivated that they are not permitted to touch everything, that there are
sacred experiences before which they have to pull off their shoes and which they must keep their dirty hands
off—this is almost the highest intensification of their humanity. By contrast, perhaps nothing makes the so-
called educated people, those who have faith in “modern ideas,” so nauseating as their lack of shame, the
comfortable impudence in their eyes and hands, with which they touch, lick, and grope everything, and it is
possible that these days among a people, one still finds in the common folk, particularly among the peasants,
more relative nobility of taste and tactful reverence than among the newspaper-reading demi-monde of the
spirit, among the educated.
The refinement, goodness, and loftiness of a soul are put to a perilous test when something passes by that is
of the highest rank, but is not yet protected by the awe of authority.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Helen Zimmern, trans., § 263
Much has been achieved when the sentiment has been at last instilled into the masses (the shallow-pates and
the boobies of every kind) that they are not allowed to touch everything, that there are holy experiences
before which they must take off their shoes and keep away the unclean hand—it is almost their highest
advance towards humanity. On the contrary, in the so-called cultured classes, the believers in “modern
ideas,” nothing is perhaps so repulsive as their lack of shame, the easy insolence of eye and hand with which
they touch, taste, and finger everything; and it is possible that even yet there is more relative nobility of taste,
and more tact for reverence among the people, among the lower classes of the people, especially among
peasants, than among the newspaper-reading demimonde of intellect, the cultured class.
Der Egoismus gehört zum Wesen der vornehmen Seele.

Egoism belongs to the essence of a noble soul.
The Chinese have a proverb which mothers even teach their children: “siao-sin” (“make thy heart small”).
This is the essentially fundamental tendency in latter-day civilizations. I have no doubt that an ancient Greek,
also, would first of all remark the self-dwarfing in us Europeans of today—in this respect alone we should
immediately be “distasteful” to him.
The more similar, the more ordinary people, have always had and are still having the advantage; the more
select, more refined, more unique, and difficultly comprehensible, are liable to stand alone; they succumb to
accidents in their isolation, and seldom propagate themselves. One must appeal to immense opposing forces,
in order to thwart this natural, all-too-natural progressus in simile, the evolution of man to the similar, the
ordinary, the average, the gregarious—to the ignoble!
792
Wer das Hohe eines Menschen nicht sehen will, blickt um so schärfer nach dem, was niedrig und
Vordergrund an ihm ist—und verräth sich selbst damit.
He who does not wish to see the height of a man, looks all the more sharply at what is low in him, and in the
foreground.
Schlimm genug! Wieder die alte Geschichte! Wenn man sich sein Haus fertig gebaut hat, merkt man,
unversehens Etwas dabei gelernt zu haben, das man schlechterdings hätte wissen.
It is too bad! Always the old story! When a man has finished building his house, he finds that he has learnt
unawares something which he ought absolutely to have known before he—began to build. The eternal, fatal
“Too late!” The melancholia of everything completed!
[My interpretation: Here Nietzsche is talking about education and building of character, and probably with reference to himself. Learning later in life
what is noble and ignoble in character, one finds that in large part one’s character is already constructed, and cannot be easily changed.]
Es ist eine feine und zugleich vornehme Selbstbeherrschung, gesetzt, dass man überhaupt loben will, immer
nur da zu loben, wo man nicht übereinstimmt:—im andern Falle würde man ja sich selbst loben, was wider
den guten Geschmack geht—freilich eine Selbstbeherrschung, die einen artigen Anlass und Anstoss bietet,
um beständig missverstanden zu werden. Man muss, um sich diesen wirklichen Luxus von Geschmack und
Moralität gestatten zu dürfen, nicht unter Tölpeln des Geistes leben, vielmehr unter Menschen, bei denen
Missverständnisse und Fehlgriffe noch durch ihre Feinheit belustigen,—oder man wird es theuer büssen
müssen!
If one wishes to praise at all, it is a delicate and at the same time a noble self-control, to praise only where
one does not agree—otherwise in fact one would praise oneself, which is contrary to good taste:—a self-
control, to be sure, which offers excellent opportunity and provocation to constant misunderstanding. To be
able to allow oneself this veritable luxury of taste and morality, one must not live among intellectual
imbeciles, but rather among men whose misunderstandings and mistakes amuse by their refinement.
The noble soul has reverence for itself.

Nur wer sich wandelt, bleibt mit mir verwandt.

Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse
Only those who change remain akin to me.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, “Aftersong”
Zur Genealogie der Moral [The Genealogy of Morals] (1887)

file:////H:/eBooks/Nietzsche - KSA.pdf s. 4071
Ein Aphorismus, rechtschaffen geprägt und ausgegossen, ist damit, dass er abgelesen ist, noch nicht
„entziffert”; vielmehr hat nun erst dessen Auslegung zu beginnen, zu der es einer Kunst der Auslegung
bedarf.
Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral, Vorrede, § 8
An aphorism, honestly stamped and molded, has not yet been “deciphered” once we have read it over; rather,
its exegesis—for which an art of exegesis is needed—has only just begun.
Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, Preface, § 8
We have never sought ourselves—how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves?
Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals
793
Whereas every noble morality springs from a triumphant acceptance and affirmation of oneself, slave
morality is in its very essence a negation of everything “outside” and “different,” of whatever is “not
oneself”: and this negation is its creative deed. This reversal of the perspective of valuation—this necessary
determination by the outside rather than by oneself—is typical of ressentiment.
Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, Part I, Section 8, as cited in Max Scheler, Ressentiment (1961), p. 4
Vergesslichkeit ist keine blosse vis inertiae, wie die Oberflächlichen glauben, sie ist vielmehr ein aktives, in
strengsten Sinne positives Hemmungsvermögen.
Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral, § 2.1
These English psychologists—what do they really want? We find them, willingly or unwillingly, always at
the same work, that is, hauling the partie honteuse [shameful part] of our inner world into the foreground, in
order to look right there for the truly effective and operative factor which has determined our development,
the very place where man’s intellectual pride least wishes to find it …—what is it that really drives these
psychologists always in this particular direction? Is it a secret, malicious, common instinct, perhaps one
which cannot be acknowledged even to itself, for belittling humanity?
Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals
Ascetic ideals reveal so many bridges to independence that a philosopher is bound to rejoice and clap his
hands when he hears the story of all those resolute men who one day said No to all servitude and went into
some desert.
Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals § 3.7, W. Kaufmann, trans., Basic Writings of Nietzsche (1992), p. 543
Was bedeutet demnach das asketische Ideal bei einem Philosophen? Meine Antwort ist—man wird es längst
errathen haben: der Philosoph lächelt bei seinem Anblick einem Optimum der Bedingungen höchster und
kühnster Geistigkeit zu,—er verneint nicht damit „das Dasein”, er bejaht darin vielmehr sein Dasein und nur
sein Dasein, und dies vielleicht bis zu dem Grade, dass ihm der frevelhafte Wunsch nicht fern bleibt: pereat
mundus, fiat philosophia, fiat philosophus, fiam!
What, then, is the meaning of the ascetic ideal in the case of a philosopher? My answer is: … the philosopher
sees in it an optimum condition for the highest and boldest spirituality and smiles—he does not deny
“existence,” he rather affirms his existence and only his existence, and this perhaps to the point at which he is
not far from harboring the impious wish: pereat mundus, fiat philosophia, fiat philosophus, fiam!—
Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals § 3.7, W. Kaufmann, trans., Basic Writings of Nietzsche (1992), pp. 543-544
Das aber, dem Heraklit auswich, ist das Gleiche noch, dem wir jetzt aus dem Wege gehn: der Lärm und das
Demokraten-Geschwätz der Ephesier, ihre Politik, ihre Neuigkeiten vom „Reich” (Persien, man versteht
mich), ihr Markt-Kram von „Heute”,—denn wir Philosophen brauchen zu allererst vor Einem Ruhe: vor
allem „Heute”. Wir verehren das Stille, das Kalte, das Vornehme, das Ferne, das Vergangne, Jegliches
überhaupt, bei dessen Aspekt die Seele sich nicht zu vertheidigen und zuzuschnüren hat,—Etwas, mit dem
man reden kann, ohne laut zu reden.
That which Heraclitus avoided, however, is still the same at that which we shun today: the noise and
democratic chatter of the Ephesians, their politics, their latest news of the “Empire,” … their market
business of “today”—for we philosophers need to be spared one thing above all: everything to do with
“today.” We reverence what is still, cold, noble, distant, past, and in general everything in the face of
which the soul does not have to defend itself and wrap itself up.
Jener dort spricht selten anders als heiser: hat er sich vielleicht heiser gedacht?
Has he perhaps thought himself hoarse?
794
Dieser Dritte da redet aufdringlich, er tritt zu nahe uns an den Leib, sein Athem haucht uns an,—
unwillkürlich schliessen wir den Mund, obwohl es ein Buch ist, durch das er zu uns spricht: der Klang seines
Stils sagt den Grund davon,—dass er keine Zeit hat, dass er schlecht an sich selber glaubt, dass er heute oder
niemals mehr zu Worte kommt.
A third person speaks importunately: … his style betrays his reason: he has no time to waste, he has little
faith in himself, he must speak today or never.
Ein Geist aber, der seiner selbst gewiss ist, redet leise; er sucht die Verborgenheit, er lässt auf sich warten.
A spirit that is sure of itself speaks softly; it seeks concealment; it keeps people waiting.
Sie verlangen zuletzt wenig genug, diese Philosophen, ihr Wahlspruch ist „wer besitzt, wird besessen”:—
nicht, wie ich wieder und wieder sagen muss, aus einer Tugend, aus einem verdienstlichen Willen zur
Genügsamkeit und Einfalt, sondern weil es ihr oberster Herr so von ihnen verlangt, klug und unerbittlich
verlangt: als welcher nur für Eins Sinn hat und Alles, Zeit, Kraft, Liebe, Interesse nur dafür sammelt, nur
dafür aufspart.
Ultimately they ask for little enough, these philosophers: their motto is “he who possesses is possessed”—
not, as I must say again and again, from virtue, from a laudable will to contentment and simplicity, but
because their supreme lord demands this of them, prudently and inexorably: he is concerned with one thing
alone, and assembles and saves up everything—time, energy, love, and interest—only for that one thing.
Diese Art Mensch liebt es nicht, durch Feindschaften gestört zu werden, auch durch Freundschaften nicht: sie
vergisst oder verachtet leicht. Es dünkt ihr ein schlechter Geschmack, den Märtyrer zu machen; „für die
Wahrheit zu leiden”—das überlässt sie den Ehrgeizigen und Bühnenhelden des Geistes und wer sonst Zeit
genug dazu hat (—sie selbst, die Philosophen, haben Etwas für die Wahrheit zu thun). Sie machen einen
sparsamen Verbrauch von grossen Worten; man sagt, dass ihnen selbst das Wort „Wahrheit” widerstehe: es
klinge grossthuerisch.
A philosopher …thinks it in bad taste to play the martyr; “to suffer for the truth”—he leaves that to the
ambitious and the stage heroes of the spirit and to anyone else who has the time for it (the philosophers
themselves have something to do for the truth). They use big words sparingly; … they dislike the very word
“truth”: it sounds too grandiloquent.
795
Let us compress the facts into a few brief formulas: to begin with, the philosophic spirit always had to use as
a mask and cocoon the previously established types of contemplative man—priest, sorcerer, soothsayer, and
in any case a religious type—in order to be able to exist at all: the ascetic ideal for a long time served the
philosopher as a form in which to appear, as a precondition of existence—he had to represent it so as to be
able to be a philosopher; he had to believe in order to be able to represent it. The peculiar, withdrawn attitude
of the philosopher, world denying, hostile to life, suspicious of the senses, freed from sensuality, which has
been maintained down to the most modern times and has become virtually the philosopher’s pose par
excellence—is above all a result of the emergency conditions under which philosophy arose and survived at
all; for the longest time, philosophy would not have been possible at all on earth without ascetic wraps and
cloaks, without an ascetic self-misunderstanding. To put it vividly: the ascetic priest provided until the most
modern times the repulsive and gloomy caterpillar form in which alone the philosopher could live and creep
about. Has all this really altered? Has that many-colored and dangerous winged creature, the “spirit” which
this caterpillar concealed, really been unfettered at last and released into the light, thanks to a sunnier,
warmer, brighter world? Is there sufficient pride, daring, courage, self-confidence available today, sufficient
will of the spirit, will to responsibility, freedom of will, for “the philosopher” to be henceforth possible on
earth?
Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals § 3.10
The proficiency of our finest scholars, their heedless industry, their heads smoking day and night, their very
craftsmanship; how often the real meaning of all this lies in the desire to keep something hidden from
oneself!
Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, W. Kauffmann, trans., § 3.23, Basic Writings, p. 583
Götzen-Dämmerung [Twilight of the Idols] (1888)

German: file:////H:/eBooks/Nietzsche - KSA.pdf p. 4227
German: http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Nietzsche,+Friedrich/G%C3%B6tzen-D%C3%A4mmerung
English: http://www.lexido.com/EBOOK_TEXTS/TWILIGHT_OF_THE_IDOLS_.aspx?S=1
... imprisoned among all sorts of terrible concepts

Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
‘You run ahead? Are you doing it as a shepherd? Or as an exception? A third case would be the fugitive.
First question of conscience.’
‘Are you genuine? Or merely an actor? A representative? Or that which is represented? In the end, perhaps
you are merely a copy of an actor. Second question of conscience.
‘Are you one who looks on? Or one who lends a hand? Or one who looks away and walks off? Third
question of conscience.’
‘Do you want to walk along? Or walk ahead? Or walk by yourself? One must know what one wants and
that one wants. Fourth question of conscience.’
‘Those were steps for me, and I have climbed up over them: to that end I had to pass over them. Yet they
thought that I wanted to retire on them.’
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
Everything that is simple [einfach] is just plain imaginary, it is not “true.”

Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (KSA 6, 59)
Auch der Muthigste von uns hat nur selten den Muth zu dem, was er eigentlich weiss.
Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung, „Sprüche und Pfeile” § 1.2
Even the most courageous among us only rarely has the courage to face what he already knows.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “Maxims and Arrows,” 1.2
„Alle Wahrheit ist einfach.”—Ist das nicht zwiefach eine Lüge?

‘All truth is simple’—Isn’t that a compound lie?
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “Maxims and Arrows,” 1.4
796
Die Weisheit zieht auch der Erkenntniss Grenzen.
Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “Maxims and Arrows,” § 1.5
I want, once and for all, not to know many things. Wisdom requires moderation in knowledge as in other
things.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “Maxims and Arrows,” § 1.5
Man erholt sich in seiner wilden Natur am besten von seiner Unnatur, von seiner Geistigkeit.
Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung (1888), „Sprüche und Pfeile” § 1.6
Daß man gegen seine Handlungen keine Feigheit begeht! daß man sie nicht hinterdrein im Stiche laßt!—Wer
Gewissensbiß ist unanständig.
Not to perpetrate cowardice against one’s own acts! Not to leave them in the lurch afterward! The bite of
conscience is indecent.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “Maxims and Arrows” § 1.10
Hat man sein warum? des Lebens, so verträgt man sich fast mit jedem wie?
If we have our own why in life, we shall get along with almost any how.
Das ist ein Künstler, wie ich Künstler liebe, bescheiden in seinen Bedürfnissen: er will eigentlich nur
Zweierlei, sein Brod und seine Kunst.
That is the kind of artist I love, modest in his needs: he really wants only two things, his bread and his art.
Ich mißtraue allen Systematikern und gehe ihnen aus dem Weg. Der Wille zum System ist ein Mangel an
Rechtschaffenheit.
I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.
Man begeht selten eine Übereilung allein. In der ersten Übereilung thut man immer zu viel. Eben darum
begeht man gewöhnlich noch eine zweite—und nunmehr thut man zu wenig.
One rarely falls into a single error. Falling into the first one, one always does too much. So one usually
perpetrates another one—and now one does too little.
Es giebt einen Hass auf Lüge und Verstellung aus einem reizbaren Ehrbegriff; es giebt einen ebensolchen
Hass aus Feigheit, insofern die Lüge, durch ein göttliches Gebot, verboten ist. Zu feige, um zu lügen.
There is a hatred of lies; ... there is just as great a hatred of cowardice, insofar as the lie is prohibited by
divine commandment. Too cowardly to lie.
Ohne Musik wäre das Leben ein Irrthum.

Without music, life would be a mistake.
797
On ne peut penser et écrire qu’assis (G. Flaubert).— Damit habe ich dich, Nihilist! Das Sitzfleisch ist gerade
die Sünde wider den heiligen Geist. Nur die ergangenen Gedanken haben Werth.
Only thoughts reached by walking have value.
Das waren Stufen für mich, ich bin über sie hinaufgestiegen,—dazu mußte ich über sie hinweg. Aber sie
meinten, ich wollte mich auf ihnen zur Ruhe setzen.
Those were steps for me, and I have climbed up over them... Yet they thought that I wanted to retire on them.
Der Fanatismus, mit dem sich das ganze griechische Nachdenken auf die Vernünftigkeit wirft, verräth eine
Nothlage: man war in Gefahr, man hatte nur Eine Wahl: entweder zu Grunde zu gehn oder—absurd-
vernünftig zu sein.
Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung (1888), „Das Problem des Socrates” § 2.10
The fanaticism with which all Greek reflection throws itself upon rationality betrays a desperate situation;
there was danger, there was but one choice: either to perish or—to be absurdly rational.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “The Problems of Socrates” § 2.10
All passions have a phase when they are merely disastrous, when they drag down their victim with the
weight of stupidity—and a later, very much later phase when they wed the spirit, when they “spiritualize”
themselves. Formerly, in view of the element of stupidity in passion, war was declared on passion itself, its
destruction was plotted… The most famous formula for this is to be found in the New Testament.... There it
is said, for example, with particular reference to sexuality: “If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out.” Fortunately,
no Christian acts in accordance with this precept. Destroying the passions and cravings, merely as a
preventive measure against their stupidity and the unpleasant consequences of this stupidity—today this itself
strikes us as merely another acute form of stupidity. We no longer admire dentists who “pluck out” teeth so
that they will not hurt any more.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Ch. 5 “Morality as Anti-Nature” § 5.1
The early church, as everyone knows, certainly did wage war against the intelligent …
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Ch. 5 “Morality as Anti-Nature” § 5.1 (Ludovici trans.) 2:18
The church combats passion by means of excision of all kinds. Its practice, its remedy is castration. It never
inquires, “How can a desire be spiritualized, beautified, deified.” In all ages it has laid the weight of
discipline in the process of extirpation. The extirpation of sensuality, pride, lust of dominion, lust of property,
and revenge. But to attack the passions at the roots means attacking life itself at its source. The method of
the church is hostile to life.
Castration and extirpation are instinctively chosen for waging war against a passion by those who are too
weak of will, too degenerate, to impose some sort of moderation upon it.
Radical and moral hostility to sensuality remains a suspicious symptom.

The most poisonous diatribes against the senses have not been said by the impotent, nor by the ascetics, but
by those impossible ascetics, by those who found it necessary to be ascetics.
The spiritualization of sensuality is called love.

Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Ch. 5 “Morality as Anti-Nature” § 5.3 (Ludovici trans.)
798
…the value of having enemies …
A man is productive only insofar as he is rich in contrasted instincts. He can remain young only on condition
that his soul does not begin to take things easy and to yearn for peace.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Ch. 5 “Morality as Anti-Nature” § 3 (Ludovici trans.)
Nothing has grown more alien to us than that old desire, the peace of the soul, which is the aim of
Christianity.
… the well-being of unaccustomed satiety …

… laziness, coaxed by vanity into togging itself out in a moral garb …

The price of fruitfulness is to be rich in internal opposition …

Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Ch. 5 “Morality as Anti-Nature” § 5.3 (Kaufmann trans)., p. 488
Any one of the laws of life is fulfilled by the definite cannon “thou shalt.” “Thou shalt not,” and any sort of
obstacle or hostile element in the road of life, is thus cleared away.
The morality which is antagonistic to nature, that is to say, almost every morality that has been taught,
honored and preached hitherto, is directed precisely against the life instincts. It is a condemnation, now
secret, now blatant and impudent, of these very instincts.
The saint in whom God is well pleased is the ideal Eunuch.

Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Ch. 5 “Morality as Anti-Nature” § 4 (Ludovici trans.)
Admitting that you have understood the villainy of such a mutiny against life as that which has become
almost sacrosanct in Christian morality, you have fortunately understood something besides, and that is the
futility, the fictitiousness, the absurdity and the falseness of such a mutiny. For the condemnation of life by a
living creature is after all but the symptom of a definite kind of life.
In order even to approach the problem of the value of life, a man would need to be placed outside life, and
moreover know it as well as one, as many, as all in fact, who have lived it. These are reasons enough to
prove to us that this problem is an inaccessible one to us.
When we speak of values, we speak under the inspiration, and through the optics, of life. Life itself urges us
to determine values. Life itself values through us when we determine values.
799
Eine Verurteilung des Lebens von seiten des Lebenden bleibt zuletzt doch nur das Symptom einer
bestimmten Art von Leben: die Frage, ob mit Recht, ob mit Unrecht, ist gar nicht damit aufgeworfen. Man
müßte eine Stellung außerhalb des Lebens haben, und andrerseits es so gut kennen, wie einer, wie viele, wie
alle, die es gelebt haben, um das Problem vom Wert des Lebens überhaupt anrühren zu dürfen: Gründe
genug, um zu begreifen, daß dies Problem ein für uns unzugängliches Problem ist. Wenn wir von Werten
reden, reden wir unter der Inspiration,
Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung, „Moral als Widernatur,” § 5.5
A condemnation of life by the living remains in the end a mere symptom of a certain kind of life: the
question whether it is justified or unjustified is not even raised thereby. One would require a position outside
of life … in order to be permitted even to touch the problem of the value of life…
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Ch. 5 “Morality as Anti-Nature” § 5.5 Kaufmann, trans., p. 490
Morality as it has been understood hitherto … is the instinct of degeneration itself, which converts itself into
an imperative. It says “perish.” It is the death sentence of men …
Every healthy morality is dominated by an instinct of life… Anti-natural morality—that is, almost every
morality which has so far been taught, revered and preached—turns, conversely, against the instincts of life:
it is a condemnation of these instincts…
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Ch. 5 “Morality as Anti-Nature” § 5 Kaufmann, trans., p. 490
Morality, insofar as it condemns for its own sake, and not out of regard for the concerns, considerations, and
contrivances of life, is a specific error for which one ought to have no pity…
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Ch. 5 “Morality as Anti-Nature” § 5 Kaufmann, trans., p. 491
Let us at last consider how exceedingly simple it is on our part to say: “Man should be thus and thus!”
Reality shows us a marvelous wealth of types, and a luxuriant variety of forms and changes—and yet the first
wretch of a moral loafer that comes along cries: “No! Man should be different.” He even knows what man
should be like, this sanctimonious prig: he draws his own face on the wall and declares, “Ecce homo!”
The individual in his past and future is a piece of fate. One law the more, one necessity the more for all that
is to come and is to be. To say to him, “change thyself” is tantamount to saying that everything should
change, even backwards as well.
Morality, insofar as it condemns per se, and not out of any aim, consideration or motive of life, is a specific
error for which no one should feel any mercy—a degenerate idiosyncrasy that has done an unalterable
amount of harm.
We others, we immoralists, on the contrary, have opened our hearts wide to all kinds of comprehension,
understanding, and approbation. We do not deny readily; we glory in saying “Yea” to things. Our eyes have
opened ever wider and wider to that economy which still employs, and knows how to use to its own
advantage, all that which the sacred craziness of priests and the morbid reason in priests rejects.
… the repulsive race of bigots, the priests and the virtuous …

800
[regarding the error of confusing cause and effect] The church and morality say: “A generation, a people, are
destroyed by license and luxury.” My recovered reason says: when a people approaches destruction, when it
degenerates physiologically, then license and luxury follow from this (namely, the craving for ever stronger
and more frequent stimulation, as every exhausted nature knows it). This young man turns pale early and
wilts; his friends say: that is due to this or that disease. I say: that he became diseased, that he did not resist
the disease, was already the effect of an impoverished life or hereditary exhaustion.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “The Four Great Errors” § 6.2
Alles Gute ist Instinkt—und, folglich, leicht, nothwendig, frei. Die Mühsal ist ein Einwand.
Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung, “Die vier grossen Irrthümer” § 6.2
All that is good is instinct, and hence easy, necessary, free. Laboriousness is an objection.
Die leichten Füsse das erste Attribut der Göttlichkeit.

Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung, “Die vier grossen Irrthümer” § 6.2
Light feet, the first attribute of divinity.
The so-called motive: another error. Merely a surface phenomenon of consciousness, something alongside
the deed that is more likely to cover up the antecedents of the deeds than to represent them.
And what a fine abuse we had perpetrated with this “empirical evidence”; we created the world on this basis
as a world of causes, a world of will, a world of spirits. The most ancient and enduring psychology was at
work here and did not do anything else: all that happened was considered a doing, all doing the effect of a
will; the world became to it a multiplicity of doers; a doer (a “subject”) was slipped under all that happened.
It was out of himself that man projected his three “inner facts”—that in which he believed most firmly: the
will, the spirit, the ego. He even took the concept of being from the concept of the ego; he posited “things” as
being, in his image, in accordance with his concept of the ego as a cause. Is it any wonder that later he
always found in things only that which he had put into them?
With the unknown, one is confronted with danger, discomfort, and care,—the first instinct is to abolish
[wegzuschaffen] these painful states. First principle: any explanation is better than none. Since at bottom it is
merely a matter of wishing to be rid of oppressive representations, one is not too particular about the means
of getting rid of them: the first representation that explains the unknown as familiar feels so good that one
“considers it true.” The proof of pleasure (“of strength”) as a criterion of truth. .— The causal instinct is thus
conditional upon, and excited by, the feeling of fear. The “why?” shall, if at all possible, not give the cause
for its own sake so much as for a kind of cause—a cause that is comforting, liberating, and relieving. That it
is something already familiar, experienced, and inscribed in the memory, which is posited as a cause, that is
the first consequence of this need. That which is new and strange and has not been experienced before, is
excluded as a cause.— Thus one searches not only for some kind of explanation to serve as a cause, but for a
selected and preferred kind of explanation—that which has most quickly and most frequently abolished the
feeling of the strange, new, and hitherto unexperienced: the most habitual explanations.— Consequence: one
kind of positing of causes predominates more and more, is concentrated into a system and finally emerges as
dominant, that is, as simply precluding other causes and explanations.— The banker immediately thinks of
“business,” the Christian of “sin,” and the girl of her love.
801
The “explanation” of agreeable general feelings. They are produced by trust in God. They are produced by
the consciousness of good deeds .. They are produced by faith, charity, and hope—the Christian virtues.— In
truth, all these supposed explanations are resultant states and, as it were, translations of pleasurable or
unpleasurable feelings into a false dialect: one is in a state of hope because the basic physiological feeling is
once again strong and rich; one trusts in God because the feeling of fullness and strength gives a sense of
rest.— Morality and religion belong altogether to the psychology of error: in every single case, cause and
effect are confused; or truth is confused with the effects of believing something to be true; or a state of
consciousness is confused with its causes.
The error of free will.— Today we no longer have any pity for the concept of “free will”: we know only too
well what it is—the foulest of all theologians’ artifices aimed at making mankind “responsible” in their
sense, that is, dependent upon them ... Here I simply supply the psychology of all making-responsible.—
Wherever responsibilities are sought, it is usually the instinct of wanting to judge and punish which is at
work. Becoming has been deprived of its innocence when any being-such-and-such is traced back to will, to
purposes, to acts of responsibility: the doctrine of the will has been invented essentially for the purpose
of punishment, that is, because one wanted to impute guilt. The entire old psychology, the psychology of
will, was conditioned by the fact that its originators, the priests at the head of ancient communities,
wanted to create for themselves the right to punish—or wanted to create this right for God ... Men
were considered “free” so that they might be judged and punished—so that they might become guilty:
consequently, every act had to be considered as willed, and the origin of every act had to be considered
as lying within the consciousness (—and thus the most fundamental counterfeit in psychologicis was made
the principle of psychology itself ...). Today, as we have entered into the reverse movement and we
immoralists are trying with all our strength to take the concept of guilt and the concept of punishment out of
the world again, and to cleanse psychology, history, nature, and social institutions and sanctions of them,
there is in our eyes no more radical opposition than that of the theologians, who continue with the concept of
a “moral world-order” to infect the innocence of becoming by means of “punishment” and “guilt.”
Christianity is a metaphysics of the hangman ...
Moral judgment has this in common with the religious one: that it believes in realities which are not real.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “The ‘Improvers’ of Mankind’” § 7.1
Moral judgments, like religious ones, belong to a stage of ignorance at which the very concept of the real,
and the distinction between what is real and imaginary, are still lacking.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “The ‘Improvers’ of Mankind’” § 7.1
Weder Manu, noch Plato, noch Confucius, noch die jüdischen und christlichen Lehrer haben je an ihrem
Recht zur Lüge gezweifelt.
Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung, „Die ‚Verbesserer’ der Menschheit” § 7.5
Neither Manu nor Plato nor Confucius nor the Jewish and Christian teachers have ever doubted their right to
lie.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “The ‘improvers’ of mankind,” § 7.5
Alle Mittel, wodurch bisher die Menschheit moralisch gemacht werden sollte, waren von Grund aus
unmoralisch.
Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung, „Die ‚Verbesserer’ der Menschheit” § 7.5
All the means by which one has so far attempted to make mankind moral were through and through immoral.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “The ‘improvers’ of mankind,” § 7.5
Plato … says … that there would be no Platonic philosophy at all if there were not such beautiful youths in
Athens.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “Skirmishes of an untimely man” § 9.23
802
Wenn man den christlichen Glauben aufgiebt, zieht man sich damit das Recht zur christlichen Moral unter
den Füßen weg.
Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung, “Streitzüge eines Unzeitgemäßen” § 9.5
When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “Skirmishes of an untimely man” § 9.5 “George Eliot” p. 515
Wenn thatsächlich die Engländer glauben, sie wüßten von sich aus, „intuitiv”, was gut und böse ist, wenn sie
folglich vermeinen, das Christenthum als Garantie der Moral nicht mehr nöthig zu haben, so ist dies selbst
bloß die Folge der Herrschaft des christlichen Werthurtheils und ein Ausdruck von der Stärke und Tiefe
diesen Herrschaft: sodaß der Ursprung der englischen Moral vergessen worden ist, sodaß das Sehr-Bedingte
ihres Rechts auf Dasein nicht mehr empfunden wird.
Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung, “Streitzüge eines Unzeitgemäßen” § 9.5 „G. Eliot”
When the English actually believe that they know “intuitively” what is good and evil, when they
therefore suppose that they no longer require Christianity as the guarantee of morality, we merely
witness the effects of the dominion of the Christian value judgment and an expression of the strength
and depth of this dominion: such that the origin of English morality has been forgotten, such that the very
conditional character of its right to existence is no longer felt. For the English, morality is not yet a problem.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, W. Kaufmann, trans. (1976), “Skirmishes of an untimely man” § 9.5 “George Eliot” p. 516
In art, man enjoys himself as perfection.

The other thing I do not like to hear is the notorious “and” …

How does one compromise oneself today? If one is consistent. If one proceeds in a straight line. If one is not
ambiguous enough to permit five conflicting interpretations. If one is genuine.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “Skirmishes of an untimely man” § 9.18 “On the ‘Intellectual Conscience’”
Plato goes further. He says with an innocence possible only for a Greek, not a “Christian,” that there would
be no Platonic philosophy at all if there were not such beautiful youths in Athens: it is only their sight that
transposes the philosopher’s soul into an erotic trance, leaving it no peace until it lowers the seed of all
exalted things into such beautiful soil.
“What is the task of all higher education?” To turn men into machines. “What are the means?” Man must
learn to be bored. “How is that accomplished?” “By means of the concept of duty.”
Nothing is more distasteful to true philosophers than man when he beings to wish. If they see man only at his
deeds, if they see this bravest, craftiest, and most enduring of animals, even inextricably entangled in
disaster, how admirable he then appears to them. They even encourage him. But true philosophers despise
the man who wishes, as also the desirable man, and all the desiderata and ideals of man in general … he
finds only nonentity behind human ideals, or, not even nonentity but vileness, absurdity, sickness, cowardice,
fatigue, … How is it that man, who as a reality is so estimable, ceases from deserving respect the moment he
begins to desire. Must he pay for being so perfect as a reality? Must he make up for his deeds, for the tension
of spirit and will which underlies all his deeds, by an eclipse of his power in matters of the imagination,
and in absurdity. … That which justifies man is his reality. It will justify him to all eternity. How much more
valuable is a real man than any other man who is merely the phantom desires, of dreams …than any kind of
ideal man.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “Skirmishes in a War with the Age” § 9.32 (Ludovici trans.)
Audio Part 2, 22:22 underlining added
Self-interest is worth as much as the person who has it.

Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “Skirmishes of an untimely man” § 9.33 p. 533
803
The single one, the “individual,” as hitherto understood by the people and the philosophers alike, is an error
after all: he is nothing by himself, no atom, no “link in the chain,” nothing merely inherited from former
times; he is the whole single line of humanity up to himself.
The way that the “single one” or the “individual,” has been hitherto understood, by the people and the
philosophers alike, is an error. He is not a thing by himself, not an atom, not a “link in the chain,” not a thing
merely inherited from former times. He represents the whole single line of humanity up to himself.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “Skirmishes of an untimely man” § 9.33 (My rewording)
The anarchist, as the mouthpiece of the declining strata of society, demands with a fine indignation what is
“right,” “justice,” and “equal rights,” … the “fine indignation” itself soothes him; it is a pleasure for all
wretched devils to scold: it gives a slight but intoxicating sense of power. Even plaintiveness and
complaining can give life a charm.
Complaining is never any good: it stems from weakness. Whether one charges one’s misfortune to others or
to oneself—the socialist does the former; the Christian, for example, the latter—really makes no difference.
The common and, let us add, the unworthy thing is that it is supposed to be somebody’s fault that one is
suffering; in short, that the sufferer prescribes the honey of revenge for himself against his suffering. The
objects of this need for revenge, as a need for pleasure, are mere occasions: everywhere the sufferer finds
occasions for satisfying his little revenge.
When the anarchist, as the mouthpiece of the decaying strata of society, raises his voice in splendid
indignation for “right,” “justice,” “equal rights,” he is only groaning under the burden of his ignorance,
which cannot understand why he actually suffers, what his poverty consists of: the poverty of life. An
instinct of causality is active in him. Someone must be responsible for him being so ill at ease. His splendid
indignation alone relieves him somewhat. It is a pleasure for all poor devils to grumble. It gives them a little
intoxicating sensation of power. The very act of complaining, the mere fact that one bewails one’s lot, may
lend such a charm to life that on that account alone one is ready to endure it. There is a small dose of
revenge in every lamentation. One casts one’s affections, and, under certain circumstances, even one’s
baseness, in the teeth of those who are different, as if their condition were an injustice and iniquitous
privilege.
To bewail one’s lot is always despicable: it is always the outcome of weakness. Whether one ascribes one’s
afflictions to others or to one’s self, it is all the same. The socialist does the former, the Christian, for
instance, does the latter. That which is common to both attitudes, or rather that which is equally ignoble in
them both, is the fact that somebody must be to blame if one suffers—in short, that the sufferer drugs himself
with the honey of revenge to allay his anguish.
Instinctively to choose what is harmful for oneself, to feel attracted by “disinterested” motives, that is
virtually the formula of decadence. “Not to seek one’s own advantage”—that is merely the moral fig leaf for
quite a different, namely, a physiological, state of affairs: “I no longer know how to find my own advantage.”
Disintegration of the instincts!
Instead of saying naively, “I am no longer worth anything,” the moral lie in the mouth of the decadent
says, “Nothing is worth anything, life is not worth anything.”
804
Finally, some advice for our dear pessimists and other decadents. It is not in our hands to prevent our birth;
but we can correct this mistake …one must advance a step further in its logic and not only negate life with
“will and representation,” as Schopenhauer did—one must first of all negate Schopenhauer.
If one wants an end, one must also want the means: if one wants slaves, then one is a fool if one educates
them to be masters.
Philosophers are merely another kind of saint, and their whole craft is such that they admit only certain
truths—namely, those for the sake of which their craft is accorded public sanction.
The criminal type is the type of the strong human being under unfavorable circumstances: a strong human
being made sick.
Whoever must do secretly, with long suspense, caution, and cunning, what he can do best and would like
most to do, becomes anemic; and because he always harvests only danger, persecution, and calamity from his
instincts, his attitude to these instincts is reversed too
It is society, our tame, mediocre, emasculated society, in which a natural human being … necessarily
degenerates into a criminal.
Let us generalize the case of the criminal: let us think of men so constituted that for one reason or another,
they lack public approval and know that they are not felt to be beneficent or useful—that chandala feeling
that one is not considered equal, but an outcast, unworthy, contaminating. All men so constituted have a
subterranean hue to their thoughts and actions; everything about them becomes paler than in those whose
existence is touched by daylight. Yet almost all forms of existence which we consider distinguished today
once lived in this half tomblike atmosphere: the scientific character, the artist, the genius, the free spirit, the
actor, the merchant, the great discoverer. … All innovators of the spirit must for a time bear the pallid and
fatal mark of the chandala on their foreheads—not because they are considered that way by others, but
because they themselves feel the terrible chasm which separates them from everything that is customary or
reputable. Almost every genius knows, as one stage of his development, the “Catilinarian existence”—a
feeling of hatred, revenge, and rebellion against everything which already is, which no longer becomes ...
Catiline—the form of pre-existence of every Caesar.—
In Athens, in the time of Cicero (who expresses his surprise about this), the men and youths were far superior
in beauty to the women. But what work and exertion in the service of beauty had the male sex there imposed
on itself for centuries!— For one should make no mistake about the method in this case: a breeding of
feelings and thoughts alone is almost nothing (—this is the great misunderstanding underlying German
education, which is wholly illusory): one must first persuade the body.
Strict perseverance in significant and exquisite gestures together with the obligation to live only with
people who do not “let themselves go”—that is quite enough for one to become significant and exquisite…
Supreme rule of conduct: before oneself too, one must not “let oneself go.”
805
It is decisive for the lot of a people and of humanity that culture should begin in the right place—not in the
“soul” (as was the fateful superstition of the priests and half-priests): the right place is the body, the gesture,
the diet, physiology; the rest follows from that ... Therefore the Greeks remain the first cultural event in
history—they knew, they did, what was needed; and Christianity, which despised the body, has been the
greatest misfortune of humanity so far.
The beauty of a race or family, their grace and graciousness in all gestures, is won by work: like
genius, it is the end result of the accumulated work of generations. One must have made great
sacrifices to good taste… one must have preferred beauty to advantage, habit, opinion and inertia.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “Skirmishes of an untimely man” § 9.47 “Beauty no accident” p. 551
It is decisive … for humanity that culture should begin in the right place—not in the “soul”: … the
right place is the body, the gesture, the diet, physiology; the rest follows from that. Therefore the
Greeks remain the first cultural event in history: the knew, they did, what was needed; and
Christianity, which despised the body, has been the greatest misfortune to humanity so far.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “Skirmishes of an untimely man” § 9.47 p. 552 (underlining added)
Plato is a coward before reality, consequently he flees into the ideal

Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “What I owe to the ancients” § 10.2
[I praise] the unconditional will to not deceive oneself and to see reason in reality—not in “reason,” still less
in “morality.”
I know no higher symbolism than this Greek symbolism of the Dionysian festivals. Here the most profound
instinct of life, that directed toward the future of life, the eternity of life, is experienced religiously—and the
way to life, procreation, as the holy way. It was Christianity, with its ressentiment against life at the bottom
of its heart, which first made something unclean of sexuality: it threw filth on the origin, on the
presupposition of our life.
For the Greeks the sexual symbol was therefore the venerable symbol par excellence, the real profundity in
the whole of ancient piety. Every single element in the act of procreation, of pregnancy, and of birth aroused
the highest and most solemn feelings.
All becoming and growing—all that guarantees a future—involves pain.

Saying Yes to life even in its strangest and hardest problems, the will to life rejoicing over its own
inexhaustibility even in the very sacrifice of its highest types—that is what I called Dionysian.
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book.

The criminal type is the strong type under unfavorable conditions, a strong man rendered sickly. What he
lacks is the jungle, a certain freer and more dangerous form of nature and existence where all that serves as
arms and armor—in the strong man’s instinctive view—is his by right. His virtues society has prohibited; the
liveliest impulses he has borne within him are quickly entangled with the crushing emotions of suspicion,
fear and ignominy.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, § 9.45
806
Was kann allein unsre Lehre sein?—Daß niemand dem Menschen seine Eigenschaften giebt, weder Gott,
noch die Gesellschaft, noch seine Eltern und Vorfahren, noch er selbst ... Niemand ist dafür verantwortlich,
daß er überhaupt da ist, daß er so und so beschaffen ist, daß er unter diesen Umständen in dieser Umgebung
ist. Die Fatalität seines Wesens ist nicht herauszulösen aus der Fatalität alles dessen, was war und sein wird
... Man ist notwendig, man ist ein Stück Verhängnis, man gehört zum Ganzen, man ist im Ganzen,—es gibt
nichts, was unser Sein richten, messen, vergleichen, verurteilen könnte, denn das hieße, das Ganze richten,
messen, vergleichen, verurteilen ... Aber es gibt nichts außer dem Ganzen! . . .—Damit erst ist die Unschuld
des Werdens wieder hergestellt
Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung, § 6.8
Nobody gives man his attributes, neither God nor society nor his parents and forefathers, nor he himself ...
Nobody is responsible for his being here at all, his disposition to this and that, his existing in these
surroundings under these conditions. The fatality of his essential being is not to be puzzled out of the fatality
of all that was and will be ... We are necessary, a portion of destiny, we belong to the whole, we are in the
whole—and there is nothing which could judge, measure, compare and condemn our being, for that would
mean judging, measuring, comparing and condemning the whole ... But there is nothing outside the whole! ...
Only then is the innocence of becoming restored
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “The Four Great Errors” § 6.8 = KSA 6.96
Der Antichrist [The Antichrist] (1888)

German: http://books.google.com/books?id=zzHXAAAAMAAJ
English: http://books.google.com/books?id=0ao8AAAAYAAJ
Die Bedingungen, unter denen man mich versteht und dann mit Notwendigkeit versteht – ich kenne sie nur
zu genau. Man muß rechtschaffen sein in geistigen Dingen bis zur Härte, um auch nur meinen Ernst, meine
Leidenschaft auszuhalten. Man muß geübt sein, auf Bergen zu leben – das erbärmliche Zeitgeschwätz von
Politik und Völker-Selbstsucht unter sich zu sehn. Man muß gleichgültig geworden sein, man muß nie
fragen, ob die Wahrheit nützt, ob sie einem Verhängnis wird... Eine Vorliebe der Stärke für Fragen, zu denen
niemand heute den Mut hat; der Mut zum Verbotenen; die Vorherbestimmung zum Labyrinth. Eine
Erfahrung aus sieben Einsamkeiten. Neue Ohren für neue Musik. Neue Augen für das Fernste. Ein neues
Gewissen für bisher stumm gebliebene Wahrheiten. Und der Wille zur Ökonomie großen Stils: seine Kraft,
seine Begeisterung beisammenbehalten... Die Ehrfurcht vor sich; die Liebe zu sich; die unbedingte Freiheit
gegen sich.
Wohlan! Das allein sind meine Leser, meine rechten Leser, meine vorherbestimmten Leser: was liegt am
Rest? – Der Rest ist bloß die Menschheit. – Man muß der Menschheit überlegen sein durch Kraft, durch
Höhe der Seele – durch Verachtung.
Nietzsche, Der Antichrist
The conditions under which one can understand me, under which one cannot help but understand me—I
understand them all too well. One must be scrupulous in intellectual things to the point of hardness to even
begin to endure my seriousness, my passion. One must be proficient in living in mountains, in seeing the
wretched daily gossip about politics and national egotism beneath him. One must have become indifferent.
One must never question whether the truth is useful, or whether it will be a curse. The preference of the
strong one for questions for which no one has the courage; the courage for the forbidden; the inevitable
attraction to the maze. An experience of seven lonelinesses. New ears for new music. New eyes for what is
furthest. A new conscience for truths that until now have remained mute. And the will to economy of great
style: its power, its enthusiasm all assembled. The ambition for oneself; the love of oneself; the unmitigated
freedom against oneself.
This alone is my reader, my proper reader, my predestined reader. What about the rest? The rest is merely
humanity. You must be the sovereign of humanity, propelled by power, by elevation of soul, by contempt.
Nietzsche, The Antichrist, preface, my translation
Im Grunde gab es nur einen Christen, und der starb am Kreuz.

Nietzsche, Der Antichrist
In truth, there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross.
Nietzsche
807
To endure my seriousness, my passion, one must carry intellectual integrity to the verge of hardness. ... He
must have become indifferent; he must never ask of the truth whether it brings profit to him.
Nietzsche, The Antichrist, preface
Every participation in divine service is an assassination attempt on public morality. One should be more
severe toward Protestants than toward Catholics, more severe toward liberal Protestants than toward the
orthodox. The criminal character of a Christian increases when he approaches knowledge. The criminal of
criminals is consequently the philosopher.
Nietzsche, Antichrist, “Decree Against Christianity”
Every display of contempt for sexual love, and every defilement of it through the concept “dirty” is original
sin against the holy spirit of life.
Nietzsche, Antichrist, “Decree Against Christianity”
Sin, man’s self-violation par excellence, was invented purely in order to make science, culture, and every
elevation and ennobling of man impossible; the priest rules by the invention of sin.
Nietzsche, The Antichrist
Was zerstört schneller, als ohne innere Notwendigkeit, ohne eine tief persönliche Wahl, ohne Lust arbeiten,
denken, fühlen? als Automat der „Pflicht”?
Nietzsche, Der Antichrist, § 11
What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think, and feel without inner necessity, without any
deep personal desire, without pleasure—as a mere automaton of “duty”?
Nietzsche, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (1947), p. 229
‘Progress’ is just a modern idea, which is to say a false idea.

Nietzsche, The Antichrist, § 4
Under Christianity neither morality nor religion has any point of contact with actuality. It offers purely
imaginary causes (“God” “soul,” “ego,” “spirit,” “free will”—or even “unfree”), and purely imaginary effects
(“sin” “salvation” “grace,” “punishment,” “forgiveness of sins”). Intercourse between imaginary beings
(“God,” “spirits,” “souls”); an imaginary natural history (anthropocentric; a total denial of the concept of
natural causes); an imaginary psychology (misunderstandings of self, misinterpretations of agreeable or
disagreeable general feelings—for example, of the states of the nervus sympathicus with the help of the sign-
language of religio-ethical balderdash—, “repentance,” “pangs of conscience,” “temptation by the devil,”
“the presence of God”); an imaginary teleology (the “kingdom of God,” “the last judgment,” “eternal life”).
—This purely fictitious world, greatly to its disadvantage, is to be differentiated from the world of dreams;
the latter at least reflects reality, whereas the former falsifies it, cheapens it and denies it. Once the concept of
“nature” had been opposed to the concept of “God,” the word “natural” necessarily took on the meaning of
“abominable”—the whole of that fictitious world has its sources in hatred of the natural (—the real!—), and
is no more than evidence of a profound uneasiness in the presence of reality. . . . This explains everything.
Who alone has any reason for living his way out of reality? The man who suffers under it. But to suffer from
reality one must be a botched reality.
Nietzsche, The Antichrist, H. L. Mencken, trans., § 15
Of course, they do not call themselves the weak; they call themselves “the good.”
The same instinct which prompts the inferior to reduce their own god to “goodness-in-itself” also prompts
them to eliminate all good qualities from the god of their superiors; they make revenge on their masters by
making a devil of the latter's god.
808
The philosophers support the church: the lie about a “moral order of the world” runs through the whole of
philosophy, even the newest.
The priest, a parasitical variety of man who can exist only at the cost of every sound view of life, takes the
name of God in vain: he calls that state of human society in which he himself determines the value of all
things “the kingdom of God”; he calls the means whereby that state of affairs is attained “the will of God”;
with cold-blooded cynicism he estimates all peoples, all ages and all individuals by the extent of their
subservience or opposition to the power of the priestly order.
Und ein Dogma von der „unbefleckten Empfängniß” noch obendrein? ... Aber damit hat sie die Empfängniß
befleckt.
The dogma of the “immaculate conception” … with that, conception is maculated.
Nietzsche, Antichrist, § 34
Niemand hat heute mehr den Mut zu Sonderrechten, zu Herrschaftsrechten, zu einem Ehrfurchtsgefühl vor
sich und seinesgleichen,—zu einem Pathos der Distanz.
Today, nobody has any longer the courage of special rights, or rights of command, or a sense of respect
towards oneself and one’s peers—a pathos of distance
Der Aristokratismus der Gesinnung wurde durch die Seelen-Gleichheits-Lüge am unterirdischsten

untergraben.
The fib of the equality of souls undermined the aristocratic outlook in the most insidious way.
Wenn der Glaube an das “Vorrecht der meisten” Revolutionen macht und machen wird, das Christentum ist
es … Das Christentum ist ein Aufstand alles Am-Boden-Kriechenden gegen das, was Höhe hat.
Faith in the “prerogative of the most” is making and will make revolutions—it is Christianity, let there be no
mistake about it … Christianity is the revolt of all grovelling creatures against that which has stature.
The vast lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all natural instinct—henceforth, everything in the
instincts that is beneficial, that fosters life and that safeguards the future is a cause of suspicion.
Nietzsche, The Antichrist, § 43 (Mencken trans.)
Der grundsätzliche Wille, nur Begriffe, Symbole, Attitüden anzuwenden, welche aus der Praxis des Priesters
bewiesen sind, die Instinkt-Ablehnung jeder andren Praxis, jeder andren Art Werth- und Nützlichkeits-
Perspektive
... the underlying will to make use only of such concepts, symbols and attitudes as fit into priestly practice,
the instinctive repudiation of every other mode of thought, and every other method of estimating values and
utilities
Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose!
809
…the most fatal sort of megalomania that the earth has ever seen: little abortions of bigots and liars began to
claim exclusive rights in the concepts of “God,” “the truth,” “the light,” “the spirit,” “love,” “wisdom” and
“life,” as if these things were synonyms of themselves…
Das ist es nicht, was uns abscheidet, dass wir keinen Gott wiederfinden, weder in der Geschichte, noch in der
Natur, noch hinter der Natur,—sondern dass wir, was als Gott verehrt wurde, nicht als „göttlich”, sondern als
erbarmungswürdig, als absurd, als schädlich empfinden, nicht nur als Irrthum, sondern als Verbrechen am
Leben.
What differentiates us is not that we find no God—neither in history, nor in nature, nor behind nature—but
that we do not feel that what has been revered as God is ‘god-like.’
Nietzsche, The Antichrist, § 47, cited in Kaufmann, Nietzsche, p. 101
Die Wissenschaft ist das Verbotene an sich,—sie allein ist verboten. Die Wissenschaft ist die erste Sünde,
der Keim aller Sünde, die Erbsünde. Dies allein ist Moral.— „Du sollst nicht erkennen”:—der Rest folgt
daraus.
Science is the first of sins, the germ of all sins, the original sin. This is all there is of morality—“Thou
shalt not know”—the rest follows from that.
Nietzsche, The Antichrist, § 48 (H. L. Mencken trans., modified)
Der Schuld- und Strafbegriff, die ganze „sittliche Weltordnung” ist erfunden gegen die Wissenschaft,—
gegen die Ablösung des Menschen vom Priester
The concept of guilt and punishment, the whole “moral order of the world,” was set up against
science—against the deliverance of man from priests.
Psychology of the priest… Man must not look outward; he must look inward. He must not look at things
shrewdly and cautiously, to learn about them; he must not look at all; he must suffer.... And he must suffer so
much that he is always in need of the priest.
Let us admit, for the sake of politeness, that blessedness by faith may be demonstrated (—not merely hoped
for, and not merely promised by the suspicious lips of a priest): even so, could blessedness—in a technical
term, pleasure—ever be a proof of truth? So little is this true that it is almost a proof against truth when
sensations of pleasure influence the answer to the question “What is true?” or, at all events, it is enough to
make that “truth” highly suspicious. … why in the world should it be assumed that true judgments give more
pleasure than false ones, and that, in conformity to some pre-established harmony, they necessarily bring
agreeable feelings in their train?—The experience of all disciplined and profound minds teaches the contrary.
Man has had to fight for every atom of the truth, and has had to pay for it almost everything that the heart,
that human love, that human trust cling to.
Greatness of soul is needed for this business: the service of truth is the hardest of all services.—What, then,
is the meaning of integrity in things intellectual? It means that a man must be severe with his own heart, that
he must scorn “beautiful feelings”…
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
Christianity has the rancour of the sick at its very core—the instinct against the healthy, against health.
Everything that is well-constituted, proud, gallant and, above all, beautiful gives offence to its ears and eyes.
810
“Faith” means the will to avoid knowing what is true.
Great intellects are skeptical.

Freedom from any sort of conviction belongs to strength and to an independent point of view.
A man who would talk to any purpose about value and non-value must be able to see five hundred
convictions beneath him—and behind him
Conviction as a means: one may achieve a good deal by means of a conviction. A grand passion makes use
of and uses up convictions; it does not yield to them—it knows itself to be sovereign.—On the contrary, the
need of faith, of something unconditioned by yea or nay, of Carlylism, if I may be allowed the word, is a
need of weakness. The man of faith, the “believer” of any sort, is necessarily a dependent man—such a man
cannot posit himself as a goal, nor can he find goals within himself. The “believer” does not belong to
himself; he can only be a means to an end; he must be used up; he needs some one to use him up. His instinct
gives the highest honours to an ethic of self-effacement. … Every sort of faith is in itself an evidence of self-
effacement, of self-estrangement.
A grand passion makes use of and uses up convictions … The “believer” does not belong to himself; he can
only be a means to an end; he must be used up.
The man of faith, the “believer” of any sort … cannot posit himself as a goal, nor can he find goals within
himself.
The believer is not free to answer the question, “true” or “not true,” according to the dictates of his own
conscience: integrity on this point would work his instant downfall.
Every conviction has its history, its primitive forms, its stage of tentativeness and error: it becomes a
conviction only after having been, for a long time, not one, and then, for an even longer time, hardly one.
What if falsehood be also one of these embryonic forms of conviction?—Sometimes all that is needed is a
change in persons: what was a lie in the father becomes a conviction in the son.
The most common sort of lie is that by which a man deceives himself.
The priests, who have more finesse in such matters, and who well understand the objection that lies against
the notion of a conviction, which is to say, of a falsehood that becomes a matter of principle because it serves
a purpose, have borrowed from the Jews the shrewd device of sneaking in the concepts, “God,” “the will of
God” and “the revelation of God”
There are questions regarding the truth or untruth of which it is not for man to decide; all the capital
questions, all the capital problems of valuation, are beyond human reason. ... To know the limits of reason—
that alone is genuine philosophy
811
The “law,” the “will of God,” the “holy book,” and “inspiration”—all these things are merely words for the
conditions under which the priest comes to power and with which he maintains his power…
The means which establish the authority of a slowly and painfully attained truth are fundamentally different
from those which one would make use of to prove it. A law-book never recites the utility, the grounds, the
casuistical antecedents of a law: for if it did so it would lose the imperative tone, the “thou shall,” on which
obedience is based.
At a certain point in the evolution of a people, the class within it of the greatest insight, which is to say, the
greatest hindsight and foresight, declares that the series of experiences determining how all shall live—or
can live—has come to an end. The object now is to reap as rich and as complete a harvest as possible from
the days of experiment and hard experience. In consequence, the thing that is to be avoided above everything
is further experimentation—the continuation of the state in which values are fluent, and are tested, chosen
and criticized ad infinitum. Against this a double wall is set up: on the one hand, revelation, which is the
assumption that the reasons lying behind the laws are not of human origin, that they were not sought out and
found by a slow process and after many errors, but that they are of divine ancestry, and came into being
complete, perfect, without a history, as a free gift, a miracle...; and on the other hand, tradition, which is the
assumption that the law has stood unchanged from time immemorial, and that it is impious and a crime
against one’s forefathers to bring it into question. The authority of the law is thus grounded on the thesis:
God gave it, and the fathers lived it.—The higher motive of such procedure lies in the design to distract
consciousness, step by step, from its concern with notions of right living (that is to say, those that have been
proved to be right by wide and carefully considered experience), so that instinct attains to a perfect
automatism—a primary necessity to every sort of mastery, to every sort of perfection in the art of life.
The [Hindu] order of castes, the highest, the dominating law, is merely the ratification of an order of nature,
of a natural law of the first rank, over which no arbitrary fiat, no “modern idea,” can exert any influence. In
every healthy society there are three physiological types, gravitating toward differentiation but mutually
conditioning one another, and each of these has its own hygiene, its own sphere of work, its own special
mastery and feeling of perfection. It is not Manu but nature that sets off in one class those who are chiefly
intellectual, in another those who are marked by muscular strength and temperament, and in a third those
who are distinguished in neither one way or the other, but show only mediocrity—the last-named represents
the great majority, and the first two the select.
“The world is perfect”—so prompts the instinct of the intellectual, the instinct of the man who says yes
to life. “Imperfection, whatever is inferior to us, distance, the pathos of distance, even the Chandala
themselves are parts of this perfection.”
The most intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would find only
disaster: in the labyrinth, in being hard with themselves and with others, in effort; their delight is in
self-mastery; in them asceticism becomes second nature, a necessity, an instinct. They regard a
difficult task as a privilege; it is to them a recreation to play with burdens that would crush all others.
812
All the presuppositions for a scholarly culture, all scientific methods, were already there; the great, the
incomparable art of reading well had already been established—that presupposition for the tradition of
culture, for the unity of science; natural science, allied with mathematics and mechanics, was well along on
the best way—the sense for facts, the last and most valuable of all the senses, had its schools and its tradition
of centuries! Is this understood? Everything essential had been found, so that the work could be begun:—the
methods, one must say it ten times, are what is essential, also what is most difficult, also what is for the
longest time opposed by habits and laziness. What we today have again conquered with immeasurable self-
mastery—for each of us still has the bad instincts, the Christian ones, in his system—the free eye before
reality, the cautious hand, patience and seriousness in the smallest matters, the whole integrity in
knowledge—that had already been there once before! More than two thousand years ago!
The nobility of instinct, the taste, the methodical research, the genius of organization and administration, …
the great Yes to all things, become visible in the imperium Romanum, visible for all the senses, the grand
style no longer mere art but become reality, truth, life.
I condemn Christianity. I raise against the Christian church the most terrible accusation that any accuser has
ever uttered. It is to me the ultimate conceivable corruption. It has possessed the will to the final corruption
that is even possible. The Christian church has left nothing untouched by its depravity: it has turned every
value into a disvalue, every truth into a falsehood, every integrity into a vileness of the soul.
Ecce Homo (1888)

English: http://books.google.com/books?id=RPib_YcrjG4C
Man hat die Realität in dem Grade um ihren Werth, ihren Sinn, ihre Wahrhaftigkeit gebracht, als man eine
ideale Welt erlog.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, Vorrede, § 2
In proportion as an ideal world has been falsely assumed, reality has been robbed of its value, its meaning,
and its truthfulness.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, A. Ludovici, trans., Preface, § 2
Die Lüge des Ideals war bisher der Fluch über der Realität, die Menschheit selbst ist durch sie bis in ihre
untersten Instinkte hinein verlogen und falsch geworden—bis zur Anbetung der umgekehrten Werthe, als die
sind, mit denen ihr erst das Gedeihen, die Zukunft, das hohe Recht auf Zukunft verbürgt wäre.
Hitherto the lie of the ideal has been the curse of reality; by means of it the very source of mankind's instincts
has become mendacious and false so much so that those values have come to be worshipped which are the
exact opposite of those which would ensure man's prosperity, his future, and his great right to a future.
Philosophie, wie ich sie bisher verstanden und gelebt habe, ist das freiwillige Leben in Eis und
Hochgebirge—das Aufsuchen alles Fremden und Fragwürdigen im Dasein, alles dessen, was durch die
Moral bisher in Bann gethan war.
Philosophy, as I have understood it hitherto, is ... the seeking out of everything strange and questionable in
existence, everything upon which, hitherto, morality has set it's ban.
813
Philosophie, wie ich sie bisher verstanden und gelebt habe, ist das freiwillige Leben in Eis und
Hochgebirge—das Aufsuchen alles Fremden und Fragwürdigen im Dasein, alles dessen, was durch die
Moral bisher in Bann gethan war.
Philosophy, as I have until now understood and lived it, is the voluntary life in ice and high mountains—the
seeking out of everything strange and questionable in existence, everything that up to now has been banned
by morality.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, Preface, § 3
Wie viel Wahrheit erträgt, wie viel Wahrheit wagt ein Geist? das wurde für mich immer mehr der eigentliche
Werthmesser.
How much truth can a certain mind endure, how much truth can it dare? These questions became for me ever
more and more the actual test of values.
Irrthum (—der Glaube an's Ideal—) ist nicht Blindheit, Irrthum ist Feigheit.
Error is not blindness, error is cowardice
Jede Errungenschaft, jeder Schritt vorwärts in der Erkenntnis folgt aus dem Muth, aus der Härte gegen sich,
aus der Sauberkeit gegen sich.
Every conquest, every step forward in knowledge is the outcome of courage, of hardness toward one’s self,
of cleanliness toward one’s self.
Nitimur in vetitum: in diesem Zeichen siegt einmal meine Philosophie, denn man verbot bisher grundsätzlich
immer nur die Wahrheit.
That which has been most stringently forbidden is, without exception, truth.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, A. Ludovici, trans., Preface, § 3, p. 3
Ich machte aus meinem Willen zur Gesundheit, zum Leben, meine Philosophie.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, “Warum ich so weise bin,” § 1.2
Out of my will to health and to life I made my philosophy.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, A. Ludovici, trans., “Why I am so wise,” § 1.2
Und woran erkennt man im Grunde die Wohlgerathenheit? Dass ein wohlgerathner Mensch unsern Sinnen
wohlthut: dass er aus einem Holze geschnitzt ist, das hart, zart und wohlriechend zugleich ist. Ihm schmeckt
nur, was ihm zuträglich ist; sein Gefallen, seine Lust hört auf, wo das Maass des Zuträglichen überschritten
wird. Er erräth Heilmittel gegen Schädigungen, er nützt schlimme Zufälle zu seinem Vortheil aus; was ihn
nicht umbringt, macht ihn stärker. Er sammelt instinktiv aus Allem, was er sieht, hört, erlebt, seine Summe:
er ist ein auswählendes Princip, er lässt Viel durchfallen. Er ist immer in seiner Gesellschaft, ob er mit
Büchern, Menschen oder Landschaften verkehrt: er ehrt, indem er wählt, indem er zulässt, indem er vertraut.
Er reagirt auf alle Art Reize langsam, mit jener Langsamkeit, die eine lange Vorsicht und ein gewollter Stolz
ihm angezüchtet haben,—er prüft den Reiz, der herankommt, er ist fern davon, ihm entgegenzugehn. Er
glaubt weder an „Unglück”, noch an „Schuld”: er wird fertig, mit sich, mit Anderen, er weiss zu
vergessen,—er ist stark genug, dass ihm Alles zum Besten gereichen muss.
814
By what signs are Nature’s lucky strokes recognised among men? They are recognised by the fact that any
such lucky stroke gladdens our senses; that he is carved from one integral block, which is hard, sweet, and
fragrant as well. He enjoys that only which is good for him; his pleasure, his desire, ceases when the limits of
that which is good for him are overstepped. He divines remedies for injuries; he knows how to turn serious
accidents to his own advantage; that which does not kill him makes him stronger. He instinctively gathers his
material from all he sees, hears, and experiences. He is a selective principle; he rejects much. He is always in
his own company, whether his intercourse be with books, with men, or with natural scenery; he honours the
things he chooses, the things he acknowledges, the things he trusts. He reacts slowly to all kinds of stimuli,
with that tardiness which long caution and deliberate pride have bred in him—he tests the approaching
stimulus; he would not dream of meeting it half-way. He believes neither in “ill-luck” nor “guilt”; he can
digest himself and others; he knows how to forget—he is strong enough to make everything turn to his own
advantage.
... I, the last anti-political German.

Das Instrument, es sei, welches es wolle, es sei so verstimmt, wie nur das Instrument „Mensch” verstimmt
werden kann—ich müsste krank sein, wenn es mir nicht gelingen sollte, ihm etwas Anhörbares
abzugewinnen. Und wie oft habe ich das von den „Instrumenten” selber gehört, dass sie sich noch nie so
gehört hätten.
Meine Erfahrungen geben mir ein Anrecht auf Misstrauen überhaupt hinsichtlich der sogenannten
„selbstlosen” Triebe, der gesammten zu Rath und That bereiten „Nächstenliebe”. Sie gilt mir an sich als
Schwäche, als Einzelfall der Widerstands-Unfähigkeit gegen Reize.
My experience gave me a right to feel suspicious in regard to all so-called “unselfish” instincts, in regard to
the whole of “neighbourly love” which is ever ready and waiting with deeds or with advice. To me it seems
to me that these instincts are a sign of weakness, they are an example of the inability to withstand a stimulus.
Ich werfe den Mitleidigen vor, dass ihnen die Scham, die Ehrfurcht, das Zartgefühl vor Distanzen leicht
abhanden kommt, dass Mitleiden im Handumdrehn nach Pöbel riecht und schlechten Manieren zum
Verwechseln ähnlich sieht,—dass mitleidige Hände unter Umständen geradezu zerstörerisch in ein grosses
Schicksal, in eine Vereinsamung unter Wunden, in ein Vorrecht auf schwere Schuld hineingreifen können.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, “Warum ich so weise bin,” § 4
What I reproach the pitiful with is, that they are too ready to forget shame, reverence, and the delicacy of
feeling which knows how to keep at a distance.
Hier Herr bleiben, hier die Höhe seiner Aufgabe rein halten von den viel niedrigeren und kurzsichtigeren
Antrieben, welche in den sogenannten selbstlosen Handlungen thätig sind, das ist die Probe, die letzte Probe
vielleicht, die ein Zarathustra abzulegen hat.
To remain one’s own master in such circumstances [when tempted to pity], to keep the sublimity of one’s
mission pure in such cases—pure from the many ignoble and more short-sighted impulses which come into
play in so-called unselfish actions,—this is ... the last test.
815
Gleich Jedem, der nie unter seines Gleichen lebte und dem der Begriff „Vergeltung” so unzugänglich ist wie
etwa der Begriff „gleiche Rechte”, verbiete ich mir in Fällen, wo eine kleine oder sehr grosse Thorheit an mir
begangen wird, jede Gegenmaassregel, jede Schutzmaassregel,—wie billig, auch jede Vertheidigung, jede
„Rechtfertigung”.
I have forbidden myself the use of any sort of measure of security or protection—and also, of course, of
defence and “justification”—in all cases in which I have been made the victim either of trifling or even very
great foolishness.
Meine Art Vergeltung besteht darin, der Dummheit so schnell wie möglich eine Klugheit nachzuschicken: so
holt man sie vielleicht noch ein.
My form of retaliation consists in this: as soon as possible to set a piece of cleverness at the heels of an act of
stupidity.
Auch scheint es mir, dass das gröbste Wort, der gröbste Brief noch gutartiger, noch honnetter sind als
Schweigen. Solchen, die schweigen, fehlt es fast immer an Feinheit und Höflichkeit des Herzens; Schweigen
ist ein Einwand, Hinunterschlucken macht nothwendig einen schlechten Charakter,—es verdirbt selbst den
Magen.
[In response to being a victim of foolishness,] The rudest word, the rudest letter, is more good-natured, more
straightforward, than silence. Those who keep silent are almost always lacking in subtlety and refinement of
heart; silence is an objection.
Man sieht, ich möchte die Grobheit nicht unterschätzt wissen, sie ist bei weitem die humanste Form des
Widerspruchs und, inmitten der modernen Verzärtelung, eine unsrer ersten Tugenden.
I should not like to see rudeness undervalued; it is by far the most humane form of contradiction, and, in the
midst of modern effeminacy, it is one of our first virtues.
Kranksein ist eine Art Ressentiment selbst.—Hiergegen hat der Kranke nur Ein grosses Heilmittel—ich
nenne es den russischen Fatalismus, jenen Fatalismus ohne Revolte, mit dem sich ein russischer Soldat, dem
der Feldzug zu hart wird, zuletzt in den Schnee legt. Nichts überhaupt mehr annehmen, an sich nehmen, in
sich hineinnehmen,—überhaupt nicht mehr reagiren … Die grosse Vernunft dieses Fatalismus, der nicht
immer nur der Muth zum Tode ist, als lebenerhaltend unter den lebensgefährlichsten Umständen, ist die
Herabsetzung des Stoffwechsels, dessen Verlangsamung, eine Art Wille zum Winterschlaf. … Weil man zu
schnell sich verbrauchen würde, wenn man überhaupt reagirte, reagirt man gar nicht mehr: dies ist die Logik.
Und mit Nichts brennt man rascher ab, als mit den Ressentiments-Affekten. Der Ärger, die krankhafte
Verletzlichkeit, die Ohnmacht zur Rache, die Lust, der Durst nach der Rache, das Giftmischen in jedem
Sinne—das ist für Erschöpfte sicherlich die nachtheiligste Art zu reagiren.
To be ill is a sort of resentment in itself. Against this resentment the invalid has only one great remedy—I
call it Russian fatalism, that fatalism which is free from revolt, and with which the Russian soldier, to whom
a campaign proves unbearable, ultimately lays himself down in the snow. To accept nothing more, to
undertake nothing more, to absorb nothing more—to cease entirely from reacting. The tremendous sagacity
of this fatalism, which does not always imply merely the courage for death, but which in the most dangerous
cases may actually constitute a self-preservative measure, amount to a reduction of activity in the vital
functions, the slackening down of which is like a sort of will to hibernate. ... Owing to the fact that one
would be used up too quickly if one reacted, one no longer reacts at all: this is the principle. And nothing on
earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.
816
Das Ressentiment ist das Verbotene an sich für den Kranken—sein Böses: leider auch sein natürlichster
Hang.—Das begriff jener tiefe Physiolog Buddha. Seine „Religion”, die man besser als eine Hygiene
bezeichnen dürfte, um sie nicht mit so erbarmungswürdigen Dingen wie das Christenthum ist, zu
vermischen, machte ihre Wirkung abhängig von dem Sieg über das Ressentiment: die Seele davon frei
machen—erster Schritt zur Genesung. „Nicht durch Feindschaft kommt Feindschaft zu Ende, durch
Freundschaft kommt Feindschaft zu Ende”: das steht am Anfang der Lehre Buddha's—so redet nicht die
Moral, so redet die Physiologie.—Das Ressentiment, aus der Schwäche geboren, Niemandem schädlicher als
dem Schwachen selbst,—im andern Falle, wo eine reiche Natur die Voraussetzung ist, ein überflüssiges
Gefühl, ein Gefühl, über das Herr zu bleiben beinahe der Beweis des Reichthums ist.
To the sick man resentment ought to be more strictly forbidden than anything else—it is his special danger:
unfortunately, however, it is also his most natural propensity. This was fully grasped by that profound
physiologist Buddha. His “religion,” which it would be better to call a system of hygiene, in order to avoid
confounding it with a creed so wretched as Christianity, depended for its effect upon the triumph over
resentment: to make the soul free wherefrom was considered the first step towards recovery. “Not through
hostility is hostility put to flight; through friendship does hostility end”: this stands at the beginning of
Buddha’s teaching—this is not a precept of morality, but of physiology. Resentment born of weakness is not
more deleterious to anybody than it is to the weak man himself—conversely, in the case of that man whose
nature is fundamentally a rich one, resentment is a superfluous feeling, a feeling to remain master of which is
almost a proof of riches.
In den Zeiten der décadence verbot ich sie mir als schädlich; sobald das Leben wieder reich und stolz genug
dazu war, verbot ich sie mir als unter mir.
In my moments of decadence I forbade myself the indulgence of feelings of resentment, because they were
harmful; as soon as my life recovered enough riches and pride, however, I regarded them again as forbidden,
but this time because they were beneath me.
Pure habits and honesty toward myself are among the first conditions of my existence. ... I swim, bathe, and
splash about, as it were, incessantly in water, in any kind of perfectly transparent and shining element. That
is why my relations with fellows try my patience to no small extent; my humanity does not consist in the fact
that I understand the feelings of my fellow, but that I can endure to understand.
Ich habe nie über Fragen nachgedacht, die keine sind, —ich habe mich nicht verschwendet.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, “Warum ich so klug bin,” § 2.1
I have never pondered over questions that are not questions—I have not squandered my strength.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, A. Ludovici, trans., “Why I am so clever,” § 2.1
Ich habe nie über Fragen nachgedacht, die keine sind, —ich habe mich nicht verschwendet.
I have never pondered questions that are not questions—I have not wasted myself.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, “Why I am so clever,” § 2.1
817
Ich möchte nicht eine Handlung hinterdrein in Stich lassen, ich würde vorziehn, den schlimmen Ausgang, die
Folgen grundsätzlich aus der Werthfrage wegzulassen. Man verliert beim schlimmen Ausgang gar zu leicht
den richtigen Blick für Das, was man that: ein Gewissensbiss scheint mir eine Art „böser Blick”. Etwas, das
fehlschlägt, um so mehr bei sich in Ehren halten, weil es fehlschlug—das gehört eher schon zu meiner
Moral.
Once it was done I should hate to leave an action of mine in the lurch; I should prefer to omit the evil
outcome, the consequences, from the problem concerning the value of an action. In the face of evil
consequences one is too ready to lose the proper standpoint from which one’s deed ought to be considered. ...
Something that has failed should be honored all the more jealously, precisely because it has failed—this is
much more in keeping with my morality.
Ich bin zu neugierig, zu fragwürdig, zu übermüthig, um mir eine faustgrobe Antwort gefallen zu lassen. Gott
ist eine faustgrobe Antwort, eine Undelicatesse gegen uns Denker —, im Grunde sogar bloss ein faustgrobes
Verbot an uns: ihr sollt nicht denken!
I am too inquisitive, too incredulous, too high spirited, to be satisfied with such a palpably clumsy solution of
things. God is a too palpably clumsy solution of things; a solution which shows a lack of delicacy toward us
thinkers—at bottom He is really no more than a coarse and rude prohibition of us: ye shall not think!
In diesem Falle wird einfach Nichts gehört, mit der akustischen Täuschung, dass wo Nichts gehört wird, auch
Nichts da ist
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, “Warum ich so gute Bücher schreibe,” § 3.0.1
Thanks to an acoustic delusion, people will believe that where nothing is heard there is nothing to hear.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, A. Ludovici, trans., “Why I write such excellent books,” § 3.0.1
Wer mir aber durch Höhe des Wollens verwandt ist, erlebt dabei wahre Ekstasen des Lernens.
He who is related to me through loftiness of will experiences genuine raptures of understanding in my books.
Es giebt durchaus keine stolzere und zugleich raffinirtere Art von Büchern: —sie erreichen hier und da das
Höchste, was auf Erden erreicht werden kann, den Cynismus.
... the highest pinnacle of earthly endeavour, cynicism.
„Femininismus” im Menschen, auch im Manne, ein Thorschluss für mich: man wird niemals in dies
Labyrinth verwegener Erkenntnisse eintreten.
Feminism, whether in mankind or man, is likewise a barrier to my writings; with it, no one could ever enter
into this labyrinth of fearless knowledge.
Man muss sich selbst nie geschont haben, man muss die Härte in seinen Gewohnheiten haben, um unter
lauter harten Wahrheiten wohlgemuth und heiter zu sein.
A man must never have spared himself, he must have been hard in his habits, in order to be good-humoured
and merry among a host of inexorable truths.
818
Das Christenthum ... ist weder apollinisch, noch dionysisch; es negirt alle ästhetischen Werthe—die einzigen
Werthe, die die „Geburt der Tragödie” anerkennt.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, “ Die Geburt der Tragödie,” § 3.1.1
Christianity ... Is neither Apollonian nor Dionysian. It denies all aesthetic values, which are the only values
that The Birth of Tragedy recognizes.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, A. Ludovici, trans., “The Birth of Tragedy,” § 3.1.1
Insgleichen war damit, dass ich Sokrates als décadent erkannte, ein völlig unzweideutiger Beweis dafür
gegeben, wie wenig die Sicherheit meines psychologischen Griffs von Seiten irgend einer Moral-
Idiosynkrasie Gefahr laufen werde:—die Moral selbst als décadence-Symptom ist eine Neuerung, eine
Einzigkeit ersten Rangs in der Geschichte der Erkenntniss.
To regard morality itself as a symptom of degeneration is an innovation, a unique event of the first order in
the history of knowledge.
Ich sah zuerst den eigentlichen Gegensatz:—den entartenden Instinkt, der sich gegen das Leben mit
unterirdischer Rachsucht wendet (—Christenthum, die Philosophie Schopenhauers, in gewissem Sinne schon
die Philosophie Platos, der ganze Idealismus als typische Formen) und eine aus der Fülle, der Überfülle
geborene Formel der höchsten Bejahung, ein Jasagen ohne Vorbehalt, zum Leiden selbst, zur Schuld selbst,
zu allem Fragwürdigen und Fremden des Daseins selbst.
I was the first to see the actual contrast: the degenerate instinct which turns upon life with a subterranean lust
for vengeance, ... as opposed to a formula of the highest yea-saying to life, born of an abundance and a
superabundance of life—a yea-saying free of reserve, applying even to suffering, and guilt, and all that is
questionable and strange in existence.
Es ist Nichts, was ist, abzurechnen, es ist Nichts entbehrlich—die von den Christen und andren Nihilisten
abgelehnten Seiten des Daseins sind sogar von unendlich höherer Ordnung in der Rangordnung der Werthe
als das, was der Décadence-Instinkt gutheissen, gut heissen durfte. Dies zu begreifen, dazu gehört Muth und,
als dessen Bedingung, ein Überschuss von Kraft.
Nothing that exists must be suppressed. Nothing can be dispensed with. Those aspects of life which
Christians and other nihilists reject belong to an incalculably higher order of values than that which the
instinct of degeneration calls good. ... In order to understand this, a certain courage is necessary.
Genau so weit als der Muth sich vorwärts wagen darf, genau nach dem Maass von Kraft nähert man sich der
Wahrheit.
A man can approach only as near to truth as he has the courage to advance.
Die Erkenntniss, das Jasagen zur Realität ist für den Starken eine ebensolche Nothwendigkeit als für den
Schwachen, unter der Inspiration der Schwäche, die Feigheit und Flucht vor der Realität—das „Ideal” … Es
steht ihnen nicht frei, zu erkennen: die décadents haben die Lüge nöthig, sie ist eine ihrer Erhaltungs-
Bedingungen.
Knowledge, and the affirmation of reality, are just as necessary to the strong man as cowardice, the flight
from reality—in fact, the “ideal”—are necessary to the weak inspired by weakness. These people are not at
liberty to “know,”—decadents stand in need of lies,—it is one of their self-preservative measures.
819
Heraklit, in dessen Nähe überhaupt mir wärmer, mir wohler zu Muthe wird als irgendwo sonst. Die Bejahung
des Vergehens und Vernichtens, das Entscheidende in einer dionysischen Philosophie, das Jasagen zu
Gegensatz und Krieg, das Werden, mit radikaler Ablehnung auch selbst des Begriffs „Sein”—darin muss ich
unter allen Umständen das mir Verwandteste anerkennen, was bisher gedacht worden ist.
Heraclitus, in whose presence alone, I felt warmer and more at ease than anywhere else. The yea-saying to
the impermanence and annihilation of things, which is the decisive feature of a Dionysian philosophy; the
yea-saying to contradiction and war, the postulation of Becoming, together with the radical rejection even of
the concept Being—in all these things, at all events, I must recognize him who has some nearest to me in
thought hitherto.
Die zweite Unzeitgemässe (1874) bringt das Gefährliche, das Leben-Annagende und -Vergiftende in unsrer
Art des Wissenschafts-Betriebs an's Licht —: das Leben krank an diesem entmenschten Räderwerk und
Mechanismus, an der „Unpersönlichkeit” des Arbeiters, an der falschen Ökonomie der „Theilung der
Arbeit”. Der Zweck geht verloren, die Cultur:—das Mittel, der moderne Wissenschafts-Betrieb, barbarisirt
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, “Die Unzeitgemässen,” § 3.2.1
Life is diseased, thanks to this dehumanised piece of clockwork and mechanism, thanks to the
“impersonality” of the workman, and the false economy of the “division of labour.” The object, which is
culture, is lost sight of: modern scientific activity as a means thereto simply produces barbarism.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, A. Ludovici, trans., “Thoughts out of Season,” § 3.2.1
Es ist meine Klugheit, Vieles und vielerorts gewesen zu sein, um Eins werden zu können,—um zu Einem
kommen zu können. Ich musste eine Zeit lang auch Gelehrter sein.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, “Die Unzeitgemässen,” § 3.2.3
My wisdom consists in my having been many things, and in many places, in order to become one thing, in
order to attain one thing. It was part of my fate to be a scholar for a while.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, A. Ludovici, trans., “Thoughts out of Season,” § 3.2.3
In keinem andren Sinne will das Wort „freier Geist” hier verstanden werden: ein freigewordner Geist, der
von sich selber wieder Besitz ergriffen hat.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, “ Menschliches, Allzumenschliches.,” § 3.3.1
The words “free spirit” in this book must not be understood as anything else than a spirit that has become
free, that has once more taken possession of itself.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, A. Ludovici, trans., “Human, All-Too Human,” § 3.3.1
Sieht man genauer zu, so entdeckt man einen unbarmherzigen Geist, der alle Schlupfwinkel kennt, wo das
Ideal heimisch ist,—wo es seine Burgverliesse und gleichsam seine letzte Sicherheit hat.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, “ Menschliches, Allzumenschliches,” § 3.3.1
Looking into this book a little more closely, you perceive a pitiless spirit who knows all the secret hiding-
places in which ideals are wont to skulk-where they find their dungeons, as it were their last refuge.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, A. Ludovici, trans., “Human, All-Too Human,” § 3.3.1
… diese Unterwelt des Ideals

Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, “ Menschliches, Allzumenschliches,” § 3.3.1
820
Meine Aufgabe, einen Augenblick höchster Selbstbesinnung der Menschheit vorzubereiten, einen grossen
Mittag, wo sie zurückschaut und hinausschaut, wo sie aus der Herrschaft des Zufalls und der Priester
heraustritt und die Frage des warum?, des wozu? zum ersten Male als Ganzes stellt —, diese Aufgabe folgt
mit Nothwendigkeit aus der Einsicht, dass die Menschheit nicht von selber auf dem rechten Wege ist, dass
sie durchaus nicht göttlich regiert wird, dass vielmehr gerade unter ihren heiligsten Werthbegriffen der
Instinkt der Verneinung, der Verderbniss, der décadence-Instinkt verführerisch gewaltet hat.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, „Morgenröthe” § 3.4.2
My life-task is to prepare for humanity one supreme moment in which it can come to its senses, a Great
Noon in which it will turn its gaze backwards and forwards, in which it will step from under the yoke of
accident and of priests, and for the first time set the question of the Why and Wherefore of, humanity as a
whole—this life-task naturally follows out of the conviction that mankind does not get on the right road of its
own accord, that it is by no means divinely ruled, but rather that it is precisely under the cover of its most
holy valuations that the instinct of negation, of corruption, and of degeneration has held such a seductive
sway.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, A. Ludovici, trans., “Dawn of Day,” § 3.4.2
My task, preparing for humanity’s moment of highest self-examination … when it will escape from the
domination of chance and priests and, for the first time, pose the question ‘why?’, the question ‘what
for?’ as a whole.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, § 3.4.2, J. Norman, trans. (Cambridge: 2005), p. 121
The instinct of negation, of corruption, the decadence-instinct, has been seductively at work, and precisely
under humanity’s holiest value concepts.
Das entscheidende Zeichen, an dem sich ergiebt, dass der Priester (—eingerechnet die versteckten Priester,
die Philosophen) nicht nur innerhalb einer bestimmten religiösen Gemeinschaft, sondern überhaupt Herr
geworden ist, dass die décadence-Moral, der Wille zum Ende, als Moral an sich gilt, ist der unbedingte
Werth, der dem Unegoistischen und die Feindschaft, die dem Egoistischen überall zu Theil wird.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, „Morgenröthe” § 3.4.2
The decisive sign that priests (—including the hidden priests, the philosophers) have not just become
dominant within a certain religious community, but overall, and that decadence morality, the will to an end,
passes for morality as such, is that absolute value is conferred on the absence of egoism, while egoism meets
with hostility.
Mensch will lieber noch das Nichts wollen als nicht wollen.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, „Genealogie der Moral”, § 3.8
Man prefers to aspire to nonentity than to not aspire at all.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, A. Ludovici, trans., “The Genealogy of Morals,” § 3.8
I alone have the criterion of “truths” in my possession. I alone can decide.

Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, A. Ludovici, trans., “Twilight of the Idols,” § 3.9.2
The fate of music be as dear to man as his own life, because joy and suffering are alike bound up with it.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, A. Ludovici, trans., “The Case of Wagner,” § 3.10.1
The German people, ... with an appetite for which they are to be envied, continue to diet themselves on
contradictions, and gulp down “faith” in company with science, ... without showing the slightest signs of
indigestion.
To be “German” is itself an argument.

Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, A. Ludovici, trans., “The Case of Wagner”
821
Not only have the Germans entirely lost the breath of vision which enables one to grasp the course of culture
and the values of culture, not only are they one and all political (or Church) puppets, but they have also
actually put a ban upon this very breadth of vision.
Psychology is almost the standard of measurement for the cleanliness or uncleanliness of a race.
That which is called “deep” in Germany is precisely this uncleanliness towards oneself. ... People refuse to
be clear in regard to their own natures.
I require no “believers,” it is my opinion that I am too full of malice to believe even in myself; I never
address myself to masses.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, A. Ludovici, trans., “Why I am a Fatality,” § 4.1
I refuse to be a saint; I would rather be a clown.

If falsehood insists on claiming at all costs the word “truth” for its standpoint, the really truthful man must be
sought out among the despised.
The kind of man that he [Zarathustra] conceives sees reality as it is. He is strong enough for this.
In his own nature can be found all the terrible and questionable character of reality.
Was a single one of the philosophers who preceded me a psychologist at all, and not the very reverse of a
psychologist, that is to say, a superior swindler, an idealist?
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, A. Ludovici, trans
Not to have awakened to these discoveries before struck me as the sign of the greatest uncleanliness that
mankind has on it's conscience, as self-deception become instinctive, as fundamental will to be blind to every
phenomenon.
It is not ... the millennia of absence ... of bravery in spiritual things which betrays itself in the triumph of
Christianity. It is rather ... the perfectly ghastly fact that anti-nature itself received the highest honors, as
morality and as law and has remained suspends over man in the form of the categorical imperative.
My formula for the greatness of a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different—not
forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely to bear what is necessary, still less conceal it … but
love it.
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, § 11.10, cited in Kauffman, Nietzsche, p. 283
Nietzsche contra Wagner (1888)

What does a philosopher demand of himself, first and last? To overcome his time in himself, to become
“timeless.”
Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner, Preface, cited in Kauffman, Nietzsche, pp. 406
822
The Will to Power (posthumous)
Band 1: http://books.google.com/books?id=X4koAAAAYAAJ
Band 1: file://H:/eBooks/Werke_Der_Wille_zur_Macht_1884_1888_band1.pdf
Band 2: http://books.google.com/books?id=kI0oAAAAYAAJ
Band 2: file://H:/eBooks/Werke_Der_Wille_zur_Macht_1884_1888_band2.pdf
To deny value, and yet to do what surpasses all praise or (for that matter) understanding.
Nietzsche, The Will to Power
If we unhesitatingly sacrifice ourselves to the notions of ‘God’, ‘Country,’ and ‘Freedom,’ and if all of
history is the smoke surrounding this kind of sacrifice, how can we show the primacy of the concept of
‘philosophy’ over popular concepts like ‘God’, ‘Country,’ and ‘Freedom,’ except by making the former more
expensive than the latter—showing that it demands still greater hecatombs?
We’ll make philosophy a dangerous thing, change the idea of it, teach a philosophy that is dangerous to life;
what better service can be rendered to philosophy?
To let oneself be determined by one’s environment is decadent.

Nietzsche, The Will to Power, § 49
The Church is precisely what Jesus preached against.

The whole conception of an order of rank among the passions: as if the right and normal thing were for
one to be guided by reason—with the passions as abnormal, dangerous, semi-animal, and, moreover, so far
as their aim is concerned, nothing other than desires for pleasure—
Passion is degraded (1) as if it were only in unseemly cases, and not necessarily and always, the motive
force; (2) in as much as it has for its object something of no great value, amusement—
The misunderstanding of passion and reason, as if the latter were an independent entity and not rather a
system of relations between various passions and desires; and is if every passions did not possess its quantum
of reason
Was die Moral Philosophen selbst auszeichnet, das ist die vollkommene Absenz jeder Sauberkeit, jeder
Selbstzucht des Intellekts: sie halten „schone Gefühle” für Argumente: ihr „geschwellter Busen” dünkt ihnen
der Blasebalg der Gottheit.
Nietzsche
What distinguish moral philosophers themselves is a complete absence of intellectual self-discipline:
they take “beautiful feelings” for arguments: they regard their heaving bosoms as the bellows of
divinity.
“Virtue” made completely abstract was the greatest seduction to make oneself abstract: i.e., to detach oneself.
The spell that fights on our behalf, the eye of Venus that charms and blinds even our opponents, is the magic
of the extreme, the seduction that everything extreme exercises
How can I help it that I am wretched! But somebody must be responsible, otherwise it would be too
unbearable!
823
What has been spoilt through the abuse of the church: … the “monastery”: temporary isolation … a kind of
deepest concentration on oneself and self-recovery—to avoid not “temptations” but “obligations” … away
from the tyranny of stimuli and influences that condemns us to spend our strength in reactions, and does not
permit us any more to let it accumulate to the point of spontaneous activity. (One should observe our
scholars closely: they have reached the point where they think only “reactively,” i.e. they must read before
they can think.
Nietzsche, The Will to Power, § 916, cited in Kauffman, Nietzsche, pp. 418-419
Man ist um den Preis Künstler, daß man Das, was alle Nichtkünstler „Form” nennen, als Inhalt, als „die
Sache selbst” empfindet. Damit gehört man freilich in eine verkehrte Welt: denn nunmehr wird einem der
Inhalt zu etwas bloß Formalem,—unser Leben eingerechnet.
Nietzsche
One is an artist at the cost of regarding that which all non-artists call ‘form’ as content, as ‘the matter itself.’
… henceforth content becomes something merely formal.
Nietzsche, The Will To Power, § 818, cited in Nehamas, Nietzsche, p. 39
Ein Erzieher sagt nie, was er selber denkt: sondern immer nur, was er im Verhältnis zum Nutzen Dessen, den
er erzieht, über eine Sache denkt. In dieser Verstellung darf er nicht errathen werden; es gehört zu seiner
Meisterschaft, daß man an seine Ehrlichkeit glaubt.
Nietzsche
An educator never says what he himself thinks, but always only what he thinks of a thing in relation to the
requirements of those he educates.
Nietzsche, The Will To Power, § 980 (Colli/Montinari vol. 11 p. 580)
Greatness of soul cannot be separated from greatness of mind.

Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (posthumous)

Marianne Cowan, trans.
As art tames the unbridled human instinct for knowledge, so philosophy restrains the religious instinct which
is opposed to analysis and which seeks a single whole in which nothing is distinguishable. Again. philosophy
tames mythical elements by strengthening man's desire for objective truth as over against free inventiveness.
Marianne Cowan, introduction to Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (1962), p. 2
I tell the story of these philosophers in simplified form: I merely wish to bring out in each system that point
which represents a piece of the personality, and which history must preserve as a part of what is irrefutable
and indisputable.
Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks
My task is to throw a light on that which we must always love and revere, of which no subsequent
knowledge can rob us: man in his greatness.
Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks
The only thing of interest in a refuted system is the personal element. It alone is what is forever irrefutable.
Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, Marianne Cowan trans., p. 25
Whoever wishes to justify [Philosophy] must show … to what ends a healthy culture uses and has used
philosophy.
Where could we find an instance of cultural pathology which philosophy restored to health? If philosophy
ever manifested itself as helpful, redeeming, or prophylactic, it was in a healthy culture. The sick, it made
even sicker.
824
The very reason [the Greeks] got so far is that they knew how to pick up the spear and throw it onward from
the point where others had left it. Their skill in the art of fruitful learning was admirable. We ought to be
learning from our neighbors precisely as the Greeks learned from theirs, not for the sake of learned pedantry
but rather using everything we learn as a foothold which will take us up as high, and higher, than our
neighbor.
The quest for philosophical beginnings is idle, for everywhere in all beginnings we find only the crude, the
unformed, the empty and the ugly. What matters in all things is the higher levels.
… the republic of creative minds: each giant calling to his brother through the desolate intervals of time. And
undisturbed by the wanton noises of the dwarfs that creep past beneath them, their high spirit-converse
continues.
Philosophy leaps ahead on tiny toeholds; hope and intuition lend wings to its feet. Calculating reason
lumbers heavily behind, looking for better footholds, for reason too wants to reach that alluring goal which
its divine comrade has long since reached.
Science rushes headlong, without selectivity, without “taste,” at whatever is knowable, in the blind
desire to know all at any cost. Philosophical thinking, on the other hand, is ever on the scent of those
things which are most worth knowing, the great and the important insights.
The concept of greatness is changeable, in the realm of morality as well as in that of esthetics. And so
philosophy starts by legislating greatness.
"Grant me, ye gods, but one certainty," runs Parmenides' prayer, "and if it be but a log's breadth on which to
lie. on which to ride upon the sea of uncertainty. Take away everything that comes-to-be, everything lush,
colorful, blossoming, illusory, everything that charms and is alive. Take all these for yourselves and grant me
but the one and only, poor empty certainty.”
Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (1962), p. 81
The Pre-Platonic Philosophers (posthumous)

Socrates ... is the first philosopher of life [Lebensphilosoph], … Thinking serves life, while among all
previous philosophers life had served thought and knowledge: here the proper life appears as a purpose; there
proper knowledge [is seen as] the highest.
Thus Socratic philosophy is absolutely practical: it is hostile to all knowledge unconnected to ethical
implications.
Nietzsche, The Pre-Platonic Philosophers, G. Whitlock trans., p. 145
Dithyrambs of Dionysus (posthumous)

Einsam mit dir, zwiesam im eignen Wissen
Nietzsche „Zwischen Raubvögeln”
Alone with yourself, twofold in self-knowledge
Nietzsche, “Amid Birds of Prey” Dithyrambs of Dionysus, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1984), p.41
825
Wer will bezahlt sein?
Die Käuflichen
Wer feil steht, greift
mit fetten Händen
nach diesem Allerwelts-Blechklingklang Ruhm!
Nietzsche, “Ruhm und Ewigkeit”
So lange die Welt lebt,

zahlt sie Tugend-Geplapper
mit Ruhm-Geklapper—,
die Welt lebt von diesem Lärm
Von großen Dingen—ich sehe Großes!—

soll man schweigen
oder groß reden:
rede groß, meine entzückte Weisheit!
Of great things … one should keep silent
or speak greatly:
speak greatly, my enraptured wisdom!
Nietzsche, “Fame and Eternity” Dithyrambs of Dionysus, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1984), p.65
Meine Seele … in jede Tiefe tauchte sie hinab.

Aber immer gleich dem Korke,
immer schwimmt sie wieder obenauf.
Nietzsche, “Von der Armut des Reichsten”
My soul … dived down into every depth.
But always, like a cork,
always it comes bobbing up again.
Nietzsche, “Of the Poverty of the Richest Man” Dithyrambs of Dionysus, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1984), p. 71
Philosophy and Truth (posthumous, written circa 1872)

The unselective knowledge drive (Erkenntnistrieb) resembles the indiscriminate sexual drive—signs of
vulgarity!
Nietzsche, The Philosopher: Reflections on the Struggle Between Art and Knowledge, D. Breazeale, trans.
Der letzte Philosoph: Betrachtungen über den Kampf von Kunst und Erkenntniß
http://books.google.com/books?id=iVDjAAAAMAAJ (S. 108)
In einer rechten Höhe kommt alles zusammen und über eins — die Gedanken des Philosophen, die Werke
des Künstlers und die guten Thaten.
Nietzsche, Der Letzte Philosoph, § 16
Es ist zu zeigen, wie das ganze Leben eines Volkes unrein und verworren das Bild wiederspiegelt, das seine
höchsten Genien bieten. ... Es giebt eine unsichtbare Brücke von Genius zu Genius — das ist die wahrhaft
reale „Geschichte" eines Volkes, alles andere ist schattenhafte unzählige Variation in schlechterem Stoffe,
Copien ungeübter Hände.
Der Philosoph ist ein Sich-offenbaren der Werkstätte der Natur — Philosoph und Künstler reden von den
Handwerksgeheimnissen der Natur.
826
… ein wählerischer Erkenntnißtrieb d. h. Philosophie
Sie [die Wissenschaft] hängt nämlich in allen ihren Zielen und Methoden durch und durch ab von
philosophischen Ansichten, vergißt dies aber leicht.
Die Philosophie soll den geistigen Höhenzug durch die Jahrhunderte festhalten: damit die ewige
Fruchtbarkeit alles Großen.
Für die Wissenschaft giebt es kein Groß und Klein — aber für die Philosophie! An jenem Satze mißt sich
der Werth der Wissenschaft.
Das Festhalten des Erhabenen!
Welcher außerordentliche Mangel an Büchern in unserer Zeit, die eine heroische Kraft athmen! — Selbst
Plutarch wird nicht mehr gelesen!
Für den tragischen Philosophen vollendet es das Bild des Daseins, daß das Metaphysische nur
anthropomorphisch erscheint.
Der Erkenntnißtrieb, an seine Grenzen gelangt, wendet sich gegen sich selbst, um nun zur Kritik des Wissens
zu schreiten. Die Erkenntniß im Dienste des besten Lebens.
Jedenfalls müßte die Religion, welche es könnte, eine ungeheure Liebeskraft haben: an der zerbricht auch das
Wissen, wie es an der Sprache der Kunst zerbricht.
Für uns gilt nur der ästhetische Maßstab.

Es ist die Aufgabe einer Cultur, daß das Große in einem Volke nicht als Einsiedler erscheint, noch als
Verbannter.
Dagegen kann ich mir eine ganz neue Art des Philosophen-Künstlers imaginiren, der ein Kunstwerk hinein in
die Lücke stellt, mit ästhetischem Werthe.
Die Cultur eines Volkes offenbart sich in der einheitlichen Bändigung der Triebe dieses Volkes: die
Philosophie bändigt den Erkenntnißtrieb, die Kunst den Formentrieb und die Ekstasis, die αγάπη den ερως u.
s. w.
Other Nachlass
Hast du eine große Freude an etwas gehabt? so nimm Abschied, nie kommt es zum zweiten Male.
Nietzsche, KSA 8.562
Have you had a great joy? Well, then bit it farewell. It will never come a second time.
Nietzsche, KSA 8.562, my translation
827
Dem Werden den Charakter des Seins aufzuprägen—das ist der höchste Wille zur Macht ... Daß alles
wiederkehrt, ist die extremste Annäherung einer Welt des Werdens an die des Seins:—Gipfel der
Betrachtung.
Nietzsche
To impress on becoming the character of being—that is the highest will-to-power ... The fact that everything
recurs is the very nearest approach of a world of becoming to the world of being—a contemplative peak.
Nietzsche, Werke, XVI 101 = KSA 12.312
Man muß an der Kirche die Lüge empfinden, nicht nur die Unwahrheit: so weit die Aufklärung ins Volk
treiben, daß die Priester alle mit schlechtem Gewissen Priester werden—ebenso muß man es mit dem Staate
machen. Das ist Aufgabe der Aufklärung, den Fürsten und Staatsmännern ihr ganzes Gebahren zur
absichtlichen Lüge zu machen, sie um das gute Gewissen zu bringen, und die unbewußte Tartüfferie aus dem
Leibe des europäischen Menschen wieder herauszubringen.
Nietzsche, Nachlass 1884, Gruppe 25, 294 = KSA 11
Die geistige Aufklärung ist ein unfehlbares Mittel, um die Menschen unsicher, willensschwächer, an schluß-
und stütze-bedürftiger zu machen, kurz das Herdentier im Menschen zu entwickeln: weshalb bisher alle
großen Regierungs-Künstler (Konfuzius in China, das imperium Romanum, Napoleon, das Papsttum, zur
Zeit, wo es der Macht und nicht nur der Welt sich zugekehrt hatte), wo die herrschenden Instinkte bisher
kulminierten, auch sich der geistigen Aufklärung bedienten—mindestens sie walten ließen (wie die Päpste
der Renaissance). Die Selbsttäuschung der Menge über diesen Punkt, z. B. in aller Demokratie, ist äußerst
wertvoll: die Verkleinerung und Regierbarkeit der Menschen wird als »Fortschritt« erstrebt!
Nietzsche, Nachlass
Ich bekämpfe den Gedanken, daß der Egoismus schädlich und verwerflich ist. Ich will dem Egoismus das
gute Gewissen schaffen.
Nietzsche
I challenge the idea that egoism is harmful and reprehensible: I want to give egoism a clear conscience.
Nietzsche, Werke, Vol. XIII, p. 111 = KGW VII-1.529 = KSA 10.503
Was aber wirklich, was wahr ist, ist weder Eins, noch auch nur reduzirbar auf Eins.
Nietzsche
What is actual, what is true, is neither one nor yet to be reduced to one.
Nietzsche, KSA 13, 477
Der falsche Gegensatz von vita practica und contemplativa ist asiatisch. Die Griechen verstanden es besser.
Nietzsche
The false opposition between the vita practica and the vita contemplativa is Asiatic. The Greek
understanding is better.
Nietzsche IV.6[17] = KGW IV-1.180 = KSA 8.104, my translation
Nietzsche’s Statements on Politics

A higher civilization can only come about when there are two distinct social castes: that of the working
people and that of the leisured, those capable of true leisure; or, to put it more strongly, the caste of
forced labor and the caste of free labor.
Nietzsche, Works, Vol. II, p. 349
The people are the farthest away from socialism as a doctrine of reform in the acquisition of property: and
should they ever have access to the taxation screw through their parliaments large majorities, they will
assault the principality of capitalists, businessmen and stock exchanges with progressive taxation, thus in fact
slowly creating a middle class which may forget about socialism as it would a disease it has recovered from.
Nietzsche, Werke, Vol. III, p. 352.
828
Were they [the capitalists] to share the hereditary nobility’s distinction in glance and gesture, then perhaps
there would be no socialism of the masses.
Nietzsche, Werke, Vol. V, p. 77.
Letters
I have never been characterized, either as a psychologist, or as a writer (including poet), or as the inventor of
a new kind of pessimism (a Dionysian pessimism, born of strength, which takes pleasure in seizing the
problem of existence by the horns), or as an Immoralist (the highest form, till now, of “intellectual rectitude,”
which is permitted to treat morality as an illusion, having itself become instinct and inevitability).
Nietzsche, Letter to Carl Fuchs, cited in Werner Dannhauser, Nietzsche’s View of Socrates (Ithaca: 1974), p. 17
It is not necessary at all—not even desirable—that you should argue in my favor; on the contrary, a dose of
curiosity, as in the presence of a foreign plant, with an ironic resistance, would seem to me an incomparably
more intelligent attitude.
Nietzsche, Letter to Carl Fuchs, cited in Werner Dannhauser, Nietzsche’s View of Socrates (Ithaca: 1974), p. 17
ANATOLE FRANCE (1844-1924)

The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which will last forever.
Anatole France
I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.

Anatole France
Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.

Anatole France
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is part of
ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.
Anatole France
One must learn to think well before learning to think; afterward it proves too difficult.
Anatole France
An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able
to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't.
Anatole France
EDWARD CARPENTER (1844-1929)

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Carpenter%2C%20Edward%2C%201844-1929%22&page=1
Every human being grows up inside a sheath of custom, which enfolds it as the swathing clothes enfold the
infant.
Edward Carpenter, “Custom”
“Defence of criminals: A criticism of morality” (1889)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/carpenter/1889/defence-criminals-1.htm
The law is in a sense the consolidated public opinion of society.

Edward Carpenter, “Defence of criminals: A criticism of morality”
829
The money-grubber has been floating with the great current of society, while the poor man has been
swimming against it.
The poacher ... is asserting a right (and an instinct) belonging to a past time—when for hunting purposes all
land was held in common. ... In those times private property was theft. Obviously the man who attempted to
retain for himself land or goods, or who fenced off a portion of the common ground and—like the modern
landlord—would allow no one to till it who did not pay him a tax—was a criminal of the deepest dye.
Nevertheless the criminals pushed their way to the front, and have become the respectables of modern
society.
Law represents from age to age the code of the dominant or ruling class, slowly accumulated, no doubt, and
slowly modified, but always added to and always administered by the ruling class. Today the code of the
dominant class may perhaps best be denoted by the word Respectability—and if we ask why this code has to
a great extent overwhelmed the codes of the other classes and got the law on its side (so far that in the main it
characterises those classes who do not conform to it as the criminal classes), the answer can only be: Because
it is the code of the classes who are in power. Respectability is the code of those who have the wealth and the
command, and as these have also the fluent pens and tongues, it is the standard of modern literature and the
press. It is not necessarily a better standard than others, but it is the one that happens to be in the ascendant; it
is the code of the classes that chiefly represent modern society; it is the code of the Bourgeoisie. It is
different from the Feudal code of the past, of the knightly classes, and of Chivalry; it is different from the
Democratic code of the future—of brotherhood and of equality; it is the code of the Commercial age and its
distinctive watchword is—property.
The Respectability of today is the respectability of property. There is nothing so respectable as being well-
off.
Thus we see that though there are for instance in the England of to-day a variety of classes, and a variety of
corresponding codes of public opinion and morality, one of these codes, namely that of the ruling class
whose watchword is property, is strongly in the ascendant. And we may fairly suppose that in any nation
from the time when it first becomes divided into well-marked classes this is or has been the case. In one
age—the commercial age—the code of the commercial or money-loving class is dominant; in another—the
military—the code of the warrior class is dominant; in another—the religious—the code of the priestly class;
and so on.
Probably the respect or stigma attaching to particular classes of actions arose from the fact that these classes
of actions were—or were thought to be—beneficial or injurious to the society of the time; but it is also clear
that this good or bad name once created clings to the action long after the action has ceased in the course of
social progress to be beneficial in the one case, or injurious in the other; and indeed long after the thinkers of
the race have discovered the discrepancy. And so in a short time arises a great confusion in the popular mind
between what is really good or evil for the race and what is reputed to be so—the bolder spirits who try to
separate the two having to atone for this confusion by their own martyrdom.
830
Plato in his allegory of the soul—in the Phaedrus—though he apparently divides the passions which draw the
human chariot into two classes, the heavenward and the earthward—figured by the white horse and the black
horse respectively—does not recommend that the black horse should be destroyed or dismissed, but only that
he (as well as the white horse) should be kept under due control by the charioteer. By which he seems to
intend that there is a power in man which stands above and behind the passions, and under whose control
alone the human being can safely move. In fact if the fiercer and so-called more earthly passions were
removed, half the driving force would be gone from the chariot of the human soul. Hatred may be devilish at
times—but after all the true value of it depends on what you hate, on the use to which the passion is put.
Anger, though inhuman at one time is magnificent and divine at another. Obstinacy may be out of place in a
drawing-room, but it is the latest virtue on a battlefield when an important position has to be held against the
full brunt of the enemy. And Lust, though maniacal and monstrous in its aberrations, cannot in the last resort
be separated from its divine companion, Love. To let the more amiable passions have entire sway notoriously
does not do: to turn your cheek, too literally, to the smiter, is (pace Tolstoy) only to encourage smiting; and
when society becomes so altruistic that everybody runs to fetch the coal-scuttle we feel sure that something
has gone wrong. The white-washed heroes of our biographies with their many virtues and no faults do not
please us. We have an impression that the man without faults is, to say the least, a vague, uninteresting
being—a picture without light and shade—and the conventional semi-pious classification of character into
good and bad qualities (as if the good might be kept and the bad thrown away) seems both inadequate and
false.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON (1850-1894)

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.
Robert Louis Stevenson, Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882)
An idle mind is a questioning, sceptical mind. Hence it is a mind not too bound up with ephemeral things, as
the minds of workers are. The idler, then, is somebody who separates himself from his occupation: there are
many people scarcely conscious of living except in the exercise of some conventional occupation.
Robert Louis Stevenson
There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.

Robert Louis Stevenson cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 66
An aim in life is the only fortune worth the finding; and it is not to be found in foreign lands but in the heart
itself.
To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end in life.
Our own vices in another man seem particularly hideous.

If your morals make you dreary, depend on it they are wrong.

It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste it like a miser. It is better to live and be done with it,
then to die daily in the sick-room.
Robert Louis Stevenson, “Aes Triplex,” 315
Old and young, we are all on our last cruise.

Robert Louis Stevenson, “Crabbed Age and Youth”
831
Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious
attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity. And since mediocre people constitute the bulk of
humanity, this is no doubt very properly so.
Robert Louis Stevenson, “Crabbed Age and Youth”
If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say “give them up,” for they may be
all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.
Robert Louis Stevenson, Across the Plains, Chapter 12
An Apology for Idlers

http://grammar.about.com/od/classicessays/a/apologstevenson.htm
Just now, when every one is bound, under pain of a decree in absence convicting them of lèse-respectability,
to enter on some lucrative profession, and labour therein with something not far short of enthusiasm, a cry
from the opposite party, who are content when they have enough.
Robert Louis Stevenson, “An Apology for Idlers”
There is a sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scarcely conscious of living except in the
exercise of some conventional occupation. ... They have no curiosity; they cannot give themselves over to
random provocations; they do not take pleasure in the exercise of their faculties for its own sake; and unless
necessity lays about them with a stick, they will even stand still. It is no good speaking to such folk: they
cannot be idle, their nature is not generous enough; and they pass those hours in a sort of coma, which are not
dedicated to furious moiling in the gold-mill.
Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of
many other things.
There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.

ADOLF VON HARNACK (1851-1930)

Essays on the Social Gospel (1907)
The Gospel … aims at raising the individual to a standpoint far above the conflicts between earthly success
and earthly distress, between riches and poverty, lordship and service.
Adolf von Harnack and Wilhelm Herrmann, “The evangelical social mission in the light of the history of the
church,” (1894) Essays on the Social Gospel, G. M. Craik, trans. (1907), vol. 20, p. 9
[From] indifference to all earthly affairs … two principles arise. One may be called the tranquil, quietistic
principle, and the other, the radical; the former impels men to acquiesce, with faith and resignation, in the
whole course of the world, whatever it may be, or, however it may develop, while the latter urges them to
renounce the world, and live for something new.
church,” (1894) Essays on the Social Gospel, G. M. Craik, trans. (1907), vol. 20, pp. 9-10
832
The kingdom of God must be built upon the foundation, not of institutions, but of individuals in whom God
dwells and who are glad to live for their fellow men.
church,” (1894) Essays on the Social Gospel, G. M. Craik, trans. (1907), vol. 20, p. 15
EDGAR W. HOWE (1853-1937)

When I say “Everybody says so,” it means I say so.
Edgar W. Howe, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 117
If you can forgive the magnificence and vanity of a successful politician, why are you unable to forgive a
successful businessman? Every time I strike a match, or turn on an electric button, or use the telephone, I am
indebted to a business man.
Edgar W. Howe, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 117
Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better.

Edward W. Howe
Ventures in Common Sense

http://books.google.com/books?id=18vGLKgIBaQC
Saving souls was once the most popular work; but now saving the country takes the lead.
Edgar W. Howe, Ventures in Common Sense (1919), “Politics,” § 1, p. 50
We have certain words now in politics more potent than the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, etc., ever were. We
worship the word Democracy. Has any one ever taken the pains to look into its real meaning?
Edgar W. Howe, Ventures in Common Sense (1919), “Politics,” § 2, p. 51
Many a man has professed to hear a call to go out into the world and preach, but I never knew one who heard
the call to come in.
Edgar W. Howe, Ventures in Common Sense (1919), “Religion,” § 20, p. 75
If a fool can be made better by deceiving him, and promising him rewards at a time so remote he cannot
know he has been deceived, I do not object. So far as I know, there may be a secret work in theological
schools admitting that the base of it all is to teach fools morality. Intelligent men accept the truth of morality
as unreservedly as they accept the truth of arithmetic; they stumble at times, and are unable to work all the
sums in the book, but they know the rules are true.
My Bishop is any man who is living a better life than I am living.

A modest man is usually admired—if people ever hear of him.

Edgar W. Howe, Ventures in Common Sense (1919), “Man,” § 7, p. 85
Most men who want to do good, want it done at the expense of others.
A man who does not fool himself seldom cares much about fooling others. But the man who claims to have
seen a ghost wants everybody else to believe in ghosts.
I will not lie about myself: others do it habitually, and call their lying virtue.
833
You often hear people compliment a dog. A pig is complimented for growing satisfactorily, on a certain
amount of food. Horses are admired, and said to be perfect specimens. The prize steer attracts attention at a
county fair, and is admired without reserve. But there never was a satisfactory man.
A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.

Edgar W. Howe, Ventures in Common Sense (1919), “Selfishness,” § 4
OSCAR WILDE (1854–1900)

I consider ugliness a kind of malady, and illness and suffering always inspire me with revulsion.
Oscar Wilde, The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde, #213
A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.

Oscar Wilde
Genius is born, not paid.

Oscar Wilde
Some kill their love when they are young,

And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold.
Oscar Wilde, Ballad of Reading Goal (1898)
So with curious eyes and sick surmise

We watched him day by day,
And wondered if each one of us
Would end the self-same way,
For none can tell to what red Hell
His sightless soul may stray.
A prison wall was round us both,

Two outcast men we were:
The world had thrust us from its heart,
And God from out His care:
And the iron gin that waits for Sin
Had caught us in its snare
And all the woe that moved him so

That he gave that bitter cry,
And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
None knew so well as I:
For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths that one must die.
His mourners will be outcast men.

It takes great courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.
Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband
834
Good resolutions are a useless attempt to interfere with scientific laws; their origin pure vanity, their results
absolutely nil.
Oscar Wilde cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 90
Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love; it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.
Oscar Wilde cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 101
Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob.
Oscar Wilde, cited in The Last Word, p. 204
When I think of all the harm the bible has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.
Oscar Wilde
Conscience and cowardice are really the same things.

A community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment than … by the
occasional occurrence of crime.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Oscar Wilde
The English are always degrading truths into facts. When a truth becomes a fact, it loses all its intellectual
value.
Oscar Wilde
I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put
it back again.
Oscar Wilde
If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.
Oscar Wilde
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

Oscar Wilde
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
Oscar Wilde
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

Oscar Wilde
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde
One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act
in accordance with the dictates of reason.
Oscar Wilde
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their
passions a quotation.
Oscar Wilde
He to whom the present is the only thing that is present, knows nothing of the age in which he lives.
Oscar Wilde
835
The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.
Oscar Wilde
To drift with every passion till my soul

Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play,
Is it for this that I have given away
Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?—
Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll 5
Scrawled over on some boyish holiday
With idle songs for pipe and virelay
Which do but mar the secret of the whole.
Oscar Wilde, “Hélas”
Surely there was a time I might have trod

The sunlit heights, and from life’s dissonance
Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God:
Is that time dead? ...
Oscar Wilde, “Hélas”
It is only shallow people who do no judge by appearances. The mystery of the world is the visible, not the
invisible.
Oscar Wilde, cited in Against Interpretation, p. 3
I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit;
touch it and the bloom is gone.
Oscar Wilde, Lady Bracknell, in The Importance of Being Earnest, act 1.
Duty is what one expects from others, it is not what one does oneself.
Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth, in A Woman of No Importance, act 2
Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

Oscar Wilde, Cecil Graham, in Lady Windermere’s Fan, act 3
Do you really think, Arthur, that it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible
temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to.
Oscar Wilde, Sir Robert Chiltern, in An Ideal Husband, act 2
The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/wilde-oscar/soul-man/index.htm
Now and then, in the course of the century, a great man of science, like Darwin; a great poet, like Keats; a
fine critical spirit, like M. Renan; a supreme artist, like Flaubert, has been able to isolate himself, to keep
himself out of reach of the clamorous claims of others, to stand “under the shelter of the wall,” as Plato puts
it, and so to realise the perfection of what was in him, to his own incomparable gain, and to the incomparable
and lasting gain of the whole world. These, however, are exceptions. The majority of people spoil their lives
by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism—are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves
surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should
be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence. … It is
much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought.
Oscar Wilde, “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” Complete Works (New York: 1989), p. 1079, ¶ 2
836
They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very
advanced school, by amusing the poor.
But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct
society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the
carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so
prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by
those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm
are the people who try to do most good.
Oscar Wilde, “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” Complete Works (New York: 1989), p. 1079, ¶ 3-4
It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of
private property.
At present, in consequence of the existence of private property, a great many people are enabled to develop a
certain very limited amount of Individualism. They are either under no necessity to work for their living, or
are enabled to choose the sphere of activity that is really congenial to them, and gives them pleasure. These
are the poets, the philosophers, the men of science, the men of culture – in a word, the real men, the men who
have realised themselves, and in whom all Humanity gains a partial realisation. Upon the other hand, there
are a great many people who, having no private property of their own, and being always on the brink of sheer
starvation, are compelled to do the work of beasts of burden, to do work that is quite uncongenial to them,
and to which they are forced by the peremptory, unreasonable, degrading Tyranny of want.
If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the
rich we must get rid of it.
Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience
that progress has been made.
Oscar Wilde, “The Soul of Man under Socialism,” ¶ 9
To recommend thrift to the poor ... is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They
have made private terms with the enemy.
I can quite understand a man accepting laws that protect private property, and admit of its accumulation, as
long as he himself is able under those conditions to realise some form of beautiful and intellectual life. But it
is almost incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and made hideous by such laws can possibly
acquiesce in their continuance.
Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercise such a paralysing effect over the nature of men,
that no class is ever really conscious of its own suffering. They have to be told of it by other people.
It is clear, then, that no Authoritarian Socialism will do. For while under the present system a very large
number of people can lead lives of a certain amount of freedom and expression and happiness, under an
industrial-barrack system, or a system of economic tyranny, nobody would be able to have any such freedom
at all. It is to be regretted that a portion of our community should be practically in slavery, but to propose to
solve the problem by enslaving the entire community is childish.
837
Private property ... has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain not growth its aim. So that man
thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true
perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is.
Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, ¶ 15
Private property has crushed true Individualism, and set up an Individualism that is false. It has debarred one
part of the community from being individual by starving them. It has debarred the other part of the
community from being individual by putting them on the wrong road, and encumbering them.
Most personalities have been obliged to be rebels. Half their strength has been wasted in friction. Byron’s
personality, for instance, was terribly wasted in its battle with the stupidity, and hypocrisy, and Philistinism
of the English. Such battles do not always intensify strength. ... Even in Shelley the note of rebellion is
sometimes too strong. The note of the perfect personality is not rebellion, but peace.
It will be a marvellous thing – the true personality of man – when we see it. It will grow naturally and
simply, flowerlike, or as a tree grows. It will not be at discord. It will never argue or dispute. It will not prove
things. It will know everything. And yet it will not busy itself about knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its
value will not be measured by material things. It will have nothing. And yet it will have everything, and
whatever one takes from it, it will still have, so rich will it be. It will not be always meddling with others, or
asking them to be like itself. It will love them because they will be different. And yet while it will not meddle
with others, it will help all, as a beautiful thing helps us, by being what it is. The personality of man will be
very wonderful. It will be as wonderful as the personality of a child.
‘Know thyself’ was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, ‘Be
thyself’ shall be written
When Jesus talks about the poor he simply means personalities, just as when he talks about the rich he
simply means people who have not developed their personalities. Jesus moved in a community that allowed
the accumulation of private property just as ours does, and the gospel that he preached was not that in such a
community it is an advantage for a man to live on scanty, unwholesome food, to wear ragged, unwholesome
clothes, to sleep in horrid, unwholesome dwellings, and a disadvantage for a man to live under healthy,
pleasant, and decent conditions. Such a view would have been wrong. ... What Jesus meant, was this. He said
to man, ‘You have a wonderful personality. Develop it. Be yourself. Don’t imagine that your perfection lies
in accumulating or possessing external things. Your perfection is inside of you. If only you could realise that,
you would not want to be rich. Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the treasury-
house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that may not be taken from you. And so, try to so
shape your life that external things will not harm you. And try also to get rid of personal property. It involves
sordid preoccupation, endless industry, continual wrong. Personal property hinders Individualism at every
step.’
What Jesus does say is that man reaches his perfection, not through what he has, not even through what he
does, but entirely through what he is.
Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, , ¶ 22
838
The wealthy young man ... comes to Jesus. ... Jesus says to him, ‘You should give up private property. It
hinders you from realising your perfection. It is a drag upon you. It is a burden. Your personality does not
need it. It is within you, and not outside of you, that you will find what you really are, and what you really
want.’ To his own friends he says the same thing. He tells them to be themselves, and not to be always
worrying about other things. What do other things matter? Man is complete in himself. When they go into
the world, the world will disagree with them. That is inevitable. The world hates Individualism. But that is
not to trouble them. They are to be calm and self-centred. If a man takes their cloak, they are to give him
their coat, just to show that material things are of no importance. If people abuse them, they are not to answer
back. What does it signify? The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public
opinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual violence, they are not to be violent in turn.
That would be to fall to the same low level. After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free. His soul can be
free. His personality can be untroubled. He can be at peace. And, above all things, they are not to interfere
with other people or judge them in any way. Personality is a very mysterious thing. A man cannot always be
estimated by what he does. He may keep the law, and yet be worthless. He may break the law, and yet be
fine. He may be bad, without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against society, and yet realise
through that sin his true perfection.
A man ... may commit a sin against society, and yet realise through that sin his true perfection.
He who would lead a Christlike life is he who is perfectly and absolutely himself. He may be a great poet, or
a great man of science; or a young student at a University, or one who watches sheep upon a moor; or a
maker of dramas, like Shakespeare, or a thinker about God, like Spinoza; or a child who plays in a garden, or
a fisherman who throws his net into the sea. It does not matter what he is, as long as he realises the perfection
of the soul that is within him. All imitation in morals and in life is wrong.
While to the claims of charity a man may yield and yet be free, to the claims of conformity no man may yield
and remain free.
Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things. ... All
authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised.
When it is violently, grossly, and cruelly used, it produces a good effect, by creating, or at any rate bringing
out, the spirit of revolt and Individualism that is to kill it. When it is used with a certain amount of kindness,
and accompanied by prizes and rewards, it is dreadfully demoralising. People, in that case, are less conscious
of the horrible pressure that is being put on them, and so go through their lives in a sort of coarse comfort,
like petted animals, without ever realising that they are probably thinking other people’s thoughts, living by
other people’s standards, wearing practically what one may call other people’s second-hand clothes, and
never being themselves for a single moment. ‘He who would be free,’ says a fine thinker, ‘must not
conform.’ And authority, by bribing people to conform, produces a very gross kind of over-fed barbarism
amongst us.
As one reads history, not in the expurgated editions written for school-boys and passmen, but in the original
authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by
the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual
employment of punishment, than it is by the occurrence of crime.
A community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the
occasional occurrence of crime.
839
Though a crime may not be against property, it may spring from the misery and rage and depression
produced by our wrong system of property-holding.
he State is to be a voluntary association that will organise labour, and be the manufacturer and distributor of
necessary commodities. The State is to make what is useful. The individual is to make what is beautiful.
Civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly,
horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong,
insecure, and demoralising. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world
depends.
Is this Utopian? A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves
out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and,
seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.
Whenever a community or a powerful section of a community, or a government of any kind, attempts to

dictate to the artist what he is to do, Art either entirely vanishes, or becomes stereotyped, or degenerates into
a low and ignoble form of craft.
A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is
what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want. Indeed, the moment that
an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and
becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or a dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim to be
considered as an artist. Art is the most intense mode of Individualism that the world has known. I am inclined
to say that it is the only real mode of Individualism that the world has known. Crime, which, under certain
conditions, may seem to have created Individualism, must take cognisance of other people and interfere with
them. It belongs to the sphere of action. But alone, without any reference to his neighbours, without any
interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and if he does not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is
not an artist at all.
The public has always, and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art to be
popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told
before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating
too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity. Now Art should never
try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.
If a man of science were told that the results of his experiments, and the conclusions that he arrived at,
should be of such a character that they would not upset the received popular notions on the subject, or disturb
popular prejudice, or hurt the sensibilities of people who knew nothing about science; if a philosopher were
told that he had a perfect right to speculate in the highest spheres of thought, provided that he arrived at the
same conclusions as were held by those who had never thought in any sphere at all – well, nowadays the man
of science and the philosopher would be considerably amused.
840
It is at once too easy and too difficult to be a popular novelist. It is too easy, because the requirements of the
public as far as plot, style, psychology, treatment of life, and treatment of literature are concerned are within
the reach of the very meanest capacity and the most uncultivated mind. It is too difficult, because to meet
such requirements the artist would have to do violence to his temperament, would have to write not for the
artistic joy of writing, but for the amusement of half-educated people, and so would have to suppress his
individualism, forget his culture, annihilate his style, and surrender everything that is valuable in him.
Art is Individualism, and Individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. Therein lies its immense
value. For what it seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction
of man to the level of a machine.
They swallow their classics whole, and never taste them.

The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They
degrade the classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of
Beauty in new forms.
A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears they get so angry, and
bewildered that they always use two stupid expressions – one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible;
the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What they mean by these words seems to me to be this.
When they say a work is grossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing
that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a
beautiful thing that is true.
The true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely himself.
It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone, and can be made
as offensive as the brickbat. They at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed him, and made him
their industrious and well-paid servant. It is greatly to be regretted.
The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. Journalism,
conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.
Oscar Wilde, “The Soul of Man under Socialism” ¶ 39
This advance is entirely due to a few individual artists refusing to accept the popular want of taste as their
standard, and refusing to regard Art as a mere matter of demand and supply.
At first he [Irving] appealed to the few: now he has educated the many.
The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art. The spectator is
to be receptive. He is to be the violin on which the master is to play. And the more completely he can
suppress his own silly views, his own foolish prejudices, his own absurd ideas of what Art should be, or
should not be, the more likely he is to understand and appreciate the work.
841
An educated person’s ideas of Art are drawn naturally from what Art has been, whereas the new work of art
is beautiful by being what Art has never been; and to measure it by the standard of the past is to measure it
by a standard on the rejection of which its real perfection depends.
The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all.
Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism
There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.
There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannises over the body. There is the despot who
tyrannises over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannises over the soul and body alike. The first is called
the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People.
Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, (London, 1891)
We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently
do not influence it.
The people ... have marred themselves by imitation of their inferiors. They have taken the sceptre of the
Prince.
Individualism does not come to man with any sickly cant about duty, which merely means doing what other
people want because they want it; or any hideous cant about self-sacrifice, which is merely a survival of
savage mutilation. In fact, it does not come to man with any claims upon him at all. It comes naturally and
inevitably out of man. It is the point to which all development tends. It is the differentiation to which all
organisms grow. It is the perfection that is inherent in every mode of life, and towards which every mode of
life quickens. And so Individualism exercises no compulsion over man. On the contrary, it says to man that
he should suffer no compulsion to be exercised over him. It does not try to force people to be good. It knows
that people are good when they are let alone. Man will develop Individualism out of himself. Man is now so
developing Individualism. To ask whether Individualism is practical is like asking whether Evolution is
practical. Evolution is the law of life, and there is no evolution except towards Individualism. Where this
tendency is not expressed, it is a case of artificially-arrested growth, or of disease, or of death.
Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, (London, 1891)
It has been pointed out that one of the results of the extraordinary tyranny of authority is that words are
absolutely distorted from their proper and simple meaning, and are used to express the obverse of their right
signification. ... A man is called selfish if he lives in the manner that seems to him most suitable for the full
realisation of his own personality; if, in fact, the primary aim of his life is self-development. But this is the
way in which everyone should live. Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live
as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people’s lives alone, not interfering with them.
Selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognises
infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it. It is not selfish to think for
oneself. A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
It is grossly selfish to require of one’s neighbour that he should think in the same way, and hold the same
opinions. Why should he? If he can think, he will probably think differently. If he cannot think, it is
monstrous to require thought of any kind from him.
842
One should sympathise with the entirety of life, not with life’s sores and maladies merely, but with life’s joy
and beauty and energy and health and freedom. The wider sympathy is, of course, the more difficult. It
requires more unselfishness. Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very
fine nature – it requires, in fact, the nature of a true Individualist – to sympathise with a friend’s success.
The Critic as Artist (1891)

What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or
become colourless. By its curiosity Sin increases the experience of the race. Through its intensified assertion
of individualism it saves us from monotony of type. In its rejection of the current notions about morality, it is
one with the higher ethics.
Oscar Wilde, Gilbert, in The Critic as Artist, pt. 1, Intentions (1891)
We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so
industrious that they become absolutely stupid.
There is no sin except stupidity.

Newspapers ... give us the bald, sordid, disgusting facts of life. They chronicle, with degrading avidity, the
sins of the second-rate, and with the conscientiousness of the illiterate give us accurate and prosaic details of
the doings of people of absolutely no interest whatsoever.
Whatever, in fact, is modern in our life we owe to the Greeks. Whatever is an anachronism is due to
mediaevalism.
Public Opinion ... an attempt to organise the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of
physical force.
Oscar Wilde, Gilbert, in The Critic as Artist, pt. 2, published in Intentions (1891)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (New York: 1989)
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.

Oscar Wilde, Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, Complete Works (New York: 1989), p. 17
Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.

Oscar Wilde, Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, Complete Works(New York: 1989), p. 17
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are cultivated.

Oscar Wilde, Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it.
Oscar Wilde, Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray
Unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in it all the passion of the
romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek. The harmony of soul and body—how much that
is! We in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, and ideality that is
void.
Oscar Wilde, Basil, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 1, Complete Works (New York: 1989), p. 24
843
There is no doubt that Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains
to over-educate ourselves.
Oscar Wilde, Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 1, Complete Work s(New York: 1989), p. 25
The thoroughly well-informed man—that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-
informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-à-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything
priced above its proper value.
Oscar Wilde, Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 1, Complete Works (New York: 1989), p. 25
How delightful other people’s emotions were!—much more delightful that their ideas, it seemed to him.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 1, Complete Works (New York: 1989), p. 26
Had he gone to his aunt, … the whole conversation would have been about the feeding of the poor, and the
necessity for model lodging-houses. Each class would have preached the importance of those virtues, for
whose exercise there was no necessity in their own lives. The rich would have spoken on the value of thrift,
and the idle grown eloquent over the dignity of labour.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 1, Complete Works (New York: 1989), p. 26
“There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral.” …
“Why?”
“Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn
with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are
borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.
The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here
for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty
that one owes to one’s self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar.
But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had
it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion—these
are the two things that govern us. … I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely,
were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream—I believe that the
world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and
return to the Hellenic ideal—to something finer, richer than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest
man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that
mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind
and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing
remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a
temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to
itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the
great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the
world take place also.”
Oscar Wilde, Lord Henry to Dorian, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 2, pp. 28-29
Beauty is a form of genius—is higher, indeed, than genius.

Oscar Wilde, Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 2, p. 31
People say that Beauty is superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is.
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.

You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty
will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content
yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats.
Oscar Wilde, Lord Henry to Dorian, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 2, p. 32
844
Realise your youth while you have it. Don’t squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious,
trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the
vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you!
Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing. . . . A new
Hedonism—that is what our century wants.
Oscar Wilde, Lord Henry to Dorian, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 2, p. 32 (ellipsis in original)
The world belongs to you for a season. . . . The moment I met you I saw that you were quite unconscious of
what you really are, of what you really might be. There was so much in you that charmed me that I felt I
must tell you something about yourself. I thought how tragic it would be if you were wasted. For there is
such a little time that your youth will last—such a little time. The common hill-flowers wither, but they
blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars
on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get
back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot.
We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too
much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.
Oscar Wilde, Lord Henry to Dorian, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 2, p. 32 (ellipsis in original)
If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for
him.
Oscar Wilde, Lord Fermor, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 3, p. 38
Talking to him was like playing upon an exquisite violin. He answered to every touch and thrill of the bow.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 3, p. 41
The new manner in art, the fresh mode of looking at life, suggested so strangely by the merely visible
presence of one who was unconscious of it all; the silent spirit that dwelt in dim woodland, and walked
unseen in open field, suddenly showing herself, Dryadlike and not afraid, because in his soul who sought for
her there had been wakened that wonderful vision to which alone are wonderful things revealed; the mere
shapes and patterns of things becoming, as it were, refined, and gaining a kind of symbolical value, as though
they were themselves patterns of some other and more perfect form whose shadow they made real: how
strange it all was!
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 3
Like all people who try to exhaust a subject, he exhausted his listeners.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 3
I can sympathize with everything except suffering. I cannot sympathize with that. It is too ugly, too
horrible, too distressing. There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One
should sympathize with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores, the
better.
I don’t desire to change anything in England except the weather. I am quite content with philosophic
contemplation.
Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh,
history would have been different.
845
“Can you remember any great error that you committed in your early days, Duchess?” he asked, looking at
her across the table.
“A great many, I fear,” she cried.
“Then commit them over again,” he said gravely. “To get back one’s youth, one has merely to repeat one’s
follies. … That is one of the great secrets of life. Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common
sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.”
Oscar Wilde, Lord Henry to the Duchess of Harley, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 3, p. 44
He played with the idea and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and transformed it; let it escape and recaptured
it; made it iridescent with fancy and winged it with paradox. The praise of folly, as he went on, soared into a
philosophy, and philosophy herself became young, and catching the mad music of pleasure, wearing, one
might fancy, her wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a Bacchante over the hills of life, and
mocked the slow Silenus for being sober. Facts fled before her like frightened forest things.
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
… monstrous London, … with its sordid sinners and its splendid sins.
Oscar Wilde, Dorian quoting Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 4, p. 49
The search for beauty is the real secret of life.

Oscar Wilde, Dorian quoting Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 4, p. 49
The people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and
their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the
emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect—simply a confession of failure. Faithfulness!
I must analyse it some day. The passion for property is in it. There are many things that we would throw
away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.
Ordinary women never appeal to one’s imagination. They are limited to their century. No glamour ever
transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets. One can always find them.
There is no mystery in any of them. They ride in the park in the morning and chatter at tea-parties in the
afternoon. They have their stereotyped smile and their fashionable manner. They are quite obvious. But an
actress! How different an actress is!
Oscar Wilde, Dorian, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 4, p. 51
Most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one’s
self over poetry is an honour.
Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him into his work. The consequence is that he has
nothing left for life but his prejudices, his principles, and his common sense. The only artists I have ever
known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and
consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most
unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are,
the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets
makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry
that they dare not realize.
Oscar Wilde, Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 4, pp. 54-55
846
Lord Henry … had been always enthralled by the methods of natural science, but the ordinary subject-matter
of that science had seemed to him trivial and of no import. And so he had begun by vivisecting himself, as he
had ended by vivisecting others. Human life—that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating.
Compared to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible
of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one’s face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes
from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams.
There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so
strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand their nature. And, yet, what a great
reward one received! How wonderful the whole world became to one! To note the curious hard logic of
passion, and the emotional coloured life of the intellect—to observe where they met, and where they
separated, at what point they were in unison, and at what point they were at discord—there was a delight in
that! What matter what the cost was? One could never pay too high a price for any sensation.
He had made him premature. That was something. Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its
secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away.
Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the
passions and the intellect. But now and then a complex personality took the place and assumed the office of
art, was indeed, in its way, a real work of art, life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or
sculpture, or painting.
It was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most strongly over us.
Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious.
Thin-lipped wisdom spoke at her from the worn chair, hinted at prudence, quoted from that book of
cowardice whose author apes the name of common sense.
Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.
I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent
into the world to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never
interfere with what charming people do. If a personality fascinates me, whatever mode of expression that
personality selects is absolutely delightful to me.
The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism
is sheer terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbour with the possession of those
virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find
good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets. I mean everything that I have
said. I have the greatest contempt for optimism. As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth
is arrested. If you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it.
Pleasure is Nature’s test, her sign of approval.

To be good is to be in harmony with one’s self. Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others
847
“But, surely, if one lives merely for one’s self, Harry, one pays a terrible price for doing so?” suggested
the painter.
“Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays. I should fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that
they can afford nothing but self-denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich.”
Oscar Wilde, Basil and Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 6, p. 69
There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
“I want to be good. I can’t bear the idea of my soul being hideous.”

“A very charming artistic basis for ethics, Dorian! I congratulate you on it.”
Oscar Wilde, Dorian and Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 8, p. 82
You cut life to pieces with your epigrams.

Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their
result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a
certain charm for the weak. That is all that can be said for them. They are simply cheques that men draw on a
bank where they have no account.
It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their
crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style. They
affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us an impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against
that. Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of beauty crosses our lives. If these
elements of beauty are real, the whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly we find
that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the play. Or rather we are both. We watch ourselves,
and the mere wonder of the spectacle enthralls us.
The one charm of the past is that it is the past. But women never know when the curtain has fallen. They
always want a sixth act, and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely over, they propose to continue it. If
they were allowed their own way, every comedy would have a tragic ending, and every tragedy would
culminate in a farce.
Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.

“But suppose, Harry, I became haggard, and old, and wrinkled? What then?”
“Ah, then,” said Lord Henry, rising to go, “then, my dear Dorian, you would have to fight for your victories.
As it is, they are brought to you. No, you must keep your good looks. We live in an age that reads too much
to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful. We cannot spare you.”
Oscar Wilde, Dorian and Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 8, pp. 86-87
A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don’t want to
be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.
Then it passed away. I cannot repeat an emotion. No one can, except sentimentalists.
You come down here to console me. That is charming of you. You find me consoled, and you are
furious. How like a sympathetic person!
848
If you really want to console me, teach me rather to forget what has happened, or to see it from a proper
artistic point of view.
Old brocades, green bronzes, lacquer-work, carved ivories, exquisite surroundings, luxury, pomp—there is
much to be got from all these. But the artistic temperament that they create, or at any rate reveal, is still more
to me. To become the spectator of one’s own life, as Harry says, is to escape the suffering of life
Hour by hour, and week by week, the thing upon the canvas was growing old. It might escape the
hideousness of sin, but the hideousness of age was in store for it
It was a novel without a plot and with only one character, being, indeed, simply a psychological study of a
certain young Parisian who spent his life trying to realize in the nineteenth century all the passions and
modes of thought that belonged to every century except his own, and to sum up, as it were, in himself the
various moods through which the world-spirit had ever passed, loving for their mere artificiality those
renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still
call sin.
In one point he was more fortunate than the novel’s fantastic hero. He never knew—never, indeed, had any
cause to know—that somewhat grotesque dread of mirrors, and polished metal surfaces, and still water which
came upon the young Parisian so early in his life, and was occasioned by the sudden decay of a beau that had
once, apparently, been so remarkable. It was with an almost cruel joy—and perhaps in nearly every joy, as
certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its place—that he used to read the latter part of the book, with its
really tragic, if somewhat overemphasized, account of the sorrow and despair of one who had himself lost
what in others, and the world, he had most dearly valued.
There were many, especially among the very young men, who saw, or fancied that they saw, in Dorian Gray
the true realization of a type of which they had often dreamed in Eton or Oxford days, a type that was to
combine something of the real culture of the scholar with all the grace and distinction and perfect manner of
a citizen of the world. To them he seemed to be of the company of those whom Dante describes as having
sought to “make themselves perfect by the worship of beauty.”
In his inmost heart he desired to be something more than a mere arbiter elegantiarum, to be consulted on the
wearing of a jewel, or the knotting of a necktie, or the conduct of a cane. He sought to elaborate some new
scheme of life that would have its reasoned philosophy and its ordered principles, and find in the
spiritualizing of the senses its highest realization.
Oscar Wilde, describing Dorian, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 11, p. 104
849
The worship of the senses has often, and with much justice, been decried, men feeling a natural instinct of
terror about passions and sensations that seem stronger than themselves, and that they are conscious of
sharing with the less highly organized forms of existence. But it appeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature
of the senses had never been understood, and that they had remained savage and animal merely because the
world had sought to starve them into submission or to kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them
elements of a new spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the dominant characteristic. As he
looked back upon man moving through history, he was haunted by a feeling of loss. So much had been
surrendered! and to such little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of self-
torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear and whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible
than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to escape; Nature, in her
wonderful irony, driving out the anchorite to feed with the wild animals of the desert and giving to the hermit
the beasts of the field as his companions.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), ch. 11, p. 104
Yes: there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new Hedonism that was to recreate life and to save it
from that harsh uncomely puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival. It was to have its
service of the intellect, certainly, yet it was never to accept any theory or system that would involve the
sacrifice of any mode of passionate experience. Its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself, and not the fruits
of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be. Of the asceticism that deadens the senses, as of the vulgar
profligacy that dulls them, it was to know nothing. But it was to teach man to concentrate himself upon
the moments of a life that is itself but a moment.
Oscar Wilde, Dorian’s musings, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 11, p. 104
Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it
where we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the necessity for the continuance of energy
in the same wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might open
some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure, a world in
which things would have fresh shapes and colours, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in which
the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the
remembrance even of joy having its bitterness and the memories of pleasure their pain.
It was the creation of such worlds as these that seemed to Dorian Gray to be the true object, or amongst
the true objects, of life; and in his search for sensations that would be at once new and delightful, and possess
that element of strangeness that is so essential to romance, he would often adopt certain modes of thought
that he knew to be really alien to his nature, abandon himself to their subtle influences, and then, having, as it
were, caught their colour and satisfied his intellectual curiosity, leave them with that curious indifference that
is not incompatible with a real ardour of temperament, and that, indeed, according to certain modern
psychologists, is often a condition of it.
He never fell into the error of arresting his intellectual development by any formal acceptance of creed
or system, or of mistaking, for a house in which to live, an inn that is but suitable for the sojourn of a
night,
No theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself. He felt keenly conscious
of how barren all intellectual speculation is when separated from action and experiment.
The senses, no less than the soul, have their spiritual mysteries to reveal.
850
These whispered scandals only increased in the eyes of many his strange and dangerous charm. His great
wealth was a certain element of security. Society—civilized society, at least—is never very ready to believe
anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of
more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the
possession of a good chef. And, after all, it is a very poor consolation to be told that the man who has given
one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in his private life. Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for
half-cold entrees, as Lord Henry remarked once, in a discussion on the subject, and there is possibly a good
deal to be said for his view. For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art.
Form is absolutely essential to it. It should have the dignity of a ceremony, as well as its unreality, and
should combine the insincere character of a romantic play with the wit and beauty that make such plays
delightful to us. Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we can
multiply our personalities.
Dorian Gray … used to wonder at the shallow psychology of those who conceive the Ego in man as a thing
simple, permanent, reliable, and of one essence. To him, man was a being with myriad lives and myriad
sensations, a complex multiform creature that bore within itself strange legacies of thought and passion.
There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his
conception of the beautiful.
Oscar Wilde, regarding Dorian, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 11, p. 115
Don’t tell me that you have exhausted life. When a man says that one knows that life has exhausted him.
Oscar Wilde, Lady Narborough in The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 15, p. 137
“You would sacrifice anybody, Harry, for the sake of an epigram.”

“The world goes to the altar of its own accord.”
Oscar Wilde, Dorian and Lord Henry in The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 18, p.154
It’s absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth. The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any respect
are people much younger than myself.
Oscar Wilde, Lord Henry in The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 19, p.162
I am so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or
produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your
days are your sonnets.
Oscar Wilde, Lord Henry in The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 19, p. 163
My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralize. You will soon be going about like the converted, and the
revivalist, warning people against all the sins of which you have grown tired.
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
He had told her once that he was wicked, and she had laughed at him and answered that wicked people were
always very old and very ugly.
She knew nothing, but she had everything that he had lost.
851
Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young (1894)
Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.
Oscar Wilde, “Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young”
Dullness is the coming of age of seriousness.

In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity is the essential.

In all important matters, style, not sincerity is the essential.
It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.
The only way to atone for being occasionally a little overdressed is by being always absolutely over-
educated.
A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.

Industry is the root of all ugliness.

The condition of perfection is idleness: the aim of perfection is youth.

There is something tragic about the enormous number of young men there are in England at the present
moment who start life with perfect profiles, and end by adopting some useful profession.
JOSIAH ROYCE (1855-1916)

The Spirit of Modern Philosophy
Other investigators may deal with novelties. It is the fate of the philosophical student to be cut off, by his
very task, from all but a very relative and imperfect sort of originality. He is simply making articulate the life
which he is privileged to enjoy. He invents nothing; he only confesses. Prophets create ideals; he critically
expounds them. Poets, whose relation to passion is more direct and momentary, and therefore less universal,
less abstract, less critical, less systematic, have for this very reason far more of the inventive about them. The
student of philosophy is privileged to survey, to contemplate life from without, to reword. Others create; he
observes. Consequently, were a philosophy original, it would be ipso facto untrue. The doctrines of
philosophy are borrowed from passion. If, for instance, idealism is true at all, that is because all of you are
already idealists. The philosopher only tells you so. He does not make you so.
Josiah Royce, The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, p. 342
852
The time is long past when really intelligent thinkers sought to do anything outside of intimate relations to
the history of thought. It still happens, indeed, that even in our day, some lonesome student will occasionally
publish a philosophical book that he regards as entirely revolutionary, as digging far beneath all that thought
has ever yet accomplished, and as beginning quite afresh the labors of human reflection. ... You will always
find them either ignorant of the history of the very subject that they propose to revolutionize or incapable of
reading this history intelligently. What they give you is always an old doctrine, more or less disguised in a
poorly novel terminology, and much worse thought out than it has already been thought out, time after time,
in the history of speculation. … The sole corrective of the error is a certain amount of philosophical study of
an historical sort before one begins to print one’s speculations.
Josiah Royce, The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, p. 343
Lectures on Modern Idealism (1919)

Without erring, and transcending our error, we, as sometimes suggested by the Socratic irony, simply cannot
become wise. Such is human wisdom; namely the self-consciousness that observes one’s own forms of
unwisdom. Without such self-consciousness, one remains blind in one’s own conceit. Yet to get it, one must
err and then rise above the error. … Error is not a mere accident of an untrained intellect, but a
necessary stage or feature or moment of the expression of the truth.
Josiah Royce, Lectures on Modern Idealism (1919), p. 79
FERDINAND TÖNNIES (1855-1936)

Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887)
German: http://books.google.com/books?id=1j4WAAAAYAAJ
Die menschlichen Willen stehen in vielfachen Beziehungen zu einander; jede solche Beziehung ist eine
gegenseitige Wirkung, welche insofern, als von der einen Seite gethan oder gegeben, von der anderen erlitten
oder empfangen wird. Diese Wirkungen sind aber entweder so beschaffen, dass sie zur Erhaltung, oder so,
dass sie zur Zerstörung des anderen Willens und Leibes tendiren: bejahende oder verneinende. Auf die
Verhältnisse gegenseitiger Bejahung wird diese Theorie als auf die Objecte ihrer Untersuchung gerichtet
sein. Jedes solches Verhältniss stellt Einheit in der Mehrheit oder Mehrheit in der Einheit dar. Es besteht aus
Förderungen, Erleichterungen, Leistungen, welche hinüber und herüber gehen, und als Ausdrücke der Willen
und ihrer Kräfte betrachtet werden. Die durch dieses positive Verhältniss gebildete Gruppe heisst, als
einheitlich nach innen und nach aussen wirkendes Wesen oder Ding aufgefasst, eine Verbindung. Das
Verhfiltniss selber, und also die Verbindung wird entweder als reales und organisches Leben begriffen—dies
ist das Wesen der Gemeinschaft, oder als ideelle und mechanische Bildung—dies ist der Begriff der
Gesellschaft.
Ferdinand Tönnies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887), s. 3
Human wills stand in manifold relations to one another. Every such relationship is a mutual action. … These
actions are of such a nature that they tend either toward preservation or destruction of the other will or life;
that is, they are either positive or negative. This study will consider as its subject of investigation only the
relationships of mutual affirmation. … The group which is formed through this positive type of relationship
is called an association (Verbindung). … The relationship itself, and also the resulting association, is
conceived either as real and organic life—this is the essential characteristic of the Gemeinschaft
(community); or as imaginary and mechanical structure—this is the concept of Gesellschaft (society). …
Gesellschaft is conceived as mere coexistence of people independent of each other.
Ferdinand Tönnies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, C. Loomis, trans., pp. 33-34
853
Der ganze Begriff der Gesellschaft im socialen und politischen Sinne findet seine natürliche Grundlage in
den Sitten und Anschauungen des dritten Standes. Er ist eigentlich kein Volks-Begriff, sondern immerhin nur
ein Drittenstands-Begriff.
The entire concept of Gesellschaft (society) … finds its natural foundations in the folkways, mores and ideas
of the third estate. It is not really the concept of the people (Volks-Begriff) but the concept of the third estate.
Bluntschli, Staatswörterbuch, IV, cited in Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, C. Loomis, trans., p. 34
Die Theorie der Gemeinschaft geht solchen Bestimmungen gemäss von der vollkommenen Einheit
menschlicher Willen als einem ursprünglichen oder natürlichen Zustande aus, welcher trotz der empirischen
Trennung und durch dieselbe hindurch, sich erhalte
The theory of Gemeinschaft starts from the assumption of perfect unity of human wills as an original or
natural condition which is preserved in spite of actual separation.
Ferdinand Tönnies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, C. Loomis, trans., p. 37
Eine überlegene Kraft, welche zum Wohle des Untergebenen oder seinem Willen gemäss ausgeübt, daher
durch diesen bejaht wird, nenne ich Würde oder Auctorität; und so mögen ihrer drei Arten: die Würde des
Alters, die Würde der Stärke und die Würde der Weisheit oder des Geistes von einander unterschieden
werden.
Ferdinand Tönnies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887), s.15
A superior power which is exercised to the benefit of the subordinate and which, because in accordance with
his will, is accepted by him, I call dignity or authority. We distinguish three kinds: authority of age, authority
of force, and authority of wisdom or spirit.
Denn die Gemeinschaft des Blutes, als Einheit des Wesens, entwickelt und besondert sich zur Gemeinschaft
des Ortes, als welche im Zusammen-Wohnen ihren Ausdruck hat, und diese wiederum zur Gemeinschaft des
Geistes als dem blossen Miteinander-Wirken und Walten in der gleichen Richtung, im gleichen Sinne.
Gemeinschaft des Ortes kann als Zusammenhang des animalischen, wie die des Geistes als Zusammenhang
des mentalen Lebens begriffen werden, die letztere daher, in ihrer Verbindung mit den früheren, als die
eigentlich menschliche und höchste Art der Gemeinschaft.
The Gemeinschaft by blood, denoting unity of being, is developed and differentiated into Gemeinschaft of
locality, which is based on a common habitat. A further differentiation leads to the Gemeinschaft of mind,
which implies only cooperation and coordinated action for a common goal. Gemeinschaft of locality may be
conceived as a community of physical life, just as Gemeinschaft of mind expresses a community of mental
life. In conjunction with the others, this last type of Gemeinschaft represents the truly human and supreme
form of community.
Wherever human beings are related through their wills in an organic manner and affirm each other, we find
one or another of the three types of Gemeinschaft: … (1) kinship, (2) neighborhood, and (3) friendship.
854
The theory of the Gesellschaft deals with the artificial construction of an aggregate of human beings which
superficially resembles the Gemeinschaft in so far as the individuals live and dwell together peacefully.
However, in the Gemeinschaft they remain essentially united in spite of all separating factors, whereas in the
Gesellschaft they remain essentially separated in spite of all uniting factors. In the Gesellschaft, as contrasted
with the Gemeinschaft, we find no actions that can be derived from an a priori and necessarily existing unity;
no actions, therefore, which manifest the will and the spirit of the unity even if performed by the individual;
no actions which, in so far as they are performed by the individual, take place on behalf of those united with
him. In the Gesellschaft such actions do not exist. On the contrary, here everybody is by himself and isolated,
and there exists a condition of tension against all others. Their spheres of activity and power are sharply
separated, so that everybody refuses to everyone else contact with and admittance to his sphere; i.e.,
intrusions are regarded as hostile acts. Such a negative attitude toward one another becomes the normal and
always underlying relation of these power-endowed individuals, and it characterizes the Gesellschaft in the
condition of rest; nobody wants to grant and produce anything for another individual, nor will he be inclined
to give ungrudgingly to another individual, if it not be in exchange for a gift or labor equivalent that he
considers equal to what was given.
In the concept [of Gesellschaft], all goods are conceived to be separate, as also are their owners. What
somebody has and enjoys, he has and enjoys to the exclusion of all others. So, in reality, something that has a
common value does not exist. Its existence may, however, be brought about through fiction on the part of the
individuals, which mean that they have to invent a common personality and his will, to whom this common
value is to bear reference. Now, a manipulation of this kind must warranted by a sufficient occasion. Such an
occasion is given when we consider the simple action of delivery of an object by one individual and its
acceptance by another one. For then a contact takes place and there is brought into existence a common
sphere which is desired by both individuals and lasts through the same length of time as does the
“transaction.”
Gesellschaft, an aggregate by convention and law of nature, is to be understood as a multitude of natural and
artificial individuals, the wills and spheres of whom are in many relations with and to one another, and
remain nevertheless independent of one another and devoid of mutual familiar relationships. This gives us
the general description of “bourgeois society” or “exchange Gesellschaft,” the nature and movements of
which legislative economy attempts to understand; a condition in which, according to the expression of
Adam Smith, “Every man … becomes in some measure a merchant.”
In Gesellschaft every person strives for that which is to his own advantage and he affirms the actions of
others only in so far as and as long as they can further his interest.
Before and outside of convention and also before and outside of each special contract, the relation of all to all
may therefore be conceived as potential hostility or latent war. Against this condition, all agreements of the
will stand out as so many treaties and peace pacts.
[Society’s] supreme rule of politeness … consists of an exchange of words or courtesies in which everyone
seems to be present for the good of everyone else and everyone seems to consider everyone else as his equal,
whereas in reality everyone is thinking of himself and trying to bring to the fore his importance and
advantages in competition with the others.
855
In the Gesellschaft … the relations with visible, material matters have preference, and that mere activities
and words form a foundation of such relationships only in an unreal way. In contrast to this, Gemeinschaft as
a bond of “blood” is in the first place a physical relation, therefore expressing itself in deeds and words.
Here, the common relation to the material objects is of a secondary nature, and such objects are not
exchanged as often as they are used and possessed in common.
The more everyone learns to act as a trader the less one is apt to get the advantage of another. In this sense it
has been said that bourgeois Gesellschaft society requires everyone to have an encyclopedic knowledge of
goods—K. Marx, Kapital I, Ch. 1, footnote.
SIGMUND FREUD (1856-1939)

Die Absicht, daß der Mensch glücklich sei, ist im Plan der Schöpfung nicht enthalten.
Sigmund Freud
Die Traumdeutung aber ist die via regia zur Kenntnis des Unbewußten im Seelenleben.
Freud, Die Traumdeutung
Die Traumdeutung ist in Wirklichkeit die Via Regia zur Kenntnis des Unbewußten, die sicherste Grundlage
der Psychoanalyse und jenes Gebiet, auf welchem jeder Arbeiter seine Überzeugung zu gewinnen und seine
Ausbildung anzustreben hat. ...
Freud, Über Psychoanalyse: Fünf Vorlesungen
Every internal compulsion which has been of service in the development of human beings was
originally, that is, in the evolution of the human race, nothing but an external one.
Freud, “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death.” Collected Papers, vol. 4, p. 297, quoted in Russell Jacoby, Social Amnesia (1975), p. 32
Right is the might of a community. It is still violence, ready to be directed against any individual who resists
it. ... The only real difference lies in the fact that what prevails is no longer the violence of an individual, but
that of a community.
Freud, “Why War?” Collected Papers, vol. 5, p. 275, quoted in Russell Jacoby, Social Amnesia (1975), p. 32
A person who professes to believe in commonsense psychology, and who things psychoanalysis is “far-
fetched” can certainly have no understanding of it, for it is common sense which produces all the ills we have
to cure
Freud, as quoted in J. Wortis, Fragments of an Analysis with Freud (1954), as quoted in Russell Jacoby, Social Amnesia (1975), p. 20
A religion, even if it calls itself the religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to
it.
Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1922), p. 50
I prefer to think in torment than not to be able to think clearly.

Freud
The unconscious is the real psychic; its inner nature is just as unknown to us as the reality of the external
world, and it is just as imperfectly reported to us through the data of consciousness as is the external world
through the indications of our sensory organs.
Freud, Dream Psychology : Psychoanalysis For Beginners (1920) as translated by M. D. Eder
Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, 1933.
856
Philosophy ... behaves itself as if it were a science, and to a certain extent it makes use of the same methods;
but it parts company with science, in that it clings to the illusion that it can produce a complete and coherent
picture of the universe, though in fact that picture must needs fall to pieces with every new advance in our
knowledge. Its methodological error lies in the fact that it over-estimates the epistemological value of our
logical operations, and to a certain extent admits the validity of other sources of knowledge, such as intuition.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis (1933)
Die Zukunft einer Illusion [The Future of an Illusion] (1927)

Those historical residues have helped us to view religious teachings, as it were, as neurotic relics, and we
may now argue that the time has probably come, as it does in an analytic treatment, for replacing the effects
of repression by the results of the rational operation of the intellect.
Freud, The Future of an Illusion (1927)
Religious ideas have sprung from the same need as all the other achievements of culture: from the necessity
for defending itself against the crushing supremacy of nature.
The true believer is in a high degree protected against the danger of certain neurotic afflictions, by accepting
the universal neurosis he is spared the task of forming a personal neurosis.
Where the questions of religion are concerned people are guilty of every possible kind of insincerity and
intellectual misdemeanor.
Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis.

Das Unbehagen der Kultur [Civilization and Its Discontents] (1930)

German: http://www.archive.org/details/DasUnbehagenInDerKultur
Normally, there is nothing of which we are more certain than the feeling of our self, of our own ego. This
ego appears to us as something autonomous and unitary, marked off distinctively from everything else. That
such an appearance is deceptive, and that on the contrary the ego is continued inwards, without any sharp
delimitation, into an unconscious mental entity which we designate as the id and for which it serves as a kind
of façade—this was a discovery first made by psychoanalytic research
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents
Ich hatte ihm meine kleine Schrift zugeschickt, welche die Religion als Illusion behandelt, und er
antwortete, er wäre mit meinem Urteil über die Religion ganz einverstanden, bedauerte aber, daß ich die
eigentliche Quelle der Religiosität nicht gewürdigt hätte. Diese sei ein besonderes Gefühl, das ihn selbst nie
zu verlassen pflege, das er von vielen anderen bestätigt gefunden und bei Millionen Menschen voraussetzen
dürfe. Ein Gefühl, das er die Empfindung der „Ewigkeit” nennen möchte, ein Gefühl wie von etwas
Unbegrenztem, Schrankenlosem, gleichsam „Ozeanischem”. Dies Gefühl sei eine rein subjektive Tatsache,
kein Glaubenssatz ; keine Zusicherung persönlicher Fortdauer knüpfe sich daran, aber es sei die Quelle der
religiösen Energie, die von den verschiedenen Kirchen und Religionssystemen gefaßt, in bestimmte Kanäle
geleitet und gewiß auch aufgezehrt werde. Nur auf Grund dieses ozeanischen Gefühls dürfe man sich religiös
heißen, auch wenn man jeden Glauben und jede Illusion ablehne. …
An meiner Person könnte ich mich von der primären Natur eines solchen Gefühls nicht überzeugen.
Darum darf ich aber sein tatsächliches Vorkommen bei anderen nicht bestreiten. Es fragt sich nur, ob es
richtig gedeutet wird und ob es als „fons et origo” aller religiösen Bedürfnisse anerkannt werden soll. …
Eine weitere Überlegung sagt: Dies Ichgefühl des Erwachsenen kann nicht von Anfang an so gewesen
sein. Es muß eine Entwicklung durchgemacht haben, die sich begreiflicherweise nicht nachweisen, aber mit
857
ziemlicher Wahrscheinlichkeit konstruieren läßt. Der Säugling sondert noch nicht sein Ich von einer
Außenwelt als Quelle der auf ihn einströmenden Empfindungen. Er lernt es allmählich auf verschiedene
Anregungen hin. Es muß ihm den stärksten Eindruck machen, daß manche der Erregungsquellen, in denen er
später seine Körperorgane erkennen wird, ihm jederzeit Empfindungen zusenden können, während andere
sich ihm zeitweise entziehen—darunter das Begehrteste : die Mutterbrust—und erst durch ein Hilfe
heischendes Schreien herbeigeholt werden. Damit stellt sich dem Ich zuerst ein „Objekt” entgegen, als etwas,
was sich „außerhalb” befindet und erst durch eine besondere Aktion in die Erscheinung gedrängt wird. Einen
weiteren Antrieb zur Loslösung des Ichs von der Empfindungsmasse, also zur Anerkennung eines
„Draußen”, einer Außenwelt, geben die häufigen, vielfältigen, unvermeidlichen Schmerz- und
Unlustempfindungen, die das unumschränkt herrschende Lustprinzip aufrieben und vermeiden heißt. Es
entsteht die Tendenz, alles, was Quelle solcher Unlust werden kann, vom Ich abzusondern, es nach außen zu
werfen, ein reines Lust-Ich zu bilden, dem ein fremdes, drohendes Draußen gegenübersteht. Die Grenzen
dieses primitiven Lust-Ichs können der Berichtigung durch die Erfahrung nicht entgehen. Manches, was man
als lustspendend nicht aufgeben möchte, ist doch nicht Ich, ist Objekt, und manche Qual, die man
hinausweisen will, erweist sich doch als unabtrennbar vom Ich, als innerer Herkunft. Man lernt ein Verfahren
kennen, wie man durch absichtliche Lenkung der Sinnestätigkeit und geeignete Muskelaktion Innerliches—
dem Ich angehöriges—und Äußerliches—einer Außenwelt entstammendes—unterscheiden kann und tut
damit den ersten Schritt zur Einsetzung des Realitätsprinzips, das die weitere Entwicklung beherrschen soll.
Diese Unterscheidung dient natürlich der praktischen Absicht, sich der verspürten und der drohenden
Unlustempfindungen zu Überleben des primären Ichgefühls erwehren. Daß das Ich zur Abwehr gewisser
Unlusterregungen aus seinem Inneren keine anderen Methoden zur Anwendung bringt, als deren es sich
gegen Unlust von außen bedient, wird dann der Ausgangspunkt bedeutsamer krankhafter Störungen.
Auf solche Art löst sich also das Ich von der Außenwelt. Richtiger gesagt: Ursprünglich enthält das Ich
alles, später scheidet es eine Außenwelt von sich ab. Unser heutiges Ichgefühl ist also nur ein
eingeschrumpfter Rest eines weitumfassenderen, ja,—eines allumfassenden Gefühls, welches einer innigeren
Verbundenheit des Ichs mit der Umwelt entsprach. Wenn wir annehmen dürfen, daß dieses primäre
Ichgefühl sich im Seelenleben vieler Menschen—in größerem oder geringerem Ausmaße—erhalten hat, so
würde es sich dem enger und schärfer umgrenzten Ichgefühl der Reifezeit wie eine Art Gegenstück an die
Seite stellen, und die zu ihm passenden Vorstellungsinhalte wären gerade die der Unbegrenztheit und der
Verbundenheit mit dem All, dieselben, mit denen mein Freund das „ozeanische” Gefühl erläutert. Haben wir
aber ein Recht zur Annahme des Überlebens des Ursprünglichen neben dem Späteren, das aus ihm geworden
ist ?
Freud, Das Unbehagen der Kultur (1930), S. 5-11
I had sent him my small book that treats religion as an illusion and he answered that he entirely agreed
with my judgement upon religion, but that he was sorry I had not properly appreciated the true source of
religious sentiments. This, he says, consists in a particular feeling which he himself is never without, which
he finds confirmed by many others, and which he may suppose is present in millions of people. It is a feeling
which he would like to call a sensation of ‘eternity’, a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded — as it
were, ‘oceanic’. This feeling, he adds, is a purely subjective fact, not an article of faith; it brings with it no
assurance of personal immortality, but it is the source of religious energy which is seized upon by various
Churches and religious systems, directed by them into particular channels, and doubtless also exhausted by
them. One may, he thinks, rightly call oneself religious on the grounds of this oceanic feeling alone, even if
one rejects every belief and every illusion. ... From my own experience I could not convince myself of the
primary nature of such a feeling. But this gives me no right to deny that it does in fact occur in other people.
The only question is whether it is being correctly interpreted and whether it ought to be regarded as the fons
et origo of the whole need for religion. ...
The adult’s ego-feeling can not have been the same from the beginning. It must have gone through a
process of development. ... An infant at the breast does not as yet distinguish his ego from the external world
as the source of the sensations flowing in upon him. He gradually learns to do so, in response to various
promptings.
He must be very strongly impressed by the fact that some sources of excitation, which he will later
recognize as his own bodily organs, can provide him with sensations at any moment, whereas other sources
858
evade him from time to time—among them what he desires most of all, his mother’s breast—and only
reappear as a result of his screaming for help. In this way there is for the first time set over against the ego an
‘object’, in the form of something which exists ‘outside’ and which is only forced to appear by a special
action. A further incentive to a disengagement of the ego from the general mass of sensations—that is, to the
recognition of an ‘outside’, an external world—is provided by the frequent, manifold and unavoidable
sensations of pain and unpleasure the removal and avoidance of which is enjoined by the pleasure principle,
in the exercise of its unrestricted domination. A tendency arises to separate from the ego everything that can
become a source of such unpleasure, to throw it outside and to create a pure pleasure-ego which is confronted
by a strange and threatening ‘outside’. The boundaries of this primitive pleasure-ego cannot escape
rectification through experience. Some of the things that one is unwilling to give up, because they give
pleasure, are nevertheless not ego but object; and some sufferings that one seeks to expel turn out to be
inseparable from the ego in virtue of their internal origin. One comes to learn a procedure by which, through
a deliberate direction of ones sensory activities and through suitable muscular action, one can differentiate
between what is internal—what belongs to the ego—and what is external—what emanates from the outer
world. In this way one makes the first step towards the introduction of the reality principle which is to
dominate future development. This differentiation, of course, serves the practical purpose of enabling one to
defend oneself against sensations of unpleasure which one actually feels, or with which one is threatened. In
order to fend off certain unpleasurable excitations arising from within, the ego can use no other methods than
those which it uses against unpleasure coming from without, and this is the starting-point of important
pathological disturbances.
In this way, then, the ego detaches itself from the external world. Or, to put it more correctly, originally
the ego includes everything, later it separates off an external world from itself. Our present ego-feeling is,
therefore, only a shrunken residue of a much more inclusive—indeed, all-embracing—feeling which
corresponded to a more intimate bond between the ego and the world about it. If we may assume that there
are many people in whose mental life this primary ego-feeling has persisted to a greater or less degree, it
would exist in them side by side with the narrower and more sharply demarcated ego-feeling of maturity, like
a kind of counterpart to it. In that case, the ideational contents appropriate to it would be precisely those of
limitlessness and of a bond with the universe—the same ideas with which my friend elucidated the ‘oceanic’
feeling.
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, J. Strachey, trans. (1961), pp. 10-14
In meiner Schrift „Die Zukunft einer Illusion” handelte es sich weit weniger um die tiefsten Quellen des
religiösen Gefühls, als vielmehr um das, was der gemeine Mann unter seiner Religion versteht, um das
System von Lehren und Verheißungen, das ihm einerseits die Rätsel dieser Welt mit beneidenswerter
Vollständigkeit aufklärt, anderseits ihm zusichert, daß eine sorgsame Vorsehung über sein Leben wachen
und etwaige Versagungen in einer jenseitigen Existenz gutmachen wird. Diese Vorsehung kann der gemeine
Mann sich nicht anders als in der Person eines großartig erhöhten Vaters vorstellen. Nur ein solcher kann die
Bedürfnisse des Menschenkindes kennen, durch seine Bitten erweicht, durch die Zeichen seiner Reue
beschwichtigt werden. Das Ganze ist so offenkundig infantil, so wirklichkeitsfremd, daß es einer
menschenfreundlichen Gesinnung schmerzlich wird zu denken, die große Mehrheit der Sterblichen werde
sich niemals über diese Auffassung des Lebens erheben können.
Freud, Das Unbehagen der Kultur (1930), S. 20
In my Future of an Illusion I was concerned much less with the deepest sources of the religious feeling than
with what the common man understands by his religion—with the system of doctrines and promises which
on the one hand explains to him the riddles of this world with enviable completeness, and, on the other,
assures him that a careful Providence, will watch over his life and will compensate him in a future existence
for any frustrations he may suffer here. The common man cannot imagine this Providence otherwise than in
the figure of an enormously exalted father. Only such a being can understand the needs of the children of
men and be softened by their prayers and placated by the signs of their remorse. The whole thing is so
patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to
think that the great majority of mortals will never be able rise above this view of life.
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, J. Strachey, trans. (1961), p. 22
859
At the height of being in love the boundary between ego and object threatens to melt away. Against all the
evidence of his senses, a man who is in love declares that "I" and "you" are one, and is prepared to behave as
if it were a fact.
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, J. Riviere, trans.
It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other
people left over to receive manifestations of their aggressiveness.
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, J. Strachey, trans. (1961)
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW (1856-1950)

Tradition is a Lantern. The foolish hold on to it. The clever allow it to lead the way.
George Bernard Shaw
In my dreams [heaven] is a country where the State is the Church and the Church the people: three in one and
one in three. It is a commonwealth in which work is play and play is life: three in one and one in three. It is a
temple in which the priest is the worshipper and the worshipper the worshipped: three in one and one in
three. It is a godhead in which all life is human and all humanity divine: three in one and one in three.
George Bernard Shaw, John Bull’s Other Island, Act 4
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
George Bernard Shaw
It is not the sale of my soul that troubles me: I have sold it too often to care about that. I have sold it for a
professorship. I have sold it for an income.
George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara (1905)
What is all human conduct but the daily and hourly sale of our souls for trifles?
George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara (1905)
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
George Bernard Shaw
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is
happier than a sober one.
George Bernard Shaw
All great truths begin as blasphemies.

George Bernard Shaw
Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I
want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it onto future generations.
George Bernard Shaw
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
George Bernard Shaw, cited in The Last Word, p. 223
There is nothing that people will not believe nowadays if only it be presented to them as science, and nothing
they will not disbelieve if it is presented to them as religion.
George Bernard Shaw, cited in The Last Word, p. 224
Artist-philosophers are the only sort of artists I take seriously.

George Bernard Shaw
860
That the author of Everyman [Shakespeare] was no mere artist, but an artist-philosopher, and that the artist-
philosophers are the only sort of artists I take seriously will be no news to you.
George Bernard Shaw
It is difficult, if not impossible, for most people to think otherwise than in the fashion of their own period.
George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan, preface (1923)
Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were
born in it.
George Bernard Shaw, The World (15 November 1893)
[Chess] is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when
they are only wasting their time.
George Bernard Shaw, The Irrational Knot (1905)
The word morality, if we met it in the Bible, would surprise us as much as the word telephone or motor car.
George Bernard Shaw, Fanny's First Play, Preface (1911)
All Shaw's characters are himself: mere puppets stuck up to spout Shaw.
George Bernard Shaw, Fanny's First Play, Epilogue (1911)
All great truths begin as blasphemies.

George Bernard Shaw, Annajanska (1919)
Pardon him. Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of
nature.
George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra (1898)
The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees
me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.
George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903)
My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world.
George Bernard Shaw, John Bull's Other Island (1907)
The fact that we can become accustomed to anything, however disgusting at first, makes it necessary to
examine carefully everything we have become accustomed to.
George Bernard Shaw, A Treatise on Parents and Children (1910)
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is
happier than a sober one.
George Bernard Shaw, Androcles and the Lion (1913)
Revolutionary movements attract those who are not good enough for established institutions as well as those
who are too good for them.
No sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its legs again in
the name of Jesus.
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Take the case of the extermination of Jesus Christ. No doubt there was a strong case for it. Jesus was from
the point of view of the High Priest a heretic and an impostor. From the point of view of the merchants he
was a rioter and a Communist. From the Roman Imperialist point of view he was a traitor. From the
commonsense point of view he was a dangerous madman. From the snobbish point of view, always a very
influential one, he was a penniless vagrant. From the police point of view he was an obstructor of
thoroughfares, a beggar, an associate of prostitutes, an apologist of sinners, and a disparager of judges; and
his daily companions were tramps whom he had seduced into vagabondage from their regular trades. From
the point of view of the pious he was a Sabbath breaker, a denier of the efficacy of circumcision and the
advocate of a strange rite of baptism, a gluttonous man and a winebibber. He was abhorrent to the medical
profession as an unqualified practitioner who healed people by quackery and charged nothing for the
treatment. He was not anti-Christ: nobody had heard of such a power of darkness then; but he was startlingly
anti-Moses. He was against the priests, against the judiciary, against the military, against the city (he
declared that it was impossible for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven), against all the interests,
classes, principalities and powers, inviting everybody to abandon all these and follow him. By every
argument, legal, political, religious, customary, and polite, he was the most complete enemy of the society of
his time ever brought to the bar. He was guilty on every count of the indictment, and on many more that his
accusers had not the wit to frame. If he was innocent then the whole world was guilty. To acquit him was to
throw over civilization and all its institutions. History has borne out the case against him; for no State has
ever constituted itself on his principles or made it possible to live according to his commandments: those
States who have taken his name have taken it as an alias to enable them to persecute his followers more
plausibly.
George Bernard Shaw, On the Rocks (1933)
Man and Superman (1903)

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being
thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a
feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to
making you happy.
George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903), Epistle Dedicatory
If Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance has Democracy, which
requires a whole population of capable voters.
George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903), Epistle Dedicatory
The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy,
sooner than work at anything but his art.
George Bernard Shaw, Tanner in Man and Superman (1903)
The Revolutionist’s Handbook (1903)

No market demand in the world takes the form of exact technical specification of the article required.
Excellent poultry and potatoes are produced to satisfy the demand of housewives who do not know the
technical differences between a tuber and a chicken. They will tell you that the proof of the pudding is in the
eating; and they are right. The proof of the Superman will be in the living; and we shall find out how to
produce him by the old method of trial and error, and not by waiting for a completely convincing prescription
of his ingredients.
George Bernard Shaw, The Revolutionist’s Handbook (1903), § 1
Man reads his own nature into every ordinance: if you devise a superhuman commandment so cunningly that
it cannot be misinterpreted in terms of his will, he will denounce it as seditious blasphemy, or else disregard
it as either crazy or totally unintelligible.
862
The very greatest man will no more dare to govern on the assumption that all are as great as he than a drover
dare leave his flock to find its way through the streets as he himself would.
That the real Superman will snap his superfingers at all Man's present trumpery ideals of right, duty, honor,
justice, religion, even decency, and accept moral obligations beyond present human endurance, is a thing that
contemporary Man does not foresee. ... He will therefore make no objection to the production of a race of
what he calls Great Men or Heroes, because he will imagine them, not as true Supermen, but as himself
endowed with infinite brains, infinite courage, and infinite money.
Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Do not do unto others as you would expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists, #1
If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a foot-rule can measure a pyramid, there would be
finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the political problem remains unsolved.
He who confuses political liberty with freedom and political equality with similarity has never thought for
five minutes about either.
The duke inquires contemptuously whether his gamekeeper is the equal of the Astronomer Royal; but he
insists that they shall both be hanged equally if they murder him.
Where equality is undisputed, so also is subordination.

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry.
At the University every great treatise is postponed until its author attains impartial judgment and perfect
knowledge. If a horse could wait as long for its shoes and would pay for them in advance, our blacksmiths
would all be college dons.
Every fool believes what his teachers tell him, and calls his credulity science or morality as confidently
as his father called it divine revelation.
No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.
The man who has graduated from the flogging block at Eton to the bench from which he sentences the
garrotter to be flogged is the same social product as the garrotter who has been kicked by his father and
cuffed by his mother until he has grown strong enough to throttle and rob the rich citizen whose money he
desires.
When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport: when the tiger wants to murder him he calls it
ferocity. The distinction between Crime and Justice is no greater.
863
There are no perfectly honorable men; but every true man has one main point of honor and a few minor ones.
Beware of the man whose god is in the skies.

Self-denial is not a virtue: it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.

Obedience simulates subordination as fear of the police simulates honesty.

Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the
laziest and commonest of the vices.
In a stupid nation the man of genius becomes a god: everybody worships him and nobody does his will.
Happiness and Beauty are by-products.

Riches and Art are spurious receipts for the production of Happiness and Beauty.
He who desires a lifetime of happiness with a beautiful woman desires to enjoy the taste of wine by keeping
his mouth always full of it.
The man with toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty stricken man
makes the same mistake about the rich man.
The more a man possesses over and above what he uses, the more careworn he becomes.
In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness.
No elaboration of physical or moral accomplishment can atone for the sin of parasitism.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to
himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her.
Decency is Indecency’s Conspiracy of Silence.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience. If we could learn
from mere experience, the stones of London would be wiser than its wisest men.
George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists, #127-128
864
No age or condition is without its heroes. The least incapable general in a nation is its Cæsar, the least
imbecile statesman its Solon, the least confused thinker its Socrates, the least commonplace poet its
Shakespear.
The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless a passion for gaming is common,
though a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown.
The reformer for whom the world is not good enough finds himself shoulder to shoulder with him that is not
good enough for the world.
Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven
nothing.
Do not mistake your objection to defeat for an objection to fighting, your objection to being a slave for an
objection to slavery, your objection to not being as rich as your neighbor for an objection to poverty. The
cowardly, the insubordinate, and the envious share your objections.
Those who understand evil pardon it.

When a heretic wishes to avoid martyrdom he speaks of “Orthodoxy, True and False” and demonstrates that
the True is his heresy.
If you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end by hating those to whom you have
sacrificed yourself.
JAMES HUNEKER (1857-1921)

The Pathos of Distance (1915)
The wine cost eight sous a litre; it was sharp, thin, and blue: yet it warmed, and when one is not twenty, and
possesses a ferocious appetite, coupled with a yearning for the ideal, the human machine needs much stoking
to keep up steam and soul.
James Huneker, The Pathos of Distance (1915), p. 3
Great art is an instant arrested in eternity.

He dares to be a fool, and that is the first step in the direction of wisdom.
Introduction to The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire (1919)

Notwithstanding his desperate effort to realize Poe’s idea, he [Baudelaire] only proved Poe correct, who had
said that no man can bare his heart quite naked; there always will be something held back, something false
ostentatiously thrust forward. The grimace, the attitude, the pomp of rhetoric are so many buffers between
the soul of man and the sharp reality of published confessions.
James Huneker, Introduction to The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire (1919), p. xi
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JOSEPH CONRAD (1857-1924)
A belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are capable of every wickedness.
Joseph Conrad
We live, as we dream—alone.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
SAMUEL MCCHORD CROTHERS (1857-1927)

The Gentle Reader (1903)
To keep shooting at a folly after it is dead is unsportsmanlike.
Samuel Crothers, “Quixotism,” The Gentle Reader (1903), p. 272
We sometimes speak of stubborn facts. Nonsense! A fact is a mere babe when compared with a stubborn
theory.
Samuel Crothers, “Quixotism,” The Gentle Reader (1903), p. 277
It aims at nothing less than the complete transformation of human society, by the use of means which, to say
the least, seem quite inadequate.
Samuel Crothers, regarding the quixotic society, “Quixotism,” The Gentle Reader (1903), p. 278
There is no absurdity in its mental processes; all that is concealed in its assumptions.
Samuel Crothers, regarding the thought of members of quixotic societies, “Quixotism,” The Gentle Reader (1903), p. 279
Ralph Waldo Emerson: How to Know Him (1921)
THORSTEIN VEBLEN (1857-1929)

The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.
Thorstein Veblen, “The Evolution of the Scientific Point of View”
The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/VEBLEN/veb_toc.html
http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/LeisureClass/00000010.htm
From the ownership of women the concept of ownership extends itself to include the products of their
industry, and so there arises the ownership of things as well as of persons.
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), p..23
The members of each stratum accept as their ideal of decency the scheme of life in vogue in the next higher
stratum.
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), p. 84
Leisure held the first place at the start, and came to hold a rank very much above wasteful consumption of
goods... From that point onward, consumption has gained ground, until, at present, it unquestionably holds
the primacy.
The superior gratification derived from the use and contemplation of costly and supposedly beautiful
products is, commonly, in great measure a gratification of our sense of costliness masquerading under the
name of beauty.
866
Ownership began and grew into a human institution on grounds unrelated to the subsistence minimum. The
dominant incentive was from the outset the invidious distinction attaching to wealth, and, save temporarily
and by exception, no other motive has usurped the primacy at any later stage of the development.
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), Chapter 2
These lower classes can in any case not avoid labor, and the imputation of labor is therefore not greatly
derogatory to them, at least not within their class. Rather, since labor is their recognized and accepted mode
of life, they take some emulative pride in a reputation for efficiency in their work, this being often the only
line of emulation that is open to them. For those for whom acquisition and emulation is possible only within
the field of productive efficiency and thrift, the struggle for pecuniary reputability will in some measure work
out in an increase of diligence and parsimony. But certain secondary features of the emulative process, yet to
be spoken of, come in to very materially circumscribe and modify emulation in these directions among the
pecuniarily inferior classes.
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), Chapter 3, ¶ 1
Vulgarly productive occupations are unhesitatingly condemned and avoided. They are incompatible with
life on a satisfactory spiritual plane—with “high thinking”. From the days of the Greek philosophers to the
present, a degree of leisure and of exemption from contact with such industrial processes as serve the
immediate everyday purposes of human life has ever been recognized by thoughtful men as a prerequisite to
a worthy or beautiful, or even a blameless, human life. In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is
beautiful and ennobling in all civilized men's eyes.
This direct, subjective value of leisure and of other evidences of wealth is no doubt in great part secondary
and derivative. It is in part a reflex of the utility of leisure as a means of gaining the respect of others, and in
part it is the result of a mental substitution. The performance of labor has been accepted as a conventional
evidence of inferior force; therefore it comes itself, by a mental short-cut, to be regarded as intrinsically base.
The ancient tradition of the predatory culture is that productive effort is to be shunned as being unworthy of
able-bodied men, and this tradition is reinforced rather than set aside in the passage from the predatory to the
quasi-peaceable manner of life.
The achievements which characterize a life of leisure, and which remain as its decorous criteria, have much
in common with the trophies of exploit. But leisure in the narrower sense, as distinct from exploit and from
any ostensibly productive employment of effort on objects which are of no intrinsic use, does not commonly
leave a material product. The criteria of a past performance of leisure therefore commonly take the form of
“immaterial” goods. Such immaterial evidences of past leisure are quasi-scholarly or quasi-artistic
accomplishments and a knowledge of processes and incidents which do not conduce directly to the
furtherance of human life. So, for instance, in our time there is the knowledge of the dead languages and the
occult sciences; of correct spelling; of syntax and prosody; of the various forms of domestic music and other
household art; of the latest properties of dress, furniture, and equipage; of games, sports, and fancy-bred
animals, such as dogs and race-horses. In all these branches of knowledge the initial motive from which their
acquisition proceeded at the outset, and through which they first came into vogue, may have been something
quite different from the wish to show that one's time had not been spent in industrial employment; but unless
these accomplishments had approved themselves as serviceable evidence of an unproductive expenditure of
time, they would not have survived and held their place as conventional accomplishments of the leisure class.
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), Chapter 3, ¶ 14
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The leisure of the master class is, at least ostensibly, an indulgence of a proclivity for the avoidance of labor
and is presumed to enhance the master's own well-being and fullness of life; but the leisure of the servant
class exempt from productive labor is in some sort a performance exacted from them, and is not normally or
primarily directed to their own comfort. The leisure of the servant is not his own leisure. So far as he is a
servant in the full sense, and not at the same time a member of a lower order of the leisure class proper, his
leisure normally passes under the guise of specialized service directed to the furtherance of his master's
fullness of life. Evidence of this relation of subservience is obviously present in the servant's carriage and
manner of life. The like is often true of the wife throughout the protracted economic stage during which she
is still primarily a servant—that is to say, so long as the household with a male head remains in force. In
order to satisfy the requirements of the leisure class scheme of life, the servant should show not only an
attitude of subservience, but also the effects of special training and practice in subservience. The servant or
wife should not only perform certain offices and show a servile disposition, but it is quite as imperative that
they should show an acquired facility in the tactics of subservience—a trained conformity to the canons of
effectual and conspicuous subservience. Even today it is this aptitude and acquired skill in the formal
manifestation of the servile relation that constitutes the chief element of utility in our highly paid servants.
The first requisite of a good servant is that he should conspicuously know his place. It is not enough that he
knows how to effect certain desired mechanical results; he must above all, know how to effect these results
in due form. Domestic service might be said to be a spiritual rather than a mechanical function. Gradually
there grows up an elaborate system of good form, specifically regulating the manner in which this vicarious
leisure of the servant class is to be performed.
The addiction to sports ... marks an arrested development of the man's moral nature.
The Higher Learning in America: A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities

(1918)
http://books.google.com/books?id=u-otAAAAIAAJ
Both in point of the purely competitive value of their training and of the unscientific character of their work,
the law schools are in very much the same case as the schools of commerce; and, no doubt, the accepted
inclusion of law schools in the university corporation has made the intrusion of the schools of commerce
much easier than it otherwise would have been. The law school's inclusion in the university corporation has
the countenance of ancient tradition, it comes down as an authentic usage from the mediaeval era of
European education, and from the pre-history of the American universities. But in point of substantial merit
the law school belongs in the modern university no more than a school of fencing or dancing. This is
particularly true of the American law schools, in which the Austinian conception of law is followed, and it is
more particularly true the more consistently the “case method” is adhered to. These schools devote
themselves with great singleness to the training of practitioners, as distinct from jurists; and their teachers
stand in a relation to their students analogous to that in which the “coaches “ stand to the athletes. What is
had in view is the exigencies, expedients and strategy of successful practice; and not so much a grasp of even
those quasi-scientific articles of metaphysics that lie at the root of the legal system. What is required and
inculcated in the way of a knowledge of these elements of law is a familiarity with their strategic use.
The Higher Learning in America: A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities (1918), p. 211
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JOHN WILLIAM LLOYD (1857-1940)
The Natural Man (1902)
http://www.archive.org/stream/naturalmanromanc00lloyiala/naturalmanromanc00lloyiala_djvu.txt
I pay taxes, of course. I believe in these things no more than Emerson or Thoreau, but resistance to them is
folly, except on the mental plane.
J. W. Lloyd, The Natural Man (1902)
He paused a moment and then pointed to the brook. "You see that the water divides there and flows on each
side of a great rock. Now, if we imagine the brook endowed with consciousness, no doubt the stream on the
right of the rock will feel itself separate from the stream on the left, but to us they are plainly continuous and
the same. So I suppose every life in the world flows from the same infinite source and finally returns to it and
while feeling itself separate, because limited and partial, is really continuous and the same.
J. W. Lloyd, The Natural Man (1902), p. 95
This explains the instant satisfaction and growing reward which comes to every man who aspires to a higher
life, who covets wisdom, who pursues beauty, who idealizes and worships his ideals.
J. W. Lloyd, The Natural Man (1902), p. 100
ÉMILE DURKHEIM (1858-1917)

The individual submits to society and this submission is the condition of his liberation. For man freedom
consists in deliverance from blind, unthinking physical forces; he achieves this by opposing against them the
great and intelligent force of society, under whose protection he shelters.
[opposition] Émile Durkheim, Selected Writings, A. Giddens, trans. (Cambridge: 1972), pp. 94-115
De La Division Du Travail Social [The Division of Labor in Society] (1893)

http://www.sociologycentral.com/theory/readings/durkheim/dol.pdf
At this point, an urgent question arises: ... Is it our duty to seek to become a thorough and complete human
being, one quite sufficient unto himself; or, on the contrary, to be only a part of a whole, the organ of an
organism? Briefly, is the division of labor, at the same time that it is a law of nature, also a moral rule of
human conduct; and, if it has this latter character, why and in what degree? ...
It seems that opinion is steadily inclining towards making the division of labor an imperative rule of
conduct, to present it as a duty. Those who shun it are not punished precise penalty fixed by law, it is true;
but they are blamed. The time has passed when the perfect man was he who appeared interested in
everything without attaching himself exclusively to anything, capable of tasting and understanding
everything finding means to unite and condense in himself all that was most exquisite in civilization. ... We
want activity, instead of spreading itself over a large area, to concentrate and gain in intensity what it loses in
extent. We distrust those excessively mobile talents that lend themselves equally to all uses, refusing to
choose a special role and keep to it. We disapprove of those men whose unique care is to organize and
develop all their faculties, but without making any definite use of them, and without sacrificing any of them,
as if each man were sufficient unto himself, and constituted an independent world. It seems to us that this
state of detachment and indetermination has something anti-social about it. The praiseworthy man of
former times is only a dilettante to us, and we refuse to give dilettantism any moral value; we rather
see perfection in the man seeking, not to be complete, but to produce; who has a restricted task, and
devotes himself to it; who does his duty, accomplishes his work. “To perfect oneself,” said Secrétan, “is to
learn one's role, to become capable of fulfilling one's function. . . The measure of our perfection is no longer
found in our complacence with ourselves, in the applause of a crowd, or in the approving smile of an affected
dilettantism, but in the sum of given services and in our capacity to give more.” [Le principe de la morale, p.
189] ... We no longer think that the exclusive duty of man is to realize in himself the qualities of man in
869
general; but we believe he must have those pertaining to his function. ... The categorical imperative of the
moral conscience is assuming the following form: Make yourself usefully fulfill a determinate function.
Émile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, G. Simpson, trans. (1933), pp. 41-43
Would it not then be true that custom manifesto other sorts of solidarity than that expressed in positive
law?
This opposition, however, crops up only in quite exceptional circumstances. This comes about when law
no longer corresponds to the state of existing society, but maintains itself, without reason for so doing, by the
force of habit. In such a case, new relations which establish themselves in spite of it are not bereft of
organization, for they cannot endure without seeking consolidation. But since they are in conflict with the old
existing law, they can attain only superficial organization. They do not pass beyond the stage of custom and
do not enter into the juridical life proper. Thus conflict ensues.
Émile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, G. Simpson, trans. (1933), p. 65
All law is private in the sense that it is always about individuals who are present and acting; but so, too, all
law is public, in the sense that it is a social function and that all individuals are, whatever their varying titles,
functionaries of society.
Émile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, G. Simpson, trans. (1933), p. 68
GEORG SIMMEL (1858-1918)

Die Grosstädte und das Geistesleben (1903)
German: http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/6598/1
English: http://faculty.washington.edu/cbehler/teaching/coursenotes/simmelmet.html
In alledem wirkt das gleiche Grundmotiv: der Widerstand des Subjekts, in einem gesellschaftlich-
technischen Mechanismus nivelliert und verbraucht zu werden.
Georg Simmel, „Die Grosstädte und das Geistesleben“
... the resistance of the individual to being leveled, swallowed up in the social-technological mechanism.
Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis and Modern Life” (1903)
Money economy has filled the days of so many people with weighing, calculating, with numerical
determinations, with a reduction of qualitative values to quantitative ones.
The essence of the blasé attitude consists in the blunting of discrimination. This does not mean that the
objects are not perceived, as is the case with the half-wit, but rather that the meaning and differing values of
things, and thereby the things themselves, are experienced as insubstantial. They appear to the blasé person
in an evenly flat and gray tone; no one object deserves preference over any other. This mood is the faithful
subjective reflection of the completely internalized money economy. By being the equivalent to all the
manifold things in one and the same way, money becomes the most frightful leveler. For money expresses all
qualitative differences of things in terms of "how much?" Money, with all its colorlessness and indifference,
becomes the common denominator of all values; irreparably it hollows out the core of things, their
individuality, their specific value, and their incomparability. All things float with equal specific gravity in the
constantly moving stream of money. All things lie on the same level and differ from one another only in the
size of the area which they cover.
On Individuality and Social Forms

The brutality of a man purely motivated by monetary considerations … often does not appear to him at all as
a moral delinquency, since he is aware only of a rigorously logical behavior, which draws the objective
consequences of the situation.
Georg Simmel, “Domination,” On Individuality and Social Forms (1971), p. 110
870
FRANCISCO FERRER (1859-1909)
In our many conversations I refrained from taking any definite side; so that she did not recognize me as a
partisan of any particular belief, but as a careful reasoner with whom it was a pleasure to confer.
Francisco Ferrer, describing conversations with Mlle. Meunier, The Origin and Ideals of the Modern School (1908), J. McCabe, trans. (1913), p. 10
There must be a co-education of the different social classes as well as of the two sexes. I might have
founded a school giving lessons gratuitously; but a school for poor children only would not be a rational
school, since, if they were not taught submission and credulity as in the old type of school, they would have
been strongly disposed to rebel, and would instinctively cherish sentiments of hatred.
There is no escape from the dilemma. There is no middle term in the school for the disinherited class
alone; you have either a systematic insistence, by means of false teaching, on error and ignorance, or hatred
of those who domineer and exploit. It is a delicate point, and needs stating clearly. Rebellion against
oppression is merely a question of statics, of equilibrium. Between one man and another who are perfectly
equal, as is said in the immortal first clause of the famous Declaration of the French Revolution ("Men are
born and remain free and equal in rights"), there can be no social inequality. If there is such inequality, some
will tyrannise, the others protest and hate. Rebellion is a levelling tendency, and to that extent natural and
rational, however much it may be discredited by justice and its evil companions, law and religion.
I venture to say quite plainly: the oppressed and the exploited have a right to rebel, because they have to
reclaim their rights until they enjoy their full share in the common patrimony. The Modern School, however,
has to deal with children, whom it prepares by instruction for the state of manhood, and it must not anticipate
the cravings and hatreds, the adhesions and rebellions, which may be fitting sentiments in the adult. In other
words, it must not seek to gather fruit until it has been produced by cultivation, nor must it attempt to implant
a sense of responsibility until it has equipped the conscience with the fundamental conditions of such
responsibility. Let it teach the children to be men; when they are men, they may declare themselves rebels
against injustice.
It needs very little reflection to see that a school for rich children only cannot be a rational school. From
the very nature of things it will tend to insist on the maintenance of privilege and the securing of their
advantages. The only sound and enlightened form of school is that which co-educates the poor and the rich,
which brings the one class into touch with the other in the innocent equality of childhood, by means of the
systematic equality of the rational school.
Francisco Ferrer, The Origin and Ideals of the Modern School (1908), J. McCabe, trans. (1913), pp. 44-46
If modern pedagogy means an effort towards the realisation of a new and more just form of society; if it
means that we propose to instruct the rising generation in the causes which have brought about and maintain
the lack of social equilibrium; if it means that we are anxious to prepare the race for better days, freeing it
from religious fiction and from all idea of submission to an inevitable socio-economic inequality; we cannot
entrust it to the State or to other official organisms which necessarily maintain existing privileges and
support the laws which at present consecrate the exploitation of one man by another, the pernicious source of
the worst abuses.
Francisco Ferrer, The Origin and Ideals of the Modern School (1908), J. McCabe, trans. (1913), p. 47
In Belgium. ... the government is so attentive to education and conducts it so excellently that private
schools are impossible. In the official schools, he says, the children of the rich mingle with the children of
the poor, and one may at times see the child of wealthy parents, arm in arm with a poor and lowly
companion. It is true, I admit, that children of all classes may attend the Belgian schools; but the instruction
that is given in them is based on the supposed eternal necessity for a division of rich and poor, and on the
principle that social harmony consists in the fulfilment of the laws.
It is natural enough that the masters should like to see this kind of education given on every side. It is a
means of bringing to reason those who might one day be tempted to rebel.
Francisco Ferrer, The Origin and Ideals of the Modern School (1908), J. McCabe, trans. (1913), p. 48
871
L. P. JACKS (1860-1955)
A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his
leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply
pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is
working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.
L. P. Jacks, Education through Recreation (1932)
The mechanical mind has a passion for control — of everything except itself.
L. P. Jacks, Revolt Against Mechanism (1933)
The Usurpation Of Language (1910)

http://essays.quotidiana.org/jacks/usurpation_of_language/
How can the Universe tell its own story save by making use of human speech?
L. P. Jacks, The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
Philosophy resembles poetry in being an art for enforcing meditation, for driving the mind inwards.
The highest function of philosophy is to enforce the attitude of meditation and therewithal restrain the
excessive volubility of the tongue. To us it seems that the reflective thinker wins his greatest victories when
by what he says he compels us to recognise the relative insignificance of anything he can say. His task is not
to capture Reality, but to free it from captivity.
There are some things about which men disagree only because they have chosen to discuss them.
The words best suited to the thinkers employment are the words which call least attention to themselves,
inviting us not to look at them but to look through them.
Philosophy resembles poetry in being an art for enforcing meditation, for driving the mind inwards.
Things and events explain themselves, and the business of thought is to brush aside the verbal and conceptual
impediments which prevent them from doing so. Start with the notion that it is you who explain the Object,
and not the Object that explains itself, and you are bound to end in explaining it away. It ceases to exist, its
place being taken by a parcel of concepts, a string of symbols, a form of words, and you find yourself
contemplating, not the thing, but your theory of the thing.
… the Agnostic’s conclusion that things about which we can say nothing, can say nothing about themselves
Were we to reflect more deeply, we might discover that the true reason of our being able to say nothing about
this or that object is that it tells its own story so completely as to leave us nothing to say, explains itself so
adequately as to leave our powers of explanation with nothing to do.
872
It is only after prolonged, and often painful, self-examination that any of us can realise the extent to which
our minds are in bondage to words, to phrases, to formulae. We are the children of an age which spends the
best energies of its life in the discussion of life, in an atmosphere of deferred fulfilment, continually
postponing the act of living to the work of mentally preparing to live.
Much skepticism has its roots in nothing deeper than an exaggerated estimate of the functions of speech.
WALTER RAUSCHENBUSCH (1861-1918)

Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)
The Kingdom of God ... is not a matter of getting individuals to heaven, but of transforming the life on earth
into the harmony of heaven.
Walter Rauschenbusch
The essential purpose of Christianity was to transform human society into the kingdom of God by
regenerating all human relations and reconstituting them in accordance with the will of God.
Walter Rauschenbusch
Ascetic Christianity called the world evil and left it. Humanity is waiting for a revolutionary Christianity
which will call the world evil and change it.
Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), p. 91
Jesus ... was the first real man, the inaugurator of a new humanity.
Jesus was never an inhabitant of the realm of speculative thought.

It is correctly asserted that the apostles undertook no social propaganda. Paul held no antislavery meetings,
and Peter made no public protest against the organized grafting in the Roman system of tax-farming. Of
course they did not. Even the most ardent Christian socialist of our day would have stepped softly if he had
been in their place. The right of public agitation was very limited in the Roman Empire. Any attempt to
arouse the people against the oppression of the government or the special privileges of the possessing classes,
would have been choked off with relentless promptness. If, for instance, any one had been known to sow
discontent among the vast and ever threatening slave population, — which was not negro, but white, — he
would have had short shrift. Society was tensely alert against any possible slave rising. If a slave killed his
master, the law provided that every slave of that household should be killed, even if there was no trace of
complicity. Upper-class philosophers might permit themselves very noble and liberal sentiments only
because there was no connection between them and the masses, and their sentiments ended in perfumed
smoke.
Under such circumstances any prudent man will husband his chances of life and usefulness, and drop the
seeds of truth warily. If the convictions of William Lloyd Garrison had burned in Paul, we should probably
not know that Paul had ever existed. There is no parallel between such a situation and our own in a country
where we are ourselves the citizen kings, and where the right of moral agitation is almost unlimited.
873
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD (1861-1947)
Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its
song, and the sun for its radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to
themselves and should turn them into odes of self-congratulation on the excellence of the human mind.
Alfred North Whitehead
If you like to phrase it so, philosophy is mystical. For mysticism is direct insight into depths as yet unspoken.
But the purpose of philosophy is to rationalize mysticism: not by explaining it away, but by the introduction
of novel verbal characterizations, rationally coordinated.
Alfred North Whitehead, Modes of Thought (1938), p. 237
Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise.
Alfred North Whitehead
The function of the university is to enable you to shed details in favour of principles.
Alfred North Whitehead, “The Rhythm of Education,” The Aims of Education and Other Essays (1929)
Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows: for details are swallowed up in principles.

Alfred North Whitehead, “Freedom and Discipline,” The Aims of Education and Other Essays (1929), p. 48
What the learned world tends to offer is one second-hand scrap of information illustrating ideas derived from
another second-hand scrap of information. The second-handedness of the learned world is the secret of its
mediocrity.
Alfred North Whitehead, “Technical Education,” The Aims of Education and Other Essays (1929), p. 61
The main importance of Francis Bacon’s influence does not lie in any peculiar theory of inductive reasoning
which he happened to express, but in the revolt against second-hand information of which he was a leader.
Alfred North Whitehead, “Technical Education,” The Aims of Education and Other Essays (1929), p. 61
The Aims of Education (1916)

Culture is activity of thought, and receptiveness to beauty and humane feeling. Scraps of information have
nothing to do with it.
Alfred North Whitehead, “The Aims of Education,” Presidential address to the Mathematical Association of England, 1916
In training a child to activity of thought, above all things we must beware of what I will call
"inert ideas"—that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilised, or tested, or
thrown into fresh combinations.
In the history of education, the most striking phenomenon is that schools of learning, which at one epoch
are alive with a ferment of genius, in a succeeding generation exhibit merely pedantry and routine. The
reason is, that they are overladen with inert ideas. Education with inert ideas is not only useless: it is, above
all things, harmful — Corruptio optimi, pessima [the corruption of the best is the worst].
Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest
against inert ideas. Then, alas, with pathetic ignorance of human psychology, it has proceeded by some
educational scheme to bind humanity afresh with inert ideas of its own fashioning.
Education is the acquisition of the art of the utilisation of knowledge.

874
CONSTANTIN BRUNNER (1862–1937)
Our Christ (1921)
In point of fact there are two kinds sorts of mysticism, differing from one another as the ranting of drunkards
from the language of illumined spirits. There is the muddled, stammering mysticism, and there is the
mysticism luminous with truly ultimate ideas. On the one hand there are the empty dimness and darkness, the
barren, chilling sentimentalism and mental debauchery, the foolishly grimacing but rigid phantasms of the
Cabbala, of occultism, mysteriosophy and theosophy. We cannot draw too sharp a dividing line between
these and the brightness, the simple sincerity, and healthy, rejuvenating strength of genuine mysticism, which
takes the most precious gems from philosophy's treasure chest and displays them in the beauty of its own
setting. Mysticism is in complete accord with the result, with the sum of philosophy. In fact, mysticism is
precisely the sum and the soul of philosophy, in the form of that rapturous, passionate outpouring of love....
We are concerned with an understanding of this serious mysticism, and its meaning could be stated in three
words... godlessness... freedom from the world... blessedness of soul.
Constantin Brunner, Our Christ (1921)
In mysticism, everything is thrown at us directly, without discursiveness and ratiocination, as if it were a

matter of course, and we are challenged to follow an unrestrainable will to love, arising out of a
tremendously agitated, indiscriminate feeling. ... Mystics will—rather than know—their thoughts. ...
Mysticism witnesses nothing but love; mysticism is nothing but love. ... Art shows how it loves, philosophy
what it loves; mysticism knows only that it loves.
Constantin Brunner, Our Christ (1921)
Christ, with whom the multitude could not deal other than by making him into God Himself, thus enabling
itself to venerate as God him whom they had loathed as man.
Constantin Brunner, Our Christ (1921), p. 113
The difference between Christ and the other prophets is threefold:

1. Unlike the other prophets, he has no connection with politics and is not a people's tribune. In the Gospels,
we find temporal circumstances only as background, Christ having no relationship to them at all. He kept his
thoughts unmuddled by the world—"Get thee behind me, Satan!"—he was and remained truly free of the
world.
2. He preaches no religious superficialities whatsoever, nothing at all of worship, nothing of God; he is truly
godless.
3. Neither for earth nor heaven does he preach any coming kingdom. "But seek ye first the kingdom of God,
and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you" (Mt. 6:33). The kingdom, however, is
nothing that is to come; it is here, it is within you (Lk. 17:21). It is the Spirit of innerness as it is alive in him,
the truly blessed man; it is the essence, ever being and never changing. It is also the essence of this our life,
not merely an appendix granted it by some other essence, for which we would have to fulfill certain
conditions.
Constantin Brunner, Our Christ (1921), pp. 165-166
Great, strong, spiritual love—which is always at the same time a genuine, unsentimental love of man—
cannot be without wrath. ... Anger can no more be separated from love than flame and heat can from fire.
Love and anger are a single fire of the Spirit.
From the midst of the flat plain of human reason, there arises the terrible, fire-spewing mountain of genius.
Constantin Brunner, Our Christ (), p. 168
875
Christ ... made the blood of the specialists and leading spirits, the representatives of the people boil with his
battle-cry: "I", "I", "I"! and provoked the enraged counterblast: We, We, We!
Constantin Brunner, Our Christ (), p. 179
And so, from this day forth, we want all the more to let our thoughts revolve around and hover over Socrates
and Christ at all times, openly taking pride that they are more alive for us than all those living today and that
we listen to and love them as we do none of the living.
Socrates and Christ speak to us everlastingly of mankind. ... It belongs to the great, to the greatest men to say
how things are with mankind, how they stand in its innerness and which way it is going; it belongs to
Socrates and Christ. These absolutely extraordinary, eternally alive people penetrate to the groundless depth
of human nature and understand the speech of ordinary people, of those who are scarcely alive from one day
to the next.
The Tyranny of Hate

The usual judgments are judgments of interest and they tell us less about the nature of the person judged than
about the interest of the one who judges.
Constantin Brunner, The Tyranny of Hate, p. 18
Men are forever doing two things at the same time: acting egoistically and talking moralistically.
Constantin Brunner, The Tyranny of Hate, p. 25
EDWARD W. BOK (1863-1930)

Successward
http://books.google.com/books?id=4XczAAAAMAAJ
We see ourselves with unmistakable accuracy, for example, in what we most enjoy in reading, in the
people whose company pleases us most, in the things that interest us; and where our tastes and interest lead
us we are generally truest to ourselves.
Some writer has said that most people find themselves out best while they are at play, upon the basis that a
man shows his real side in the pleasures which he seeks and enjoys.) This is true in a large measure. And the
character of his pleasures will have both an indirect and a direct bearing upon the more practical side of his
nature. If a young man visits an art gallery, for example, and finds that the pleasure he derives from the
pictures takes the form of recreation to the mind, that he is delighted and interested in the canvases he sees so
long as he is before them, but feels simply refreshed after he leaves the gallery, it is plain that his nature is
not one suited to art as a vocation. He employs the picture as a means of recreation from some other study
which has engrossed him most. If, on the other hand, his instincts lead him to an art gallery, and he studies
rather than enjoys the pictures that he sees, is curious as to the methods of the artist, and goes away with his
mind charged with the intention of getting further knowledge of what he has seen from books or other
authorities, it is natural to assume that the art instinct is within him, and he should give it the fullest chance of
development. But he should in every way feel, realize, and know that a love of art possesses him before he
adopts it as a profession. And thus, in a way, a young man has an opportunity to study himself through his
pleasures.
Edward W. Bok, Successward, pp. 15-16
GEORGE SANTAYANA (1863-1952)

Our dignity is not in what we do, but what we understand. The whole world is doing things.
George Santayana, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 72
876
Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first
comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the
ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.
Reasons we give for love attempt to justify at the bar of reason and convention, something which is far more
primitive than they and underlies them both.
Most men’s conscience, habits, and opinions are borrowed from convention and gather continual comforting
assurances from the same social consensus that originally suggested them.
The mind celebrates a little triumph whenever it can formulate a truth.

Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble, it must remain rare, if common, it
must become mean.
It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than a prig.

As virtue is a wider thing than morality, because it includes natural gifts and genial sympathies, or
even heroic sacrifices, so wisdom is a wider thing than logic.
To be preoccupied with vitality is a symptom of anemia.

George Santayana
The philosophy of the common man is an old wife that gives him no pleasure, yet he cannot live without her,
and resents any aspersions that strangers cast on her character.
George Santayana
Intolerance is itself a form of egoism, and to condemn egoism intolerantly is to share it.
George Santayana
Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavor to understand him.
George Santayana
Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.

George Santayana
The wisest mind has something yet to learn.

George Santayana
Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality.
George Santayana
To be interested in the changing seasons is … a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with
spring.
George Santayana cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 65
Why shouldn’t things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? They are so, and we are so, and they and we
go very well together.
George Santayana
877
Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.
George Santayana, Life of Reason (1905) vol. 1, Introduction
Music is essentially useless, as life is.

George Santayana, Life of Reason (1905) vol. 4, ch. 4
For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned.
George Santayana, Winds of Doctrine (1913) ch. 2
Skepticism and Animal Faith

http://www.archive.org/stream/philosophyofsant032135mbp/philosophyofsant032135mbp_djvu.txt
Here is one more system of philosophy. If the reader is tempted to smile, I can assure him that I smile with
him. ... my system is not mine, nor new. I am merely trying to express for the reader the principles to which
he appeals when he smiles. There are convictions in the depths of his soul, beneath all his overt parrot
beliefs, on which I would build our friendship.
George Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith (1955), p. v
I think that common sense, in a rough dogged way, is technically sounder than the special schools of
philosophy, each of which squints and overlooks half the facts and half the difficulties in its eagerness to find
in some detail the key to the whole.
George Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith (1955), p. v
My endeavour is to think straight in such terms as are offered to me, to clear my mind of cant and free it
from the cramp of artificial traditions; but I do not ask any one to think in my terms if he prefers others. Let
him clean better, if he can, the windows of his soul, that the variety and beauty of the prospect may spread
more brightly before him.
George Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith (1955), p. vi
If I regard the world of appearance as a mask which the deity wears inevitably, the very essence of the
creator being to create such a world, the difference between belief in God and belief in nature will be merely
verbal, and I may say with Spinoza, Deus sive natura. If on the contrary God is approachable in himself and
would prove a better companion than nature and sweeter to commune with, why should he terrify me or
delude me with this unworthy disguise? Why should he have preferred to manifest himself by creating
appearances rather than by creating substances? What secret necessity could have compelled him to create
anything at all, or whispered in his ear these irresponsible designs? If nature behaves as nature would, is it
not simply nature? If God were there instead would he not behave like God? Or if I say that I have no right to
presume how God should behave, but that wisdom counsels me to learn his ways by experience, what
difference remains between God and nature, and are they more than two names for the same thing?
If by calling nature God or the work of God, or the language in which God speaks to us, nothing is meant
except that nature is wonderful, unfathomed, alive, the source of our being, the sanction of morality, and the
dispenser of happiness and misery, there can be no objection to such alternative terms in the mouth of poets;
but I think a philosopher should avoid the ambiguities which a too poetical term often comports. The word
nature is poetical enough: it suggests sufficiently the generative and controlling function, the endless vitality
and changeful order of the world in which I live.
George Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith (1955), pp. 236-238
“The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy”

A philosophy is not genuine unless it inspires and expresses the life of those who cherish it.
George Santayana, The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy (1967), p. 42
The American Will inhabits the sky-scraper. The American Intellect inhabits the colonial mansion.
878
Vigilance over conduct and an absolute demand for personal integrity were not merely traditional things, but
things that practical sages, like Franklin and Washington, recommended to their countrymen, because they
were virtues that justified themselves visibly by their fruits.
A passion arose [in America] for counting heads, and square miles, and cubic feet, and minutes saved—as if
there has been anything to save them for.
Any of the radical points of view in philosophy may cease to be prevalent, but none can cease to be possible.
Emerson ... read transcendentally, not historically, to learn what he himself felt, not what others might
have felt before him.
Transcendentalism proper, like romanticism, is not any particular set of dogmas about what things exist; it is
not a system of the universe regarded as a fact, or as at collection of facts. It is a method, a point of view,
from which any world, no matter what it might contain. could be approached by a self-conscious observer.
Transcendentalism is systematic subjectivism. It studies the perspectives of knowledge as they radiate
from the self. It is a plan of those avenues of inference by which our ideas of things must be reached. ...
Knowledge, it says, has a station, as in a watchtower; it is always seated here and now, in the self of the
moment. The past and the future, things inferred and things conceived, lie around it, painted as upon a
panorama.
The Germans who first gained the full transcendental insight were romantic people; they were more or less
frankly poets; they were colossal egotists, and wished to make not only their own knowledge but the whole
universe centre about themselves. And full as they were of their romantic isolation and romantic liberty, it
occurred to them to imagine that all reality might be a transcendental self and a romantic dreamer like
themselves; nay, that it might be just their own transcendental self and their own romantic dreams extended
indefinitely; Transcendental logic, the method of discovery for the mind, was to become also the method of
evolution in nature and history. Transcendental method, so abused, produced transcendental myth. A
conscientious critique of knowledge was turned into at sham system of nature. We must therefore distinguish
sharply the transcendental grammar of the intellect, which is significant and potentially correct, from the
various transcendental systems of the universe, which are chimeras.
Emerson ... practiced the transcendental method in all its purity. He had no system. He opened his eyes on
the world every morning with a fresh sincerity, marking how things seem to him then.
879
To covet truth is a very distinguished passion. Every philosopher says he is pursuing the truth, but this is
seldom the case. As Mr. Bertrand Russell has observed, one reason why philosophers often fail to reach the
truth is that often they do not desire to reach it. Those who are genuinely concerned in discovering what
happens to be true are rather the men of science, the naturalists, the historians; and ordinarily they discover it,
according to their lights. The truths they find are never complete, and are not always important; but they are
integral parts of the truth, facts and circumstances that help to fill in the picture, and that no later
interpretation can invalidate or afford to contradict. But professional philosophers are usually only
apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea. Like
lawyers or detectives, they study the case for which they are retained, to see how much evidence or
semblance of evidence they can gather for the defence, and how much prejudice they can raise against the
witnesses for the prosecution; for they know they are defending prisoners suspected by the world, and
perhaps by their own good sense, of falsification. They do not covet truth, but victory and the dispelling of
their own doubts. What they defend is some system, that is, some view about the totality of things, of which
men are actually ignorant.
[The essay as published in The Genteel Tradition runs “Professional philosophers are usually only
scholastics”; as published in Winds of Doctrine, it runs “Professional philosophers are usually only
apologists.”]
George Santayana, The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy (1967), pp. 48-49
No system would have ever been framed if people had been simply interested in knowing what is true,
whatever it may be. What produces systems is the interest in maintaining against all comers that some
favourite or inherited idea of ours is sufficient and right. A system may contain an account of many
things which, in detail, are true enough; but as a system, covering infinite possibilities that neither our
experience nor our logic can prejudge, it must be a work of imagination and a piece of human soliloquy: It
may be expressive of human experience, it may be poetical; but how should anyone who really coveted truth
suppose that it was true?
Emerson had no system; and his coveting truth had another exceptional consequence: he was detached,
unworldly, contemplative. When he came out of the conventicle or the reform meeting, or out of the
rapturous close atmosphere of the lecture-room, he heard Nature whispering to him: “Why so hot, little sir?”
No doubt the spirit or energy of the world is what is acting in us, as the sea is what rises in every little wave;
but it passes through us, and cry out as we may, it will move on. Our privilege is to have perceived it as it
moves. Our dignity is not in what we do, but in what we understand. The whole world is doing things. we are
turning in that vortex; yet within us is silent observation, the speculative eye before which all passes, which
bridges the distances and compares the combatants.
Nature ... is what is acting in us, as the sea is what rises in every little wave; but it passes through us,
and cry out as we may, it will move on. Our privilege is to have perceived it as it moves. Our dignity is
not in what we do, but in what we understand.
On this side of his genius Emerson broke away from all conditions of age or country and represented
nothing except intelligence itself.
Music and landscape make up the spiritual resources of those who cannot or dare not express their unfulfilled
ideas in words.
880
To understand oneself is the classic form of consolation; to elude oneself is the romantic.
In Walt Whitman democracy is carried into psychology and morals. The various sights, moods, and emotions
are given each one vote; they are declared to be all free and equal, and the innumerable commonplace
moments of life are suffered to speak like the others. Those moments formerly reputed great are not
excluded, but they are made to march in the ranks with their companions—plain foot-soldiers and servants of
the hour.
This utilitarian view of the mind ... is an external view only, which marks the place and conditions of the
mind in nature, but neglects its specific essence; as if a jewel were defined as a round hole in a ring. ... If the
intellect is a device produced in organic bodies to expedite their processes, these organic bodies must have
interests and a chosen direction in their life; otherwise their life could not be expedited, nor could anything
be useful to it.
The universe is an experiment; it is unfinished. It has no ultimate or total nature, because it has no end. It
embodies no formula or suitable law; any formula is at best a poor abstraction, describing what, in some
region and for some time, may be the most striking characteristic of existence; the law is a description a
posteriori of the habit things have chosen to acquire, and which they may possibly throw off altogether. ...
Observation must be continual if our ideas are to remain true. Eternal vigilance is the price of knowledge.
George Santayana, describing the view of William James, The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy (1967), p. 58
The vision and not the arguments of a philosopher is the interesting and influential thing about him.
George Santayana, describing the view of William James, The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy (1967), pp. 58-59
The pint would call the quart a dualist, if you tried to pour the quart into him.
When you [the American] transform nature to your uses, when you experiment with her forces, and reduce
them to industrial agents, you cannot feel that nature was made by you or for you, for then these adjustments
would have been pre-established. Much less can you feel it when she destroys your labour of years in a
momentary spasm. You must feel, rather, that you are an offshoot of her life; one brave little force among her
immense forces. When you escape, as you love to do, to your forests and your sierras, I am sure again that
you do not feel you made them, or that they were made for you. They have grown, as you have grown, only
more massively and more slowly. In their non-human beauty and peace they stir the sub-human depths and
the superhuman possibilities of your own spirit. It is no transcendental logic that they teach; and they give no
sign of any deliberate morality seated in the world. It is rather the vanity and superficiality of all logic, the
needlessness of argument, the relativity of morals, the strength of time, the fertility of matter, the variety, the
unspeakable variety, of possible life. Everything is measurable and conditioned, indefinitely repeated, yet, in
repetition, twisted somewhat from its old form. Everywhere is beauty and nowhere permanence, everywhere
an incipient harmony, nowhere an[214] intention, nor a responsibility, nor a plan. It is the irresistible suasion
of this daily spectacle, it is the daily discipline of contact with things, so different from the verbal discipline
of the schools, that will, I trust, inspire the philosophy of your children. A Californian whom I had recently
the pleasure of meeting observed that, if the philosophers had lived among your mountains their systems
would have been different from what they are. Certainly, I should say, very different from what those
systems are which the European genteel tradition has handed down since Socrates; for these systems are
egotistical; directly or indirectly they are anthropocentric, and inspired by the conceited notion that man, or
human reason, or the human distinction between good and evil, is the centre and pivot of the universe. That
is what the mountains and the woods should make you at last ashamed to assert. From what, indeed, does the
society of nature liberate you, that you find it so sweet? It is hardly (is it?) that you wish to forget your past,
or your friends, or that you have any secret contempt for your present ambitions. You respect these, you
respect them perhaps too much; you are not suffered by the genteel tradition to criticise or to reform them at
881
all radically. No; it is the yoke of this genteel tradition itself that these primeval solitudes lift from your
shoulders. They suspend your forced sense of your own importance not merely as individuals, but even as
men. They allow you, in one happy moment, at once to play and to worship, to take yourselves simply,
humbly, for what you are, and to salute the wild, indifferent, non-censorious infinity of nature. You are
admonished that what you can do avails little materially, and in the end nothing. At the same time, through
wonder and pleasure, you are taught speculation. You learn what you are really fitted to do, and where lie
your natural dignity and joy, namely, in representing many things, without being them, and in letting your
imagination, through sympathy, celebrate and echo their life. Because the peculiarity of man is that his
machinery for reaction on external things has involved an imaginative transcript of these things, which is
preserved and suspended in his fancy; and the interest and beauty of this inward landscape, rather than any
fortunes that may await his body in the outer world, constitute his proper happiness. By their mind, its scope,
quality, and temper, we estimate men, for by the mind only do we exist as men, and are more than so many
storage-batteries for material energy. Let us therefore be frankly human. Let us be content to live in the
mind.
“Philosophical opinion in America”

http://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/george-santayana/philosophical-opinion-in-america-hci/1-philosophical-opinion-in-america-hci.shtml
The younger professors of philosophy are no longer the sort of persons that might as well have been
clergymen or schoolmasters: they have rather the type of mind of a doctor, an engineer, or a social reformer;
the wide-awake young man who can do most things better than old people, and who knows it. He is less
eloquent and apostolic than the older generation of philosophers, very professional in tone and conscious of
his Fach; not that he would deny for a moment the many-sided ignorance to which nowadays we are all
reduced, but that he thinks he can get on very well without the things he ignores. His education has been
more pretentious than thorough; his style is deplorable; social pressure and his own great eagerness have
condemned him to over-work, committee meetings, early marriage, premature authorship, and lecturing two
or three times a day under forced draught. He has no peace in himself, no window open to a calm horizon,
and in his heart perhaps little taste for mere scholarship or pure speculation. Yet like the plain soldier
staggering under his clumsy equipment, he is cheerful; he keeps his faith in himself and in his allotted work,
puts up with being toasted only on one side, remains open-minded, whole-hearted, appreciative, helpful,
confident of the future of goodness and of science. In a word, he is a cell in that teeming democratic body; he
draws from its warm, contagious activities the sanctions of his own life and, less consciously, the spirit of his
philosophy.
It is evident that such minds will have but a loose hold on tradition, even on the genteel tradition in
American philosophy. Not that in general they oppose or dislike it; their alienation from it is more
radical; they forget it.
George Santayana, “Philosophical opinion in America,” The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy (1967), pp. 102-103
They [American philosophers] feel it is as much every one’s right to choose and cherish a religion as to
choose and cherish a wife, without having his choice rudely commented upon in public.
George Santayana, “Philosophical opinion in America,” The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy (1967), p. 103
I think we may conjecture why this startling conclusion, that consciousness does not exist, a conclusion
suggested somewhat hurriedly by William James, has found a considerable echo in America. ... To deny
consciousness ... is a relief to an overtaxed and self-impeded generation; it seems a blessed
simplification. It gets rid of the undemocratic notion that by being very reflective, circumspect and
subtle you might discover something that most people do not see. They can go on more merrily with their
work if they believe that by being so subtle, circumspect, and reflective you would only discover a mare’s
nest. The elimination of consciousness not only restores the obvious, but proves all parts of the obvious to be
equally real.
George Santayana, “Philosophical opinion in America,” The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy (1967), p. 108
882
The Winds of Doctrine
MAX WEBER (1864-1920)

The standpoint that the distinction between purely logically deducible and empirical factual assertions on the
one hand, and practical, ethical or philosophical value-judgments on the other, is correct, but that,
nevertheless, both classes of problems properly belong within the area of instruction ... is acceptable ... only
when the teacher sets as his unconditional duty, in every single case, even to the point where it involves the
danger of making his lecture less lively or attractive, to make relentlessly clear to his audience, and
especially to himself, which of his statements are statements of logically deduced or empirically observed
facts and which are statements of practical evaluations.
Max Weber, Methodology of the Social Sciences, E. Shils, trans. (2010), pp. 1-2
Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus [The Protestant Ethic and
the Spirit of Capitalism] (1904)
German: http://www.joachimschmid.ch/docs/PAzWeberMaxProteEtG.pdf
So fällt als das Eigentümliche in dieser »Philosophie des Geizes« ... der Gedanke der Verpflichtung des
einzelnen gegenüber dem als Selbstzweck vorausgesetzten Interesse an der Vergrößerung seines Kapitals
auf.
Max Weber, Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus (1904)
883
Vor allem ist das »summum bonum« dieser »Ethik«: der Erwerb von Geld und immer mehr Geld, unter
strengster Vermeidung alles unbefangenen Genießens, so gänzlich aller eudämonistischen oder gar
hedonistischen Gesichtspunkte entkleidet, so rein als Selbstzweck gedacht, dass es als etwas gegenüber dem
»Glück« oder dem »Nutzen« des einzelnen Individuums jedenfalls gänzlich Transzendentes und schlechthin
Irrationales erscheint. Der Mensch ist auf das Erwerben als Zweck seines Lebens, nicht mehr das Erwerben
auf den Menschen als Mittel zum Zweck der Befriedigung seiner materiellen Lebensbedürfnisse bezogen.
Diese für das unbefangene Empfinden schlechthin sinnlose Umkehrung des, wie wir sagen würden,
»natürlichen« Sachverhalts ist nun ganz offenbar ebenso unbedingt ein Leitmotiv des Kapitalismus, wie sie
dem von seinem Hauche nicht berührten Menschen fremd ist. Aber sie enthält zugleich eine
Empfindungsreihe, welche sich mit gewissen religiösen Vorstellungen eng berührt. Fragt man nämlich:
warum denn »aus Menschen Geld gemacht« werden soll, so antwortet Benjamin Franklin, obwohl selbst
konfessionell farbloser Deist, in seiner Autobiographie darauf mit einem Bibelspruch, den, wie er sagt, sein
streng calvinistischer Vater ihm in der Jugend immer wieder eingeprägt habe: »Siehst du einen Mann rüstig
in seinem Beruf, so soll er vor Königen stehen«. Der Gelderwerb ist – sofern er in legaler Weise erfolgt –
innerhalb der modernen Wirtschaftsordnung das Resultat und der Ausdruck der Tüchtigkeit im Beruf und
diese Tüchtigkeit ist, wie nun unschwer zu erkennen ist, das wirkliche A und O der Moral Franklins.
In fact, the summum bonum of this ethic, the earning of more and more money, combined with the strict
avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment of life, is above all completely devoid of any eudaemonistic, not to
say hedonistic, admixture. It is thought of so purely as an end in itself, that from the point of view of the
happiness of, or utility to, the single individual, it appears entirely transcendental and absolutely irrational.
Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life. Economic
acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for the satisfaction of his material needs. This
reversal of what we should call the natural relationship, so irrational from a naive point of view, is evidently
as definitely a leading principle of capitalism as it is foreign to all peoples not under capitalistic influence. At
the same time it expresses a type of feeling which is closely connected with certain religious ideas. If we thus
ask, why should “money be made out of men”, Benjamin Franklin himself, although he was a colourless
deist, answers in his autobiography with a quotation from the Bible, which his strict Calvinistic father
drummed into him again and again in his youth: “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand
before kings” (Prov. xxii. 29). The earning of money within the modern economic order is, so long as it is
done legally, the result and the expression of virtue and proficiency in a calling; and this virtue and
proficiency are, as it is now not difficult to see, the real Alpha and Omega of Franklin’s ethic.
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, T. Parsons, trans. (Dover: 2003), p. 53
Die heutige kapitalistische Wirtschaftsordnung ist ein ungeheurer Kosmos, in den der einzelne hineingeboren
wird und der für ihn, wenigstens als einzelnen, als faktisch unabänderliches Gehäuse, in dem er zu leben hat,
gegeben ist. Er zwingt dem einzelnen, soweit er in den Zusammenhang des Marktes verflochten ist, die
Normen seines wirtschaftlichen Handelns auf. Der Fabrikant, welcher diesen Normen dauernd
entgegenhandelt, wird ökonomisch ebenso unfehlbar eliminiert, wie der Arbeiter, der sich ihnen nicht
anpassen kann oder will, als Arbeitsloser auf die Straße gesetzt wird.
MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO (1864-1936)

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913)
In most of the histories of philosophy that I know, philosophic systems are presented to us as if growing out
of one another spontaneously, and their authors, the philosophers, appear only as mere pretexts. The inner
biography of the philosophers, of the men who philosophized, occupies a secondary place. And yet it is
precisely this inner biography that explains for us most things.
Miguel de Unamuno, Tragic Sense of Life (1913)
884
All philosophic systems which have been constructed as a supreme concord of the final results of the
individual sciences have in every age possess much less consistency and life than those which expressed the
integral spiritual yearning of their authors.
Now we know what another man, the man Benedict Spinoza, that Portuguese Jew who was born and lived in
Holland in the middle of the seventeenth century, wrote about the nature of things. The sixth proposition of
Part III. of his Ethic states: unaquoeque res, quatenus in se est, in suo esse perseverare conatur—that is,
Everything, in so far as it is in itself, endeavours to persist in its own being. Everything in so far as it is in
itself—that is to say, in so far as it is substance, for according to him substance is id quod in se est et per se
concipitur—that which is in itself and is conceived by itself. And in the following proposition, the seventh,
of the same part, he adds: conatus, quo unaquoeque res in suo esse perseverare conatur, nihil est proeter
ipsius rei actualem essentiam—that is, the endeavour wherewith everything endeavours to persist in its own
being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing itself. This means that your essence, reader, mine, that of
the man Spinoza, that of the man Butler, of the man Kant, and of every man who is a man, is nothing but the
endeavour, the effort, which he makes to continue to be a man, not to die.
They tell me I am here to realize I know not what social end; but I feel that I, like each one of my fellows, am
here to realize myself, to live.
Yes, yes, I see it all!—an enormous social activity, a mighty civilization, a profuseness of science, of art, of
industry, of morality, and afterwards, when we have filled the world with industrial marvels, with great
factories, with roads, museums, and libraries, we shall fall exhausted at the foot of it all, and it will subsist—
for whom? Was man made for science or was science made for man?
If the sun possessed consciousness it would think, no doubt, that it lived in order to give light to the worlds;
but it would also and above all think that the worlds existed in order that it might give them light and enjoy
itself in giving them light and so live. And it would think well.
There are, in fact, people who appear to think only with the brain, or with whatever may be the specific
thinking organ; while others think with all the body and all the soul, with the blood, with the marrow of the
bones, with the heart, with the lungs, with the belly, with the life. And the people who think only with the
brain develop into definition-mongers; they become the professionals of thought. And you know what a
professional is? You know what a product of the differentiation of labour is?
If a philosopher is not a man, he is anything but a philosopher; he is above all a pedant, and a pedant is a
caricature of a man.
Philosophy, like poetry, is a work of integration and synthesis, or else it is merely pseudo-philosophical
erudition.
Knowledge for the sake of knowledge is, say what you will, nothing but a dismal begging of the question.
I will never willingly yield myself, nor entrust my confidence, to any popular leader who is not penetrated
with the feeling that he who orders a people orders men, men of flesh and bone, men who are born, suffer,
and, although they do not wish to die, die; men who are ends in themselves, not merely means.
885
Among men of flesh and bone there have been typical examples of those who possess this tragic sense of
life. I recall now Marcus Aurelius, St. Augustine, Pascal, Rousseau, René, Obermann, Thomson, Leopardi,
Vigny, Lenau, Kleist, Amiel, [Tarquínio] Quental, Kierkegaard—men burdened with wisdom rather than
with knowledge.
While men believe themselves to be seeking truth for its own sake, they are in fact seeking life in truth.
There is a world, the sensible world, that is the child of hunger, and there is another world, the ideal
world, that is the child of love. And just as there are senses employed in the service of the knowledge of
the sensible world, so there are also senses, at present for the most part dormant, for social
consciousness has scarcely awakened, employed in the service of the knowledge of the ideal world.
Human society, as a society, possesses senses which the individual, but for his existence in society, would
lack, just as the individual, man, who is in his turn a kind of society, possesses senses lacking in the cells of
which he is composed.
The parasites which live in the intestines of higher animals, feeding upon the nutritive juices which these
animals supply, do not need either to see or hear, and therefore for them the visible and audible world does
not exist. And if they possessed a certain degree of consciousness and took account of the fact that the animal
at whose expense they live believed in a world of sight and hearing, they would perhaps deem such belief to
be due merely to the extravagance of its imagination. And similarly there are social parasites, as Mr. A. J.
Balfour admirably observes, who, receiving from the society in which they live the motives of their moral
conduct, deny that belief in God and the other life is a necessary foundation for good conduct and for a
tolerable life, society having prepared for them the spiritual nutriment by which they live. An isolated
individual can endure life and live it well and even heroically without in any sort believing either in the
immortality of the soul or in God, but he lives the life of a spiritual parasite.
Astronomy, mathematics, have no other reality than that which they possess as knowledge in the minds of
those who study and cultivate them. And if some day all personal consciousness must come to an end on the
earth; if some day the human spirit must return to the nothingness—that is to say, to the absolute
unconsciousness—from whence it sprang; and if there shall no more be any spirit that can avail itself of all
our accumulated knowledge—then to what end is this knowledge?
A philosopher who had made philosophy his speciality, who had first murdered his humanity and then buried
it in his philosophy, …
Whence do I come and whence comes the world in which and by which I live? Whither do I go and whither
goes everything that environs me? What does it all mean? Such are the questions that man asks as soon as he
frees himself from the brutalizing necessity of labouring for his material sustenance. And if we look closely,
we shall see that beneath these questions lies the wish to know not so much the "why" as the "wherefore,"
not the cause but the end. Cicero's definition of philosophy is well known—"the knowledge of things divine
and human and of the causes in which these things are contained," rerum divinarum et humanarum,
causarumque quibus hæ res continentur; but in reality these causes are, for us, ends. And what is the
Supreme Cause, God, but the Supreme End? The "why" interests us only in view of the "wherefore." We
wish to know whence we came only in order the better to be able to ascertain whither we are going.
886
I have heard it related of a poor harvester who died in a hospital bed, that when the priest went to anoint his
hands with the oil of extreme unction, he refused to open his right hand, which clutched a few dirty coins, not
considering that very soon neither his hand nor he himself would be his own any more. And so we close and
clench, not our hand, but our heart, seeking to clutch the world in it.
They ask us who are we, vile earthworms, to pretend to immortality; in virtue of what? wherefore? by what
right? "In virtue of what?" you ask; and I reply, In virtue of what do we now live? "Wherefore?"—and
wherefore do we now exist? "By what right?"—and by what right are we? To exist is just as gratuitous as to
go on existing for ever.
'Tis a tragic fate, without a doubt, to have to base the affirmation of immortality upon the insecure and
slippery foundation of the desire for immortality; but to condemn this desire on the ground that we believe it
to have been proved to be unattainable, without undertaking the proof, is merely supine. I am dreaming ...?
Let me dream, if this dream is my life. Do not awaken me from it. I believe in the immortal origin of this
yearning for immortality, which is the very substance of my soul. But do I really believe in it ...? And
wherefore do you want to be immortal? you ask me, wherefore? Frankly, I do not understand the question,
for it is to ask the reason of the reason, the end of the end, the principle of the principle.
Only the feeble resign themselves to final death and substitute some other desire for the longing for personal
immortality. In the strong the zeal for perpetuity overrides the doubt of realizing it, and their superabundance
of life overflows upon the other side of death.
When doubts invade us and cloud our faith in the immortality of the soul, a vigorous and painful impulse is
given to the anxiety to perpetuate our name and fame, to grasp at least a shadow of immortality. And hence
this tremendous struggle to singularize ourselves, to survive in some way in the memory of others and of
posterity. It is this struggle, a thousand times more terrible than the struggle for life, that gives its tone,
colour, and character to our society, in which the medieval faith in the immortal soul is passing away.
If a man despises the applause of the crowd of to-day, it is because he seeks to survive in renewed
minorities for generations. "Posterity is an accumulation of minorities," said Gounod. He wishes to
prolong himself in time rather than in space. The crowd soon overthrows its own idols and the statue
lies broken at the foot of the pedestal without anyone heeding it; but those who win the hearts of the
elect will long be the objects of a fervent worship in some shrine, small and secluded no doubt, but
capable of preserving them from the flood of oblivion.
Pride, to wish to leave an ineffaceable name? Pride? It is like calling the thirst for riches a thirst for pleasure.
No, it is not so much the longing for pleasure that drives us poor folk to seek money as the terror of poverty,
just as it was not the desire for glory but the terror of hell that drove men in the Middle Ages to the cloister
with its acedia. Neither is this wish to leave a name pride, but terror of extinction. We aim at being all
because in that we see the only means of escaping from being nothing.
Only by draining the lees of spiritual sorrow can we at last taste the honey that lies at the bottom of the cup
of life.
887
The Church defends life. It stood up against Galileo, and it did right; for his discovery, in its inception and
until it became assimilated to the general body of human knowledge, tended to shatter the anthropomorphic
belief that the universe was created for man. It opposed Darwin, and it did right, for Darwinism tends to
shatter our belief that man is an exceptional animal, created expressly to be eternalized.
The Church … demands from them that they shall believe all or nothing, that they shall accept the complete
totality of dogma or that they shall forfeit all merit if the least part of it be rejected. And hence the result, as
the great Unitarian preacher Channing pointed out, that in France and Spain there are multitudes who have
proceeded from rejecting Popery to absolute atheism, because "the fact is, that false and absurd doctrines,
when exposed, have a natural tendency to beget scepticism in those who received them without reflection.
None are so likely to believe too little as those who have begun by believing too much."
A terrible thing is intelligence. It tends to death as memory tends to stability. The living, the absolutely
unstable, the absolutely individual, is, strictly, unintelligible. Logic tends to reduce everything to identities
and genera, to each representation having no more than one single and self-same content in whatever place,
time, or relation it may occur to us. And there is nothing that remains the same for two successive moments
of its existence. My idea of God is different each time that I conceive it. Identity, which is death, is the goal
of the intellect. The mind seeks what is dead, for what is living escapes it; it seeks to congeal the flowing
stream in blocks of ice; it seeks to arrest it. In order to analyze a body it is necessary to extenuate or destroy
it. In order to understand anything it is necessary to kill it, to lay it out rigid in the mind. Science is a
cemetery of dead ideas.
All that is vital is irrational, and all that is rational is anti-vital.

"The Western theology," Dean Stanley wrote, "is essentially logical in form and based on law. The
Eastern theology is rhetorical in form and based on philosophy. The Latin divine succeeded to the
Roman advocate. The Oriental divine succeeded to the Grecian sophist."
Advocacy always supposes a petitio principii, and its arguments are ad probandum. And theology that
pretends to be rational is nothing but advocacy.
For the theologian, as for the advocate, dogma, law, is something given—a starting-point which admits of
discussion only in respect of its application and its most exact interpretation. Hence it follows that the
theological or advocatory spirit is in its principle dogmatical.
Take the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas, the classical monument of the theology—that is, of the
advocacy—of Catholicism, underlying many, perhaps most, of its arguments you will find a logical fallacy
which may be expressed more scholastico by this syllogism: I do not understand this fact save by giving it
this explanation; it is thus that I must understand it, therefore this must be its explanation. The
alternative being that I am left without any understanding of it at all. True science teaches, above all, to doubt
and to be ignorant; advocacy neither doubts nor believes that it does not know. It requires a solution.
The rationalist, … furious at not being able to believe, … soon becomes a prey to the vindictiveness of the
odium anti-theologicum, and exclaims with the Pharisees: "This people who knoweth not the law are
cursed.”
888
And these motives for living and working, this thing which some call humanism, are the amazing products of
the affective and emotional hollowness of rationalism and of its stupendous hypocrisy—a hypocrisy bent on
sacrificing sincerity to veracity, and sworn not to confess that reason is a dissolvent and disconsolatory
power.
The Epicurean attitude, the extreme and grossest expression of which is "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow
we die," or the Horatian carpe diem, which may be rendered by "Live for the day," does not differ in its
essence from the Stoic attitude with its "Accomplish what the moral conscience dictates to thee, and
afterward let it be as it may be." Both attitudes have a common base; and pleasure for pleasure's sake comes
to the same as duty for duty's sake.
And against Spinoza and his doctrine of happiness there is only one irresistible argument, the argument ad
hominem. Was he happy, Benedict Spinoza, while, to allay his inner unhappiness, he was discoursing of
happiness?
“Did they believe that the soul perished with the body,” [says Spinoza,] “they would return to their natural
inclinations, preferring to accommodate everything to their own liking, and would follow fortune rather than
reason. But all this appears no less absurd than it would be to suppose that a man, because he did not believe
that he could nourish his body eternally with wholesome food, would saturate himself with deadly poisons;
or than if because believing that his soul was not eternal and immortal, he should therefore prefer to be
without a soul (amens) and to live without reason; all of which is so absurd as to be scarcely worth refuting."
When a thing is said to be not worth refuting you may be sure that either it is flagrantly stupid—in which
case all comment is superfluous—or it is something formidable, the very crux of the problem. And this it is
in this case. … That he who is convinced without a vestige of doubt, without the faintest hope of any saving
uncertainty, that his soul is not immortal, should prefer to be without a soul (amens), or irrational, or idiot,
that he should prefer not to have been born, is a supposition that has nothing, absolutely nothing, absurd in it.
IRVING BABBITT (1865-1933)

For the recovery of the truth of dualism, Babbitt insisted, modern man must begin by exalting the ethical, or
higher, will to the first place: “To give the first place to the higher will is another way of declaring that life is
an act of faith.” The affirmation of this quality of will he saw as a humanistic rather than as a purely religious
act of restraint identifying man as a responsible moral agent. Man’s “free temperamental overflow” must be
subject to a veto power, to an inner human check.
G. Panichas, Introduction to Irving Babbitt, Representative Writings (1981), p. xvi
The true dualism I take to be the contrast between two wills, one of which is felt as vital impulse (élan vital)
and the other as vital control (frein vital).
Irving Babbitt, Representative Writings (1981), p. xvi
The greatest of vices according to Buddha is the lazy yielding to the impulses of temperament (pamada); the
greatest virtue (appamada) is the opposite of this, the awakening from the sloth and lethargy of the senses,
the constant exercise of the active will.
Irving Babbitt, Representative Writings (1981), pp. xvi-xvii
889
English and the Discipline of Ideas (1920)
http://archive.org/stream/jstor-802438/802438_djvu.txt
I chanced recently to be glancing over … a book on Japanese Buddhism, and I read among other things that
several centuries ago there was a sect of Japanese Buddhism known as the Way of Hardships, and that
shortly after there arose another sect known as the Easy Way which at once gained great popularity and
tended to supplant the Way of Hardships. But the Japanese Way of Hardships is itself an easy way if one
compares it with the original way of Buddha. One can follow indeed very clearly the process by which
Buddhist doctrine descended gradually from the austere and almost inaccessible height on which it had been
placed by its founder to the level of the prayer mill.
Irving Babbitt, "English and the Discipline of Ideas" (1920), Irving Babbitt: Representative Writings (1981), pp. 61-62
The complaint is often heard at present that there is an increasing exodus from the difficult and
disciplinary subjects and a rush into the soft subjects. One good sign is that those who stand for the
difficult and disciplinary subjects, e.g., the professors of physics and the professors of the ancient
classics, are coming more and more to see that they must co-operate and not work at cross-purposes,
as they have done only too often in the past, if they are to make head against the drift toward softness.
Irving Babbitt, "English and the Discipline of Ideas" (1920), Irving Babbitt: Representative Writings (1981), p. 62
The question I propose to consider is in what way one may justify the study of English on cultural and
disciplinary, and not merely on sentimental or utilitarian, grounds. My own conviction is that if English is to
be thus justified it must be primarily by what I am terming the discipline of ideas.
As a matter of fact one hears it commonly said nowadays that literature may be rescued from the
philologist on the one hand and the mere dilettante on the other by an increase of emphasis on its intellectual
content, that the teaching of literature, if it is to have virility, must be above all the teaching of ideas.
Those who are filled with concern for the lot of humanity as a whole, especially for the less fortunate
portions of it, are wont nowadays to call themselves idealists. We should at least recognize that ideals in this
sense are not the same as standards and that they are often indeed the opposite of standards. It would be easy
to mention institutions of learning in this country that are at present engaged in breaking down standards in
the name of ideals.
Irving Babbitt, "English and the Discipline of Ideas" (1920), Irving Babbitt: Representative Writings (1981), pp. 64-65
Three or four years ago a distinguished Frenchman, M. Hovelacque, published an article on America in the
Revue de Paris in which he maintained that the essential weakness of our American civilization lay in the
failure of our education to produce any equivalent of the superior man of Confucius or the καλὸς κἀγαθός
of the Greeks.
True democracy consists not in lowering the standard but in giving everybody, so far as possible, a
chance of measuring up to the standard.
When we consider carefully what many of our so-called humanists stand for, we find that they are not
humanists but humanitarians.
Irving Babbitt, "English and the Discipline of Ideas " (1920), Irving Babbitt: Representative Writings (1981), p. 66
What seems to me to be driving our whole civilization toward the abyss at present is a one-sided conception
of liberty, a conception that is purely centrifugal, that would get rid of all outer control and then evade or
deny openly the need of achieving inner control.
Irving Babbitt, "English and the Discipline of Ideas " (1920), Irving Babbitt: Representative Writings (1981), p. 66
890
The Miltonic liberty involves the inner obeisance of the spirit to a law that is set above the mere emancipated
impulses of the natural man.
To glorify man in his natural and unmodified self is no less surely, even if less obviously, idolatry than
actually to bow down before a graven image.
Our most urgent problem just now is how to preserve in a positive and critical form the soul of truth in the
two great traditions, classical and Christian, that are crumbling as mere dogma.
"Democracy and Standards" (1924)

Since every man desires happiness, it is evidently no small matter whether he conceives of happiness in
terms of work or of enjoyment. If he work in the full ethical sense that I have attempted to define, he is
pulling back and disciplining his temperamental self with reference to some standard. In short, his
temperamental self is, in an almost literal sense, undergoing conversion. The whole of life may, indeed, be
summed up in the words diversion and conversion. Along which of these two main paths are most of us
seeking the happiness to the pursuit of which we are dedicated by our Declaration of Independence? The
author of this phrase, Thomas Jefferson, remarks of himself: "I am an Epicurean."
Irving Babbitt, " Democracy and Standards " (1924), Irving Babbitt: Representative Writings (1981), pp. 137-138
When the element of conversion with reference to a standard is eliminated from life, what remains is the
irresponsible quest for thrills.
Irving Babbitt, " Democracy and Standards " (1924), Irving Babbitt: Representative Writings (1981), p. 138
What I Believe (1930)

http://keever.us/babbittbelieve.html
According to the Christian, the true opposition between good and evil is in the heart of the individual: the
law of the spirit can scarcely prevail, he holds, over the law of the members without a greater or lesser degree
of succor in the form of divine grace. The new dualism which Rousseau sets up—that between man naturally
good and his institutions—has tended not only to substitute sociology for theology, but to discredit the older
dualism in any form whatsoever.
Irving Babbitt, "What I Believe" (1930), Irving Babbitt: Representative Writings (1981), p. 5
Rousseauist and Baconian, though often superficially at odds with one another, have co-operated in
undermining, not merely religious tradition, but another tradition which in the Occident goes back finally,
not to Judea, but to ancient Greece. This older tradition may be defined as humanistic. The goal of the
humanist is poised and proportionate living. This he hopes to accomplish by observing the law of measure. ...
Decorum is supreme for the humanist even as humility takes precedence over all other virtues in the eyes of
the Christian. Traditionally the idea of decorum has been associated, often with a considerable admixture of
mere formalism, with the idea of the gentleman. Humanism and religion in their various forms have at times
conflicted, but have more often been in alliance with one another. As Burke says in a well-known passage:
"Nothing is more certain than that our manners, our civilization, and all the good things that are connected
with manners and with civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two
principles; and were indeed the result of both combined; I mean the spirit of a gentleman and the spirit of
religion."
Irving Babbitt, "What I Believe" (1930), Irving Babbitt: Representative Writings (1981), pp. 6-7
891
There finally emerges a clear-cut issue—namely, whether humanitarianism, or, if one prefers, the utilitarian-
sentimental movement, has supplied any effective equivalent for Burke's two principles. As for the "spirit of
a gentleman," its decline is so obvious as scarcely to admit of argument. It has even been maintained that in
America, the country in which the collapse of traditional standards has been most complete, the gentleman is
at a positive disadvantage in the world of practical affairs; he is likely to get on more quickly if he assumes
the "mucker pose." According to William James, usually taken to be the representative American
philosopher, the very idea of the gentleman has about it something slightly satanic.
Everything in our modern substitutes for religion—whether Baconian or Rousseauistic—will be found to

converge upon the idea of service. The crucial question is whether one is safe in assuming that the immense
machinery of power that has resulted from activity of the utilitarian type can be made, on anything like
present lines, to serve disinterested ends; whether it will not rather minister to the egoistic aims either of
national groups or of individuals.
One's answer to this question will depend on one's view of the Rousseauistic theory of brotherhood. ... To
assert that man in a state of nature, or some similar state thus projected, is good, is to discredit the traditional
controls in the actual world. Humility, conversion, decorum—all go by the board in favor of free
temperamental overflow. Does man thus emancipated exude spontaneously an affection for his fellows that
will be an effective counterpoise to the sheer expansion of his egoistic impulses? ...
Unfortunately, the facts have persistently refused to conform to humanitarian theory. There has been an
ever-growing body of evidence from the eighteenth century to the Great War that in the natural man, as he
exists in the real world and not in some romantic dreamland, the will to power is, on the whole, more than a
match for the will to service. To be sure, many remain unconvinced by this evidence. Stubborn facts, it has
been rightly remarked, are as nothing compared with a stubborn theory. Altruistic theory is likely to prove
peculiarly stubborn, because, probably more than any other theory ever conceived, it is flattering: it holds out
the hope of the highest spiritual benefits—for example, peace and fraternal union—without any
corresponding spiritual effort.
According to Mr. Walter Lippmann, the belief the modern man has lost is "that there is an immortal essence
presiding like a king over his appetites." This immortal essence of which Mr. Lippmann speaks is, judged
experimentally and by its fruits, a higher will. But why leave the affirmation of such a will to the pure
traditionalist? Why not affirm it first of all as a psychological fact, one of the immediate data of
consciousness, a perception so primordial that, compared with it, the denial of man's moral freedom by the
determinist is only a metaphysical dream? The way would thus be open for a swift flanking movement on the
behaviorists and other naturalistic psychologists, who are to be accounted at present among the chief enemies
of human nature.
Rousseau … and, in his wake, the sentimentalist, have resorted to the usual arts of the sophist, chief among
which are a juggling with half-truths and a tampering with general terms. For example, in their use of words
like "virtue" and "conscience," they have eliminated more or less completely, in favor of vital impulse (élan
vital), the equally vital principle of control (frein vital)—in short, the dualistic element that both religion and
humanism require.
This higher will is felt in its relation to the impressions and impulses and expansive desires of the natural
man as a will to refrain. ... The failure to exercise the will to refrain in some form or degree means spiritual
anarchy. A combination such as we are getting more and more at present of spiritual anarchy with an ever-
increasing material efficiency—power without wisdom, as one is tempted to put it—is not likely to work
either for the happiness of the individual or for the welfare of society.
892
It seems to me imperative to re-establish the true dualism—that between vital impulse and vital control—and
to this end to affirm the higher will first of all as a psychological fact. The individual needs, however, to go
beyond this fact if he is to decide how far he is to exercise control in any particular instance with a primary
view to his own happiness: in short, he needs standards. To secure standards, at least critically, he cannot
afford, like the Rousseauist, to disparage the intellect. One needs to turn its keen power of analysis to an
entirely different order of experience from that envisaged by physical science.
The assumption is all but universal among those who control our educational policies from the elementary
grades to the university that anything that sets bounds to the free unfolding of the temperamental proclivities
of the young, to their right of self-expression, as one may say, is outworn prejudice. Discipline, so far as it
exists, is not of the humanistic or the religious type, but of the kind that one gets in training for a vocation or
a specialty. The standards of a genuinely liberal education, as they have been understood, more or less from
the time of Aristotle, are being progressively undermined by the utilitarians and the sentimentalists. If the
Baconian-Rousseauistic formula is as unsound in certain of its postulates as I myself believe, we are in
danger of witnessing in this country one of the great cultural tragedies of the ages.
W. B. YEATS (1865-1939)
Who does not distrust complete ideas
Yeats
I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what
Dante calls the Great Refusal,—that is they have ceased to be self-centered, have given up their
individuality.
Yeats, Letter to Katharine Tynan
It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am afraid that Labour
disagrees with me in that. On this matter I am a crusted Tory. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book
which says “there is no wisdom without leisure.”
Yeats, Speech (1923-03-28)
Others because you did not keep

That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;
Yet always when I look death in the face,
When I clamber to the heights of sleep,
Or when I grow excited with wine,
Suddenly I meet your face.
W. B. Yeats, “A Deep-sworn Vow”
… because the rich

Are driven by wealth as beggars by the itch.
W. B. Yeats, “Beggar to Beggar cried”
893
Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honor bred, with one
Who, were it proved he lies,
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbors’ eyes?
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.
W. B. Yeats, “To a Friend whose Work has come to Nothing”
LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH (1865-1946)

Thank heavens the sun has gone in, and I don’t have to go out and enjoy it.
Logan Pearsall Smith
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.

Logan Pearsall Smith, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (1947), p. 198
Reperusals and Recollections (1936)

http://www.archive.org/stream/reperusalsandrec030379mbp/reperusalsandrec030379mbp_djvu.txt
There are readers—and I am one of them—whose reading is rather like a series of intoxications. We fall
in love with a book; it is our book, we feel, for life; we shall not need another. We cram-throat our friends
with it in the cruellest fashion; make it a Gospel, which we preach in a spirit of propaganda and indignation,
putting a woe on the world for a neglect of which last week we were equally guilty.
I am not at all sorry that I have never been cured of this form of youthful susceptibility; one may after all
become the victim of more inadvisable forms of folly. My infatuations have at least one advantage; they may
lead to satiety, but they do not often end in disillusion. I have, of course (who hasn’t ?), my Bluebeard’s
closet of dead loves, abandoned for ever; but for the most part I find that the objects of my former adoration
are quite capable of awakening my old affection. My experiences of love at first sight, being followed by
love at second or third or fourth sight, I enjoy the bliss of both the constant and the inconstant lover. Indeed,
these returns to old books—as I have just now returned to Montaigne’s Essays—have often proved, in a life
of desultory reading, to be among the pleasantest experiences of that pleasant scheme of existence. …
There is something reassuring, too (at least, I find it so), in these renewals of former admirations. We all
endeavour, as Spinoza says, to persist in our own being; and that endeavour is, he adds, the very essence of
our existence. When, therefore, we find that what delighted us once can still delight us: that though the
objects of our admiration may be intermittent, yet they move in fixed orbits, and their return is certain, these
reappearances will suggest that we have after all maintained something of our own integrity; that a sort of
system lies beneath the apparent variability of our interests; that there is, so to speak, a continuity within
ourselves, a core of meaning which has not disintegrated with the years.
And if we find, when we read again one of our classics—say Virgil for instance—that we like it better
than ever, the experience may suggest an even more pleasing conjecture. Psychologists tell us that fullness of
life is the goal of everything that lives, that the impulse towards completeness, towards ripeness and self-
realization, is the most compelling of all motives. These discoveries in old books of new beauties and aspects
894
of interest may persuade us, therefore, that we are not only still ourselves, but more ourselves than ever : that
our spirit has not only persisted in its being, but has become more lucid in the process.
Logan Pearsall Smith, “Montaigne,” Reperusals and Recollections (1936), pp. 1-2
Perhaps not only in his attitude towards truth, but in his attitude towards himself, Montaigne was a precursor.
Perhaps here again he was ahead of his own time, ahead of our time also, since none of us would have the
courage to imitate him. It may be that some future century will vindicate this unseemly performance; in the
meanwhile it will be of interest to examine the reasons which he gives us for it. He says, in the first place,
that he found this study of himself, this registering of his moods and imaginations, extremely amusing; it was
an exploration of an unknown region, full of the queerest chimeras and monsters, a new art of discovery, in
which he had become by practice “the cunningest man alive.” It was profitable also, for most people enjoy
their pleasures without knowing it; they glide over them, and fix and feed their minds on the miseries
of life. But to observe and record one’s pleasant experiences and imaginations, to associate one’s mind
with them, not to let them dully and unfeelingly escape us, was to make them not only more delightful
but more lasting. As life grows shorter we should endeavour, he says, to make it deeper and more full. But
he found moral profit also in this self-study; for how, he asked, can we correct our vices if we do not
know them, how cure the diseases of our soul if we never observe their symptoms? The man who has
not learned to know himself is not the master, but the slave of life: he is the “explorer without
knowledge, the magistrate without jurisdiction, and when all is done, the fool of the play.”
Logan Pearsall Smith, “Montaigne,” Reperusals and Recollections (1936), p. 6
It is certainly curious that among all the millions of books that have been written on every conceivable
subject, so few writers have really tried to describe the tissue of their thoughts and the actual taste of
consciousness. And yet this is, after all, our most immediate and direct experience, the only experience of
whose reality we are absolutely certain.
Logan Pearsall Smith, “Montaigne,” Reperusals and Recollections (1936), p. 7
Experience is always seeking for special literary forms in which its various aspects can find their most
adequate expression; and there are many of these aspects which are best rendered in a fragmentary fashion,
because they are themselves fragments of experience, gleams and flashes of light, rather than the steady glow
of a larger illumination.
Logan Pearsall Smith, “English Aphorists,” Reperusals and Recollections (1936), pp. 102-103
The disconnected impressions which we derive from life form a kind of knowledge ‘in growth,’ as Bacon
called it; an over-early and peremptory attempt to digest this knowledge into a system tends, as he suggests,
to falsify and distort it.
Logan Pearsall Smith, “English Aphorists,” Reperusals and Recollections (1936), p. 103
We frequently fall into error and folly, Dr. Johnson tells us, “not because the true principles of action are not
known, but because, for a time, they are not remembered.” To compress, therefore, the great and obvious
rules of life into brief sentences which are not easily forgotten is, as he said, to confer a real benefit upon us.
Few things are more shocking to those who practice the arts of success than the frank description of those
arts.
That one should practice what one preaches is generally agreed, but anyone who has the indiscretion to
preach what both he and his hearers practice must always incur—as Lord Chesterfield has incurred—the
gravest moral reprobation.
895
What draws us to him so closely is that he combined a disillusioned estimate of human nature sufficient to
launch twenty little cynics, with a craving for love any sympathy urgent enough to turn a weaker nature into
a benign sentimentalist.
Logan Pearsall Smith, recounting Desmond McCarthy’s description of Dr. Johnson, “English Aphorists,” Reperusals and Recollections (1936), p. 138
Time spent in labouring to perfect one’s style, or to make of it an instrument for the production of
imaginative effects, is, Mr. Read tells us, just so much time wasted. Indeed Mr. Middleton Murry says it is
worse than this, for nothing could be more dangerous than the notion that the more poetic is prose, the finer it
is; this is a heresy that cannot be too much deplored and combated. ‘The terrible attraction of words, the
impulse to use them for anything more than exact symbols of the things they stand for, is another danger; any
sacrifice of sense to euphony being, these critics tell us, the beginning of decadence: ‘it is a step on the
downward path.’ The histories and associations of words, are, Mr. Read says, entirely irrelevant to prose-
style, their face-value in current usage being their only value. The young writer is also warned against
rhythmical effects and the use of images, and is told that any conscious care for such devices, any playing,
like Stevenson, of the sedulous ape to the masters of this technique, must be carefully eschewed.
Logan Pearsall Smith, “Fine Writing,” Reperusals and Recollections (1936), p. 304
May it [the opposition to fine writing] be accounted for by the fact that the spirit of Puritanism, having been
banished from the province of moral conduct, has found a refuge among the arts?
The disconcerting fact may first be pointed out that if you write badly about good writing, however
profound may be your convictions or emphatic your expression of them, your style has a tiresome trick (as a
wit once pointed out) of whispering: ‘Don’t listen!’ in your readers’ ears. And it is possible also to suggest
that the promulgation of new-fangled aesthetic dogmas in unwieldy sentences may be accounted for—not
perhaps unspitefully—by a certain deficiency in aesthetic sensibility; as being due to a lack of that delicate,
unreasoned, prompt delight in all the varied and subtle manifestations in which beauty may enchant us.
Or, if the controversy is to be carried further; and if, to place it on a more modern basis, we adopt the
materialistic method of interpreting aesthetic phenomena now in fashion, may we not find reason to believe
that the antagonism between journalist critics and the fine writers they disapprove of is due in its ultimate
analysis to what we may designate as economic causes? Are not the authors who earn their livings by their
pens, and those who, by what some regard as a social injustice, have been more or less freed from this
necessity—are not these two classes of authors in a sort of natural opposition to each other? He who writes at
his leisure, with the desire to master his difficult art, can hardly help envying the profits of money-making
authors.
Logan Pearsall Smith, criticizing the Cambridge School of criticism, e.g. Middleton Murry and Herbert Read, “Fine Writing,” Reperusals and
Recollections (1936), pp. 306-307
The enormous and half-educated publics of present-day England and America… acclaim as masterpieces
books that are soon forgotten, while ignoring all that is exquisite and rare.
Afterthoughts (1931)
There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest
of mankind achieve the second.
Logan Pearsall Smith, Afterthoughts (1931), in All Trivia (1984), p. 149
Happiness is a wine of the rarest vintage, and seems insipid to vulgar taste.
Solvency is entirely a matter of temperament.

896
That we should practice what we preach is generally admitted; but anyone who preaches what he and
his hearers practice must incur the gravest moral disapprobation.
An act of folly isn’t foolish, when you know it for the folly it is.
We are forced like the insects … to undergo all the metamorphoses preordained for our species.
What’s more enchanting than the voices of young people, when you can’t hear what they say?
Don’t laugh at a youth for his affectations. He is only trying on one face after another till he finds his own.
Uncultivated minds are not full of wild flowers. Villainous weeds grow in them.
“Well, for my part,” they say, “I cannot see the charm of Mrs. Jones.”
“Isn’t it just conceivable,” I feel inclined to answer, “that Mrs. Jones hasn’t tried to charm you?”
To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that
we could drink all day and stay sober.
To say what you think will certainly damage you in society, … but a free tongue is worth a thousand
invitations.
Hearts that are delicate and kind and tongues that are neither;—these make the finest company in the world.
Those that talk on the razor-edge of double meanings pluck the rarest blooms from the precipice on either
side.
‘O Joy!’ sings a bird in the heart. ‘O Joy’ another bird answers; while the world, like a large, thoughtful cat,
sits by and watches.
The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection,—even though nothing more than the pounding of an
old piano,—is what alone gives a meaning to our life on this unavailing star.
The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.

We should nourish our souls on the dew of poesy, and manure them as well.
If you are losing your leisure, look out! You may be losing your soul.
897
Poverty and her sister solitude, to whom princely talents used to look for their tuition—how these two
shabby maids of honour are hooted at now by the young.
Writers who write for money don’t write for me.

The notion of making money by popular work, and the retiring to do good work on the proceeds, is the most
familiar of all the devil’s traps for artists.
What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.
When we see what people we like will do for money, best it is to be sad and say nothing.
The most heartbreaking of all people are those who bow before our Gods, and then skip off to the shrines of
the false ones.
The extreme oddness of existence is what reconciles me to it.

Our personal affairs are not really worthy, as Plato said, of our consideration; the fact that we are forced to
take them seriously (as I was forced to run after my hat when id did blow off today), being, as he said, the
ignoble part of our condition.
And what pursuit is more elegant than that of collecting the ignominies of our nature and transfixing them,
each on the bright pin of a polished phrase?
H. G. WELLS (1866-1946)
Modern civilization was begotten and nursed in the households of the ... minor nobility, the gentry, and the
larger bourgeoisie, [houses in which] men could talk, think, and write at their leisure [in] an atmosphere of
unhurried liberal enquiry, ... of established aesthetic and intellectual standards.
H. G. Wells
Socialism and the Family (1906)

To us Socialism is … a plan for the reconstruction of human life, for the replacement of a disorder by order.
H. G. Wells, Socialism and the Family (1906), p. 6
I don’t believe that the Socialist idea is as yet nearly enough thought out and elaborated for very much of it to
be realized…
H. G. Wells, Socialism and the Family, p. 7
Socialism is the still incomplete, the still sketchy and sketchily indicative plan of a new life for the world, a
new and better way of living … Socialism, therefore, is to be served by thought and expression, in art, in
literature, in scientific statement … but the Socialist movement, as one finds it, is too often no more than a
hasty attempt to secure a premature realization of some fragmentary suggestion of this great, still plastic
design, to the neglect of all other of its aspects.
898
Some Socialists quarrel with the Liberal Party and with the Socialist section of the Liberal Party because it
does not go far enough, because it does not embody a Socialism uncompromising and complete, because it
has not definitely cut itself off from the old traditions, the discredited formulae, that served before the
coming of our great idea. They are blind to the fact that there is no organized Socialism at present,
uncompromising and complete, and the Socialists who flatter themselves they represent as much are merely
those who have either never grasped or who have forgotten the full implications of Socialism .
Take, for example, the Socialism that is popular in New York and Chicago and Germany... It still awaits
permeation by true Socialist conceptions. It is a version of life adapted essentially to the imagination of the
working wage earner, and limited by his limitations. … One of the numberless relationships of life, the
relationship of capital or the employer to the employed, is made to overshadow all other relations.
The children people bring into the world can be no more their private concern entirely, than the disease
germs they disseminate or the noises a man makes in a thin-floored flat. Socialism says boldly the State is the
Over-Parent, the Outer-Parent. People rear children for the State and the future; if they do that well, they do
the whole world a services, and deserve payment just as much as if they built a bridge or raised a crop of
wheat; if they do it unpropitiously and ill, they have done the world an injury. Socialism denies altogether the
right of any one to beget children carelessly and promiscuously, and for the prevention of disease and evil
births alike the Socialist is prepared for an insistence upon intelligence and self-restraint quite beyond the
current practice. At present we deal with that sort of thing as an infringement of private proprietary rights;
the socialist holds it is the world that is injured.
If follows that motherhood, which we still in a muddle-headed way seem to regard as partly self-indulgence
and partly a service paid to a man by a woman, is regarded by the Socialists as a benefit to society, a public
duty done. It may be in many cases a duty full of pride and happiness—that is beside the mark. The State will
pay for children born legitimately in the marriage it will sanction. A woman with healthy and successful
offspring will draw a wage for each one of them from the State, so long as they go on well. It will be her
wage. Under the State she will control
Let us really look this sex-question boldly in the face and see what implications a Socialistic view of the
subject involves. Now it seems to me that all the splutter aroused by the “sex question” is traceable to the
confusion between two different sides of it—the personal and the social side. This is noticeable in every
discussion of the subject, conversational and otherwise. These two sides are always assumed to be mutually
inseparable and the first is always judged in the light of the second. Now the first side of the question is the
direct personal relation of the man and woman, the second is the question of offspring. My contention is that
these two sides should be kept rigidly separate. The first, I contend, is purely self-regarding, and society has
no more locus standi in the matter than it has with the question whether a man spends his hours of relaxation
in reading fiction, playing chess, or writing poetry. With the second, on the other hand, society has
everything to do, the bringing into the world of new citizens being a social act of the highest importance. The
interference of society, whether juridically or morally, between what otherwise ought to be a purely private
and personal arrangement between individuals should, in reason and justice, begin and end with the
appearance of children. Society, in its corporate capacity, has an undoubted right to regulate, or at least to
take strict cognisance of, the procreation of children.
E. Belfort Bax, “Socialism and the Family,” Justice, 17th November 1906, p.4 http://www.marxists.org/archive/bax/1906/11/family.htm
899
OSCAR LEVY (1867-1946)
Surely it is not every one who is chosen to combat a religion or a morality of two thousand years’ standing,
fist within and then without himself.
Oscar Levy, Editorial Note, Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (1909), vol. 1, p. ix
“Down with the strong, long live the weak!” is the secret watchword of every Christian and every democrat.
Oscar Levy
I had only the battle “Culture against Barbarism” at heart; I was not interested in the fight “Nation against
Nation,” knowing very well that, whatever its results, it would only lead to more barbarism.
Oscar Levy
The Revival of Aristocracy (1906)

http://books.google.com/books?id=xgo0AAAAMAAJ
While in the nineteenth century you [Englishmen] have been occupied in consolidating an empire,
conquering new countries, and spreading civilization to all parts of the world, you have in true British
magnanimity forgotten to confer this blessing upon yourselves.
Oscar Levy, The Revival of Aristocracy (1906), Preface, p. v
You English are never as thorough, never as decided, never as dead-set in your views as your cousins over
the Channel. You are a people of compromises, of opportunism, of amiable and business-like settlements;
you can even strike a bargain with your own conscience and live ever happy afterwards. ... This is no doubt a
great virtue, because it has preserved you from great follies, and it is no doubt a great vice, because it has
sadly refrigerated your enthusiasm and your “feu sacré.”
Oscar Levy, The Revival of Aristocracy (1906), Preface, pp. viii-ix
I shall hate my brethren in St. Revoluzio, because they spoil all my pleasure in being disobedient and
revolutionary myself; I shall love my enemies much better than those enthusiastic persons: but I shall console
myself with the example of some one else, who also loved his enemies and, nevertheless, had, in propagating
a new teaching, to suffer from the society of sinners, hysterical women, maniacs, and all the poor in spirit.
Oscar Levy, The Revival of Aristocracy (1906), Preface, p. x
In spite of my attack on Christianity: the Englishman who is a Christian is very much nearer to my heart than
he who is not.
Oscar Levy, The Revival of Aristocracy (1906), Preface, p. x
If I have blamed here Christianity, Christian morals, Christian humanity and helpfulness; if I have spoken
ironically of all the lighter, minor, and female virtues this teaching has produced and still produces—I have
done so in the name of those who have lifted themselves above them, who have outgrown them, who have
acquired greater than Christian virtues.
Oscar Levy, The Revival of Aristocracy (1906), Preface, pp. x-xi
900
Some one wrote to me upon the publication of my book two years ago: “But you live in England! Poor
man: then you are a preacher in the desert!” So I am. But I owe something to my desert. The desert is an
excellent place for anybody who can make use of it, as biblical and post-biblical experience proves. Without
my desert I should not have written my book. Without coming to England I should have become a modern
creature, going in for money and motor-cars. For I was born with a fatal inclination for such lighter and
brighter kind of things. I was born under a lucky star, so to say: I was born with a warm heart and a happy
disposition; I was born to play a good figure in one of those delightful fêtes champêtres of Watteau, Lancret,
and Boucher, with a nice little shepherdess on my arm, listening to the sweet music of Rossini and drinking
the inspiring “Capri bianco” or “Verona soave” of that beautiful country Italy. But the sky over here is not
blue—nor grows there any wine in England—and no Rossini ever lived here; and towards the native
shepherdesses I adopted the ways of the Christian towards his beautiful ideals: I admired them intensely but
kept myself afar. So there was nothing to console your thirsty and disenchanted traveller in the British
Sahara. In the depths of his despair, there was sent to him, as to the traveller in the desert, an enchanting
vision, a beautiful fata Morgana rising on the horizon of the future, a fertile and promising Canaan of a new
creed that had arisen in Germany (there too as a revulsion against the desert): the philosophy of Friedrich
Nietzsche.
So I owe something to the desert. Had I not wandered there so long, I could never have fervently wished to
escape nor finally succeeded in coming out of it.
Oscar Levy, The Revival of Aristocracy (1906), Preface, pp. xii-xiii
We Neopagans ... could even be mistaken for Christians, if our deeds did not differ so entirely from those of
our more religious brethren. For we forgive those who have hurt us, we thank them for their neglect, we
return good for evil, always supposed that the publication of an additional book is not an evil in itself. We
even adapt ourselves to their wishes and tastes— we talk to them as they like to be talked to— we do not
disdain to don the garment of Punchinello and make them laugh, where we perhaps have wept.
Oscar Levy, The Revival of Aristocracy (1906), Preface, p. xiii
Goethe, ... who lived through the struggle against Napoleon, was once asked how he had managed to exist
during the days of shame, defeat, and humiliation. He replied: “I have nothing to complain of. Like one who,
from the fastness of a cliff, gazes down on the raging sea, unable to help the ship-wrecked crew, but also out
of the reach of the billows—according to Lucretius, a not unpleasant feeling—I have been standing in
security, and have watched the fury of the storm passing by me.” ...
It was not only on the political combats and storms of his emasculate fellow-countrymen that Goethe
looked down with indifference; to those troubles of the heart, which Rousseau’s teaching had quickened, a
philanthropic and educational enthusiasm, he was not merely apathetic ; he was positively hostile. ...
“As of old Lutherdom, so now French ideals are forcing us away from a peaceful development of culture,”
he used to say.
Oscar Levy, The Revival of Aristocracy (1906), pp. 29-30
Love thyself, learn to love thyself, but have reason to love thyself.
Oscar Levy, describing or quoting Goethe’s view, The Revival of Aristocracy (1906), p. 34
When I am stupid, they uphold me:

When I am right, they fain would scold me.
“Oh ! the years I have lost,” will be the exclamation of a man, if he be not philosophical, and not possess
Friedrich Nietzsche’s appreciation of the value of sorrow in education.
Oscar Levy, The Revival of Aristocracy (1906), p. 37
901
Altruism itself was so insisted upon in the latter half of the nineteenth century that ... theory and practice,
words and deeds, stood in liveliest contradiction. ... Everywhere a conflict rent the world in twain: it created
abysses in every thinker’s scheme of things: it made its presence so unpleasantly real that the best brains
gave up research and thinking, and crept for refuge into a profession, a craft, into libraries, or hid themselves
in the mine-shafts of specialism.
Whose interest was it to protect the weak? It was the weak themselves, the slave and the woman. And was
not this verdict in conformity with historical fact ? Who were the first Christians? Slaves and women. Who
next swore that it was incumbent on men to love their neighbour as themselves, to break their bread with the
hungry, to give them their cloak and their possessions? They who had nor bread nor cloaks, nor possessions,
they who might win by the bargain.
With the great quality of egoism, great deeds and great merits became extinct.
It had become an indisputable dogma that every expression in the same language must bear the same
meaning in all peoples. And this was really the greatest affliction of the Select of that epoch, that they had to
converse in the same tongue as the rabble, which had so often been desecrated in Parliaments, and
assemblies, and lectures, and railway carriages; all of them, like Stendhal, would have given a great deal to
have a langue sacre, comprehensible only by the few. All of them, like Goethe, allegorized meanings into
their best works, in order to give the slip to prying snouts, and endeavoured to make themselves, as did
Nietzsche, inaccessible, in order that “the swine might not break into the gardens.”
Have trust in your own desires, for they will soon give you new ideals.
Oscar Levy, describing or quoting Nietzsche’s view, The revival of Aristocracy (1906), p. 48
One day, when Nietzsche was telling his friend Deussen that it was not abrogation of the will nor extinction
of the passions he aimed at, but their ennobling, his friend, a learned man, fast in the trammels of Christian
doctrine, answered—not without some justice—that the only means of ennoblement was abrogation and
extinction. Nietzsche had a difficult position to maintain; for what he wished to ennoble was no longer there.
Oscar Levy, The Revival of Aristocracy (1906), pp 48-49
Nietzsche, unlike Jesus Christ, did not mistake his common folk and their ideals; he knew all they wanted
was bread and fish, and that they spurned the bread which “cometh from Heaven.”
Sovereign let him make himself, who understands his own profit:
Yet did we choose us one, who seeketh but ours, not his own.
Had you suffered more betimes, had you lolled less, and been less smug, not contented yourselves with
stuffing out your fat paunches, you would not have multiplied to this positively indecent extent, nor belittled
yourselves to the uniformity and consistency of grains of sand, till you are come to resemble an anthill, and
are in your own eyes an abomination.
Oscar Levy, describing or quoting Nietzsche’s view, The Revival of Aristocracy (1906), pp. 55-56
Limit your many for the sake of the few.

Oscar Levy, describing or quoting Nietzsche’s view, The revival of Aristocracy (1906), p. 56
902
Greatness loves itself, and all healthy instincts decline to flagellate themselves daily with the whip of
altruism. What is great must will to do more than its mere duty ; it must give, make others happy, and, be it at
the cost of itself, its own wellbeing, its own money or life, it must will to pour forth its blessing over others,
to the extent even of self-sacrifice—but not, as Christianity demands, from unegoistic motives; the impulse
must come from a sense of pleasure, from overflowing energy, from need of bloodletting, so as to unburden
the full heart. All acts then derived from conscience and duty, or done with a wry countenance out of
obedience to the Categorical Imperative, seem to the great man, from his point of view, through this very fact
contemptible, even as he has an unsurmountable prejudice against men and nations who are always prating of
those words, conscience and duty.
A man was wise if heavy and tardy, like all phlegmatic temperaments; learned if he wrote books with one
eye on the public and the other on his colleague.
Oscar Levy, describing the pitiable state of Germans in the 19th century The Revival of Aristocracy (1906), pp. 82-83
German erudition of his time he held in little esteem. “They go to work like galley slaves,” was his charge.
“They do not write on a theme because inspired; but the theme comes first, and with assiduous and laborious
study they hope to evolve something brilliant out of it.”
Oscar Levy, describing the view of Stendhal, The Revival of Aristocracy (1906), p. 84
Goethe ... thought that the Englishman only observed without generalizing, whilst the German generalized
without observing.
As to the journalists, those gutter-boys who peeped into the work-shop of the spirit through the key-holes, in
order to communicate to their fellow-urchins what they thought they had seen ...
What the aristocratic civilization of Rome and Greece had meant, only those greater minds, Goethe and
Nietzsche, grasped: but to none were those feelings of manly vigour more unintelligible than to the
womanish Armageddon of serfs of the nineteenth century ; to none less clear than to those unnatural products
of that unnatural time, the learned men.
The erudite was the absolute converse of the pagan positive. He studied the ancients because he could not
feel them. ... But not to all did antiquity remain dry and lifeless. Nietzsche lighted upon the slumber-bound
beauty, and awoke her to new life, and released her from the arm of her unloved wooer.
JULIEN BENDA (1867-1956)

When injustice becomes master of the world, and the entire universe kneels before it, the intellectual must
remain standing and confront it with the human conscience.
Julien Benda
903
Treason of the Intellectuals (1927)
French: http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/benda_julien/trahison_des_clercs/trahison_des_clercs.html
When Machiavelli advises the Prince to carry out the Machiavellian scheme of action, he invests those
actions with no sort of morality or beauty. For him morality remains what it is for everyone else, and does
not cease to remain so because he observes (not without melancholy) that it is incompatible with politics. …
For him evil, even if it aids politics, still remains evil. The modern realists are the moralists of realism. For
them, the act which makes the State strong is invested with a moral character by the fact that it does so, and
this whatever the act may be. The evil which serves politics ceases to be evil and becomes good.
Julien Benda, Treason of the Intellectuals, pp. 107-108
Quand Machiavel conseille au Prince le genre d’actions qu’on sait, il ne confère à ces actions aucune
moralité, aucune beauté ; la morale reste pour lui ce qu’elle est pour tout le monde et ne cesse pas de le rester
parce qu’il constate, non sans mélancolie, qu’elle est inconciliable avec la politique. « Il faut, dit-il, que le
prince ait un entendement prêt à faire toujours bien, mais savoir entrer au mal, quand il y sera contraint »,
montrant que, selon lui, le mal, même s’il sert la politique, ne cesse pas pour cela d’être le mal. Les réalistes
modernes sont des moralistes du réalisme ; pour eux, l’acte qui rend l’État fort est investi, de ce seul fait et
quel qu’il soit, d’un caractère moral ; le mal qui sert le politique cesse d’être le mal et devient le bien.
Julien Benda, La trahison des clercs (1927), p. 178
Il semble qu’on pourrait même dire que, pour Ch. Maurras, le pratique est le divin et que son « athéisme »
consiste moins à nier Dieu qu’à le déplacer pour le situer dans l’homme et son œuvre politique ; je crois
caractériser assez bien l’entreprise de cet écrivain en disant qu’elle est la divinisation du politique.
For M. Maurras the practical is the divine, and his “atheism” consists less in denying God than in
shifting him to man and his political work. … It is the divinizing of politics.
Julien Benda, Treason of the Intellectuals, p. 108
On peut marquer encore cette innovation des clercs en disant que jusqu’à nos jours les hommes n’avaient
entendu, en ce qui touche les rapports de la politique et de la morale, que deux enseignements : l’un, de
Platon, qui disait : « La morale détermine la politique », l’autre, de Machiavel, qui disait : « La politique n’a
pas de rapport avec la morale. » Ils en entendent aujourd’hui un troisième, Maurras enseigne : « La politique
détermine la morale. »
Up until our own times men had only received two sorts of teaching in what concerns the relations between
politics and morality. One was Plato’s and it said: “Morality decides politics”; and the other was
Machiavelli’s, and it said “Politics have nothing to do with morality.” Today we receive a third. M. Maurras
teaches: “Politics decide morality.”
Jadis les chefs d’État pratiquaient le réalisme, mais ne l’honoraient pas ; Louis XI, Charles Quint, Richelieu,
Louis XIV ne prétendaient pas que leurs actes fussent moraux ; ils voyaient la morale où l’Evangile la leur
avait montrée et n’essayaient pas de la déplacer parce qu’ils ne l’appliquaient pas ; avec eux — et c’est pour
quoi, malgré toutes leurs violences, ils n’ont troublé en rien la civilisation — la moralité était violée, mais les
notions morales restaient intactes. Mussolini, lui, proclame la moralité de sa politique de force et
l’immoralité de tout ce qui s’y oppose ; tout comme l’écrivain, l’homme de gouvernement, qui autrefois
n’était que réaliste, est aujourd’hui apôtre de réalisme, et on sait si la majesté de sa fonction, à défaut de celle
de sa personne, donne du poids à son apostolat. Remarquons d’ailleurs que le gouvernant moderne, du fait
qu’il s’adresse à des foules, est tenu d’être moraliste, de présenter ses actes comme liés à une morale, à une
métaphysique, à une mystique.
Julien Benda, La trahison des clercs (1927), pp. 180-181
Formerly, leaders of states practiced realism, but did not honor it… With them morality was violated, but
moral notions remained intact. … The modern governor, owing to the fact that he addresses crowds, is
compelled to be a moralist, and to present his acts as bound up with a system of morality.
904
Le christianisme déjà invitait l’homme à se poser contre la nature ; mais il l’y invitait au nom de ses attributs
spirituels et désintéressés ; le pragmatisme l’y invite au nom de ses attributs pratiques. L’homme autrefois
était divin parce qu’il avait su acquérir le concept de justice, l’idée de loi, le sens de Dieu ; aujourd’hui il
l’est parce qu’il a su se faire un outillage qui le rend maître de la matière. (Voir les glorifications de l’homo
faber par Nietzsche, Sorel, Bergson.)
Julien Benda, La trahison des clercs (1927), pp. 196-197
Christianity exhorted man to set himself up against Nature, but did so in the name of his spiritual and
disinterested attributes. Pragmatism exhorts him to do so in the name of his practical attributes. Formerly
man was divine because he had been able to acquire the concept of justice, the idea of law, the sense of God;
today he is divine because he has been able to create equipment which makes him the master of matter.
Julien Benda, Treason of the Intellectuals, pp. 126-127 (regarding homo faber)
Les clercs modernes me semblent avoir créé, dans le monde dit cultivé, un véritable romantisme de la dureté.
Ils ont aussi créé, du moins en France (singulièrement avec Barrès, en vérité depuis Flaubert et Baudelaire),
un romantisme du mépris.
The modern clercs have created in so-called cultivated society a positive romanticism of harshness. They
have also created a romanticism of contempt.
La religion du succès ...

The modern moralists extol … the cult of practical activity in defiance of the disinterested life.
What these thinkers despise in the man of study is precisely the man who … does not predicate the capture of
its environment by the species, or who, if he does predicate it, as the scientist does by his discoveries, retains
for himself only the joy of knowledge and abandons the practical exploitation of his discoveries to others.
The desire to abase the values of knowledge before the values of action ...
That teaching of modern metaphysics which exhorts man to feel comparatively little esteem for the truly
thinking portion of himself and to honor the active and willing part of himself with all his devotion...
Philosophy, which formerly raised man to feel conscious of himself because he was a thinking being and to
say, ‘I think therefore I am,” now raises him to say … “I think, therefore I am not,” (unless he takes thought
into consideration only in that humble region where it is confused with action).
From his loftiest pulpit the modern clerc assures man that he is great in proportion as he is practical.
Teachers … preach “the superiority of the intelligence”; but they preach it because in their opinion it is the
intelligence which shows us the actions required for our interests, i.e. from exactly the same passion for the
practical.
... that teaching according to which intellectual activity is worthy of esteem to the extent that it is practical
and to that extent alone.
905
Since the Greeks the predominant attitude of thinkers towards intellectual activity was to glorify it
insofar as (like aesthetic activity) it finds its satisfaction in itself, apart from any attention to the
advantages it may procure. Most thinkers would have agreed with … Renan’s verdict that the man who
loves science for its fruits commits the worst of blasphemies against that divinity. … The modern clercs have
violently torn up this charter. They proclaim the intellectual functions are only respectable to the extent that
they are bound up with the pursuit of concrete advantage.
One of the principle causes is that the modern world has made the clerc into a citizen, subject to all the
responsibilities of a citizen, and consequently to despise lay passions is far more difficult for him than for his
predecessors.
If shame is cried upon him, … he will point out … that today he has to earn his living, and that it is not his
fault if he is eager to support the class which takes a pleasure in his productions.
The true clerc is Vauvenargues, Lamarck, Fresnel, … Spinoza, Schiller, Baudelaire, César Franck, who were
never diverted from single-hearted adoration of the beautiful and the divine by the necessity of earning their
daily bread. But such clercs are inevitably rare. … The rule is that the living creature condemned to struggle
for life turns to practical passions, and thence to the sanctifying of those passions.
ANDRÉ GIDE (1869-1951)

What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do
not say it; what another would have written as well, do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere
but in yourself.
Andre Gide
Il vaut mieux d'être détesté pour ce qu'êtes vous que pour être a aimé pour ce que n'êtes pas vous.
André Gide
It is better to be hated for what one is, than loved for what one is not.
André Gide
Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
Andre Gide
Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than
all.
Andre Gide, Journal entry, 1901
One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
André Gide
Pretexts
In my present insistence on high standards you will see that there is less self-indulgence than resolve and
application. I do not let the Christian monopolize the ideal of perfection. I have my own virtue, which I am
constantly cultivating and refining by teaching myself not to tolerate in me or my surroundings
anything but the exquisite.
Maurice in André Gide, “Characters,” Pretexts, J. O’Brien, ed. (1964) p. 298
906
Pay attention only to the form; emotion will come spontaneously to inhabit it. A perfect dwelling always
finds an inhabitant. The artist’s business is to build the dwelling; as for the inhabitant, it is up to the reader to
provide him.
André Gide, “Characters,” Pretexts, J. O’Brien, ed. (1964) p. 299
Generally among intelligent people are found nothing but paralytics and among men of action nothing
but fools.
Pourtant il me semble que, n'eussé-je connu ni Dostoïevski, ni Nietzsche, ni Freud, ni X. ou Z., j'aurais pensé
tout de même, et que j'ai trouvé chez eux plutôt une autorisation qu'un éveil. Surtout ils m'ont appris à ne
plus douter de moi-même, à ne pas avoir peur de ma pensée et à me laisser mener par elle, puisqu'aussi bien
je les y retrouvais.
André Gide, Journal, janvier 1924 (p. 1245)
It seems to me that had I not known Dostoevsky or Nietzsche or Freud or X or Z, I should have
thought just as I did, and that I found in them rather an authorization than an awakening. Above all,
they taught me to cease doubting myself, to cease fearing my thoughts, and to let those thoughts lead
me to those lands that were not uninhabitable because, after all, I found them already there.
André Gide, “Characters,” Pretexts, J. O’Brien, ed. (1964) p. 306, translation modified
The artist who is after success lets himself be influenced by the public. Generally such an artist
contributes nothing new, for the public acclaims only what it already knows, what it recognizes.
O my dearest and most lovable thought, why should I try further to legitimize your birth?
Most often people seek in life occasions for persisting in their opinions rather than for educating
themselves.
André Gide, “An Unprejudiced Mind,” Pretexts, J. O’Brien, ed. (1964) p. 311
True intelligence very readily conceives of an intelligence superior to its own; and this is why truly
intelligent men are modest.
André Gide, “An Unprejudiced Mind,” Pretexts, J. O’Brien, ed. (1964) pp. 311-312
Often the best in us springs from the worst in us.

There is no feeling so simple that it is not immediately complicated and distorted by introspection.
The only really Christian art is that which, like St. Francis, does not fear being wedded to poverty. This rises
far above art-as-ornament.
At times it seems to me that I am living my life backwards, and that at the approach of old age my real
youth will begin. My soul was born covered with wrinkles—wrinkles my ancestors and parents most
assiduously put there and that I had the greatest trouble removing.
André Gide, “An Unprejudiced Mind,” Pretexts, J. O’Brien, ed. (1964) pp. 319-320
The finest virtues can become deformed with age. The precise mind becomes finicky; the thrifty man,
miserly; the cautious man, timorous; the man of imagination, fanciful. Even perseverance ends up in a sort of
stupidity. Just as, on the other hand, being too willing to understand too many opinions, too diverse ways of
seeing, constancy is lost and the mind goes astray in a restless fickleness.
907
We call “happiness” a certain set of circumstances that makes joy possible. But we call joy that state of mind
and emotions that needs nothing to feel happy.
When intelligent people pride themselves on not understanding, it is quite natural they should succeed better
than fools.
When people felt they had a right to seek out Christ before the torment, and in the fullness of his joy—it was
too late; the cross had overcome Christ himself; it was Christ crucified that people continued to see and
teach. And thus it is that religion came to plunge the world into gloom.
André Gide, “An Unprejudiced Mind,” Pretexts, J. O’Brien, ed. (1964)
Corydon (1924)
― C’est une Défense de la Pédérastie que j’écris. ...
― Et vous oserez publier cela ?
― Non ; je n’oserai pas, fit-il sur un ton plus grave.
― Décidément vous êtes tous les mêmes, repris-je après un court silence ; vous crânez en chambre et parmi
vos pairs ; mais en plein air et devant public votre courage s’évapore. Vous sentez parfaitement, au fond, la
légitimité de la réprobation qui vous accable ; vous protestez éloquemment à voix basse ; mais à voix haute
vous flanchez.
― Il est vrai que la cause manque de martyrs.
― N’employez donc pas de grands mots
― J’emploie les mots qu’il faut. Nous avons eu Wilde, Krupp, Macdonald, Eulenburg...
― Si cela ne vous suffit pas !
― Oh ! des victimes ! des victimes tant qu’on en veut ! des martyrs, point. Tous ont nié ; tous nieront.
André Gide, Corydon (1924)
I certainly do not believe that wisdom consists of abandoning oneself to one’s natural instincts and giving
them free rein; but I do believe that, before attempting to subdue and tame them, it is essential to understand
them fully—for a number of the discords (?) we have to endure are unwarranted and are due entirely to errors
of interpretation.
André Gide, Corydon, Preface to Third French Edition (1950), p. xvii
The essential thing is not to avoid conflicting with common sense, but to avoid warring with the truth.
André Gide, Corydon (1950)
The Counterfeiters
D. Bussy, trans.
The deeper the soul plunges into religious devotion, the more it loses all sense of reality, all need, all desire,
all love for reality. … The dazzling light of their faith blinds them to the surrounding world and to their own
selves. As for me, who care for nothing so much as to see the world and myself clearly, I am amazed at the
coils of falsehood in which devout persons take delight.
Edouard in Andres Gide, The Counterfeiters, D. Bussy trans., p. 107
I care more—infinitely more—for what may be than for what has been.
It’s a good thing to follow one’s inclination, provided it leads uphill.

908
When I’m sad, I seem so grotesque to myself that it makes me laugh; when I’m cheerful, I make such idiotic
jokes that I feel inclined to cry.
Armand in Andres Gide, The Counterfeiters, D. Bussy trans., p. 372
There are heaps of works one admires on faith, just because everyone else does, and because no one so far
has thought of saying—or dared to say—that they were stupid.
He has crammed his life full of a lot of obligations which would lose all meaning if his conviction failed; so
that in a manner they necessitate his conviction and at the same time keep it going. He imagines he believes,
because he continues to act as if he did.
The Immoralist
The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free, that is the task.
Michael in André Gide, The Immoralist, R. Howard trans., p. 7
To the man whom death’s wing has touched, what once seemed important is so no longer; and other
things become so which once did not seem important or which he did not even know existed. The layers of
acquired knowledge peel away from the mind like a cosmetic and reveal, in patches, the naked flesh beneath,
the authentic being hidden there.
Henceforth this was what I sought to discover: the authentic being, “the old Adam” whom the
Gospels no longer accepted; the man whom everything around me—books, teachers, family and I myself—
had tried from the first to suppress. And I had already glimpsed him, faint, obscured by their encrustations,
but all the more valuable, all the more urgent. I scorned henceforth that secondary, learned being whom
education had pasted over him.
And I would compare myself to a palimpsest; I shared the thrill of the scholar who beneath more
recent script discovers. on the same paper, an infinitely more precious ancient text.
My sole effort … was therefore systematically to revile or suppress whatever I believed due merely to past
education and to my early moral indoctrination. In deliberate scorn of my own erudition, in disdain for my
scholarly pastimes.
What interest could I take in myself, except as a perfectible being? This unknown perfection, vaguely as I
imagined it, exalted my will as never before in my longing to achieve it; I dedicated this will utterly to
fortifying my body.
I soon realized that what are supposedly the worst things (lying, to mention only one) are hard to do only
when you have never done them; but that each of them becomes, and so quickly! easy, pleasant, sweet in
repetition, and soon a second nature.
Everything filled me with the joy of being alive until my whole being seemed no more than a hovering
rapture: memories or regrets, hope or desire, future and past fell silent; I knew nothing of life but what the
moment brought to it, took from it.
There comes a point in love, a unique moment which later on the soul seeks in vain to surpass
909
Nothing thwarts happiness so much as the memory of happiness.
The apple trees planted in rows on the favorable hillsides heralded a splendid crop that summer; I dreamed of
the rich burden of fruit beneath which their branches would soon be bending. From this orderly abundance,
from this happy subservience, from this smiling cultivation, a harmony was being wrought, no longer
fortuitous but imposed, a rhythm, a beauty at once human and natural, in which one could no longer tell what
was most admirable, so intimately united into a perfect understanding were the fecund exposition of free
nature and man’s skillful effort to order it. What would that effort be, I thought, without the powerful
savagery it masters? What would be the savage energy of the overflowing sap without the intelligent effort
which channels and discharges it into profusion?—And I let myself dream of such lands where every force
was so well controlled, every expenditure so compensated, every exchange so strict, that the slightest waste
became evident; then, applying my dream to life, I sketched an ethic which would become a science of self-
exploitation perfected by a disciplined intelligence.
Michael in André Gide, The Immoralist, R. Howard trans., p. 71-72
You cannot be sincere and at the same time seem so.

As for the philosophers, whose role might have been to instruct me, I had long known what to expect of
them; mathematicians or neo-Kantians, they kept as far as possible from troublesome reality, and were no
more concerned with life than the algebrist with the existence of the quantities he is measuring.
I made no attempt to conceal the tedium of these encounters. “They’re all alike,” I told her, “and each repeats
the next. Whenever I talk to one, it seems to me I’m talking to several.”
“But my dear,” Marceline answered, “you can’t ask each one to be different from all the rest.”
“The more they’re like each other, the less they’re like me.” And I continued more wearily: … “They’re
alive, they seem to be alive and not to know it.”
What distinguished me from the rest was what mattered; what no one but I … could say—that was what I
had to say.
You have to let other people be right. It consoles them for not being anything else.
Ménalque in André Gide, The Immoralist, R. Howard trans., p. 94
I cannot apply to myself the distinctions and the reservations they insist on making—I exist only as a whole
man. I lay claim to nothing but my own nature, and the pleasure I take in an action is my clue to its propriety
If only the people around us could be convinced. But most of them believe they get nothing good out of
themselves except by constraint; they’re only pleased with themselves when they’re under duress. If there’s
one thing each of them claims not to resemble it’s … himself. Instead he sets up a model, then imitates it; he
doesn’t even choose the model—he accepts it ready-made.
Ménalque in André Gide, The Immoralist, R. Howard trans., p. 104, ellipsis in original
People are afraid to find themselves alone, and don’t find themselves at all.
What seems different in yourself: that’s the one rare thing you possess, the one thing which gives each of us
his worth; and that’s just what we try to suppress.
910
If there’s one thing I detest it’s a man of principles. … You can’t expect any kind of sincerity from him, for
he only does what his principles have ordered him to do, or else he considers what he does a transgression.
Michael and Ménalque in André Gide, The Immoralist, R. Howard trans., p. 105
Today beauty no longer acts, and action no longer bothers about being beautiful
I create each hour’s newness by forgetting yesterday completely. Having been happy is never enough for me.
I don’t believe in dead things. What’s the difference between no longer being and never having been?
Each joy is like manna in the desert, which spoils from one day to the next.
André Gide, Ménalque in The Immoralist, R. Howard trans., p. 112
Their clumsy thoughts were of no interest to me.

… actions whose motives he cannot understand—that is, actions not prompted by the hope of profit.
Michael in André Gide, The Immoralist, R. Howard trans., p. 122 (cf. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, § 3)
What more can man do, what else can man be? That was what I had to know. Was what man had said up till
then all he could say? Wasn’t there something he didn’t know about himself? Could he merely repeat
himself? … And day by day there grew within me the confused sense of untapped wealth lying hidden,
smothered by culture, propriety, rules.
Michael in André Gide, The Immoralist, R. Howard trans., p. 146 (ellipsis in original)
The great artists are the ones who dare to entitle to beauty things so natural that when they’re seen
afterward, people say: Why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful?
André Gide, Michael in The Immoralist, R. Howard trans., p. 159
ALBERT SCHINZ (1870-1943)

Anti-Pragmatism; an Examination into the Respective Rights of Intellectual
Aristocracy and Social Democracy (1909)
http://books.google.com/books?id=DxsQAAAAYAAJ
“Pragmatism” is only a new term to designate “Opportunism” in philosophy. As a doctrine it does not
make good. But pragmatism as revealing a certain state of mind in our present generation has a profound
significance.
We declare pragmatism to be bad, not indeed in its moral consequences (which, as a matter of fact, ought
not to count in philosophy), but because it introduces into our fashion of thinking a degrading sophistry.
Pragmatism, in its modern systematized form, would scarcely have been possible in earlier times. It has,
however, become so since erudite scholars and original thinkers have deemed it fit to cater to a public
incapable of taking a genuine interest in their researches and their speculations, a public which in the last
resort wishes simply to amuse itself with these as it amuses itself with everything else, — the public of our
modern democracies. We feel flattered by the plaudits of the crowd, and to procure these we are satisfied to
get down to the level of those whom as thinkers we should disdain. Popular science, popular art, popular
theology — only one thing was lacking — popular philosophy.
Albert Schinz, Anti-Pragmatism; an Examination into the Respective Rights of Intellectual Aristocracy and
Social Democracy (1909), p. xv
911
I do reproach a school of modern philosophers for wishing to force, so to speak, impersonal philosophy, a
moral science, indifferent nature, to speak the same language as our aspirations and our passions — even, I
grant, our generous aspirations, our noble passions. Our innate and psychic tendencies (in the moral, social,
and religious realms) are phenomena for science to record and authenticate, not to justify or legitimize. The
epoch of scholasticism ought to be left behind for good and all.
Albert Schinz, Anti-Pragmatism; an Examination into the Respective Rights of Intellectual Aristocracy and
Social Democracy (1909), pp. xvii-xviii
CHRISTIAN MORGENSTERN (1871-1914)

My task is to unsettle each individual … to seek the goad to drive into my own lethargic flesh.
Christian Morgenstern, cited in Zarathustra’s Children (2000), p. 177
None of you knows what creativity means. To paint a picture, to write a poem? No! To recast one’s
whole age, to impose upon it the stamp of one’s will, to fill it with beauty, to overwhelm it, to
overpower it with one’s spirit.
Christian Morgenstern, cited in Zarathustra’s Children (2000), p. 178
Schön ist eigentliches alles, was man mit Liebe betrachtet.

Christian Morgenstern
Weil, so schließt er messerscharf

Nicht sein kann, was nicht sein darf.
Christian Morgenstern, „Die unmögliche Tatsache” (1910)
For, he reasons pointedly
That which must not, can not be.
Christian Morgenstern, “The Impossible Fact” (1910)
Ich trage keine Schätze in mir, ich habe nur die Kraft, vieles, was ich berühre, in etwas von Wert zu
verwandeln. Ich habe keine Tiefe, als meinen unaufhörlichen Trieb zur Tiefe.
Christian Morgenstern, Stufen: Eine Entwickelung in Aphorismen und Tagebuch-Notizen (1922), S. 19
I bear no treasures within me. I only possess the power to transform much of what I touch into something of
value. I have no depths, save my incessant desire for the depths.
I shall excavate the strata of my soul.

Stufen: Eine Entwickelung in Aphorismen und Tagebuch-Notizen (1922)

Mein einziges Gebet ist das um Vertiefung. Durch sie allein kann ich wieder zu Gott gelangen. Vertiefung!
Vertiefung!
My only prayer is a prayer for depth. Through depth alone can I come closer to God. Depth! Depth!
Christian Morgenstern, Steps (my translation)
Ich möchte nicht leben, wenn Ich nicht lebte.

MARCEL PROUST (1871-1922)

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.
Marcel Proust
912
There are very few philosophers and artists who are absolutely detached from ambition and respect for
power, from "people of position." And among those who are more delicate or more sated, snobism replaces
ambition and respect for power in the same way superstition arises on the ruins of religious beliefs.
Marcel Proust, notes to Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin (1906)
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls
blossom.
Marcel Proust
In reality each reader reads only what is already within himself. The book is only a sort of optical instrument
which the writer offers to the readers to enable the latter to discover in himself what he would not have found
but for the aid of the book.
Marcel Proust, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 2
Du Côté de Chez Swann [Swann’s Way] (1913)

French: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext01/swann11h.htm
English: http://books.google.com/books?id=BrtEAAAAYAAJ
English: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/p/proust/marcel/p96s/complete.html
English: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/7178/7178-h/7178-h.htm
They held that one ought to set before children, and that children showed their own innate good taste in
admiring, only such books and pictures as they would continue to admire when their minds were developed
and mature. No doubt they regarded aesthetic values as material objects which an unclouded vision could not
fail to discern, without needing to have their equivalent in experience of life stored up and slowly ripening in
one’s heart.
Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way
Whenever she saw in others an advantage, however trivial, which she herself lacked, she would persuade
herself that it was no advantage at all, but a drawback, and would pity so as not to have to envy them.
Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, C. Moncrieff, trans. (1982), p. 24
Hardly had my grandfather begun to question Swann about that orator [Duc d’Audriffet-Pasquier] when one
of my grandmother’s sisters, in whose ears the question echoed like a solemn but untimely silence which her
natural politeness bade her interrupt, addressed the other with: “Just fancy, Flora, I met a young Swedish
governess today.”
M. Legrandin … was one of that class of men who, apart from a scientific career in which they may well
have proved brilliantly successful, have acquired an entirely different kind of culture, literary or artistic, of
which they make no use in the specialised work of their profession, but by which their conversation profits.
More ‘literary’ than many ‘men of letters’ (we were not aware at this period that M. Legrandin had a distinct
reputation as a writer, and so were greatly astonished to find that a well-known composer had set some
verses of his to music), endowed with a greater ease in execution than many painters, they imagine that the
life they are obliged to lead is not that for which they are really fitted, and they bring to their regular
occupations either a fantastic indifference or a sustained and lofty application, scornful, bitter, and
conscientious.
When I saw any external object, my consciousness that I was seeing it would remain between me and it,
surrounding it with a thin spiritual border that prevented me from ever touching its substance directly; for it
would somehow evaporate before I could make contact with it, just as an incandescent body that is brought
into proximity with something wet never actually touches its moisture, since it is always preceded by a zone
of evaporation.
913
I was disturbed by the memory of a lady whom I had seen recently for the first time; and thinking, now
that I knew that Legrandin was on friendly terms with several of the local aristocracy, that perhaps she also
was among his acquaintance, I summoned up all my courage and said to him: “Tell me, sir, do you, by any
chance, know the lady—the ladies of Guermantes?” and I felt glad because, in pronouncing the name, I had
secured a sort of power over it, by the mere act of drawing it up out of my dreams and giving it an objective
existence in the world of spoken things.
But, at the sound of the word Guermantes, I saw in the middle of each of our friend’s blue eyes a little
brown dimple appear, as though they had been stabbed by some invisible pin-point, while the rest of his
pupils, reacting from the shock, received and secreted the azure overflow. His fringed eyelids darkened, and
drooped. His mouth, which had been stiffened and seared with bitter lines, was the first to recover, and
smiled, while his eyes still seemed full of pain, like the eyes of a good-looking martyr whose body bristles
with arrows.
“No, I do not know them,” he said, but instead of uttering so simple a piece of information, a reply in
which there was so little that could astonish me, in the natural and conversational tone which would have
befitted it, he recited it with a separate stress upon each word, leaning forward, bowing his head, with at once
the vehemence which a man gives, so as to be believed, to a highly improbable statement (as though the fact
that he did not know the Guermantes could be due only to some strange accident of fortune) and with the
emphasis of a man who, finding himself unable to keep silence about what is to him a painful situation,
chooses to proclaim it aloud, so as to convince his hearers that the confession he is making is one that causes
him no embarrassment, but is easy, agreeable, spontaneous, that the situation in question, in this case the
absence of relations with the Guermantes family, might very well have been not forced upon, but actually
designed by Legrandin himself, might arise from some family tradition, some moral principle or mystical
vow which expressly forbade his seeking their society.
“No,” he resumed, explaining by his words the tone in which they were uttered. “No, I do not know them;
I have never wished to know them; I have always made a point of preserving complete independence; at
heart, as you know, I am a bit of a Radical. People are always coming to me about it, telling me I am
mistaken in not going to Guermantes, that I make myself seem ill-bred, uncivilised, an old bear. But that’s
not the sort of reputation that can frighten me; it’s too true! In my heart of hearts I care for nothing in the
world now but a few churches, books—two or three, pictures—rather more, perhaps, and the light of the
moon when the fresh breeze of youth (such as yours) wafts to my nostrils the scent of gardens whose flowers
my old eyes are not sharp enough, now, to distinguish.”
I did not understand very clearly why, in order to refrain from going to the houses of people whom one did
not know, it should be necessary to cling to one’s independence, nor how that could give one the appearance
of a savage or a bear. But what I did understand was this, that Legrandin was not altogether truthful when he
said that he cared only for churches, moonlight, and youth; he cared also, he cared a very great deal, for
people who lived in country houses, and would be so much afraid, when in their company, of incurring their
displeasure that he would never dare to let them see that he numbered, as well, among his friends middle-
class people, the families of solicitors and stockbrokers, preferring, if the truth must be known, that it should
be revealed in his absence, when he was out of earshot, that judgment should go against him (if so it must) by
default: in a word, he was a snob. Of course he would never have admitted all or any of this in the poetical
language which my family and I so much admired. And if I asked him, “Do you know the Guermantes
family?” Legrandin the talker would reply, “No, I have never cared to know them.” But unfortunately
the talker was now subordinated to another Legrandin, whom he kept carefully hidden in his breast,
whom he would never consciously exhibit, because this other could tell stories about our own Legrandin and
about his snobbishness which would have ruined his reputation for ever; and this other Legrandin had
replied to me already in that wounded look, that stiffened smile, the undue gravity of his tone in
uttering those few words, in the thousand arrows by which our own Legrandin had instantaneously
been stabbed and sickened, like a Saint Sebastian of snobbery:
“Oh, how you hurt me! No, I do not know the Guermantes family. Do not remind me of the great sorrow
of my life.” And since this other, this irrepressible, dominant, despotic Legrandin, if he lacked our
Legrandin’s charming vocabulary, showed an infinitely greater promptness in expressing himself, by
means of what are called ‘reflexes,’ it followed that, when Legrandin the talker attempted to silence
914
him, he would already have spoken, and it would be useless for our friend to deplore the bad
impression which the revelations of his alter ego must have caused, since he could do no more now
than endeavour to mitigate them.
This was not to say that M. Legrandin was anything but sincere when he inveighed against snobs. He
could not (from his own knowledge, at least) be aware that he was one also, since it is only with the
passions of others that we are ever really familiar, and what we come to find out about our own can be
no more than what other people have shown us. Upon ourselves they react but indirectly, through our
imagination, which substitutes for our actual, primary motives other, secondary motives, less stark and
therefore more decent. Never had Legrandin’s snobbishness impelled him to make a habit of visiting a
duchess as such. Instead, it would set his imagination to make that duchess appear, in Legrandin’s eyes,
endowed with all the graces. He would be drawn towards the duchess, assuring himself the while that he was
yielding to the attractions of her mind, and her other virtues, which the vile race of snobs could never
understand. Only his fellow-snobs knew that he was of their number, for, owing to their inability to
appreciate the intervening efforts of his imagination, they saw in close juxtaposition the social activities of
Legrandin and their primary cause.
Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, C. Moncrieff, trans. (1982)
“Do you know anyone at Balbec?” inquired my father. “This young man is just going to spend a couple of
months there with his grandmother, and my wife too, perhaps.”
Legrandin, taken unawares by the question at a moment when he was looking directly at my father, was
unable to turn aside his gaze, and so concentrated it with steadily increasing intensity—smiling mournfully
the while—upon the eyes of his questioner, with an air of friendliness and frankness and of not being afraid
to look him in the face, until he seemed to have penetrated my father’s skull, as it had been a ball of glass,
and to be seeing, at the moment, a long way beyond and behind it, a brightly coloured cloud, which provided
him with a mental alibi, and would enable him to establish the theory that, just when he was being asked
whether he knew anyone at Balbec, he had been thinking of something else, and so had not heard the
question. As a rule these tactics make the questioner proceed to ask, “Why, what are you thinking about?”
But my father, inquisitive, annoyed, and cruel, repeated: “Have you friends, then, in that neighbourhood, that
you know Balbec so well?”
In a final and desperate effort the smiling gaze of Legrandin struggled to the extreme limits of its
tenderness, vagueness, candour, and distraction; then feeling, no doubt, that there was nothing left for it now
but to answer, he said to us: “I have friends all the world over, wherever there are companies of trees,
stricken but not defeated, which have come together to offer a common supplication, with pathetic obstinacy,
to an inclement sky which has no mercy upon them.”
“That is not quite what I meant,” interrupted my father, obstinate as a tree and merciless as the sky. “I
asked you, in case anything should happen to my mother-in-law and she wanted to feel that she was not all
alone down there, at the ends of the earth, whether you knew any of the people.”
“There as elsewhere, I know everyone and I know no one,” replied Legrandin, who was by no means
ready yet to surrender; “places I know well, people very slightly. But, down there, the places themselves
seem to me just like people, rare and wonderful people, of a delicate quality which would have been
corrupted and ruined by the gift of life. Perhaps it is a castle which you encounter upon the cliff’s edge;
standing there by the roadside, where it has halted to contemplate its sorrows before an evening sky, still
rosy, through which a golden moon is climbing; while the fishing-boats, homeward bound, creasing the
watered silk of the Channel, hoist its pennant at their mastheads and carry its colours. Or perhaps it is a
simple dwelling-house that stands alone, ugly, if anything, timid-seeming but full of romance, hiding from
every eye some imperishable secret of happiness and disenchantment. That land which knows not truth,” he
continued with Machiavellian subtlety, “that land of infinite fiction makes bad reading for any boy; and is
certainly not what I should choose or recommend for my young friend here, who is already so much inclined
to melancholy, for a heart already predisposed to receive its impressions. Climates that breathe amorous
secrets and futile regrets may agree with an old and disillusioned man like myself; but they must always
prove fatal to a temperament which is still unformed. Believe me,” he went on with emphasis, “the waters of
that bay—more Breton than Norman—may exert a sedative influence, though even that is of questionable
915
value, upon a heart which, like mine, is no longer unbroken, a heart for whose wounds there is no longer
anything to compensate. But at your age, my boy, those waters are contra-indicated.... Good night to you,
neighbours,” he added, moving away from us with that evasive abruptness to which we were accustomed;
and then, turning towards us, with a physicianly finger raised in warning, he resumed the consultation: “No
Balbec before you are fifty!” he called out to me, “and even then it must depend on the state of the heart.”
My father spoke to him of it again, as often as we met him, and tortured him with questions, but it was
labour in vain: like that scholarly swindler who devoted to the fabrication of forged palimpsests a wealth of
skill and knowledge and industry the hundredth part of which would have sufficed to establish him in a more
lucrative—but an honourable occupation, M. Legrandin, had we insisted further, would in the end have
constructed a whole system of ethics, and a celestial geography of Lower Normandy, sooner than admit to us
that, within a mile of Balbec, his own sister was living in her own house; sooner than find himself obliged to
offer us a letter of introduction, the prospect of which would never have inspired him with such terror had he
been absolutely certain—as, from his knowledge of my grandmother’s character, he really ought to have
been certain—that in no circumstances whatsoever would we have dreamed of making use of it.
Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, C. Moncrieff, trans. (1982)
A L’Ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs [Within a Budding Grove] (1919)

French, volume 1: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2998/2998-h/2998-h.htm
English: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300401.txt
Our virtues themselves are not free and floating qualities over which we retain a permanent control and
power of disposal; they come to be so closely linked in our minds with the actions in conjunction with which
we make it our duty to practise them that if we come to engage in an activity of a different kind, it catches us
off guard and without the slightest awareness that it might involve the application of those very same virtues.
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, C. Moncrieff, trans. (1982), p. 466
The idea that one has long held of a person is apt to stop one’s eyes and ears; my mother, for three whole
years, had no more noticed the rouge with which one of her nieces used to paint her lips than if it had been
wholly and invisibly dissolved in some liquid; until one day a streak too much, or possibly something else,
brought about the phenomenon known as super-saturation; all the paint that had hitherto passed unperceived
was now crystallized.
Fashions change, being themselves begotten of the desire for change.

Finally, if I went to see Berma in a new play, it would not be easy for me to assess her art and her diction,
since I should not be able to differentiate between a text which was not already familiar and what she added
to it by her intonations and gestures, an addition which would seem to me to be embodied in the play itself;
whereas the old plays, the classics which I knew by heart, presented themselves to me as vast and empty
walls, reserved and made ready for my inspection, on which I should be able to appreciate without restriction
the devices by which Berma would cover them, as with frescoes, with the perpetually fresh treasures of her
inspiration.
916
The doctor … advised my parents not to let me go to the theatre. … The fear of this might have availed to
stop me, if what I had anticipated from such a spectacle had been only a pleasure which a subsequent pain
could offset and annul. But what I demanded from this performance—as from the visit to Balbec and
the visit to Venice for which I had so intensely longed—was something quite different from pleasure:
verities pertaining to a world more real than that in which I lived, which, once acquired, could never
be taken from me again by any trivial incident—even though it were to cause me bodily suffering—of
my otiose existence. At most, the pleasure which I was to feel during the performance appeared to me
as the perhaps necessary form of the perception of these truths.
Whereas I had hated them for their cruelty, their consent made them now so dear to me that the thought of
causing them pain stabbed me also with a pain through which the purpose of life appears to me as the pursuit
not of truth but of loving-kindness, and life itself seemed good or evil only as my parents were happy or sad.
Believing the language to be less rich in words than it is, and her own ears less trustworthy, the first time that
she heard anyone mention York ham she had thought, no doubt,—feeling it to be hardly conceivable that the
dictionary could be so prodigal as to include at once a ‘York’ and a ‘New York’—that she had misheard
what was said, and that the ham was really called by the name already familiar to her.
All that I grasped was that to repeat what everybody else was thinking was, in politics, the mark not of an
inferior but of a superior mind.
If one has lost sight for a score of years of all the people on whose account one would have liked to be
elected to the Jockey Club or the Institute, the prospect of becoming a member of one or other of those
corporations will have ceased to tempt one. Now fully as much as retirement, ill-health or religious
conversion, protracted relations with a woman will substitute fresh visions for the old. There was not on
Swann’s part, when he married Odette, any renunciation of his social ambitions, for from these ambitions
Odette had long ago, in the spiritual sense of the word, detached him.
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, C. Moncrieff, trans
It is because they imply the sacrifice of a more or less advantageous position to a purely private happiness
that, as a general rule, ‘impossible’ marriages are the happiest of all.
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, C. Moncrieff, trans.
917
“Oh, sir,” I assured M. de Norpois, when he told me that he would inform Gilberte and her mother how
much I admired them, “if you would do that, if you would speak of me to Mme. Swann, my whole life would
not be long enough for me to prove my gratitude, and that life would be all at your service.” …
From the beginning of my speech of thanks, with its chilling ardour, I had seen flitting across the face of
the Ambassador an expression of hesitation and dissatisfaction, and in his eyes that vertical, narrow, slanting
look, … that look which one addresses to the invisible audience whom one has within oneself at the moment
when one is saying something that one’s other audience, the person whom one has been addressing—myself,
in this instance—is not meant to hear. I realised in a flash that these phrases which I had pronounced, which,
feeble as they were when measured against the flood of gratitude that was coursing through me, had seemed
to me bound to touch M. de Norpois and to confirm his decision upon an intervention which would have
given him so little trouble and me so much joy, were perhaps (out of all those that could have been chosen,
with diabolical malice, by persons anxious to do me harm) the only ones that could result in making him
abandon his intention. Indeed, when he heard me speak, just as at the moment when a stranger with whom
we have been exchanging—quite pleasantly—our impressions, which we might suppose to be similar to his,
of the passers-by, whom we have agreed in regarding as vulgar, reveals suddenly the pathological abyss that
divides him from us by adding carelessly, as he runs his hand over his pocket: “What a pity, I haven’t got my
revolver here; I could have picked off the lot!” M. de Norpois, who knew that nothing was less costly or
more easy than to be commended to Mme. Swann and taken to her house, and saw that to me, on the
contrary, such favours bore so high a price and were consequently, no doubt, of great difficulty, thought that
the desire, apparently normal, which I had expressed must cloak some different thought, some suspect
intention, some pre-existent fault, on account of which, in the certainty of displeasing Mme. Swann, no one
hitherto had been willing to undertake the responsibility for conveying a message to her from me.
Immediately my mind had conceived this new idea of “the purest and most exalted manifestation of dramatic
art,” it, the idea, sped to join the imperfect pleasure which I had felt in the theatre, added to it a little of what
was lacking, and their combination formed something so exalting that I cried out within myself: “What a
great artist!” It may doubtless be argued that I was not absolutely sincere. But let us bear in mind, rather, the
numberless writers who, dissatisfied with the page which they have just written, if they read some eulogy of
the genius of Chateaubriand, or evoke the spirit of some great artist whose equal they aspire to be, by
humming to themselves, for instance, a phrase of Beethoven, the melancholy of which they compare with
what they have been trying to express in prose, are so filled with that idea of genius that they add it to their
own productions, when they think of them once again, see them no longer in the light in which at first they
appeared, and, hazarding an act of faith in the value of their work, say to themselves: “After all!” without
taking into account that, into the total which determines their ultimate satisfaction, they have introduced the
memory of marvellous pages of Chateaubriand which they assimilate to their own, but of which, in cold fact,
they are not the authors; … and let us then declare whether, in the communal life that is led by our ideas in
the enclosure of our minds, there is a single one of those that make us most happy which has not first sought,
a very parasite, and won from an alien but neighbouring idea the greater part of the strength that it originally
lacked.
918
When he spoke of my inclinations as no longer liable to change, he awakened in me two terrible suspicions.
The first was that (at a time when, every day, I regarded myself as standing upon the threshold of a life which
was still intact and would not enter upon its course until the following morning) my existence was already
begun, and that, furthermore, what was yet to follow would not differ to any extent from what had already
elapsed. The second suspicion, which was nothing more, really, than a variant of the first, was that I was not
situated somewhere outside the realm of Time, but was subject to its laws, just like the people in novels who,
for that reason, used to plunge me in such depression when I read of their lives, down at Combray, in the
fastness of my wicker sentry-box. In theory one is aware that the earth revolves, but in practice one does not
perceive it, the ground upon which one treads seems not to move, and one can live undisturbed. So it is with
Time in one’s life. … In saying of me, “He is no longer a child,” “His tastes will not change now,” and so
forth, my father had suddenly made me apparent to myself in my position in Time.
It is wiser for him, in the face of the implacable obstinacy of his mistress, to suppose that Fate intends to
crush him, and to make him die of an affection of the heart, than to seek any logical explanation.
I felt instinctively that my mind must make the sacrifices necessary to the glory of the Swanns and to my
own happiness, and by a stroke of internal authority, in spite of what I had just heard, I banished for ever
from my memory, as a good Catholic banishes Renan’s Vie de Jésus, the destroying thought that their house
was just an ordinary flat in which we ourselves might have been living.
“I don’t know, I’m sure; does that mean a lot, being Permanent Secretary?” answered Gilberte, who never let
slip an opportunity of displaying her own indifference to anything that gave her parents cause for vanity.
Sans doute dans ces coïncidences tellement parfaites, quand la réalité se replie et s’applique sur ce que nous
avons si longtemps rêvé, elle nous le cache entièrement, se confond avec lui, comme deux figures égales et
superposées qui n’en font plus qu’une, alors qu’au contraire, pour donner à notre joie toute sa signification,
nous voudrions garder à tous ces points de notre désir, dans le moment même où nous y touchons, — et pour
être plus certain que ce soit bien eux — le prestige d’être intangibles. Et la pensée ne peut même pas
reconstituer l’état ancien pour le confronter au nouveau, car elle n’a plus le champ libre: la connaissance que
nous avons faite, le souvenir des premières minutes inespérées, les propos que nous avons entendus, sont là
qui obstruent l’entrée de notre conscience, et commandent beaucoup plus les issues de notre mémoire que
celles de notre imagination, ils rétroagissent davantage sur notre passé que nous ne sommes plus maîtres de
voir sans tenir compte d’eux, que sur la forme, restée libre, de notre avenir. J’avais pu croire pendant des
années qu’aller chez Mme Swann était une vague chimère que je n’atteindrais jamais; après avoir passé un
quart d’heure chez elle, c’est le temps où je ne la connaissais pas qui était devenu chimérique et vague
comme un possible que la réalisation d’un autre possible a anéanti. Comment aurais-je encore pu rêver de la
salle à manger comme d’un lieu inconcevable, quand je ne pouvais pas faire un mouvement dans mon esprit
sans y rencontrer les rayons infrangibles qu’émettait à l’infini derrière lui, jusque dans mon passé le plus
ancien, le homard à l’américaine que je venais de manger? Et Swann avait dû voir, pour ce qui le concernait
lui-même se produire quelque chose d’analogue: car cet appartement où il me recevait pouvait être considéré
comme le lieu où étaient venus se confondre, et coïncider, non pas seulement l’appartement idéal que mon
imagination avait engendré, mais un autre encore, celui que l’amour jaloux de Swann, aussi inventif que mes
rêves, lui avait si souvent décrit, cet appartement commun à Odette et à lui qui lui était apparu si
inaccessible, tel soir où Odette l’avait ramené avec Forcheville prendre de l’orangeade chez elle; et ce qui
était venu s’absorber, pour lui, dans le plan de la salle à manger où nous déjeunions, c’était ce paradis
inespéré où jadis il ne pouvait sans trouble, imaginer qu’il aurait dit à leur maître d’hôtel ces mêmes mots:
«Madame est-elle prête?», que je lui entendais prononcer maintenant avec une légère impatience mêlée de
quelque satisfaction d’amour-propre. Pas plus que ne le pouvait sans doute Swann, je n’arrivais à connaître
mon bonheur et quand Gilberte elle-même s’écriait: «Qu’est-ce qui vous aurait dit que la petite fille que vous
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regardiez, sans lui parler, jouer aux barres, serait votre grande amie chez qui vous iriez tous les jours où cela
vous plairait», elle parlait d’un changement que j’étais bien obligé de constater du dehors, mais que je ne
possédais pas intérieurement, car il se composait de deux états que je ne pouvais, sans qu’ils cessassent d’être
distincts l’un de l’autre, réussir à penser à la fois.
It appears that in a coincidence as perfect as this was, when reality is folded over to cover the ideal of which
we have so long been dreaming, it completely hides that ideal, absorbing it in itself, as when two geometrical
figures that are congruent are made to coincide, so that there is but one, whereas we would rather, so as to
give its full significance to our enjoyment, preserve for all those separate points of our desire, at the very
moment in which we succeed in touching them, and so as to be quite certain that they are indeed themselves,
the distinction of being intangible. And our thought cannot even reconstruct the old state so as to confront
the new with it, for it has no longer a clear field: the acquaintance that we have made, the memory of those
first, unhoped-for moments, the talk to which we have listened are there now to block the passage of our
consciousness, and as they control the outlets of our memory far more than those of our imagination, they
react more forcibly upon our past, which we are no longer able to visualise without taking them into account,
than upon the form, still unshaped, of our future. I had been able to believe, year after year, that the right to
visit Mme. Swann was a vague and fantastic privilege to which I should never attain; after I had spent a
quarter of an hour in her drawing-room, it was the period in which I did not yet know her that was become
fantastic and vague like a possibility which the realisation of an alternative possibility has made impossible.
How was I ever to dream again of her dining-room as of an inconceivable place, when I could not make the
least movement in my mind without crossing the path of that inextinguishable ray cast backwards to infinity,
even into my own most distant past, by the lobster à l'Américaine which I had just been eating? And Swann
must have observed in his own case a similar phenomenon; for this house in which he entertained me might
be regarded as the place into which had flowed, to coincide and be lost in one another, not only the ideal
dwelling that my imagination had constructed, but another still, that which his jealous love, as inventive as
any fantasy of mine, had so often depicted to him, that dwelling common to Odette and himself which had
appeared so inaccessible once, on evenings when Odette had taken him home with Forcheville to drink
orangeade with her; and what had flowed in to be absorbed, for him, in the walls and furniture of the dining-
room in which we now sat down to luncheon was that unhoped-for paradise in which, in the old days, he
could not without a pang imagine that he would one day be saying to their butler those very words, "Is
Madame ready yet?" which I now heard him utter with a touch of impatience mingled with self-satisfaction.
No more than, probably, Swann himself could I succeed in knowing my own happiness, and when Gilberte
once broke out: "Who would ever have said that the little girl you watched playing prisoners' base, without
daring to speak to her, would one day be your greatest friend, and you would go to her house whenever you
liked?" she spoke of a change the occurrence of which I could verify only by observing it from without,
finding no trace of it within myself, for it was composed of two separate states on both of which I could not,
without their ceasing to be distinct from one another, succeed in keeping my thoughts fixed at one and the
same time.
Le Côté de Guermantes [The Guermantes Way] (1921)
Sodome et Gomorrhe [Sodom and Gomorrah] (1922)

La Prisonnière [The Captive] (1923)
Late every night, before leaving me, she used to slide her tongue between my lips like a portion of daily
bread, a nourishing food that had the almost sacred character of all flesh upon which the sufferings that we
have endured on its account have come in the to confer a sort of spiritual grace.
Marcel Proust, The Captive, C. Moncrieff, trans. (1982), p. 2
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All of a sudden, the sun would color this muslin glass, gild it, and, gently disclosing in my person an earlier
young man whom habit had long concealed, would intoxicate me with memories.
Marcel Proust, The Captive, C. Moncrieff, trans. (1982), pp. 2-3
Of the different persons who compose our personality, it is not the most obvious that are the most essential.
In myself, when ill health has succeeded in uprooting them one after another, there will still remain two or
three endowed with a hardier constitution than the rest, notably a certain philosopher who is happy only
when he has discovered between two works of art, between two sensations, a common element.
Mme Sazerat gave us one of those little luncheons of which she possesses the secret and which, as your poor
grandmother would have said, quoting Mme de Sévigné, deprive us of solitude without affording us
company.
As soon as she entered my room, she would spring upon my bed and sometimes would expiate upon my type
of intellect, would vow in a transport of sincerity that she would sooner die than leave me: this was on the
mornings when I had shaved before sending for her. She was one of those women who can never distinguish
the cause of what they feel. The pleasure they derive from a fresh complexion they explain to themselves by
the moral qualities of the man who seems to offer them a possibility of future happiness, which is capable,
however, of diminishing and becoming less compelling the longer he refrains from shaving.
La Fugitive [The Fugitive] (1925)

Le Temps retrouvé [Time Regained] (1927)
PAUL VALÉRY (1871-1945)

Nothing is rarer than giving no importance to things that have none.
Paul Valéry, cited in André Gide, Pretexts, J. O’Brien, ed. (1964) p. 319
All criticism is dominated by the outworn theory that the man is the cause of the work as in the eyes of the
law the criminal is the cause of the crime. Far rather are they both the effects.
Paul Valéry, Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci
In the eyes of those lovers of perfection, a work is never finished—a word that for them has no sense—but
abandoned; and this abandonment, whether to the flames or to the public (and which is the result of
weariness or an obligation to deliver) is a kind of an accident to them, like the breaking off of a reflection,
which fatigue, irritation, or something similar has made worthless.
Paul Valéry, Charmes. Le Cimetière Marin
Poetry is simply literature reduced to the essence of its active principle. It is purged of idols of every kind, of
realistic illusions, of any conceivable equivocation between the language of "truth" and the language of
"creation."
Paul Valéry, Littérature (1930)
A man’s true secrets are more secret to himself than they are to others.
Paul Valéry
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Our civilization is taking on, or tending to take on, the structure and properties of a machine. . . . This
machine will not tolerate less than world-wide rule; it will not allow a single human being to survive outside
its control, uninvolved in its functioning. … It cannot put up with ill-defined lives within its sphere of
operation. Its precision, which is its essence, cannot endure vagueness or social caprice; irregular situations
are incompatible with good running order. It cannot put up with anyone whose duties and circumstances are
not precisely specified.
Paul Valéry, cited in John Passmore, The Perfectibility of Man, p. 277
What is “form” for anyone else is “content” for me.

Paul Valéry
All criticism is dominated by the outworn theory that the man is the cause of the work as in the eyes of the
law the criminal is the cause of the crime. Far rather are they both the effects.
Paul Valéry, Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci
A work is never completed except by some accident such as weariness, satisfaction, the need to deliver, or
death: for, in relation to who or what is making it, it can only be one stage in a series of inner
transformations.
Paul Valéry, “Recollection,” Collected Works, vol. 1 (1972)
That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.
Paul Valéry, Tel Quel (1943)
Peuple stupide à qui ma puissance m’enchaine,

Hélas ! mon orgueil même a besoin de tes bras.
Paul Valéry
Foolish people, to whom my power enthralls me,
Alas! my very pride has need of your arms.
Paul Valéry, cited in Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (1972), p. 151
Regards sur le monde actuel [Reflections on the World Today] (1931)

The “determinist” swears that if we knew everything we should also be able to deduce and foretell the
conduct of every man in every circumstance, and that is obvious enough. But the expression “know
everything” means nothing.
Paul Valéry, Reflections on the World Today, F. Scarfe, trans. (1948), p. 42
A really free mind is scarcely attached to its opinions. If the mind cannot help giving birth to ... emotions and
affections which at first appear to be inseparable from them, it reacts against these intimate phenomena it
experiences against its will.
Great things are accomplished by men who are not conscious of the impotence of man. Such
insensitiveness is precious.
But we must admit that criminals are not unlike our heroes in this respect.
It is a sign of the times, and not a very good sign, that these days it is necessary—and not only necessary but
urgent—to interest minds in the fate of Mind, that is to say, in their own fate.
922
Since everything that lives is obliged to expend and receive life, there is an exchange of modifications
between the living creature and its environment.
And yet, once that vital necessity is satisfied, our species—a positively strange species—thinks it must
create for itself other needs and tasks besides that of preserving life. ...
Whatever may be the origin or cause of this curious deviation, the human species is engaged in an
immense adventure, an adventure whose objective and end it does not know. ...
The same senses, the same muscles, the same limbs—more, the same types of signs, the same instruments
of exchange, the same languages, the same modes of logic—enter into the most indispensable acts of our
lives, as they figure into the most gratuitous. ...
In short, man has not two sets of tools, he has only one, and this one set must serve him for the
preservation of his life and his physiological rhythm, and expend itself at other times on illusions and on the
labours of our great adventure. ...
The same muscles and nerves produce walking as well as dancing, exactly as our linguistic faculty enables
us to express our needs and ideas, while the same words and forms can be combined to produce works of
poetry. A single mechanism is employed in both cases for two entirely different purposes.
Paul Valéry, Reflections on the World Today, F. Scarfe, trans. (1948), pp. 158-159
There is a value called “mind” as there is a value oil, wheat, or gold. ... One can invest in that value, one
can “follow” it as they say on the stock exchange; one can watch its fluctuations in I know not what price list
which is the world’s general opinion of it. ... All these rising and falling values constitute the great market of
human affairs. And of these the unfortunate value mind does not stop falling.
The status of this value, mind, allows us, like other values, to classify men according to the confidence
they have in it.
There are some men who have set everything on it, all their hopes, all their life’s resources, their heart and
their faith.
There are others who are but faintly attached to it; for them it is an investment of minor interest whose
fluctuations interest them only slightly.
There are others who care very little for it, who have not put their vital wealth into the business.
And finally, it must be acknowledged that there are some who do their best to cheapen it.
You will notice how I use the language of the stock exchange. It might appear strange, when adapted to
spiritual things; but I believe there is none better, and perhaps no other terminology would be adequate to
express relationships of that kind, since spiritual as well as material economics, when one thinks about it, are
both effectively summed up in a simple conflict of estimates.
I have often been struck be the analogies which are apparent, without my soliciting them in the slightest
degree, between the life of the mind and its manifestations, and those of economics. Once one has noticed
this resemblance it is almost impossible not to follow it to its conclusions.
In both the economic and spiritual life, you will find above all the same notions of production and
consumption.
The producer, in the life of the mind, is a writer, an artist, a philosopher, or a man of learning; the
consumer is a reader, a listener, a spectator. ...
In each case one can consider equally both labour and capital; a civilization is capital, whose increase can
be pursued over hundreds of years like that of certain other forms of capital, and which absorbs its
accumulated interest.
Paul Valéry, Reflections on the World Today, F. Scarfe, trans. (1948), pp. 161-163 (translation modified)
When I speak of mind, I mean to indicate, at the present moment, an aspect and a property of collective life,
an aspect or property just as real as material wealth, and often just as precarious.
923
The commerce of minds was necessarily the first commerce in the world, the very first, that which began,
that which was necessarily initial, since before bartering things one must barter signs, and it is necessary
therefore that signs be instituted.
There is no market or exchange without language. The first instrument of all commerce is language.
Freedom of mind and mind itself have been most fully developed in regions where trade developed at the
same time. In all ages, without exception, every intense production of art, ideas, and spiritual values has
occurred in some locality where a remarkable degree of economic activity was also manifest.
Paul Valéry, Reflections on the World Today, F. Scarfe, trans. (1948), pp. 167-168
The same ship, the same hold, brought merchandise and gods.
I said that to invite minds to concern themselves with Mind and its destiny was a sign and symptom of the
times. Would that idea have occurred to me, had not a whole body of impressions been sufficiently
significant and powerful to reflect themselves in me, and for that reflection to become action? And that
action, which consists of expressing it in your presence, would not perhaps have been accomplished had I not
felt that my impressions were those of many other people, that the sensation of a diminution of mind, of a
menace to culture, of a twilight of the most pure gods was a sensation which imposed itself with increasing
strength on all those who are capable of feeling something in the order of superior values of which we are
speaking.
Knowledge must grow or perish; and it can grow only in a free mind, that is to say a mind which is
sufficiently strong to create its own discipline.
Knowledge ... is inseparable from that type of passion which causes us to place mind above anything else.
HEINRICH MANN (1871-1950)

An intellectual who accommodates the ruling caste betrays the spirit. For the spirit is not conservative and
grants no privileges. It dissolves; it equalizes; and it pushes through the ruins of hundreds of castles toward
the final fulfillment of truth and justice, and their completion, even if it is the completion of death.
Heinrich Mann, “Geist und Tat,” Essays (1960), p. 14, as cited in Russell Berman, Modern Culture and Critical Theory (1989), p. 45
LUDWIG KLAGES (1872-1956)

http://www.revilo-oliver.com/Writers/Klages/100.html
as translated by Joseph Pryce
The great masses, who have never been, in the history of mankind, more subject to hypnotic suggestion than
they are right now, have become the puppets of the “public opinion” that is engineered by the newspapers in
the service, it need hardly be emphasized, of the reigning powers of finance. What is printed in the morning
editions of the big city newspapers is the opinion of nine out of ten readers by nightfall. The United States of
America, whose more rapid “progress” enables us to predict the future on a daily basis, has pulled far ahead
of the pack when it comes to standardizing thought, work, entertainment, etc.
Ludwig Klages, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 4, p. 408
924
From Herbart, whose tradition was never completely interrupted in Austria, we receive the idea of species of
atoms of imagination which struggle for admission on the “threshold of consciousness.” … When this idea
was linked together with Nietzsche’s view, which attributes a decisive influence upon the course of the
activity of consciousness to the urges, and not least to the urges for self-esteem, a mythology of the so-called
unconscious arose. … This unconscious has a curious resemblance to a well-prepared defense lawyer; its
sole function is to use every kind of maneuver in order to persuade consciousness to believe in whatever
would be advantageous to the obvious, and even more to the secret, interests of the conscious entity, and
especially to shatter its belief in everything that might disturb his self-esteem. Nietzsche’s subtle and
profound investigations of the tactics of self-deception are here translated into the language of the tedious
office politics.
The meaning of the case, which the examiner requires for the validation of his doctrine, is imported by him,
and that he achieves success by virtue of a method which has the rare advantage that it never fails: to the
extent that the data that he elicits suit his view, he takes them literally; to the extent that they do not, he takes
them metaphorically.
When Novalis … pronounced the strangely Sibyline sentence: “The mysterious road leads inward,” he did
not mean to say that, like someone staring at his own navel, we should focus our gaze upon our own person
and away from the phenomenal world. He did mean to say that only through devotion to the world of images
could the eye of spirit be opened, whereby it could perceive amid the appearances the soul to whom they
appear; and in the same way it could perceive in the outer world the inner life that expresses its ever-
changing vitality there.
Eventually, the pre-dominant natural-scientific, “experimental” psychology drove the science of character
almost completely from the field. Works by French students, such as the “Characters” by Paulhan, and the
“Temperament and Character” by Fouillée, remained without influence. One began to hear on all sides that a
complete revolution in psychology was at hand.
There are superficial truths as well as profound errors.

Ludwig Klages, Die psychologischen Errungenschaften Nietzsches (1926)
In millions of hearts those ancient words are shining: love of the fatherland. Those words stand for an all-
conquering faith, a faith that arouses within us those feelings that are the strongest and deepest ties that bind
human society together. Nevertheless, we who—unhappily!—see through words to the facts behind them,
know that the state has long since usurped the rightful place of the fatherland.
H. E. Schroeder Ludwig Klages Die Geschichte Seines Lebens (1966)
Rhythmen und Runen

Christianity is the war against sleep and dream.
Ludwig Klages, Rhythmen und Runen (Leipzig: 1944), p. 253
A man who cannot climb a tree will boast of never having fallen out of one.
Everything purposeful is meaningless, and everything meaningful is purposeless.

The wakefulness of the Christian manifests a slavish impulse: the lurking wariness and prudence of
submissive souls.
925
Many first possess wealth, and are then possessed by it.
In Christianity, the priest conquered western mankind; in Socratism, this role was performed for us by the
schoolmaster. ... The priest gathers about him all the downcast natures. He attempts to elevate his flock by
poisoning life itself. The schoolmaster gathers about him those who are vitally impoverished, upon whom he
bestows an ersatz “rationality.” In this way he empties life of its substance.
Beauty is but the cloak of happiness. Where joy tarries, there also is beauty.
The egoist: I will. The altruist: I shall. The sentimentalist: you will. The ascetic: he wills (I must). Animal
man: it wills (I must). Elemental man: it happens (I must).
Die Grundlagen der Charakterkunde [The Science of Character] (1926)

Originally published as Prinzipien der Charakterologie (1910)
English: http://dispater.atspace.com/
Suppose that it were asked of psychology what would be the minimum of knowledge to which it ought in
fairness to offer a key; for example, what has been the nature of the change in mind since the classical
period; the distinction between civilized and “natural” man; of what vital facts the ruling religions, the
various castes and races are the index; what constitutes a statesman, a priest, a strategist, artist, or scientist;
what are the laws which govern jealousy, greed, or selfishness; how to lay hold of his enduring
characteristics behind the changing action of man, and how to lay hold of true motives behind the mask of
his politeness: suppose that these or similar questions were asked, then the inquirer would not only be
disappointed by the tendency of our day, but must needs believe himself to be asking in the wrong quarter.
For to his disappointment he would hear of sensations, perceptions, imaginations, judgments, Strivings, acts
of will, feelings—in short, of the commonest characteristics of mental existence, or of the nature of our
organs of sense (the admirable nature of whose physical structure is not disputed). He would be instructed
how conclusions are drawn; how something is remembered; how concepts are formed; and his study of
history, law, or religious consciousness, of the forms of mental sickness, or his interest in understanding
practical life would be enriched but little more than would be the botanical studies of a lover of flowers who
should be instructed that these are spatial bodies, fixed in their places, capable of growth, requiring certain
food, and dependent upon light.
Ludwig Klages, The Science of Character, W. Johnston, trans., p. 12
Under the influence of the curious belief that its favourite concepts—sensations, imaginations, feelings, and
the like—are the psychically simple, or data, atoms so to speak, of which the mind is properly composed,
psychology believes that it ought to reject as premature and unscientific any dealing with the questions of our
characterology. ... The case is similar to that of cytology, for it is certain that most of the processes with
which that science deals belong to categories which are proper partly to physics and partly to chemistry, but
are much more complicated, from the standpoint of those sciences, than any chemisms known to us. Here,
too, then, a warning might be made against the study of cells on the ground that chemistry is not yet
sufficiently advanced in order to cover with its formulae all the phases of germ-formation, cell-division, etc.
Fortunately, man’s search for knowledge has disregarded such impediments: with the best results it has made
the cell the centre of a science of its own.
[The reductionist character of today’s psychology] is the reason why today the science of psychology and the
soul-skilled wisdom of all times and peoples are strangers to one another.
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It must, moreover, be considered whether experiments can ever teach us what we ought to know first of all–
whether a man is envious, covetous or devoted, whether faithful and true of capricious and flighty, whether
of a happy disposition or gloomy, brave or cowardly, bold or timid—and what is the nature and operation of
these and similar qualities.
As fundamental qualities of personality [Kraepelin] posits capacity for training, for stimulation, and for
fatigue. ... The question here is, not the qualities of personality, but the inner causes of its effectiveness. And
even effectiveness is not estimated in its totality, for then initiative, inventiveness, intuition, and what else
borders on the sphere of the creative impulses would have to be investigated: here the only quarry is, the
conditions of power to work, as indeed is proper to an age which has long grown unaccustomed to the view
of great individualities, and has replaced nobility of blood by the dubious honour of professional fitness.
Man, as such, is no longer seen or known, but only an intellectual mechanism, the servant of an external
purpose, and having for criterion a hypothetical “end”.
A Renaissance busied with psychology might perhaps have considered man’s faculty of action as worthy of
investigation; a mediæval period, the strength of his faith, a classical period—in part at least—his capacity
for happiness. Such traits have lost their value for the modern psychologist; they are not even regarded at all,
and industry has remained as the only virtue—with its satellites, ambition and success—a conception of
virtue which the Ancients would never have hesitated to relegate to the lowest of men, to pariahs and to
slaves.
Science should remain neutral, and turn a deaf ear to the suggestions of an ochlocratic ideology. But instead,
it is completely hypnotized by the latter’s standards of value, and the practical nature of its apparatus is
completely in harmony with tendentious partiality in the impulses which point the way. But this does not
apply to psychology alone, but to all the philosophy of the last centuries.
Among the unpleasant results [of modern psychology] we shall always find an amazing ignorance of the
urges and passions which, as “lower”, are hardly considered worthy of notice; helplessness in the face of the
unconscious, or the psychical substratum even of reasonable actions, of which for years we learned nothing
save the vague “laws of association”; uncritical acceptance of moral judgments, which at the least
encourages a superficial classification; a foolish misinterpretation of every non-social human type as a
differential form of unnatural “sport”[?]; and complete failure before the problem of individuality or inner
multiplicity of times, peoples, castes, and strata of culture.
[Modern psychology] appears as the sickly offspring of average common sense when it is taken as what it
professes to be—a science of the inner life. The entire achievements of the so-called science in this respect is
outweighed by a single page of Goethe’s or of Jean Paul’s psychology; and it is impossible to evade the bitter
truth which Novalis already has summed up, when he says that so-called psychology is one of those idols
which have usurped the place in the sanctuary where true images of the gods should stand.
Nietzsche, … unlike the poets, does not bury under flowery meadows of fanciful sentiment the outlines of
fire-born truths.
The profundity of truth varies with the seeing power of the spirit which seeks it.
927
We must have the whole before we can successfully undertake to study the parts. It is possible, of course, to
analyse the former into the latter, but to compose the former out of the latter is impossible, unless the idea
which is to guide in the process of composition has already been extracted from the whole.
A special effort on the part of modern students was needed in order to overcome the heresy that a knowledge
of the inner life is increased by investigation of the nervous system. No more than twenty years ago it was
seriously believed that a study of the anatomy of the brain afforded instruction in psychical processes.
“Intuition” must of course necessarily be of the body; but the symbolism of the body is so far from
coinciding with any concepts of the anatomy of the brain that the latter must be completely forgotten if we
would reach the former.
JOHN COWPER POWYS (1872-1963)

My answer to the question "Why do we philosophize?" is as follows. We philosophize for the same reason
that we move and speak and laugh and eat and love. In other words, we philosophize because man is a
philosophical animal.… We may be as sceptical as we please. Our very scepticism is the confession of an
implicit philosophy.
John Cowper Powys, The Complex Vision (1920), Chapter 1
One always feels that a merely educated man holds his philosophical views as if they were so many pennies
in his pocket. They are separate from his life. Whereas with a cultured man there is no gap or lacuna between
his opinions and his life. Both are dominated by the same organic, inevitable fatality. They are what he is.
John Cowper Powys, The Meaning of Culture (1929), p. 19
The permanent mental attitude which the sensitive intelligence derives from philosophy is an attitude that
combines extreme reverence with limitless skepticism.
John Cowper Powys, The Meaning of Culture (1929), pp. 27-28
Every day that we allow some little physical infirmity or worldly worry to come between us and our
obstinate, indignant, defiant exultation, we are weakening our genius for life.
John Cowper Powys, The Meaning of Culture (1929), p. 134
Our rulers at the present day, with their machines and their preachers, are all occupied in putting into our
heads the preposterous notion that activity rather than contemplation is the object of life.
John Cowper Powys, In Defence of Sensuality (1930), p. 136
BERTRAND RUSSELL (1872-1970)

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one
maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.
Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 13: Freedom in Society
A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.
Bertrand Russell, On the Nature of Acquaintance: Neutral Monism (1914)
The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent
are full of doubt. Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to
combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points. This was not always the case.
Bertrand Russell, "The Triumph of Stupidity" (1933), Mortals and Others: Bertrand Russell's American Essays, 1931-1935 (1998), p. 28
928
Hitherto the people attracted to philosophy have been mostly those who loved the big generalizations, which
were all wrong, so that few people with exact minds have taken up the subject.
Bertrand Russell, Letter to Ottoline Morrell, December 1912, cited in R. Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, Penguin, 1991, p. 75
Contempt for philosophy, if developed to the point at which it becomes systematic, is itself a philosophy.
Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.
Bertrand Russell
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

Bertrand Russell
It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could
support this.
Bertrand Russell
Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and
science as our guidelines.
Bertrand Russell
I told him he ought not simply to state what he thinks true, but to give arguments for it, but he said that
arguments spoil its beauty, and that he would feel like he is dirtying a flower with muddy hands.
Bertrand Russell, describing Wittgenstein, cited in Paul Strathern, Wittgenstein in 90 Minutes
I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.

Bertrand Russell
A way of life cannot be successful so long as it is mere intellectual conviction. It must be deeply felt, deeply
believed, dominant even in dreams.
Bertrand Russell
The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Bertrand Russell
A drop of water is not immortal; it can be resolved into oxygen and hydrogen. If, therefore, a drop of water
were to maintain that it had a quality of aqueousness which would survive its dissolution we should be
inclined to be skeptical.
Bertrand Russell, What I believe
I do not think that evils can be cured by blind hatred of their perpetrators. This will only lead us to become
like them. … It is not by blind rage that evils will be prevented.
Bertrand Russell
Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and
science as our guidelines.
Bertrand Russell
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional
humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor all their own.
Bertrand Russell
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
Bertrand Russell
929
There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the
help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he
believes them only because they are comforting. But he dares not face this thought! Moreover, since he is
aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.
Bertrand Russell
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of
the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
Bertrand Russell
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser
people so full of doubts.
Bertrand Russell
I mean by intellectual integrity the habit of deciding vexed questions in accordance with the evidence, or of
leaving them undecided where the evidence is inconclusive. This virtue, though it is underestimated by
almost all adherents of any system of dogma, is to my mind of the very greatest social importance and far
more likely to benefit the world than Christianity or any other system of organized beliefs.
Bertrand Russell
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect
ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some others.
Bertrand Russell
The essence of the liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held but in how they are held: instead of
being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any
moment lead to their abandonment. This is the way opinions are held in science, as opposed to the way in
which they are held in theology.
Bertrand Russell
Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain
about something which, in fact, was false.
Bertrand Russell
William James used to preach “the will to believe”. For my part, I should wish to preach “the will to doubt”.
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite.
Bertrand Russell
Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather
than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth
and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to
disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our
most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is
intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking
nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred
truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence
would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an
enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.
Bertrand Russell
A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what
he hears into something he can understand.
Bertrand Russell
930
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy; I mean
that if you are happy you will be good.
Bertrand Russell
A narcissist, for example, inspired by the homage paid to great painters, may become an art student; but, as
painting is for him a mere means to an end, the technique never becomes interesting … The result is failure
and disappointment, with ridicule instead of the expected adulation. … All serious success in work depends
upon some genuine interest. … Consequently, the man whose sole concern with the world is that is shall
admire him is not likely to achieve his object.
Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness, p. 20
Pure mathematics consists entirely of assertions to the effect that, if such and such a proposition is true of
anything, then such and such another proposition is true of that thing. It is essential not to discuss whether the
first proposition is really true, and not to mention what the anything is, of which it is supposed to be true.
Both these points would belong to applied mathematics. ... If our hypothesis is about anything, and not about
some one or more particular things, then our deductions constitute mathematics. Thus, mathematics may be
defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is
true.
Bertrand Russell, “Mathematics and the Metaphysicians” http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/22895/
In the beginnings, everything is self-evident; and it is very hard to see whether one self-evident proposition
follows from another or not. Obviousness is always the enemy to correctness. Hence we invent some new
and difficult symbolism, in which nothing seems obvious. Then we set up certain rules for operating on the
symbols, and the whole thing becomes mechanical. In this way we find out what must be taken as premiss
and what can be demonstrated or defined.
Bertrand Russell, “Mathematics and the Metaphysicians”
In Praise of Idleness (1935)

http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other
such matter; second, telling other people to do so. ... Throughout Europe, though not in America, there is a
third class of men, more respected than either of the classes of workers. There are men who, through
ownership of land, are able to make others pay for the privilege of being allowed to exist and to work. These
landowners are idle, and I might therefore be expected to praise them. Unfortunately, their idleness is only
rendered possible by the industry of others; indeed their desire for comfortable idleness is historically the
source of the whole gospel of work. The last thing they have ever wished is that others should follow their
example.
Bertrand Russell, “In Praise of Idleness”
The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.
The conception of duty, speaking historically, has been a means used by the holders of power to induce
others to live for the interests of their masters rather than for their own. Of course the holders of power
conceal this fact from themselves by managing to believe that their interests are identical with the larger
interests of humanity. Sometimes this is true; Athenian slave-owners, for instance, employed part of their
leisure in making a permanent contribution to civilization which would have been impossible under a just
economic system. Leisure is essential to civilization, and in former times leisure for the few was only
rendered possible by the labors of the many. But their labors were valuable, not because work is good, but
because leisure is good. And with modern technique it would be possible to distribute leisure justly without
injury to civilization.
931
Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They
make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by
which the same number of men can make twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more
will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would
take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual
world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some
employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There
is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still
overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of
being a universal source of happiness.
In America men often work long hours even when they are well off. ... Oddly enough, while they wish their
sons to work so hard as to have no time to be civilized, they do not mind their wives and daughters having no
work at all. The snobbish admiration of uselessness, which, in an aristocratic society, extends to both sexes,
is, under a plutocracy, confined to women; this, however, does not make it any more in agreement with
common sense.
The wise use of leisure, it must be conceded, is a product of civilization and education. A man who has
worked long hours all his life will become bored if he becomes suddenly idle. But without a considerable
amount of leisure a man is cut off from many of the best things. There is no longer any reason why the bulk
of the population should suffer this deprivation; only a foolish asceticism, usually vicarious, makes us
continue to insist on work in excessive quantities now that the need no longer exists.
The necessity of keeping the poor contented ... has led the rich, for thousands of years, to preach the dignity
of labor, while taking care themselves to remain undignified in this respect.
For ages, the rich and their sycophants ... have tried to make manual workers believe that there is some
special nobility about altering the position of matter in space.
The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its
own sake.
Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease
and security, not of a life of arduous struggle.
Problems of Philosophy (1912)

Utility does not belong to philosophy. If the study of philosophy has any value at all for others than students
of philosophy, it must be only indirectly, through its effects upon the lives of those who study it
Bertrand Russell, Problems of Philosophy, Chapter XV “The Value of Philosophy”
It is exclusively among the goods of the mind that the value of philosophy is to be found; and only those who
are not indifferent to these goods can be persuaded that the study of philosophy is not a waste of time.
The ‘practical’ man, as this word is often used, is one who recognizes only material needs, who realizes
that men must have food for the body, but is oblivious of the necessity of providing food for the mind.
932
Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions since no definite answers
can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these
questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the
dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness
of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that
union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.
Physical science, through the medium of inventions, is useful to innumerable people who are wholly ignorant
of it; thus the study of physical science is to be recommended, not only, or primarily, because of the effect on
the student, but rather because of the effect on mankind in general. Thus utility does not belong to
philosophy. If the study of philosophy has any value at all for others than students of philosophy, it must be
only indirectly, through its effects upon the lives of those who study it.
As definite knowledge concerning any subject becomes possible, this subject ceases to be called philosophy,
and becomes a separate science.
The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very uncertainty. The man who has no tincture
of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual
beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-
operation or consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become definite, finite,
obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected.
Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, [Philosophy] greatly increases our
knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never
travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar
things in an unfamiliar aspect.
Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is
able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom.
The life of the instinctive man is shut up within the circle of his private interests: family and friends may be
included, but the outer world is not regarded except as it may help or hinder what comes within the circle of
instinctive wishes. In such a life there is something feverish and confined, in comparison with which the
philosophic life is calm and free.
All acquisition of knowledge is an enlargement of the Self, but this enlargement is best attained when it is
not directly sought. It is obtained when the desire for knowledge is alone operative, by a study which does
not wish in advance that its objects should have this or that character, but adapts the Self to the characters
which it finds in its objects. This enlargement of Self is not obtained when, taking the Self as it is, we try to
show that the world is so similar to this Self that knowledge of it is possible without any admission of what
seems alien.
933
There is a widespread philosophical tendency towards the view which tells us that Man is the measure of all
things, that truth is man-made, that space and time and the world of universals are properties of the mind, and
that, if there be anything not created by the mind, it is unknowable and of no account for us. This view, if our
previous discussions were correct, is untrue; but in addition to being untrue, it has the effect of robbing
philosophic contemplation of all that gives it value, since it fetters contemplation to Self. What it calls
knowledge is not a union with the not-Self, but a set of prejudices, habits, and desires, making an
impenetrable veil between us and the world beyond.
The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from
common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up
in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to
become definite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are
contemptuously rejected. As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we find … that even the most
everyday things lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers can be given.
Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays (1917)

http://www.archive.org/stream/mysticism00russuoft#page/n9/mode/2up
“Mysticism and Logic” (1917)
The greatest men who have been philosophers have felt the need both of science and of mysticism: the
attempt to harmonise the two was what made their life, and what always must, for all its arduous uncertainty,
make philosophy, to some minds, a greater thing than either science or religion. ...
Science ... might have inspired [Heraclitus’] famous saying to which Plato alludes: “You cannot step twice
into the same rivers; the fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.” But we find also another statement
among the extant fragments: “We step and do no step into the same rivers; we are and are not.”
The comparison of this statement, which is mystical, with the one quoted by Plato, which is scientific,
shows how intimately the two tendencies are blended in the system of Heraclitus. Mysticism is, in essence,
little more than a certain intensity and depth of feeling in regard to what is believed about the universe; and
this kind of feeling leads Heraclitus, on the basis of his science, to strangely poignant sayings concerning life
and the world. ...
The facts of science, as they appeared to him, fed the flame in his soul, and in its light, he saw into
the depths of the world.
Bertrand Russell, “Mysticism and Logic” (1917)
The man of science, whatever his hopes may be, must lay them aside while he studies nature; and the
philosopher, if he is to achieve truth must do the same. Ethical considerations can only appear when the truth
has been ascertained: they can and should appear as determining our feeling towards the truth, and our
manner of ordering our lives in view of the truth, but not as themselves dictating what the truth is to be.
After Socrates has explained that there is an idea of the good, but not of such things as hair and mud and dirt,
Parmenides advises him "not to despise even the meanest things," and this advice shows the genuine
scientific temper. It is with this impartial temper that the mystic's apparent insight into a higher reality and a
hidden good has to be combined if philosophy is to realise its greatest possibilities. And it is failure in this
respect that has made so much of idealistic philosophy thin, lifeless, and insubstantial. It is only in marriage
with the world that our ideals can bear fruit: divorced from it, they remain barren. But marriage with the
world is not to be achieved by an ideal which shrinks from fact, or demands in advance that the world shall
conform to its desires.
934
“The study of mathematics” (1902)
http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/22896/
In regard to every form of human activity it is necessary that the question should be asked from time to time,
What is its purpose and ideal? In what way does it contribute to the beauty of human existence? As respects
those pursuits which contribute only remotely, by providing the mechanism of life, it is well to be reminded
that not the mere fact of living is to be desired, but the art of living in the contemplation of great things.
Bertrand Russell, “The study of mathematics”
To those who inquire as to the purpose of mathematics, the usual answer will be that it facilitates the
making of machines, the travelling from place to place, and the victory over foreign nations, whether
in war or commerce. ... The reasoning faculty itself is generally conceived, by those who urge its
cultivation, as merely a means for the avoidance of pitfalls and a help in the discovery of rules for the
guidance of practical life.
Bertrand Russell, “The study of mathematics”
Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like
that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting
or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The
true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than man, which is the touchstone of the highest
excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.
Bertrand Russell, “The Study of mathematics”
Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the
possible; but the world of pure reason knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to
the creative activity embodying in splendid edifices the passionate aspiration after the perfect from
which all great work springs. Remote from human passions, remote even from the pitiful facts of
nature, the generations have gradually created an ordered cosmos, where pure thought can dwell as in
its natural home, and where one, at least, of our nobler impulses can escape from the dreary exile of
the actual world.
Literature embodies what is general in particular circumstances whose universal significance shines through
their individual dress; but mathematics endeavours to present whatever is most general in its purity, without
any irrelevant trappings.
In geometry, instead of the tedious apparatus of fallacious proofs for obvious truisms which constitutes the
beginning of Euclid, the learner should be allowed at first to assume the truth of everything obvious, and
should be instructed in the demonstrations of theorems which are at once startling and easily verifiable by
actual drawing, such as those in which it is shown that three or more lines meet in a point. In this way belief
is generated; it is seen that reasoning may lead to startling conclusions, which nevertheless the facts will
verify; and thus the instinctive distrust of whatever is abstract or rational is gradually overcome.
In algebra the mind is first taught to consider general truths, truths which are not asserted to hold only of this
or that particular thing, but of any one of a whole group of things. It is in the power of understanding and
discovering such truths that the mastery of the intellect over the whole world of things actual and possible
resides; and ability to deal with the general as such is one of the gifts that a mathematical education should
bestow.
935
Far from producing a fearless belief in reason, a bold rejection of whatever failed to fulfil the strictest
requirements of logic, a mathematical training, during the past two centuries, encouraged the belief that
many things, which a rigid inquiry would reject as fallacious, must yet be accepted because they work in
what the mathematician calls "practice." By this means, a timid, compromising spirit, or else a sacerdotal
belief in mysteries not intelligible to the profane, has been bred where reason alone should have ruled. All
this it is now time to sweep away; let those who wish to penetrate into the arcana of mathematics be taught at
once the true theory in all its logical purity.
It is well to study afresh the elementary portions of mathematics, asking no longer merely whether a given
proposition is true, but also how it grows out of the central principles of logic.
In the great majority of mathematical text-books there is a total lack of unity in method and of systematic
development of a central theme. Propositions of very diverse kinds are proved by whatever means are
thought most easily intelligible, and much space is devoted to mere curiosities which in no way contribute to
the main argument. But in the greatest works, unity and inevitability are felt as in the unfolding of a drama;
in the premisses a subject is proposed for consideration, and in every subsequent step some definite advance
is made towards mastery of its nature. The love of system, of interconnection, which is perhaps the inmost
essence of the intellectual impulse, can find free play in mathematics as nowhere else. The learner who feels
this impulse must not be repelled by an array of meaningless examples or distracted by amusing oddities, but
must be encouraged to dwell upon central principles, to become familiar with the structure of the various
subjects which are put before him, to travel easily over the steps of the more important deductions. In this
way a good tone of mind is cultivated, and selective attention is taught to dwell by preference upon
what is weighty and essential.
The true method of discovery in symbolic logic, and probably also the best method for introducing the study
to a learner acquainted with other parts of mathematics, is the analysis of actual examples of deductive
reasoning, with a view to the discovery of the principles employed. These principles, for the most part, are so
embedded in our ratiocinative instincts, that they are employed quite unconsciously, and can be dragged to
light only by much patient effort. But when at last they have been found, they are seen to be few in number,
and to be the sole source of everything in pure mathematics. The discovery that all mathematics follows
inevitably from a small collection of fundamental laws is one which immeasurably enhances the intellectual
beauty of the whole; to those who have been oppressed by the fragmentary and incomplete nature of most
existing chains of deduction this discovery comes with all the overwhelming force of a revelation; like a
palace emerging from the autumn mist as the traveller ascends an Italian hill-side, the stately storeys of the
mathematical edifice appear in their due order and proportion, with a new perfection in every part.
Conquest of Happiness (1930)

The habit of looking to the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what it
will bring forth is a pernicious one. There can be no value in the whole unless there is value in the
parts.
Bertrand Russell, Conquest of Happiness, chapter 2
For my part, the thing I would wish to obtain from money would be leisure with security. But what the
typical modern man desires to get with it is more money, with a view to ostentation, splendour, and the
outshining of those who have hitherto been his equals.
936
Conventional people are roused to fury by departures from convention, largely because they regard such
departures as a criticism of themselves.
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison,
but anything beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
CHARLES PÉGUY (1873-1914)

Homer is new and fresh this morning, and nothing, perhaps, is so old and tired as today’s newspaper.
Charles Péguy
Life holds only one tragedy, ultimately: not to have been a saint.
Charles Péguy
Qui ne gueule pas la vérité, quand il sait la vérité, se fait toujours le complice des menteurs et des faussaires.
He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.
Charles Péguy, Basic Verities, A. & J. Green, trans. (New York: 1943), p. 47
Il faut toujours dire ce que l’on voit. Surtout il faut toujours, ce qui est plus difficile, voir ce que l’on voit.
One must always tell what one sees. Above all, which is more difficult, one must always see what one sees.
Un mot n’est pas le même dans un écrivain et dans un autre. L’un se l’arrache du ventre. L’autre le tire de la
poche de son pardessus.
A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of
his overcoat pocket.
Je crois que l’on trouverait aisément dans l’histoire du monde un très grand nombre d’exemples de personnes
qui apercevant soudain la vérité, la saisissant, ou l’ayant cherchée l’ayant trouvée, rompent délibérément
avec leurs intérêts, sacrifient leurs intérêts, rompent délibérément avec leurs amitiés politiques et même avec
leurs amitiés sentimentales. Je ne crois pas que l’on trouve beaucoup d’exemples d’hommes qui ayant
accompli ce premier sacrifice, … aient eu le deuxième courage de sacrifier aussi délibérément leurs
deuxièmes intérêts, leurs deuxièmes amitiés. … Et pourtant il faut que la vie de l’honnête homme soit une
apostasie et une renégation perpétuelle, il faut que l’honnête homme soit un perpétuel renégat, il faut que la
vie di l’honnête homme soit une infidélité perpétuelle. Car l’homme qui veut demeurer fidèle à la vérité doit
se faire incessamment infidèle à toutes les incessantes, successives, infatigables renaissantes erreurs. Et
l’homme qui veut demeurer fidèle à la justice doit se faire incessamment infidèle aux injustices
inépuisablement triomphantes.
I believe that in the history of the world one could easily find a very great number of examples of persons
who, suddenly perceiving the truth, seize it. Or, having sought and found it, deliberately break with their
interests, sacrifice their interests, break deliberately with their political friendships and even their sentimental
friendships. I do not believe that one finds many examples of men who, having accomplished this first
sacrifice, have had the second courage to sacrifice their second interests, their second friendships. … The life
of the honest man must be an apostasy and a perpetual desertion. The honest man must be a perpetual
renegade, the life of an honest man must be a perpetual infidelity. For the man who wishes to remain faithful
to truth must make himself continually unfaithful to all the continual, successive, indefatigable renascent
errors. And the man who wishes to remain faithful to justice must make himself continually unfaithful to
inexhaustibly triumphant injustices.
Charles Péguy, Basic Verities, A. & J. Green, trans. (New York: 1943), pp. 48-51
937
C’est le propre du génie que de procéder par les idées le plus simples.
It is in the innate character of genius to proceed by the simplest ideas.
Nous avons connu un temps où quand une bonne femme disait un mot, c’était sa race même, son être, son
peuple qui parlait. Qui sortait. Et quand un ouvrier allumait sa cigarette, ce qu’il allait vous dire ce n’était pas
ce que le journaliste a dit dans le journal de ce matin.
We have known the time when, if a simple woman uttered a word, it was her race itself, her being, her
people, which spoke, which came out. And when a workman lit his cigarette, what he was about to tell you
was not what a journalist had said in that morning’s paper.
De mon temps … au fond, on ne comptait pas. Et on n’avait pas à compter. …Il n’y avait pas cette espèce
d’affreuse strangulation économique qui à présent d’année en année nous donne un tour du plus. … Il n’y
avait pas cet étranglement économique d’aujourd’hui, cette strangulation scientifique, froide, rectangulaire,
régulière, propre, nette, sans une bavure, implacable, sage, commune, constante, commode comme une vertu,
où il n’y a rien à dire et où celui qui est étranglé a si évidemment tort. … Ces gens-là eussent rougi de notre
meilleur ton d’aujourd’hui, qui est le ton bourgeois. Et aujourd’hui tout le monde est bourgeois.
In my day, … no one reckoned. And there was nothing to reckon about. … The atrocious economic
strangulation which year by year tightens its grip on us did not exist. … The economic strangulation of
today, that scientific, cold, rectangular, clean, clearcut, seamless, implacable, wise, common, constant,
convenient-as-a-virtue strangulation; that strangulation where there is nothing to be said and where the
strangled one is so obviously in the wrong, did not exist. … The people of those days would have blushed for
our best tone of today, which is the bourgeois tone. And today, everyone is bourgeois.
Travailler était leur joie même, et la racine profonde de leur être. Il y avait un honneur incroyable du travail,
le plus beau de tous les honneurs, le plus chrétien, le seul peut-être qui se tienne debout. … Nous avons
connu cette piété de l’ouvrage bien faite poussée, maintenue jusqu’à ses plus extrêmes exigences. … Que
reste-t-il aujourd’hui de tout cela ? Comment a-t-on fait, … du seul peuple qui aimait le travail pour le
travail, et pour l’honneur, et pour travailler, … comment a-t-on pu en faire ce peuple qui sur un chantier met
toute son étude à ne pas en fiche un coup.
Work for them was joy itself and the deep root of their being. And the reason of their being. There was an
incredible honor in work, the most beautiful of all the honors. … We have known this devotion to l’ouvrage
bien faite, to the good job, carried and maintained to its most exacting claims. … Today, what remains of all
this? How has … the only people that loved to work … been transformed into one which in the workyard
takes the greatest pains not to lift a hand?
Dans ce bel honneur de métier convergeaient tous le plus beaux, tous le plus nobles sentiments. Une dignité.
Une fierté. Ne jamais rien demander à personne, disaient-ils. … Un ouvrier de ce temps-là ne savait pas ce
que c’est que quémander. C’est la bourgeoisie qui quémande. C’est la bourgeoisie qui, les faisant bourgeois,
leur a appris a quémander.
Towards this fine honor of a trade converged all the finest, all the most noble sentiments—dignity, pride.
Never ask anything of anyone, they used to say. … In those days a workman did not know what it was to
solicit. It is the bourgeoisie who, turning the workmen into bourgeois, have taught them to solicit.
938
These bygone workmen did not serve, they worked. They had an absolute honor, which is honor proper.
A chair rung had to be well made. That was an understood thing. That was the first thing. It wasn’t that the
chair rung had to be well made for the salary or on account of the salary. It wasn’t that it was well made for
the boss, nor for connoisseurs, nor for the boss’ clients. It had to be well made itself, in itself, for itself, in its
very self. A tradition coming, springing from deep within the race, a history, an absolute, an honor,
demanded that this chair rung be well made. Every part of the chair which could not be seen was just as
perfectly made as the parts which could be seen. The was the selfsame principal of cathedrals. … There was
no question of being seen or of not being seen. It was the innate being of work which needed to be well done.
ALBERT JAY NOCK (1873-1945)

The practice of reflective thought has virtually ceased from among us. The whole current of modern life is
against it. It is a difficult practice at best; few are able to do it, few have ever been able to do it; and hence it
is heavily disparaged by a society whose development is directed and controlled by the disabled masses of
mankind.
Albert Jay Nock, Introduction to Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 4
My chief satisfaction in recalling my conversations with A. B. is in the consciousness that never were they
trivial; never did they concern themselves with matters of the passing moment, with the day’s news, with
personalities, politics, the probable course and prospects of business—none of these things did we ever
mention. Nor did we deliberately avoid them; we simply had on our minds too much else which seemed
more important to talk about.
The sound Pantagruelist knows how and when to treat grave subjects lightly in order to establish a clearer
sense of their relative importance and a proportionate respect for their seriousness, never misappraising the
one, or misapplying the other; the attainment of this knowledge is indeed perhaps the prime object and
intention of the Pantagruelian philosophy.
Albert Jay Nock, Introduction to Meditations in Wall Street (1940), pp. 10-11
He had fallen into the bad habit, which latterly he tried with fair success to give up, of reading for
corroboration of some view or position of his own, instead of reading for what the author had to give him;
and this habit led him often to over-disparage an author who had failed him on some point, usually one
which was relatively trivial. In this way he lost incalculably; he threw out a great many babies with the
bathwater.
Memoirs of a Superfluous Man

Universal literacy … puts into a people’s hands an instrument which very few can use, but which everyone
supposes himself fully able to use; and the mischief thus wrought is very great.
Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (Chicago: 1964), p. 49
My first impression of politics was unfavorable. ... Obviously a decent person could find no place in politics,
not even the place of the ordinary voter, for the forces of ignorance, brutality and indecency would
outnumber him ten to one.
Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (Chicago: 1964), p. 52
There was an anomaly here. We were all supposed to respect our government and its laws, yet by all
accounts those who were charged with the conduct of government and the making of its laws were most
dreadful swine; indeed, the very conditions of their tenure precluded their being anything else.
Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (Chicago: 1964), pp. 52-53
939
Mr. Cram’s thesis is that we do not behave like human beings because the great majority of us, the masses of
mankind, are not human beings. We have all along assumed that the zoological classification of man is also a
competent psychical classification; that all creatures having the physical attributes which put them in the
category Homo sapiens also have the psychical attributes which put them in the category of human beings;
and this, Mr. Cram says, is wholly unwarranted and an error of the first magnitude. Consequently we have all
along been putting expectation upon the masses of Homo sapiens which they are utterly incapable of
meeting. … My change of philosophical base had one curious and wholly unforeseen effect, though it
followed logically enough. Since then I have found myself quite unable either to hate anybody or to lose
patience with anybody. … My change of base brought me into a much more philosophical temper. … One
can hate human beings, at least I could,—I hated a lot of them when that is what I thought they were,—but
one can’t hate the sub-human creatures or be contemptuous of them, wish them ill, regard them unkindly. If
an animal is treacherous, you avoid him but can’t hate him, for that is the way he is. … The mass-men who
are princes, presidents, politicians, legislators, can no more transcend their psychical capacities than any
wolf, fox or polecat in the land.
Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (Chicago: 1964), pp. 136-139
[describing Ralph A Cram’s essay “Why We Do Not Behave Like Human Beings” in Convictions and Controversies (Marshall Jones Co., Boston)
and his change of disposition after accepting its thesis]
RABINDRANATH TAGORE (1861-1941)

Love is the perfection of consciousness. We do not love because we do not comprehend, or rather we do not
comprehend because we do not love. For love is the ultimate meaning of everything around us. It is not a
mere sentiment; it is truth; it is the joy that is at the root of all creation. It is the white light of pure
consciousness.
Rabindranath Tagore, The Realisation of Life (1916)
Of course man is useful to man, because his body is a marvellous machine and his mind an organ of
wonderful efficiency. But he is a spirit as well, and this spirit is truly known only by love. When we define a
man by the market value of the service we can expect of him, we know him imperfectly. With this limited
knowledge of him it becomes easy for us to be unjust to him and to entertain feelings of triumphant self-
congratulation when, on account of some cruel advantage on our side, we can get out of him much more than
we have paid for. But when we know him as a spirit we know him as our own. We at once feel that cruelty to
him is cruelty to ourselves, to make him small is stealing from our own humanity.
Man is not entirely an animal. He aspires to a spiritual vision, which is the vision of the whole truth. This
gives him the highest delight, because it reveals to him the deepest harmony that exists between him and his
surroundings. It is our desires that limit the scope of our self-realisation, hinder our extension of
consciousness, and give rise to sin, which is the innermost barrier that keeps us apart from our God, setting
up disunion and the arrogance of exclusiveness. For sin is not one mere action, but it is an attitude of life
which takes for granted that our goal is finite, that our self is the ultimate truth, and that we are not all
essentially one but exist each for his own separate individual existence.
We never can have a true view of man unless we have a love for him. Civilisation must be judged and prized,
not by the amount of power it has developed, but by how much it has evolved and given expression to, by its
laws and institutions, the love of humanity. The first question and the last which it has to answer is, Whether
and how far it recognises man more as a spirit than a machine?
Compulsion is not indeed the final appeal to man, but joy is.
940
In the region of nature, which is the region of diversity, we grow by acquisition; in the spiritual world, which
is the region of unity, we grow by losing ourselves, by uniting. Gaining a thing, as we have said, is by its
nature partial, it is limited only to a particular want; but being is complete, it belongs to our wholeness, it
springs not from any necessity but from our affinity with the infinite, which is the principle of perfection that
we have in our soul.
The truth comes as conqueror only because we have lost the art of receiving it as guest.
Rabindranath Tagore, The Fourfold Way of India (1924)
If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars.
Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916), #6
KARL KRAUS (1874-1936)

Wenn die Sonne der Kultur niedrig steht, werfen selbst Zwerge einen langen Schatten.
Karl Kraus
I took the right road to life by conquering it with every step instead of taking possession of it as a tradition
for which the young mind has no use. Adults who still derive childlike pleasure from hanging the gifts of a
ready-made education on the Christmas tree of a child waiting outside the door to life do not realize how
unreceptive they are making children to everything that constitutes the surprise of life.
Karl Kraus, “The World of Posters,” Harry Zohn, trans., In These Great Times (Montreal: 1976), p. 42
In the realm of poverty of the imagination where people die of spiritual famine without feeling spiritual
hunger…
Karl Kraus, “In these great times,” Harry Zohn, trans., In These Great Times (Montreal: 1976), p. 71
Kultur ist die stillschweigende Verabredung, das Lebensmittel hinter den Lebenszweck abtreten zu lassen.
Karl Kraus
Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of
existence.
Karl Kraus, “In these great times,” Harry Zohn, trans., In These Great Times (Montreal: 1976), pp. 73-74
Progress … has subordinated the purpose of life to the means of subsistence and turned us into the
nuts and bolts for our tools.
Karl Kraus, “In these great times,” Harry Zohn, trans., In These Great Times (Montreal: 1976), pp. 73-74
The tyranny of necessity grants its slaves three kinds of freedom: opinion free from intellect, entertainment
free from art, and orgies free from love.
We are sacrificing ourselves for our ready-made goods; we are consumers and live in such a way that the
means may consume the end.
The aesthete stands in the same relation to beauty as the pornographer stands to love.
Karl Kraus, Die Fackel #406, October 5, 1915, p. 138
941
Zwei Läufer laufen zeitenlang,
der eine dreist, der andre bang:
Der von Nirgendher sein Ziel erwirbt;
der vom Ursprung kommt und am Wege stirbt.
Der von Nirgendher sein Ziel erwarb,
macht Platz dem, der am Wege starb.
Und dieser, den es ewig bangt,
ist stets am Ursprung angelangt.
Karl Kraus
Two runners run the track of time,
Reckless the one, the other strides in awe.
The one, from nowhere, wins his goal; the other—
The origin his start—dies on the way.
And he from nowhere, he that won, yields place
To him who e’er strides in awe and e’er
Has reached his terminus: the origin.
Karl Kraus, Die Fackel #300, April 4, 1910, p. 32, translated by Joseph Schächter, cited in Anti-Freud, p. 55
Szasz’s interpretation: “All that is true and noble lies concealed in ‘the origin’—this is, in nature and language.”
Nerve doctors who pathologize genius should have their skulls bashed in with the collected works of genius.
Karl Kraus, Die Fackel #256, June 5, 1908, pp. 21-22
The shrine at which the artist worships is now defiled by dirty boots. They belong to the psychologist.
Karl Kraus, Die Fackel #445, January 18, 1917, p. 9; B. 349
Feminine passion is to masculine as an epic is to an epigram.

Karl Kraus
The reporter has killed our imagination with his truth.

Karl Kraus
It is better not to express what one means than to express what one does not mean.
Karl Kraus
The scandal starts when the police is stopping it.

Karl Kraus
Sprüche und Widersprüche

http://www.textlog.de/kraus-aphorismen.html
Wenn die Natur vor Verfolgung sicher sein will, rettet sie sich in die Schweinerei.
Karl Kraus, Sprüche und Widersprüche, 2, „Moral, Christentum”
When nature needs a haven from persecution, she escapes into perversity.
Karl Kraus, Dicta and Contradicta, J. McVity, trans. (2001), #188
Der Judaskuß, den die christliche Kultur dem menschlichen Geiste gab, war der letzte Geschlechtsakt, den
sie gewährte.
The last sex act permitted by Christian culture was the Judas kiss it gave to the human spirit.
Karl Kraus, Dicta and Contradicta, J. McVity, trans. (2001), modified, #285
Die Verbreitung der Lustseuche hat der Glaube bewirkt, daß die Lust eine Seuche sei.
942
Wenn die Aufforderung eines Kutschers, mit ihm zu fahren, nur auf den Wunsch in uns stieße, mit ihm nicht
zu fahren, wäre das Leben leicht. Aber sie stößt manchmal auf bessere Gedanken und zerstört sie.
Karl Kraus, Sprüche und Widersprüche, 3, „Mensch und Nebenmensch”
If a coachman’s insistence that we ride with him collided only with our wish not to ride with him, life would
be easy. But it sometimes collides with better thoughts and destroys them.
Die Kunst ist dem Philister der Aufputz für des Tages Müh’ und Plage. Er schnappt nach den Ornamenten,
wie der Hund nach der Wurst.
Karl Kraus, Sprüche und Widersprüche, 4, „Presse, Dummheit, Politik”
To the Philistine, art is fancy dress for everyday toil and trouble. He snaps at ornaments like a dog at sausage.
… die Absorbierung aller Kunstmöglichkeit durch den Tatsachengeist

... all artistic possibilities absorbed by the spirit of facticity
Eines Tages wird sich die Menschheit für die großen Werke, die sie zu ihrer Erleichterung geschaffen hat,
aufgeopfert haben.
One day humanity will have sacrificed itself to the great factories it built for its own relief.
Ich halte die Politik für eine mindestens ebenso vortreffliche Manier, mit dem Ernst des Lebens fertig zu
werden, wie das Tarockspiel.
Politics seems to me just as splendid a manner of dealing with the serious side of life as casting the Tarot.
Gäbe es keine Politik, so hätte der Bürger bloß sein Innenleben, also nichts, was ihn ausfüllen könnte.
If there were no politics, then all the bourgeois would have to fill him would be his inner life, i.e., nothing.
Das Geheimnis des Agitators ist, sich so dumm zu machen, wie seine Zuhörer sind, damit sie glauben, sie
seien so gescheit wie er.
The agitator’s secret is to make himself as stupid as his audience, so they believe they are as clever as he.
Die Orthodoxie der Vernunft verdummt die Menschheit mehr als jede Religion. Solange wir uns ein Paradies
vorstellen können, geht es uns immer noch besser, als wenn wir ausschließlich in der Wirklichkeit einer
Zeitungsredaktion leben müssen. In ihr mögen wir die Überzeugung, daß der Mensch vom Affen abstammt,
in Ehren halten. Aber um einen Wahn, der ein Kunstwerk ist, wär’s schade.
Die Bildung hängt an seinem Leib wie ein Kleid an einer Modellpuppe.
Culture hangs on his body like a dress on a mannequin.
Das Talent ist ein aufgeweckter Junge. Die Persönlichkeit schläft lange, erwacht von selbst und gedeiht
darum besser.
Karl Kraus, Sprüche und Widersprüche, 5, „Der Künstler”
Talent is a boy awoken.

943
Wer das Lob der Menge gern entbehrt, wird sich die Gelegenheit, sein eigener Anhänger zu werden, nicht
versagen.
He who dispenses with the praise of the masses will not deny himself the opportunity to be his own
admirer.
Karl Kraus, Dicta and Contradicta, my translation
Die Vorstellung, daß ein Kunstwerk Nahrung sei für den philiströsen Appetit, schreckt mich aus dem
Schlafe. Vom Bürger verdaut zu werden, verschmähe ich. Aber ihm im Magen liegen zu bleiben, ist auch
nicht verlockend. Darum ist es vielleicht am besten, sich ihm überhaupt nicht zu servieren.
Der Philister langweilt sich und sucht die Dinge, die ihn nicht langweilen. Den Künstler langweilen die
Dinge, aber er langweilt sich nie.
Karl Kraus, Sprüche und Widersprüche
The Philistine gets bored and seeks things that will not bore him. Things bore the artist, but he never gets
bored.
Prinzessin von Gnaden meiner Phantasie—Aschenbrödel meiner Erkenntnis. Der Künstler läßt beide Rollen
gleichzeitig spielen. Der Philister ist enttäuscht und zieht die erste zurück.
To my imagination she is a gracious princess—to my reason, a scullery maid. The artist lets both roles play
concurrently. The Philistine is disappointed and retracts the first.
Die leichteste Melodie weckt Gedanken wie die leichteste Frau. Wer sie nicht hat, sucht sie in der Musik und
im Weibe.
The man with no thoughts seeks them in music and women.
Karl Kraus, Dicta and Contradicta, J. McVity, trans. (2001), modified, #504
Früher waren die Dekorationen von Pappe und die Schauspieler echt. Jetzt sind die Dekorationen über jeden
Zweifel erhaben und die Schauspieler von Pappe.
In earlier times set designs were cardboard and the actors were real. Now the set designs are completely
convincing but the actors are cardboard.
Der Ästhet lebt nicht so fern dem Politiker, wie man glaubt. … Es ist derselbe Mangel an Persönlichkeit, der
die einen treibt, das Leben im Stoffe, und die anderen, das Leben in der Form zu suchen.
The aesthete’s life is not so far from the politician’s as people think. ... The same lack of personality drives
one to reduce life to matter, the other to form.
Ansichten pflanzen sich durch Teilung, Gedanken durch Knospung fort.

Karl Kraus, Sprüche und Widersprüche, 6, „Schreiben und Lesen”
Views reproduce by division, thoughts by budding.
Der Gedanke ist ein Kind der Liebe. Die Meinung ist in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft anerkannt.
Thought is a love child. Opinion is recognized in bourgeois society.
944
Ist Schriftstellerei nicht mehr als die Fertigkeit, dem Publikum eine Meinung mit Worten beizubringen?
Dann wäre Malerei die Kunst, eine Meinung in Farben zu sagen. Aber die Journalisten der Malerei heißen
eben Anstreicher. Und ich glaube, daß ein Schriftsteller jener ist, der dem Publikum ein Kunstwerk sagt.
Es war die höchste Ehre, die mir je erwiesen wurde, als mir ein Leser verlegen gestand, er könne meine
Sachen erst bei der zweiten Lesung verstehen.
It was the highest honor ever accorded to me when a reader confessed with some embarrassment that he
could only understand my things on the second reading.
Ein Aphorismus braucht nicht wahr zu sein, aber er soll die Wahrheit überflügeln. Er muß mit einem Satz
über sie hinauskommen.
An aphorism need not be true, but it must surpass the truth.
Journalist heißt einer, der das, was der Leser sich ohnehin schon gedacht hat, in einer Form ausspricht, in der
es eben doch nicht jeder Kommis imstande wäre.
The journalist is the one who can express what the reader thinks anyway.
Ist es erlaubt, im Quell der deutschen Sprache ein Fußbad zu nehmen? So sollte ein Labetrunk verboten sein!
Is it permitted to take a footbath in the wellspring of the language? If so they should forbid drinking from it.
Nun gibt es nichts, was das schriftstellerische Können empfindlicher bloßstellt als die Möglichkeit, im Leser
Vorstellungen zu erzeugen, die man nicht bezweckt hat. Besser nicht zum Ausdruck bringen, was man meint,
als zum Ausdruck bringen, was man nicht meint. Der Schriftsteller muß alle Gedankengänge kennen, die
sein Wort eröffnen könnte. Er muß wissen, was mit seinem Wort geschieht. Je mehr Beziehungen dieses
eingeht, um so größer die Kunst; aber es darf nicht Beziehungen eingehen, die dem Künstler verborgen
bleiben.
Nur eine Sprache, die den Krebs hat, neigt zu Neubildungen.

Only a language that has cancer is prone to neologisms.
Karl Kraus
Ungewöhnliche Worte zu gebrauchen, ist eine literarische Unart. Man darf dem Publikum bloß gedankliche
Schwierigkeiten in den Weg legen.
Using unusual words is bad literary manners. The only difficulties one is allowed to lay in the public’s way
are conceptual.
Warum schreibt mancher? Weil er nicht genug Charakter hat, nicht zu schreiben.
Feuilletonisten sind verhinderte Kurzwarenhändler. Die Eltern zwingen sie zu einem intelligenten Beruf,
aber das ursprüngliche Talent bricht sich doch Bahn.
945
Die Prostitution des Leibes teilt mit dem Journalismus die Fähigkeit, nicht empfinden zu müssen, hat aber
vor ihm die Fähigkeit voraus, empfinden zu können.
Prostitutes and journalists share the ability to numb themselves.
Lichtenberg gräbt tiefer als irgendeiner, aber er kommt nicht wieder hinauf. Er redet unter der Erde. Nur wer
selbst tief gräbt, hört ihn.
Karl Kraus, Sprüche und Widersprüche 6, „Schreiben und Lesen”
Lichtenberg digs deeper than any other, but he does not surface afterward. He speaks underground. Only
people who dig equally deep can hear him.
Narrheit ist die Weisheit, die genug Humor hat, sich selbst in Frage zu stellen.
Karl Kraus, Sprüche und Widersprüche, 8, „Stimmungen, Worte”
Emerson: Deutsche Philosophie, die auf dem Transport übers große Wasser etwas davon angezogen hat.
Emerson: German philosophy that in crossing the great water took some on underway.
Wes das Herz leer ist, des gehet der Mund über.
With what heart lacks, the mouth overflows.
Der Liberalismus kredenzt ein Abspülwasser als Lebenstrank.

Liberalism serves dishwater as an elixir vitae.
Der Aphorismus deckt sich nie mit der Wahrheit; er ist entweder eine halbe Wahrheit oder anderthalb.
Karl Kraus, Sprüche und Widersprüche, 9, „Sprüche und Widersprüche”
An aphorism never coincides with the truth: it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.
Was sind alle Orgien des Bacchus gegen die Räusche dessen, der sich zügellos der Enthaltsamkeit ergibt!
What are the orgies of Bacchus compared to the intoxication of the man who abandons himself to unbridled
continence.
Ich stelle mir ihn nicht unrichtig vor. Wenn er anders ist, so beweist das nichts gegen meine Vorstellung: der
Mann ist unrichtig
My image of him is not inaccurate. If he differs from it, that proves nothing against my image: the inaccuracy
is in him.
Nichts beweist mehr gegen eine Theorie als ihre Durchführbarkeit.

Nothing speaks more against a theory than its practicability.
946
Die Moralheuchler sind nicht darum hassenswert, weil sie anders tun, als sie bekennen, sondern weil sie
anders bekennen, als sie tun.
Hypocrites are hateful not because they practice what they preach against but because they preach what they
do not practice.
Ein Paradoxon entsteht, wenn eine frühreife Erkenntnis mit dem Unsinn ihrer Zeit zusammenprallt.
A paradox arises when a premature insight collides with the nonsense of the times.
Die Leute verstehen nicht deutsch; und auf journalistisch kann ich’s ihnen nicht sagen.
Es gibt Leute, die mich wie eine wilde Bestie meiden. Das sollten sie nicht tun: wir entfernen uns allzuweit
voneinander. Denn sie sind es doch, die ich viel schnelleren Fußes als zahme Haustiere fliehe.
There are people who avoid me as if I were a wild beast. They should not do that: we distance ourselves all
to far from one another as it is. For it is they whom I avoid, with much faster stride, as if they were tame
house pets.
Ich habe mich im Laufe der Jahre zum Streber nach gesellschaftlichen Nachteilen entwickelt.
Over the years I have developed into a reverse social climber.
Es ist närrisch, zu verlangen, daß das Weib seine Schönheit und der Mann seinen Geist schutzlos preisgebe,
um die Armut nicht zu kränken. Es ist töricht, zu sagen, ein Wert dürfe nicht auf sich selbst weisen, um nicht
den Unwert des andern zu verraten.
It is foolish to demand that a woman unconditionally surrender her beauty, or a man his wit, just to avoid
vexing the ungifted. It is foolish to insist that something worthy not draw attention to itself, simply to avoid
revealing the worthlessness of another.
Selbstbespiegelung ist erlaubt, wenn das Selbst schön ist. Sie erwächst zur Pflicht, wenn der Spiegel gut ist.
Wenn wir einen Fehler längst abgelegt haben, werfen uns die Oberflächlichen den Fehler und die
Gründlichen Inkonsequenz vor.
Long after we have abandoned an error, superficial people reproach us with the error and thorough people
with inconsistency.
Die Persönlichkeit hat ein Recht zu irren. Der Philister kann irrtümlich recht haben.
A personality has a right to be wrong. The philistine can be right wrongly.
947
Auf einem Kostümfest hofft jeder der Auffallendste zu sein; aber es fällt nur der auf, der nicht kostümiert ist.
Sollte das nicht einen Vergleich geben?
At a costume ball everyone hopes to be the most outstanding, but the only person who stands out is the one
with no costume.
Der gesunde Menschenverstand sagt, daß er mit einem Künstler bis zu einem bestimmten Punkt »noch
mitgeht«. Der Künstler sollte auch bis dorthin die Begleitung ablehnen.
»Sich keine Illusionen mehr machen«: da beginnen sie erst.

Solange es innere Deckung gibt, können einem die Verluste des äußeren Lebens nichts anhaben.
Zu allen Dingen lasse man sich Zeit; nur nicht zu den ewigen.
Die Unsterblichkeit ist das einzige, was keinen Aufschub verträgt.

No Compromise
Whoever gladly dispenses with praise from the multitude will not deny himself the chance to be his own
partisan.
Karl Kraus, “Self Admiration,” 1908, Helene Scher, trans., No Compromise (New York: 1977), p. 24
No writer has ever made vanity easier for his reader to discover than I have. For even if he did not notice
himself that I am vain, he learned it from my repeated admissions of vanity and from the unrestrained
approval I lavished on this vice. The informed smile at the finding out of Achilles heel is frustrated by a
consciousness that voluntarily bared it, before it could be discovered.
Karl Kraus, “Self Admiration,” 1908, Helene Scher, trans., No Compromise (New York: 1977), p. 26
Sie können es nicht verstehen, daß, was sie Eitelkeit nennen, jene nie beruhigte Bescheidenheit ist, die sich
am eigenen Maße mißt und das Maß an sich, jener demütige Wille zur Steigerung, der sich dem
unerbittlichsten Urteil unterwirft, das stets sein eigenes ist. Eitel ist die Zufriedenheit, die nie zum Werk
zurückkehrt. Eitel ist die Frau, die nie in den Spiegel schaut. Bespiegelung ist der Schönheit unerläßlich und
dem Geist.
Karl Kraus
They cannot understand that what they term vanity is actually that modesty which can never be quieted,
which measures itself by its own standard. … Vain is the contentedness that never returns to the work. Vain
is the woman who never looks into a mirror. Looking at oneself is essential for beauty and also for the mind.
Karl Kraus, “Self Admiration,” 1908, No Compromise (New York: 1977), p. 27
The world wants one to be responsible to it, not to oneself.

Karl Kraus, No Compromise (New York: 1977), p. 222
Love and art embrace not what is beautiful but what by that embrace becomes beautiful.
When someone has behaved like an animal, he says: “I am only human.” But when he is treated like an
animal, he says: “I, too, am a human being.”
948
Most of my fellow citizens are the sorry consequences of uncommitted abortions.
Die Sprache ist die Mutter, nicht die Magd des Gedankens.
Karl Kraus, Pro Domo et Mundo, 4, „Vom Künstler”
Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.
What lives of subject matter, dies of subject matter. What lives in language, lives by language.
Why do some people write? Because they do not have enough character not to write.
Despise people who have no time. Have compassion for those who have no work. But those who have no
time for work, they are worthy of our envy.
Many talents preserve their precocity right into their old age.
Die Literatur von heute sind Rezepte, die die Kranken schreiben.
Karl Kraus, Nachts, 2, „Kunst”
Today’s literature is prescriptions written by patients.
No ideas and the ability to express them—that’s a journalist.

The value of education is most clearly revealed when educated people being to speak on a problem that lies
outside the sphere of their competence.
Karl Kraus, No Compromise (New York: 1977), p.231
The secret of the demagogue is to appear as stupid as his audience so that it can believe itself to be as smart
as he.
Half Truths and One-and-a-Half Truths

I hear noises which others don’t hear and which disturb for me the music of the spheres, which others don’t
hear either.
Karl Kraus, Half Truths and One-and-a-Half Truths, p. 30
I can imagine that an ugly woman who looks in the mirror is convinced that it is her mirror image, and not
she, that is ugly. Thus society sees the mirror image of its meanness and is stupid enough to believe that I am
the mean fellow.
Karl Kraus
Many share my views with me. But I don’t share them with them.
Someone who shared my opinion kept the larger share for himself
My public and I understand each other very well: it does not hear what I say, and I do not say what it wants
to hear.
949
To me all men are equal: there are jack-asses everywhere, and I have the same contempt for them all.
It is better not to express what one means than to express what one does not mean.
Der Gedanke ist ein Kind der Liebe. Die Meinung ist in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft anerkannt.
An idea is a love child. An opinion is recognized by bourgeois society.
Weltanschauung ist ein gutes Pferd. Aber es ist immerhin ein Unterschied zwischen einem Reiter und einem
Roßtäuscher.
A Weltanschauung is a good horse. But there is a difference between a fine equestrian and a horse dealer.
Meine Sprache ist die Allerweltshure, die ich zur Jungfrau mache.
Karl Kraus, Pro Domo et Mundo, 7, „Pro Domo et Mundo”
My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.
Journalism only seems to be serving the present. In reality it destroys the intellectual receptivity of posterity.
Bildung ist das, was die meisten empfangen, viele weitergeben und wenige haben.
Karl Kraus, Pro Domo et Mundo, 3, „Von Journalisten”
Education is what most people receive, many pass on, and few have.
Das Christentum hat die erotische Mahlzeit um die Vorspeise der Neugier bereichert und durch die
Nachspeise der Reue verdorben.
Karl Kraus, Sprüche und Widersprüche
Christianity has enriched the erotic meal with the appetizer of curiosity and spoiled it with the dessert of
remorse.
Der Fortschritt feiert Pyrrhussiege über die Natur.

Karl Kraus, Pro Domo et Mundo, 7, „Pro Domo et Mundo”
Progress celebrates Pyrrhic victories over nature.
G. K. CHESTERTON (1874-1936)
There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every
man feel great.
G. K. Chesterton, Charles Dickens (1906), Chapter 1
When some English moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the
importance of having a dull character.
G. K. Chesterton, Charles Dickens (1906), Chapter 10
Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more
perfectly respect it.
G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday, Chapter 4
950
Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.
G. K. Chesterton, describing Distributivism, The Uses of Diversity, 1921
Having come to doubt whether humanity can be combined with progress, most people, easily pleased, would
have elected to abandon progress and remain with humanity. Mr. Shaw, not being easily pleased, decides to
throw over humanity with all its limitations and go in for progress for its own sake. If man, as we know him,
is incapable of the philosophy of progress, Mr. Shaw asks, not for a new kind of philosophy, but for a new
kind of man. It is rather as if a nurse had tried a rather bitter food for some years on a baby, and on
discovering that it was not suitable, should not throw away the food and ask for a new food, but throw the
baby out of window, and ask for a new baby.
G. K. Chesterton, Heretics, Chapter 4
I saw in an illustrated paper—which sparkles with scientific news—that a green-blooded fish had been found
in the sea; indeed, a creature that was completely green, down to this uncanny ichor in its veins, and very big
and venomous at that. Somehow I could not get it out of my head, because the caption suggested a perfect
refrain for a Ballade: A green-blooded fish has been found in the sea. It has so wide a critical and
philosophical application. I have known so many green-blooded fish on the land, walking about the streets
and sitting in the clubs, and especially the committees. So many green-blooded fish have written books and
criticisms of books, have taught in academies of learning and founded schools of philosophy, that they have
almost made themselves the typical biological product of the present stage of evolution.
G. K. Chesterton, “On Monsters”
We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.

G. K. Chesterton
The pessimists believe that the cosmos is a clock that is running down; the progressives believe it is a clock
that they themselves are winding up. But I happen to believe that the world is what we choose to make it, and
that we are what we choose to make ourselves
G. K. Chesterton
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who
wants a book to read.
G. K. Chesterton
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly

considered.
G. K. Chesterton
There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested
person.
G. K. Chesterton
It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.
G. K. Chesterton, Scandal of Father Brown (1935)
951
Orthodoxy (1908)
http://books.google.com/books?id=p7UEAQAAIAAJ
I have often had a fancy for writing a romance about an English yachtsman who slightly miscalculated his
course and discovered England under the impression that it was a new island in the South Seas. I always find,
however, that I am either too busy or too lazy to write this fine work, so I may as well give it away for the
purposes of philosophical illustration. There will probably be a general impression that the man who landed
(armed to the teeth and talking by signs) to plant the British flag on that barbaric temple which turned out to
be the Pavilion at Brighton, felt rather a fool. I am not here concerned to deny that he looked a fool. But if
you imagine that he felt a fool, or at any rate that the sense of folly was his sole or his dominant emotion,
then you have not studied with sufficient delicacy the rich romantic nature of the hero of this tale. His
mistake was really a most enviable mistake; and he knew it, if he was the man I take him for. What could be
more delightful than to have in the same few minutes all the fascinating terrors of going abroad combined
with all the humane security of coming home again? What could be better than to have all the fun of
discovering South Africa without the disgusting necessity of landing there? What could be more glorious
than to brace one's self up to discover New South Wales and then realize, with a gush of happy tears, that it
was really old South Wales. This at least seems to me the main problem for philosophers, and is in a manner
the main problem of this book. How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in
it?
G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908), pp. 14-15
Mere light sophistry is the thing that I happen to despise most of all things, and it is perhaps a wholesome
fact that this is the thing of which I am generally accused. I know nothing so contemptible as a mere paradox;
a mere ingenious defence of the indefensible. If it were true (as has been said) that Mr. Bernard Shaw lived
upon paradox, then he ought to be a mere common millionaire; for a man of his mental activity could invent
a sophistry every six minutes. It is as easy as lying; because it is lying. The truth is, of course, that Mr. Shaw
is cruelly hampered by the fact that he cannot tell any lie unless he thinks it is the truth. I find myself under
the same intolerable bondage. I never in my life said anything merely because I thought it funny; though of
course, I have had ordinary human vainglory, and may have thought it funny because I had said it.
G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908), p. 17
If there is an element of farce in what follows, the farce is at my own expense; for this book explains how I
fancied I was the first to set foot in Brighton and then found I was the last. It recounts my elephantine
adventures in pursuit of the obvious. No one can think my case more ludicrous than I think it myself; no
reader can accuse me here of trying to make a fool of him: I am the fool of this story, and no rebel shall hurl
me from my throne. I freely confess all the idiotic ambitions of the end of the nineteenth century. I did, like
all other solemn little boys, try to be in advance of the age. Like them I tried to be some ten minutes in
advance of the truth. And I found that I was eighteen hundred years behind it. I did strain my voice with a
painfully juvenile exaggeration in uttering my truths. And I was punished in the fittest and funniest way, for I
have kept my truths: but I have discovered, not that they were not truths, but simply that they were not mine.
When I fancied that I stood alone I was really in the ridiculous position of being backed up by all
Christendom. It may be, Heaven forgive me, that I did try to be original; but I only succeeded in inventing all
by myself an inferior copy of the existing traditions of civilized religion. The man from the yacht thought he
was the first to find England; I thought I was the first to find Europe. I did try to found a heresy of my own;
and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.
952
Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so
make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion. ... To accept everything is an exercise, to understand
everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The
poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his
head. And it is his head that splits.
We have all heard people cite the celebrated line of Dryden as "Great genius is to madness near allied." But
Dryden did not say that great genius was to madness near allied. Dryden was a great genius himself, and
knew better. It would have been hard to find a man more romantic than he, or more sensible. What Dryden
said was this, "Great wits are oft to madness near allied"; and that is true. It is the pure promptitude of the
intellect that is in peril of a breakdown.
It is always perilous to the mind to reckon up the mind. A flippant person has asked why we say, "As mad as
a hatter." A more flippant person might answer that a hatter is mad because he has to measure the human
head.
The last thing that can be said of a lunatic is that his actions are causeless. If any human acts may loosely be
called causeless, they are the minor acts of a healthy man; whistling as he walks; slashing the grass with a
stick; kicking his heels or rubbing his hands. It is the happy man who does the useless things; the sick man is
not strong enough to be idle. It is exactly such careless and causeless actions that the madman could never
understand; for the madman (like the determinist) generally sees too much cause in everything. The madman
would read a conspiratorial significance into those empty activities. He would think that the lopping of the
grass was an attack on private property. He would think that the kicking of the heels was a signal to an
accomplice. If the madman could for an instant become careless, he would become sane. Every one who has
had the misfortune to talk with people in the heart or on the edge of mental disorder, knows that their most
sinister quality is a horrible clarity of detail; a connecting of one thing with another in a map more elaborate
than a maze. If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in
many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment.
He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the
more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a
misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost
everything except his reason..
The madman's explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or,
to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may be
observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men
have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are
conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as
yours. Or if a man says that he is the rightful King of England, it is no complete answer to say that the
existing authorities call him mad; for if he were King of England that might be the wisest thing for the
existing authorities to do. Or if a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world
denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ's.
Neither modern science nor ancient religion believes in complete free thought. Theology rebukes certain
thoughts by calling them blasphemous. Science rebukes certain thoughts by calling them morbid. For
example, some religious societies discouraged men more or less from thinking about sex. The new scientific
society definitely discourages men from thinking about death; it is a fact, but it is considered a morbid fact.
953
The madman ... is in the clean and well-lit prison of one idea.
It must be understood that I am not now discussing the relation of these creeds to truth; but, for the present,
solely their relation to health.
The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus
some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their
pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.
Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetite of man. He was
always outstripping his mercies with his own newly invented needs. His very power of enjoyment destroyed
half his joys. By asking for pleasure, he lost the chief pleasure; for the chief pleasure is surprise. Hence it
became evident that if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small.
The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot that prevented him
from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work
harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working
altogether.
We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication
table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their
own. Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced. The
meek do inherit the earth; but the modern sceptics are too meek even to claim their inheritance.
Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or
jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next
generation that there is no validity in any human thought.
There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped. That is the ultimate
evil against which all religious authority was aimed.
The creeds and the crusades, the hierarchies and the horrible persecutions were not organized, as is
ignorantly said, for the suppression of reason. They were organized for the difficult defence of reason. Man,
by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first. The
authority of priests to absolve, the authority of popes to define the authority, even of inquisitors to terrify:
these were all only dark defences erected round one central authority, more undemonstrable, more
supernatural than all—the authority of a man to think. We know now that this is so; we have no excuse for
not knowing it. For we can hear scepticism crashing through the old ring of authorities, and at the same
moment we can see reason swaying upon her throne. In so far as religion is gone, reason is going. For they
are both of the same primary and authoritative kind. They are both methods of proof which cannot
themselves be proved. And in the act of destroying the idea of Divine authority we have largely
destroyed the idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum. With a long and
sustained tug we have attempted to pull the mitre off pontifical man; and his head has come off with it.
954
Nietzsche denied egoism simply by preaching it. To preach anything is to give it away. First, the egoist calls
life a war without mercy, and then he takes the greatest possible trouble to drill his enemies in war. To
preach egoism is to practise altruism.
Schopenhauer and Tolstoy, Nietzsche and Shaw ... are all on the road to the emptiness of the asylum. For
madness may be defined as using mental activity so as to reach mental helplessness; and they have nearly
reached it.
When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this:
"Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle
age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery
one has and getting on with the world as it is." Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in
their honoured graves used to talk to me when I was a boy. But since then I have grown up and have
discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies. What has really happened is exactly the
opposite of what they said would happen. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the
methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is
exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics.
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the
dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to
be walking about.
G. K. Chesterton, “The ethics of Elfland,” Orthodoxy (1908), p. 85
Utopia of Usurers (1917)

http://books.google.com/books?id=OFrUSLTwqJ4C
A fairly clear line separated advertisement from art. ... The first effect of the triumph of the capitalist (if we
allow him to triumph) will be that that line of demarcation will entirely disappear. There will be no art that
might not just as well be advertisement.
G. K. Chesterton, Utopia of Usurers (1917), p. 6
Literary men are being employed to praise a big business man personally, as men used to praise a king. They
not only find political reasons for the commercial schemes—that they have done for some time past—they
also find moral defences for the commercial schemers. ... I do resent the whole age of patronage being
revived under such absurd patrons; and all poets becoming court poets, under kings that have taken no oath.
G. K. Chesterton, Utopia of Usurers (1917), pp. 15-17
Even the tyrant never rules by force alone; but mostly by fairy tales. And so it is with the modern tyrant, the
great employer. The sight of a millionaire is seldom, in the ordinary sense, an enchanting sight: nevertheless,
he is in his way an enchanter. As they say in the gushing articles about him in the magazines, he is a
fascinating personality. So is a snake. At least he is fascinating to rabbits; and so is the millionaire to the
rabbit-witted sort of people that ladies and gentlemen have allowed themselves to become.
The big commercial concerns of to-day are quite exceptionally incompetent. They will be even more
incompetent when they are omnipotent.
Employers will give time to eat, time to sleep; they are in terror of a time to think.
955
The new community which the capitalists are now constructing will be a very complete and absolute
community; and one which will tolerate nothing really independent of itself.
G. K. Chesterton, Utopia of Usurers (1917), pp. 33-34
In every serious doctrine of the destiny of men, there is some trace of the doctrine of the equality of men. But
the capitalist really depends on some religion of inequality. The capitalist must somehow distinguish himself
from human kind; he must be obviously above it—or he would be obviously below it.
Wait and see whether the religion of the Servile State is not in every case what I say: the encouragement of
small virtues supporting capitalism, the discouragement of the huge virtues that defy it.
The old lucid and trenchant expounder of socialism, such as Blatchford or Fred Henderson, always describes
the economic power of plutocrats as consisting in private property. Of course, in a sense, this is quite true;
though they too often miss the point that private property, as such, is not the same as property confined to the
few.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM (1874-1965)

It’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
W. Somerset Maugham
Charm and nothing but charm at last grows a little tiresome. It’s a relief then to deal with a man who isn’t
quite so delightful but a little more sincere.
W. Somerset Maugham
Of Human Bondage (1915)

Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.
W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage, 1915, chapter 39
One profits more by the mistakes one makes off one’s own bat than by doing the right thing on
somebody’s else advice.
W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage, 1915
It’s asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic.
There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one's means of livelihood.
Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.
When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps
only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.
The Razor’s Edge (1944)

Evil is as direct a manifestation of the divine as good.
W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge (1944)
956
MAX SCHELER (1874-1928)
Between a clever chimpanzee and Edison, if he is considered as a technician only, there exists merely a—
certainly very great—difference in degree.
Max Scheler, Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos (1928), p. 46, cited in Kauffmann, Nietzsche, p. 161
Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

English: http://www.scribd.com/doc/47099522/Ressentiment-by-Max-Scheler
German: http://books.google.com/books?id=KNVDAAAAIAAJ
Immer wieder führt sie sich mit der Wendung ein, es sei doch „nicht genug Liebe in der Welt“, als daß man
einen Teil noch an außermenschliche Wesen abgeben könnte—eine echte von Ressentiment diktierte
Wendung!
Max Scheler, Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen, Abhandlungen und Aufsätze (1915), S. 184
There is not enough love in the world to squander it on anything but human beings.
Max Scheler, Ressentiment , as cited in Camus, The Rebel (cited by Camus with approval, but Scheler says this is dictated by ressentiment.)
Ressentiment must therefore be strongest in a society like ours, where approximately equal rights(political
and otherwise) or formal social equality, publicly recognized, go hand in hand with wide factual differences
in power, property, and education.
Max Scheler, Ressentiment, L. Coser, trans. (1973), p. 50
It is peculiar to “ressentiment criticism” that it does not seriously desire that its demands be fulfilled. It does
not want to cure the evil. The evil is merely the pretext for the criticism.
Der Neid, der die stärkste Ressentimentbildung auslöst, ist daher derjenige Neid, der sich auf das individuelle
Wesen und Sein einer fremden Person richtet, der Existenzialneid. Dieser Neid flüstert gleichsam
fortwährend: »Alles kann ich Dir verzeihen ; nur nicht, daß Du bist und das Wesen bist, das Du bist; nur
nicht, daß nicht ich bin, was Du bist; ja daß »ich« nicht »Du« bin.« Dieser »Neid« entmächtigt die fremde
Person von Hause aus schon ihrer bloßen Existenz, die als solche als »Druck«, »Vorwurf«, furchtbares Maß
der eigenen Person empfunden wird. Es gibt in dem Leben großer Menschen stets kritische Zeiten, wo
Liebesintention und Neid gegen Andere, die sie ob großer Vorzüge schätzen müssen, sie noch in labiler
Weise abwechselnd durchfluten und erst langsam das eine oder das andere sich langsam fixiert. Solche hat
Goethe im Auge, wenn er sagt: »Gegen große Vorzüge gibt es nur eine Rettung, das ist die Liebe.«
Max Scheler, Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen, Abhandlungen und Aufsätze (1915), S. 63
Existential envy which is directed against the other person’s very nature, is the strongest source of
ressentiment. It is as if it whispers continually: “I can forgive everything, but not that you are— that you are
what you are—that I am not what you are—indeed that I am not you.” This form of envy strips the opponent
of his very existence, for this existence as such is felt to be a “pressure,” a “reproach,” and an unbearable
humiliation. In the lives of great men there are always critical periods of instability, in which they alternately
envy and try to love those whose merits they cannot but esteem. Only gradually, one of these attitudes will
predominate. Here lies the meaning of Goethe’s reflection that “against another’s great merits, there is no
remedy but love.”
Max Scheler, Ressentiment, L. Coser, trans. (1973), pp. 52-53
957
Der »Vornehme« hat ein ganz naives, unreflektiertes, jeden bewußten Augenblick seiner Existenz
kontinuierlich erfüllendes dunkles Bewußtsein seines Selbstwertes und seiner Seinsfülle; gleichsam seiner
selbständigen Eingewurzeltheit im Universum. Dieses Bewußtsein ist nichts weniger wie »Stolz«, — ein
Verhalten, das gerade aus der erlebten Minderung dieses »naiven« Selbstwertbewußtseins resultiert, und ein
hierauf sich einstellendes besonderes künstliches »Festhalten« des Selbstwertes, ein Akt seiner reflektierten
Erfassung und »Bewahrung« ist). Eben dieses naive, ihn wie der Tonus die Muskeln begleitende
S"elbstwertgefühl ist es, das den Vornehmen die positiven Werte Anderer ruhig in sich aufnehmen läßt, in
der ganzen Fülle ihres Gehaltes und ihrer Konfiguration; und die ihn dem Anderen eben diese Werte frei und
large »gönnen« läßt. Daß das Universum auch noch diese positiven Werte mehr enthält, erfüllt den
»Vornehmen« mit Freude und macht ihm die Welt liebenswerter als sie vorher war. Nicht aus besonderen,
auf die Werte seiner einzelnen Eigenschaften, Fähigkeiten, Anlagen gehenden Wertgefühle setzt sich dieses
naive Selbstwertgefühl des Vornehmen etwa »zusammen«; es geht vielmehr ursprünglich auf sein Wesen
und Sein selbst. Eben darum vermag er ruhig vergleichend festzustellen, daß der Andere ihm in dieser oder
jener »Eigenschaft« »überlegen« ist, in dieser oder jener »Fähigkeit«, ja in allen Fähigkeiten. Sein naives
Seinswertgefühl, das sich ihm nicht erst durch Leistungen und Fähigkeiten zu solchen beweisen oder
rechtfertigen, sondern höchstens in solchen »bewähren« muß, wird dadurch nicht vermindert. Das (im
prägnanten Sinne) »Gemeine« besteht im letzten Grundedagegendarin,daß sich die Selbstwerterfassung und
die Fremdwerterfassung nur fundiert auf Relationserfassung, zwischen Eigen- und Fremdwert realisiert, und
daß nur jene Wertqualitäten überhaupt zur klaren Erfassung kommen, die »mögliche« Differenzwerte
zwischen Eigenwerten und Fremdwerten sind. Der Vornehme erlebt die Werte vor dem Vergleich; der
Gemeine erst im und durch den Vergleich. Die Struktur: »Beziehung von Eigenund Fremdwert« wird also im
»Gemeinen« zur selectiven Bedingung seiner Werterfassung überhaupt. Er vermag an Anderen keinen Wert
aufzufassen, ohne ihn zugleich als ein »Höher« und »Niedriger«, als ein »Mehr« oder »Weniger« seines
Eigenwertes zu nehmen, ohne also den Anderen an sich und sich an dem Anderen zu messen.
Max Scheler, Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen, Abhandlungen und Aufsätze (1915), S. 66-68
The “noble” person has a completely naïve and non-reflective awareness of his own value and of his fullness
of being, an obscure conviction which enriches every conscious moment of his existence, as if he were
autonomously rooted in the universe. This should not be mistaken for “pride.” Quite on the contrary, pride
results from an experienced diminution of this “naive” self-confidence. It is a way of “holding on” to one’s
value, of seizing and “preserving” it deliberately. The noble man’s naive self-confidence, which is as natural
to him as tension is to the muscles, permits him calmly to assimilate the merits of others in all the fullness of
their substance and configuration. He never “grudges” them their merits. On the contrary: he rejoices in their
virtues and feels that they make the world more worthy of love. His naive self-confidence is by no means
“compounded” of a series of positive valuations based on specific qualities, talents, and virtues: it is
originally directed at his very essence and being. Therefore he can afford to admit that another person has
certain “qualities” superior to his own or is more “gifted” in some respects—indeed in all respects. Such a
conclusion does not diminish his naïve awareness of his own value, which needs no justification or proof by
achievements or abilities. Achievements merely serve to confirm it. On the other hand, the “common” man
(in the exact acceptation of the term) can only experience his value and that of another if he relates the two,
and he clearly perceives only those qualities which constitute possible differences. The noble man
experiences value prior to any comparison, the common man in and through a comparison. For the latter, the
relation is the selective precondition for apprehending any value. Every value is a relative thing, “higher” or
“lower,” “more” or “less” than his own. He arrives at value judgments by comparing himself to others and
others to himself.
The ultimate goal of the arriviste’s aspirations is not to acquire a thing of value, but to be more highly
esteemed than others. He merely uses the “thing” as an indifferent occasion for overcoming the oppressive
feeling of inferiority which results from his constant comparisons.
958
The medieval peasant prior to the 13th century does not compare himself to the feudal lord, nor does the
artisan compare himself to the knight. ... From the king down to the hangman and the prostitute, everyone is
“noble” in the sense that he considers himself as irreplaceable. In the “system of free competition,” on the
other hand, the notions on life’s tasks and their value are not fundamental, they are but secondary derivations
of the desire of all to surpass all the others. No “place” is more than a transitory point in this universal chase.
If the awareness of our limitations begins to limit or to dim our value consciousness as well—as happens, for
instance, in old age with regard to the values of youth—then we have already started the movement of
devaluation which will end with the defamation of the world and all its values. Only a timely act of
resignation can deliver us from this tendency toward self-delusion.
The “old maid” with her repressed cravings for tenderness, sex, and propagation, is rarely quite free of
ressentiment. What we call “prudery,” in contrast with true modesty, is but one of the numerous variants of
sexual ressentiment. The habitual behavior of many old maids, who obsessively ferret out all sexually
significant events in their surroundings in order to condemn them harshly, is nothing but sexual gratification
transformed into ressentiment satisfaction. Thus the criticism accomplishes the very thing it pretends to
condemn.
The process of aging can only be fruitful and satisfactory if the important transitions are accompanied by free
resignation, by the renunciation of the values proper to the preceding stage of life. Those spiritual and
intellectual values which remain untouched by the process of aging, together with the values of the next stage
of life, must compensate for what has been lost. Only if this happens can we cheerfully relive the values of
our past in memory, without envy for the young to whom they are still accessible. If we cannot compensate,
we avoid and flee the “tormenting” recollection of youth, thus blocking our possibilities of understanding
younger people. At the same time we tend to negate the specific values of earlier stages. No wonder that
youth always has a hard fight to sustain against the ressentiment of the older generation
Even after his conversion, the true 'apostate' is not primarily committed to the positive contents of his new
belief and to the realization of its aims. He is motivated by the struggle against the old belief and lives on for
its negation. The apostate does not affirm his new convictions for their own sake; he is engaged in a
continuous chain of acts of revenge against his own spiritual past. In reality he remains a captive of this past,
and the new faith is merely a handy frame of reference for negating and rejecting the old. As a religious type,
the apostate is therefore at the opposite pole from the 'resurrected,' whose life is transformed by a new faith
which is full of intrinsic meaning and value.
To a lesser degree, a secret ressentiment underlies every way of thinking which attributes creative power to
mere negation and criticism. Thus modern philosophy is deeply penetrated by a whole type of thinking
which is nourished by ressentiment. I am referring to the view that the “true” and the “given” is not that
which is self-evident, but rather that which is “indubitable” or “incontestable,” which can be maintained
against doubt and criticism.
All the seemingly positive valuations and judgments of ressentiment are hidden devaluations and negations.
959
Whenever convictions are not arrived at by direct contact with the world and the objects themselves, but
indirectly through a critique of the opinions of others, the processes of thinking are impregnated with
ressentiment. The establishment of “criteria” for testing the correctness of opinions then becomes the most
important task. Genuine and fruitful criticism judges all opinions with reference to the object itself.
Ressentiment criticism, on the contrary, accepts no “object” that has not stood the test of criticism
Ressentiment is always to some degree a determinant of the romantic type of mind. At least this is so when
the romantic nostalgia for some past era (Hellas, the Middle Ages, etc.) is not primarily based on the values
of that period, but on the wish to escape from the present. Then all praise of the “past” has the implied
purpose of downgrading present-day reality.
We have a tendency to overcome any strong tension between desire and impotence by depreciating or
denying the positive value of the desired object.
When we cannot obtain a thing, we comfort ourselves with the reassuring thought that it is not worth nearly
as much as we believed.
To its very core, the mind of ressentiment man is filled with envy, the impulse to detract, malice, and secret
vindictiveness. These affects have become fixed attitudes, detached from all determinate objects.
Independently of his will, this man’s attention will be instinctively drawn by all events which can set these
affects in motion. The ressentiment attitude even plays a role in the formation of perceptions, expectations,
and memories. It automatically selects those aspects of experience which can justify the factual application
of this pattern of feeling.
The man of ressentiment cannot justify or even understand his own existence and sense of life in terms of
positive values such as power, health, beauty, freedom, and independence. Weakness, fear, anxiety, and a
slavish disposition prevent him from obtaining them. Therefore he comes to feel that “all this is vain
anyway” and that salvation lies in the opposite phenomena: poverty, suffering, illness, and death. This
“sublime revenge” of ressentiment (in Nietzsche’s words) has indeed played a creative role in the history of
value systems. It is “sublime,” for the impulses of revenge against those who are strong, healthy, rich, or
handsome now disappear entirely. Ressentiment has brought deliverance from the inner torment of these
affects. Once the sense of values has shifted and the new judgments have spread, such people cease to been
viable, hateful, and worthy of revenge. They are unfortunate and to be pitied, for they are beset with “evils.”
Their sight now awakens feelings of gentleness, pity, and commiseration. When the reversal of values comes
to dominate accepted morality and is invested with the power of the ruling ethos, it is transmitted by
tradition, suggestion, and education to those who are endowed with the seemingly devaluated qualities. They
are struck with a “bad conscience” and secretly condemn themselves. The “slaves,” as Nietzsche says, infect
the “masters.” Ressentiment man, on the other hand, now feels “good,” “pure,” and “human”—at least in the
conscious layers of his mind. He is delivered from hatred, from the tormenting desire of an impossible
revenge, though deep down his poisoned sense of life and the true values may still shine through the illusory
ones. There is no more calumny, no more defamation of particular persons or things. The systematic
perversion and reinterpretation of the values themselves is much more effective than the “slandering” of
persons or the falsification of the world view could ever be.
960
Beyond all conscious lying and falsifying, there is a deeper “organic mendacity.” Here the falsification is not
formed in consciousness, but at the same stage of the mental process as the impressions and value feelings
themselves: on the road of experience into consciousness. There is “organic mendacity” whenever a man’s
mind admits only those impressions which serve his “interest” or his instinctive attitude. Already in the
process of mental reproduction and recollection, the contents of his experience are modified in this direction.
He who is “mendacious” has no need to lie! In his case, the automatic process of forming recollections,
impressions, and feelings is involuntarily slanted, so that conscious falsification becomes unnecessary.
All ancient philosophers, poets, and moralists agree that love is a striving, an aspiration of the “lower”
toward the “higher,” the “unformed” toward the “formed,” the “μήόν” towards the “όν,” “appearance”
towards “essence,” “ignorance” towards “knowledge,” a “mean between fullness and privation,” as Plato
says in the Symposium. ... The universe is a great chain of dynamic spiritual entities, of forms of being
ranging from the “prima materia” up to man—a chain in which the lower always strives for and is attracted
by the higher, which never turns back but aspires upward in its turn. This process continues up to the deity,
which itself does not love, but represents the eternally unmoving and unifying goal of all these aspirations of
love. Too little attention has been given to the peculiar relation between this idea of love and the principle of
the “agon,” the ambitious contest for the goal, which dominated Greek life in all its aspects—from the
Gymnasium and the games to dialectics and the political life of the Greek city states. Even the objects try to
surpass each other in a race for victory, in a cosmic “agon” for the deity. Here the prize that will crown the
victor is extreme: it is a participation in the essence, knowledge, and abundance of “being.” Love is only the
dynamic principle, immanent in the universe, which sets in motion this great “agon” of all things for the
deity.
Let us compare this with the Christian conception. In that conception there takes place what might be
called a reversal in the movement of love. The Christian view boldly denies the Greek axiom that love is an
aspiration of the lower towards the higher. On the contrary, now the criterion of love is that the nobler stoops
to the vulgar, the healthy to the sick, the rich to the poor, the handsome to the ugly, the good and saintly to
the bad and common, the Messiah to the sinners and publicans. The Christian is not afraid, like the ancient,
that he might lose something by doing so, that he might impair his own nobility. He acts in the peculiarly
pious conviction that through this “condescension,” through this self-abasement and “self-renunciation” he
gains the highest good and becomes equal to God. ...
There is no longer any “highest good” independent of and beyond the act and movement of love! Love
itself is the highest of all goods! The summum bonum is no longer the value of a thing, but of an act, the
value of love itself as love—not for its results and achievements. ...
Thus the picture has shifted immensely. This is no longer a band of men and things that surpass each other
in striving up to the deity. It is a band in which every member looks back toward those who are further
removed from God and comes to resemble the deity by helping and serving them.
961
There are two fundamentally different ways for the strong to bend down to the weak, for the rich to help
the poor, for the more perfect life to help the “less perfect.” This action can be motivated by a powerful
feeling of security, strength, and inner salvation, of the invincible fullness of one’s own life and existence.
All this unites into the clear awareness that one is rich enough to share one’s being and possessions. Love,
sacrifice, help, the descent to the small and the weak, here spring from a spontaneous overflow of force,
accompanied by bliss and deep inner calm. Compared to this natural readiness for love and sacrifice, all
specific “egoism,” the concern for oneself and one’s interest, and even the instinct of “self-preservation” are
signs of a blocked and weakened life. Life is essentially expansion, development, growth in plenitude, and
not “self-preservation,” as a false doctrine has it. Development, expansion, and growth are not epiphenomena
of mere preservative forces and cannot be reduced to the preservation of the “better adapted.” ... There is a
form of sacrifice which is a free renunciation of one’s own vital abundance, a beautiful and natural overflow
of one’s forces. Every living being has a natural instinct of sympathy for other living beings, which increases
with their proximity and similarity to himself. Thus we sacrifice ourselves for beings with whom we feel
united and solidary, in contrast to everything “dead.” This sacrificial impulse is by no means a later
acquisition of life, derived from originally egoistic urges. It is an original component of life and precedes all
those particular “aims” and “goals” which calculation, intelligence, and reflection impose upon it later. We
have an urge to sacrifice before we ever know why, for what, and for whom! Jesus’ view of nature and life,
which sometimes shines through his speeches and parables in fragments and hidden allusions, shows quite
clearly that he understood this fact. When he tells us not to worry about eating and drinking, it is not because
he is indifferent to life and its preservation, but because he sees also a vital weakness in all “worrying” about
the next day, in all concentration on one’s own physical well-being. ... all voluntary concentration on one’s
own bodily wellbeing, all worry and anxiety, hampers rather than furthers the creative force which
instinctively and beneficently governs all life. ... This kind of indifference to the external means of life (food,
clothing, etc.) is not a sign of indifference to life and its value, but rather of a profound and secret confidence
in life’s own vigor and of an inner security from the mechanical accidents which may befall it. A gay, light,
bold, knightly indifference to external circumstances, drawn from the depth of life itself—that is the feeling
which inspires these words! Egoism and fear of death are signs of a declining, sick, and broken life. ...
This attitude is completely different from that of recent modern realism in art and literature, the exposure
of social misery, the description of little people, the wallowing in the morbid—a typical ressentiment
phenomenon. Those people saw something bug-like in everything that lives, whereas Francis sees the
holiness of “life” even in a bug.
In the ancient notion of love, on the other hand, there is an element of anxiety. The noble fears the descent to
the less noble, is afraid of being infected and pulled down. The “sage” of antiquity does not have the same
firmness, the same inner certainty of himself and his own value, as the genius and hero of Christian love.
The fake love of ressentiment man offers no real help, since for his perverted sense of values, evils like
“sickness” and “poverty” have become goods.
The important thing is not the amount of welfare, it is that there should be a maximum of love among men.
The act of helping is the direct and adequate expression of love, not its meaning or “purpose.” Its meaning
lies in itself, in its illumination of the soul, in the nobility of the loving soul in the act of love. Therefore
nothing can be further removed from this genuine concept of Christian love than all kinds of “socialism,”
“social feeling,” “altruism,” and other subaltern modern things. When the rich youth is told to divest himself
of his riches and give them to the poor, it is really not in order to help the “poor” and to effect a better
distribution of property in the interest of general welfare. Nor is it because poverty as such is supposed to be
better than wealth. The order is given because the act of giving away, and the spiritual freedom and
abundance of love which manifest themselves in this act, ennoble the youth and make him even “richer” than
he is.
962
Antiquity believed that the forces of love in the universe were limited. Therefore they were to be used
sparingly, and everyone was to be loved only according to his value.
There is a completely different way of stooping to the small, the lowly, and the common, even though it may
seem almost the same. Here love does not spring from an abundance of vital power, from firmness and
security. Here it is only a euphemism for escape, for the inability to “remain at home” with oneself (chez
soi). Turning toward others is but the secondary consequence of this urge to flee from oneself. ... Modern
philosophical jargon has found a revealing term for this phenomenon, one of the many modern substitutes for
love: “altruism.” This love is not directed at a previously discovered positive value, nor does any such value
flash up in the act of loving: there is nothing but the urge to turn away from oneself and to lose oneself in
other people’s business. We all know a certain type of man frequently found among socialists, suffragettes,
and all people with an ever-ready “social conscience”—the kind of person whose social activity is quite
clearly prompted by inability to keep his attention focused on himself, on his own tasks and problems.
It is precisely the essential feature of egoism that it does not apprehend the full value of the isolated self. The
egoist sees himself only with regard to the others, as a member of society who wishes to possess and acquire
more than the others. Self-directedness or other-directedness have no essential bearing on the specific quality
of love or hatred. These acts are different in themselves, quite independently of their direction
In ressentiment morality, love for the “small,” the “poor,” the “weak,” and the “oppressed” is really
disguised hatred, repressed envy, an impulse to detract, etc., directed against the opposite phenomena:
“wealth,” “strength,” “power,” “largesse.” When hatred does not dare to come out into the open, it can be
easily expressed in the form of ostensible love—love for something which has features that are the opposite
of those of the hated object. This can happen in such a way that the hatred remains secret. When we hear that
falsely pious, unctuous tone (it is the tone of a certain “socially-minded” type of priest), sermonizing that
love for the “small” is our first duty, love for the “humble” inspirit, since God gives “grace” to them, then it
is often only hatred posing as Christian love.
When we are told, in the same tone, that these people will be rewarded in “heaven” for their distress, and that
“heaven” is the exact reverse of the earthly order (“the first shall be last”), we distinctly feel how the
ressentiment-laden man transfers to God the vengeance he himself cannot wreak on the great. In this way, he
can satisfy his revenge at least in imagination, with the aid of an other-worldly mechanism of rewards and
punishments.
The “kingdom of God” has become the “other world,” which stands mechanically beside “this world”—an
opposition unknown to the strongest periods of Christianity.
The highest and ultimate personality values are declared to be independent of contrasts like rich and poor,
healthy and sick, etc. The world had become accustomed to considering the social hierarchy, based on status,
wealth, vital strength, and power, as an exact image of the ultimate values of morality and personality. The
only way to disclose the discovery of anew and higher sphere of being and life, of the “kingdom of God”
whose order is independent of that worldly and vital hierarchy, was to stress the vanity of the old values in
this higher order.
963
The precepts “Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, bless them that curse you” ... are born
from the Gospel’s profound spirit of individualism, which refuses to let one’s own actions and conduct
depend in any way on somebody else’s acts. The Christian refuses to let his acts be mere reactions—such
conduct would lower him to the level of his enemy. The act is to grow organically from the person, “as the
fruit from the tree.” ... What the Gospel demands is not a reaction which is the reverse of the natural reaction,
as if it said: “Because he strikes you on the cheek, tend the other”—but a rejection of all reactive activity, of
any participation in common and average ways of acting and standards of judgment.
Jesus’ “mysterious” affection for the sinners, which is closely related to his ever-ready militancy against the
scribes and pharisees, against every kind of social respectability ... contains a kind of awareness that the great
transformation of life, the radical change in outlook he demands of man (in Christian parlance it is called
“rebirth”) is more accessible to the sinner than to the “just.” ... Jesus is deeply skeptical toward all those who
can feign the good man’s blissful existence through the simple lack of strong instincts and vitality. But all
this does not suffice to explain this mysterious affection. In it there is something which can scarcely be
expressed and must be felt. When the noblest men are in the company of the “good”—even of the truly
“good,” not only of the pharisees—they are often overcome by a sudden impetuous yearning to go to the
sinners, to suffer and struggle at their side and to share their grievous, gloomy lives. This is truly no
temptation by the pleasures of sin, nor a demoniacal love for its “sweetness,” nor the attraction of the
forbidden or the lure of novel experiences. It is an outburst of tempestuous love and tempestuous compassion
for all men who are felt as one, indeed for the universe as a whole; a love which makes it seem frightful that
only some should be “good,” while the others are “bad” and reprobate. In such moments, love and a deep
sense of solidarity are repelled by the thought that we alone should be “good,” together with some others.
This fills us with a kind of loathing for those who can accept this privilege, and we have an urge to move
away from them.
The notorious “sinner” is also one who acknowledges the evil in his soul. I am not only thinking of verbal
confession, as before a tribunal, but also of admission before oneself or through the deed in which the sinful
desire has issued. Let what he acknowledges be evil and sinful: the fact that he does it is not evil; it is good!
In this way he purges his soul and prevents the spreading of the poison. But if he represses his evil impulses,
the poison will penetrate more and more deeply, and at the same time it will become ever more hidden from
his knowledge and conscience. Finally even the “beam in one’s own eye” will no longer be felt—but the
“mote in one’s brother’s eye” all the more! Therefore the sinful deed which is followed by remorse—and
does not remorse begin with the very deed insofar as it is a confession?—is better in Jesus’ eyes than the
repression of the sinful impulse and the consequent poisoning of a man’s inner core, which can easily go
with the conviction of being good and just before the law. That is why “joy shall be in heaven over one
sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons” (Luke 15:7).
If indeed we follow the criterion of social utility, we must judge and feel differently. Then the inner state of
the individual soul, especially of its unconscious layers, is unimportant: the main thing is to keep the sinful
impulse from harming the common interest. Indeed an impulse is only “sinful” if it could lead to such harm.
Jesus judges differently: the sinner who sins is better than the sinner who does not sin, but whose sinful
impulse turns inward and poisons his soul—even if the community is harmed by the former and not by the
latter.
The strongest life is not that which functions with a maximum of natural or artificially created mechanisms
which are adapted to the surroundings, but a life which is still able to exist, grow, and even advance with a
minimum of such mechanisms.
964
Umsturz der Werte (1919)
Franz Bacon schickte dem Teile seines Novum Organon, in dem er die positive Methodik der Erforschung
der äußeren Natur entwickelte, ein negatives Lehrstück voraus, seine Lehre von den Idolen. Der »getrübte
Spiegel« unseres Verstandes sollte — meint er — durch Kenntnis von natürlichen Neigungen zu Täuschung
und Irrtum und durch resoluten Kampf gegen sie gereinigt werden. Eben das, was Bacon für die Sphäre der
äußeren Wahrnehmung unternahm, soll im Folgenden für die Sphäre der inneren und Selbstwahrnehmung
versucht werden.
Max Scheler, „Die Idole der Selbsterkenntnis“, Umsturz der Werte (1919), B. 2, S. 16-20
Es gibt vielleicht nichts, was für alle Art von Erkenntnis der seelischen Welt ein so prinzipielles Hindernis
darstellt, als die von vielen Forschern und Philosophen der Gegenwart und jüngsten Vergangenheit
angenommene Meinung, daß innere Wahrnehmung im Gegensatze zur äußeren Wahrnehmung der Natur
nicht täuschen könne; ja daß hier die Erlebnisse selbst mit evidentem und adäquatem Wissen von den
Erlebnissen zusammenfielen. Diese von Descartes stammende Lehre von einem Evidenzvorzug der inneren
Wahrnehmung vor der äußeren, wird in Folgendem ihrer vermeintlichen Stützen beraubt werden. Sie ist eine
der Grundlagen alles philosophischen subjektiven Idealismus und Egocentrismus, gleichzeitig eine der
Grundlagen jener falschen Art der Selbstgewißheit, die im Verlaufe des Aufbaues unserer Kultur
insbesondere der Protestantismus zu einer berechtigten menschlichen Haltung zu machen suchte, und die für
viele zum Stützpunkt für einen maßlosen Negativismus und Kritizismus gegen alles Sein außerhalb des Ichs
— Gott, Natur und objektive Kultur — geworden ist.
965
Ich sehe in den gegenwärtigen psychotherapeutischen Bestrebungen zwei Auffassungen des Zieles
jeglicher psychotherapeutischen Hilfeleistung miteinander ringen, die sich ausschließen und auf
grundverschiedene theoretische Vorstellungen über das Seelenleben zurückgehen. Die erste dieser
Auffassungen könnte man bezeichnen als die des psychischen Chirurgen. Hiernach bedeutet Psychotherapie
einen irgendwie zu machenden Eingriff in den kausalen Ablauf der psychischen Erlebnisse des Patienten mit
der Endabsicht, sie in die Bahn einer normalen Verlaufsform zu zwingen. Alle Suggestionsmethoden
beruhen zum Beispiel hierauf. Den theoretischen Hintergrund für diese Ansicht vom Ziele der
Psychotherapie pflegt eine mechanistische Assoziationspsychologie zu bilden. Die zweite Auffassung kann
man als die des Psychoanalytikers — oder wie ich lieber sagen will, da in der Schule, die sich diesen Namen
gab, beide Auffassungen wirr durcheinandergehen — als die »Sokratische« bezeichnen. Hiernach ist es
Endabsicht jeder Psychotherapie, den Patienten zur Einsicht über sich selbst, besonders seine tatsächlichen
Erlebnisse der Vergangenheit zu führen, zur Einsicht in ihren Sinnzusammenhang. D. h. es besteht die
Endabsicht, ihn von »Selbsttäuschungen« frei zu machen. Mag zu diesem Ende auch wieder ein technisches
Eingreifen in seinen seelischen Ablauf stattfinden z. B. auch Hypnose und Suggestion Anwendung finden, so
stellt sich doch dieses Verfahren hier immer in den Dienst des Zieles, ihm hierdurch jene mangelnde Einsicht
zu gewähren. Der kausale Eingriff in die Erlebnisse hat hier nicht den technischen Zweck, sie abzuändern,
Teile zu unterdrücken oder neue einzusetzen, sondern einen analogen Zweck, wie ihn der Eingriff
gelegentlich des Experimentes hat, ein schon Vorhandenes schärfer und isoliert sichtbar und in seinen
Zusammenhängen verständlich zu machen. Der theoretische Hintergrund dieses therapeutischen Ideals ist
aber eine Auffassung, nach der eine Art des »seelischen Krankseins« gar nicht in den real erlebten
psychischen Vorgängen des Patienten, in ihrem Inhalt und in ihrem Ablauf selbst wurzelt, sondern nur in der
Art und Weise, wie sie in den Funktionen der inneren und Selbstwahrnehmung aufgefaßt, unterdrückt und
gedeutet, interpretiert und beurteilt werden; wie wir Stellung zu ihnen nehmen, und in welcher Weise und in
welcher Art wir sie erkennen. Es sind Funktionsstörungen des Bewußtseins »von« den psychischen
Erlebnissen, auf j denen hiernach das seelische Kranksein beruht. Erst in diesem letzteren Zusammenhange
gewinnt der Begriff der Selbsttäuschung seine volle und überragende Bedeutung. Denn mindestens ein Teil
der Psychotherapie ordnet sich dann letzten Endes in das Ziel ein, Selbsttäuschungen aufzuheben. …
Der Psychotherapeut im letzteren [sokratischen] Sinne wird und kann daher nie eine Kritik am Gehalt des
Lebens seines Patienten üben, sei es eine moralische oder sonst irgend eine. Er wird es nicht wie der
aufdringliche kynische Seelenarzt und Prediger zu verändern suchen, oder ihm eine andere Richtung zu
geben suchen als diejenige ist, die aus seinem eigenen Borne quillt. Sein einziges Ziel ist, daß der Patient den
Inhalt seines Lebens sehe und übersehe — so vollständig und klar wie möglich. Was er dann damit tue, ist
seine1 Sache und nicht die des Arztes. Was in seinem Leben an Gehalt, auch an Wertgehalt liegt, das ist
durch keine Psychotherapie veränderlich. Nur was, wie viel und wie es aufgenommen, erfasst wird, ist es.
Das therapeutische Ideal im zweiten Sinne ist um ein Erhebliches bescheidener als jenes des psychischen
Chirurgen. Die sokratische Zurückhaltung ist ihm eigen — im Unterschiede von kynischer Vordringlichkeit
in der Lebenslenkung fremder Menschen.
RAINER MARIA RILKE (1875-1926)

I implore those who love me to love my solitude.
Rilke
Live life to the limit, not according to each day but by plumbing its depth
Rilke
966
Je weiter ich lebe, desto nötiger scheint es mir, auszuhalten, das ganze Diktat des Daseins bis zum Schluss
nachzuschreiben; denn es möchte sein, dass erst der letzte Satz jenes kleine, vielleicht unscheinbare Wort
enthält, durch welches alles mühsam Erlernte und Unbegriffene sich gegen einen herrlichen Sinn
hinüberkehrt.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Brief an Ilse Erdmann, 21. Dezember 1913
The longer I live, the more urgent it seems to me to endure and transcribe the whole dictation of
existence up to its end, for it might just be the case that only the very last sentence contains that small
and possibly inconspicuous word through which everything we had struggled to learn and everything
we had failed to understand will be transformed suddenly into magnificent sense.
Rilke, letter to Ilse Erdmann, 21 December 1913, in Letters on Life, U. Baer, trans. (2007)
It is not possible to have an adequate image of how inexhaustible the expansiveness and possibilities of life
are. No fate, no rejection, no hardship is entirely without prospects; somewhere the densest shrub can yield
leaves, a flower, a fruit. And somewhere in God’s furthest providence there surely exists already an insect
that will gather riches from this flower or a hunger that will be sated by this fruit. And if this fruit is bitter it
will have astonished at least one eye, and will have provided it pleasure and have triggered curiosity for the
shapes and colors and crops of the shrub.
Rilke
I have by now grown accustomed, to the degree that this is humanly possible, to grasp everything that we
may encounter according to its particular intensity without worrying much about how long it will last.
Ultimately, this may be the best and most direct way of expecting the utmost of everything—even its
duration. If we allow an encounter with a given thing to be shaped by this expectation that it may last, every
such experience will be spoiled and falsified, and ultimately it will be prevented from unfolding its most
proper and authentic potential and fertility.
Rilke
We lead our lives so poorly because we arrive in the present always unprepared, incapable, and too distracted
for everything.
Rilke
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910)

Daß es mir zum Beispiel niemals zum Bewußtsein gekommen ist, wieviel Gesichter es giebt. Es giebt eine
Menge Menschen, aber noch viel mehr Gesichter, denn jeder hat mehrere. Da sind Leute, die tragen ein
Gesicht jahrelang, natürlich nutzt es sich ab, es wird schmutzig, es bricht in den Falten, es weitet sich aus wie
Handschuhe, die man auf der Reise getragen hat. Das sind sparsame, einfache Leute; sie wechseln es nicht,
sie lassen es nicht einmal reinigen. Es sei gut genug, behaupten sie, und wer kann ihnen das Gegenteil
nachweisen? Nun fragt es sich freilich, da sie mehrere Gesichter haben, was tun sie mit den andern? Sie
heben sie auf. Ihre Kinder sollen sie tragen.
Rilke
There are people who wear the same face for years; naturally it wears out, gets dirty, “splits at the seams,
stretches like gloves worn during a long journey. They are thrifty, uncomplicated people; they never change
it, never even have it cleaned. It’s good enough, they say, and who can convince them of the contrary? Of
course, since they have several faces, you might wonder what they do with the other ones. They keep them in
storage. Their children wear them.
Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
967
Da saß ich an deinen Büchern, Eigensinniger, und versuchte sie zu meinen wie die andern, die dich nicht
beisammen lassen und sich ihren Anteil genommen haben, befriedigt. Denn da begriff ich noch nicht den
Ruhm, diesen öffentlichen Abbruch eines Werdenden, in dessen Bauplatz die Menge einbricht, ihm die
Steine verschiebend.
Junger Mensch irgendwo, in dem etwas aufsteigt, was ihn erschauern macht, nütz es, daß dich keiner
kennt. Und wenn sie dir widersprechen, die dich für nichts nehmen, und wenn sie dich ganz aufgeben, die,
mit denen du umgehst, und wenn sie dich ausrotten wollen, um deiner lieben Gedanken willen, was ist diese
deutliche Gefahr, die dich zusammenhält in dir, gegen die listige Feindschaft später des Ruhms, die dich
unschädlich macht, indem sie dich ausstreut.
Rilke
There I sat before your books, obstinate man, trying to understand them as the others do, who don’t leave
you in one piece but chip off their little portion and go away satisfied. For I still didn’t understand fame, that
public demolition of someone who is in the process of becoming, whose building site the mob breaks into,
knocking down his stones.
Young man anywhere, in whom something is welling up that makes you shiver, be grateful that no
one knows you. And if those who think you are worthless contradict you, and if those whom you call
your friends abandon you, and if they want to destroy you because of your precious ideas: what is this
obvious danger, which concentrates you inside yourself, compared with the cunning enmity of fame,
later, which makes you innocuous by scattering you all around?
Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge [about Ibsen]
A little while ago they were against you body and soul; and now they treat you as their equal. And they pull
your words around with them in the cages of their presumption, and exhibit them in the streets, and tease
them a little, from a safe distance.
Rilke, regarding Ibsen, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
Wir entdecken wohl, daß wir die Rolle nicht wissen, wir suchen einen Spiegel, wir möchten abschminken
und das Falsche abnehmen und wirklich sein. Aber irgendwo haftet uns noch ein Stück Verkleidung an, das
wir vergessen. Eine Spur Übertreibung bleibt in unseren Augenbrauen, wir merken nicht, daß unsere
Mundwinkel verbogen sind. Und so gehen wir herum, ein Gespött und eine Hälfte: weder Seiende, noch
Schauspieler.
Rilke
We discover that we do not know our role; we look for a mirror; we would like to remove our make-up and
strip off what is false and be real. But somewhere a piece of disguise that we forgot still sticks to us. A trace
of exaggeration remains in our eyebrows; we do not notice that the corners of our mouth are bent. And so we
walk around, a mockery and a mere half: neither having achieved being nor remaining actors.
Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, cited in Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, p. 141, modified translation
Even the rich, who could afford after all to die elaborately, are beginning to become negligent and
indifferent; the wish to have a death of one’s own is becoming rarer and rarer. A little while yet, and it will
be as rare as a life of one’s own. ... One comes along, one finds a life, ready-made, one only has to put it
on. One wants to go, or is forced to go, ... to no trouble at all.
Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, cited in Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, p. 135
968
Briefe
German: http://www.rilke.de/
English: http://www.carrothers.com/rilke1.htm
Erforschen Sie den Grund, der Sie schreiben heißt; prüfen Sie, ob er in der tiefsten Stelle Ihres Herzens seine
Wurzeln ausstreckt, gestehen Sie sich ein, ob Sie sterben müßten, wenn es Ihnen versagt würde zu schreiben.
Dieses vor allem: fragen Sie sich in der stillsten Stunde Ihrer Nacht: muß ich schreiben? Graben Sie in sich
nach einer tiefen Antwort. Und wenn diese zustimmend lauten sollte, wenn Sie mit einem starken und
einfachen ich muß dieser ernsten Frage begegnen dürfen, dann bauen Sie Ihr Leben nach dieser
Notwendigkeit; Ihr Leben bis hinein in seine gleichgültigste und geringste Stunde muß ein Zeichen und
Zeugnis werden diesem Drange.
Rilke, Brief an Franz Kappus, 17 Februar 1903
Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of
your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of
all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And
if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must”, then build
your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour,
must become a sign and witness to this impulse.
Rilke, Letter to Franz Kappus, February 17, 1903
Wenn Ihr Alltag Ihnen arm scheint, klagen Sie ihn nicht an; klagen Sie sich an, sagen Sie sich, daß Sie nicht
Dichter genug sind, seine Reichtümer zu rufen; denn für den Schaffenden gibt es keine Armut und keinen
armen, gleichgültigen Ort.
Rilke, Brief an Franz Kappus, 17 Februar 1903
If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of
a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place.
A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity.

Go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the
answer to, the question of whether you must create.
Of course, you must know that every letter of yours will always give me pleasure, and you must be indulgent
with the answer, which will perhaps often leave you empty-handed; for ultimately, and precisely in the
deepest and most important matters, we are unspeakably alone; and many things must happen, many things
must go right, a whole constellation of events must be fulfilled, for one human being to successfully advise
or help another.
Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, 2
Irony: Don’t let yourself be controlled by it, especially during uncreative moments. When you are fully
creative, try to use it, as one more way to take hold of fife. Used purely, it too is pure, and one needn’t be
ashamed of it; but if you feel yourself becoming too familiar with it, if you are afraid of this growing
familiarity, then turn to great and serious objects, in front of which it becomes small and helpless. Search into
the depths of things: there, irony never descends and when you arrive at the edge of greatness, find out
whether this way of perceiving the world arises from a necessity of your being. For under the influence of
serious things it will either fall away from you (if it is something accidental), or else (if it is really innate and
belongs to you) it will grow strong, and become a serious tool and take its place among the instruments
which you can form your art with.
Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves
969
Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it,
live your way into the answer.
Bodily delight ... is a great, an infinite learning that is given to us, a knowledge of the world, the fullness and
the splendor of all knowledge. And it is not our acceptance of it that is bad; what is bad is that most people
misuse this learning and squander it and apply it as a stimulant on the tired places of their lives and as a
distraction rather than as a way of gathering themselves for their highest moments.
Be happy about your growth, in which of course you can’t take anyone with you, and be gentle with those
who stay behind. Be confident and calm in front of them. Don’t torment them with your doubts. Don’t
frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn’t be able to comprehend. Seek a simple, yet true,
intuition of what you have in common with them. This need not alter as you change again and again. When
you see them, love life in a form that is not your own
There is only one solitude, and it is vast, heavy, difficult to bear, and almost everyone has hours when he
would gladly exchange it for any kind of sociability, however trivial or cheap, for the tiniest outward
agreement with the first person who comes along, the most unworthy.
What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no
one for hours—that is what you must be able to attain.
What is necessary, after all, is only ... to be solitary as you were when you were a child, when the
grownups walked around involved with matters that seemed large and important because they looked
so busy and because you didn’t understand a thing about what they were doing. When you realize that
their activities are shabby, that their vocations are petrified and no longer connected with life, why not
then continue to look upon it all as a child would, as if you were looking at something unfamiliar, out
of the depths of your own world, from the vastness of your own solitude, which is itself work and
status and vocation? Why should you want to give up a child’s wise not-understanding in exchange for
defensiveness and scorn, since not understanding is, after all, a way of being alone, whereas
defensiveness and scorn are a participation in precisely what, by these means, you want to separate
yourself from.
Perhaps all professions ... are filled with hostility toward the individual, saturated with hatred by those
who find themselves mute and sullen in an insipid duty.
The situation you must live in now is not more heavily burdened with conventions, prejudices, and false
ideas than all the other situations. If there are some that pretend to offer a greater freedom, there is
nevertheless none that is, in itself, vast and spacious and connected to the important things that the truest
kind of life consists of.
Most people have (with the help of conventions) turned their solutions toward what is easy and toward the
easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must trust in what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it,
everything, in Nature grows and defends itself any way it can and is spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at
all costs and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty
that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must
be one more reason for us to do it.
970
[Young lovers will often try to] escape into one of the many conventions that have been put up in great
numbers like public shelters on this most dangerous road. No area of human experience is so extensively
provided with conventions as this one is: there are life-preservers of the most varied invention, boats and
water wings; society has been able to create refuges of every sort, for since it preferred to take love life as an
amusement, it also had to give it an easy form, cheap, safe, and sure, as public amusements are.
PROVERBS
Better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
Proverb
The tree of silence bears the fruit of peace.

Arabian Proverb
Chinese
By filling one’s head instead of one’s pockets, one cannot be robbed.
Chinese Proverb
English
Industry is Fortune’s right hand, and frugality her left.
English Proverb
French
Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner.
To understand all is to forgive all
French Proverb
German
Wer es nicht nötig hat, sich hinter gespielter Seriosität zu verstecken, muss ein Mann von wahrer Tugend
sein.
Deutsches Sprichwort
He who has no need to conceal himself behind a veil of feigned seriousness must be a man of genuine virtue.
German Proverb
Was ich nicht weiß, macht mich nicht heiß.

Wes Brot ich ess, des Lied ich sing.

Whose bread I eat, his song I sing.
German Proverb
Alte Füchse gehen schwer in die Falle.

Old foxes go with difficulty into the trap.
[The old and wise are less likely to get tricked.]
German Proverb
971
Anfangen ist leicht, beharren eine Kunst.
To begin is easy, to persist is art.
German Proverb
Arbeit adelt
Bescheidenheit ist eine Zier, doch weiter kommt man ohne ihr.
Modesty may be a grace; forget it if you want to win the race.
German Proverb
Betrug ist der Krämer Acker und Pflug.

Deception is the shopkeeper’s field and plow.
German Proverb
Greek
Good things are hard.
Greek proverb, cited in Pseudo-Plutarch, “The education of children,” Moralia (London: 1922), 6C
What is noble is difficult.

Greek Proverb, cited in Schopenhauer, Parerga und Paralipomena, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 359
Well begun is half done.

Greek Proverb, cited in Aristotle, Politics
Give me today and take tomorrow.

Greek Proverb
Conscience to all mortals is a god.

Menander
The fountain of wisdom flows through books.

Greek Proverb
Italian
Chi si trova senz’ amici, e come un corpo senz’ anima.
A man without friends is like a body without a soul.
Italian Proverb
Japanese
Ware is the art of embellishing death
Japanese Proverb
Latin
http://books.google.com/books?id=fIIVAAAAMAAJ
A bove majori discit arare minor.

The young ox learns to plow from the old.
Latin Proverb
972
Omnia mea mecum porto.
Everything of mine I carry with me.
Latin Proverb
Per aspera ad astra.

Through hardship to the stars.
Latin Proverb
Fit fabricando faber.

A smith becomes a smith by working at the forge.
Latin Proverb
Ubi dubium ibi libertas.

Where there is doubt there is freedom.
Latin Proverb
Ab abusu ad usum non valet consequentia.

The abuse of a thing is no argument against its use.
Latin Proverb, Latin Quotations (New York: 2005), p. 3
Abstineto a fabis.
[literally] abstain from beans
[figuratively] have nothing to do with elections.
Absurdum est ut alios regat, qui seipsum regere nescit.

It is absurd that he should rule others who knows not how to rule himself.
Addecet honeste vivere.

It becomes us to live honorably.
Aequari pavet alta minori.

A lofty thing fears being made equal to a lower.
Alienos agros irrigas tuis sitientibus.

You water the fields of others while your own are parched.
Amicorum communia omia.

Among friends all things should be in common.
Latin Proverb
Amicus Plato, amicus Socrates, sed magis amica veritas.

Plato is my friend, Socrates is my friend, but truth is more my friend.
Cave ab homine unius libri.

Beware of the man of one book.
Cito maturum, cito putridum.

Soon ripe, soon rotten.
973
Ne gustaris quibus nigra est cauda.
Eat not what has a black tail.
[In other works, do nothing which you will repent upon reflection.]
Latin Proverb
Abite nummi, ego vos mergam, ne mergar a vubis.

Away with you, money, I will sink you, that I may not be sunk by you.
Latin Proverb
Abiturus illuc quo prior es abierunt,

Quid mente caecd miserium torques spiritum?
Tibi dico, avdre
As you must go to that place to which others have gone before, why in the blindness of your mind do you
torment your wretched existence? To you I address myself, miser.
Latin Proverb
Spanish
Hablar sin pensar, es tirar sin encarar.
Speaking without thinking is shooting without aiming.
Spanish Proverb
MISCELLANEOUS
The word "anarchy" etymologically signifies the negation of governmental authority, the absence of
government. ... But this definition would have only a negative value did it not possess, as a practical
complement, a conscious attempt to live outside this domination and servility which are incompatible with
the anarchist conception. An anarchist, therefore, is an individual who, whether he has been brought to it by a
process of reasoning or by sentiment, lives to the greatest possible extent in a state of legitimate defence
against authoritarian encroachments. From this it follows that anarchist individualism—the tendency which
we believe contains the most profound realization of the anarchist idea—is not merely a philosophical
doctrine—it is an attitude, an individual way of life.
Emile Armand, Anarchist Individualism as Life and Activity (1907)
I have been an Anarchist all my life. I hope I have remained one. I should consider it very sad indeed, had I
to turn into a general and rule the men with a military rod. They have come to me voluntarily, they are ready
to stake their lives in our antifascist fight. I believe, as I always have, in freedom. The freedom which rests
on the sense of responsibility. I consider discipline indispensable, but it must be inner discipline, motivated
by a common purpose and a strong feeling of comradeship.
Buenaventura Durruti , describing his military leadership against fascist troops in the Spanish Civil War, as quoted by Emma Goldman in "Durruti Is
Dead, Yet Living" (1936)
974
La suite des idées change totalement de direction du moment où l'on a reconnu la vérité de fait que l'individu
n'est point un tout indépendant, mais une partie, qui n'a d'être que dans le tout et par le tout. Alors, mais
seulement alors, on peut résumer la morale universelle dans le concept du perfectionnement. Se
perfectionner, c'est apprendre son rôle, c'est se rendre capable de remplir sa fonction; et cette capacité ne
s'acquiert que par l'exercice. La mesure de notre perfection ne se trouvera plus dans notre complaisance à
nous-même, dans les applaudissements de la foule ou dans le sourire approbateur d'un dilettantisme précieux,
mais dans la somme des services par nous rendus et dans notre capacité d'en rendre encore.
Charles Secrétan, La principle de la morale (1883), p. 189
The collection of ideas changes totally in the direction of the moment, in which one has recognized the truth
of the fact that the individual is not a completely independent being, but a party, who has no being other than
inside the totality and by virtue of the totality. Thus, and thus alone, may one resume the universal morality
within the concept of perfectionism. To perfect oneself is to learn one’s role, to render oneself capable of
fulfilling one’s function. And this capacity is not acquired except by exercising it. The measure of our
perfection will no longer be found in our satisfaction with ourselves, in the plaudits of crowd or the
approving smiles of a precious dilettantism, but rather in the sum of services rendered by us and our capacity
to render more.
Charles Secrétan, La principle de la morale (1883), p. 189, my translation
Folks who are skilled in Greek, tell us; that philosophy means no more than the Love of Wisdom, and I, by
the Adjunction of Polite, wou'd be understood to mean that Sort of Wisdom which teaches Men to be at
Peace in themselves, and neither by their Words or Behaviour to disturb the Peace of others.
James Forrester, The Polite Philosopher, or, An Essay on that Art which Makes a Man happy in Himself and agreeable to Others (1734), p. 3
Secure his soul preserved a constant frame,

Through every varying scene of life the same.
James Forrester, The Polite Philosopher: Or, An Essay on that Art which Makes a Man happy in Himself and agreeable to Others (1734), p. 3
Harsh to the heart, and grating to the ear,

Who can reproof without reluctance hear
Why against priests the gen'ral heat so strong,
But that they shew us all we do is wrong?
Wit well apply‘d does weightier wisdom right,
And gives us knowledge, while it gives delight,
Thus on the stage, we with applause behold,
What would have pain'd us from the pulpit told.
James Forrester, The Polite Philosopher: Or, An Essay on that Art which Makes a Man happy in Himself and agreeable to Others (1734), p. 17
I am, indeed, a king, because I know how to rule myself.

Pietro Aretino
Concentration is the natural piety of the soul.

Malebranche
The neglect or abuse of ourselves is the true Original of all Sin.

Benjamin Whichcote, Moral and Religious Aphorisms (1703), #31
In a city that has no watchdogs, the fox is the overseer.

Sumerian Aphorism
Not to know what happened before one was born is always to be a child.
Cicero
975
Money, not morality, is the principle of commercial nations.
Thomas Jefferson
For every ailment under the sun

There is a remedy, or there is none;
If there be one, try to find it;
If there be none, never mind it.
John Newbery, Mother Goose’s Melody (1791), based on Charles Perrault, Tales of My Mother Goose (1695)
There is too much of pleasantry, and too little of seriousness, in this method of considering the subject.
Joseph Priestley, referring to homosexuality, Socrates and Jesus Compared (1803), p. 17
What is the hangman but a servant of law? And what is that law but an expression of public opinion? And if
public opinion be brutal and thou a component part thereof, art thou not the hangman's accomplice?
Lydia Maria Child, Letter 32, November 26, 1842 Letters from New York (1853), p. 221 http://books.google.com/books?id=hLAIAAAAQAAJ
Those who enjoy their own emotionally bad health and who habitually fill their own minds with the rank
poisons of suspicion, jealousy and hatred, as a rule take umbrage at those who refuse to do likewise, and they
find a perverted relief in trying to denigrate them.
Johannes Brahms
Government is a veritable religion: it has its dogmas, its mysteries, its ministers. ... The primary need of man
is that his growing reason ... be lost in the national reason so that it may change his individual existence into
another, common existence.
Joseph de Maistre, Etude sur la Souveraineté, Ouvres Completes, Lyon 1891, Tome I, p. 367
Du hast keinen Begriff davon, wie es unsereinem zumute ist, wenn er immer so einen Riesen hinter sich
marschieren hört.
Johannes Brahms, in Max Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, Band 1, S. 165 (Der „Riese“ heißt Beethoven)
Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.
Those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the
riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.
Flaccus Albinus Alcuinus, Letter to Charlemagne (798) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, third edition, Oxford University Press, 1993
The bird of life is singing on the bough

His two eternal notes of “I and Thou”—
O! hearken well, for soon the song sings through
And, would we hear it, we must hear it now.
The bird of life is singing in the sun,
Short is his song, nor only just begun,—
A call, a trill, a rapture, then—so soon!—
A silence, and the song is done—is done.
Yea! what is man that deems himself divine?
Man is a flagon, and his soul the wine;
Man is a reed, his soul the sound therein;
Man is a lantern, and his soul the shine.
Would you be happy! hearken, then, the way:
Heed not tomorrow, heed not yesterday;
The magic words of life are here and now—
O fools, that after some tomorrow stray!
Omar Khayyám, Rubáiyát, R. Le Gallienne, trans. http://www.epubbud.com/read.php?g=XWBCBM3L&p=12
976
To all of us the thought of heaven is dear—
Why not be sure of it and make it here?
Nor idle I who speak it, nor profane,

This playful wisdom growing out of pain;
How many midnights whitened into morn
Before the seeker knew he sought in vain.
You want to know the Secret—so did I,
Low in the dust I sought it, and on high
Sought it in awful flight from star to star,
The Sultan’s watchman of the starry sky.
Up, up, where Parwín’s hoofs stamp heaven’s floor,
My soul went knocking at each starry door,
Till on the stilly top of heaven’s stair,
Clear-eyed I looked—and laughed—and climbed no more.
Of all my seeking this is all my gain:
No agony of any mortal brain
Shall wrest the secret of the life of man;
The Search has taught me that the Search is vain.
Look not above, there is no answer there;

Pray not, for no one listens to your prayer;
The Koran! well, come put me to the test—

Lovely old book in hideous error drest—
Believe me, I can quote the Koran too,
The unbeliever knows his Koran best.
And do you think that unto such as you,
A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew,
God gave the Secret, and denied it me?—
Well, well, what matters it! believe that too.
Old Khayyám, say you, is a debauchee;
If only you were half so good as he!
He sins no sins but gentle drunkenness,
Great-hearted mirth, and kind adultery.
But yours the cold heart, and the murderous tongue,
The wintry soul that hates to hear a song,
The close-shut fist, the mean and measuring eye,
And all the little poisoned ways of wrong.
So I be written in the Book of Love,
I have no care about that book above;
I said, “Old man, hast thou forgotten God?”

“Go, drink yourself,” he said, “for God is kind.”
“Did God set grapes a-growing, do you think,
And at the same time make it sin to drink?
Give thanks to Him who foreordained it thus—
Surely He loves to hear the glasses clink!”
977
Les heures sont faites pour l'homme, et non l'homme pour les heures.
Rabelais, Gargantua (1534)
Hours were made for man, not man for hours
Rabelais, Gargantua (1534)
Youth, no better prize can find

Than the riches of the mind;
These can yield them pleasures high,
Mines of wealth could never buy.
This, the fortune gained aright,
Time and change can never blight;
When land is gone and money spent,
Then learning is most excellent.
T. Crampton
Officialese originates with the Circumlocution Office.

Charles Dickens
It is better to be high-spirited, even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too
prudent. It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs
much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love, is well done.
Vincent Van Gogh, Letter to his brother Theo
What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody
who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if
that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a
nobody, has in his heart.
That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling
of serenity than on passion.
Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see
paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these
things with an irresistible momentum.
Vincent Van Gogh, Letter to his brother Theo, 21 July 1882
A good picture is equivalent to a good deed.

Vincent Van Gogh, Letter to his brother Theo, 21 July 1882
The public will accept a masterpiece, but it will not accept an attempt to write a masterpiece.
George Moore, Vain Fortune (1891)
The mind petrifies if a circle be drawn around it, and it can hardly be denied that dogma draws a circle round
the mind.
George Moore, Hail and Farewell (1912)
It does not matter how badly you paint so long as you don't paint badly like other people.
George Moore, Confessions of a Young Man (1886), chapter 6
The world is dying of machinery; that is the great disease, that is the plague that will sweep away and destroy
civilization; man will have to rise against it sooner or later.
George Moore, Confessions of a Young Man (1886), chapter 7
In art, there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists.
Paul Gauguin, Letter published in Le Soir, April 25, 1895
978
Follow the masters! But why should one follow them? The only reason they are masters is that they didn't
follow anybody!
Paul Gauguin, Quoted by Eugène Tardieu, "Interview with Paul Gauguin," L'Écho de Paris, (1895-05-13), p. 108
If it were absolutely necessary to choose, I would rather be guilty of an immoral act than of a cruel one.
Anatole France, Le Rys Rouge (1894), chapter 7
Dans tout État policé, la richesse est chose sacrée; dans les démocraties elle est la seule chose sacrée.
Anatole France, L’île des Pingouins (1908)
In every well-governed state, wealth is a sacred thing; in democracies it is the only sacred thing.
Anatole France, L’île des Pingouins (1908)
He had no knowledge and had no desire to acquire any; wherein he conformed to his genius whose engaging
fragility he forbore to overload; his instinct fortunately telling him that it was better to understand little than
to misunderstand a lot.
Anatole France, La Révolte des Anges [The Revolt of the Angels], (1914), chapter 1
L'homme est ainsi fait qu'il ne se délasse d'un travail que par un autre.
Anatole France, Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard (1881)
Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.
J'ai toujours préféré la folie des passions à la sagesse de l'indifférence.

I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the wisdom of indifference.
Le bon critique est celui qui raconte les aventures de son âme au milieu des chefs-d'œuvre.
Anatole France, La vie littéraire (1892)
The good critic is one who tells of his mind's adventures among masterpieces.
Anatole France, La vie littéraire (1892)
That which is not just, is not Law; and that which is not Law, ought not to be obeyed.
Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government (1698)
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
Lord Acton, The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)
The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by
minorities.
Lord Acton, The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)
I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable
presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power,
increasing as the power increases.
Lord Acton, Letter to Mandell Creighton (5 April 1887)
Judge not according to the orthodox standard of a system religious, philosophical, political, but according as
things promote, or fail to promote the delicacy, integrity, and authority of Conscience.
Lord Acton, Letter to Mandell Creighton (5 April 1887)
It appeared to [Machiavelli] that the most vexatious obstacle to intellect is conscience, and that the vigorous
use of statecraft necessary for the success of difficult schemes would never be made if governments allowed
themselves to be hampered by the precepts of the copy-book.
Lord Acton, The History of Freedom in Christianity (1877)
979
But twenty times I rather would be
An atheist clean,
Than under gospel colours hid be,
Just for a screen.
Robert Burns, Epistle to Rev. John M'Math, Stanza 8.
A man with all the algebra in the world is often only an ass when he knows nothing else. Perhaps in ten years
society may derive advantage from the curves which these visionary algebraists will have laboriously
squared. I congratulate posterity beforehand. But to tell you the truth I see nothing but a scientific
extravagance in all these calculations. That which is neither useful nor agreeable is worthless. And as for
useful things, they have all been discovered; and to those which are agreeable, I hope that good taste will not
admit algebra among them.
Frederick II of Prussia, ''Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great'' (New York: Brentano's, 1927), transl. Richard Aldington, letter 93 from
Frederick to Voltaire, 16 May 1749
Our authors no longer write in their own chambers, but in the open market-place. Hence we find so much
noise, and dust, and highway reality [Landstrassenwirklichkeit] in their works: but this is attained at the
expense of that profundity of thought and clearness of expression which distinguished the writings of our
forefathers. Hence, likewise, the haste which nowadays hurries us onward. The philosopher, lest he remain
behind in the race, publishes his ideas, and the poet his fancies; each being content when he produces a
violent and instantaneous effect on the public.
Baron von Sternberg, as cited in Dietetics of the Soul (1838)
We become popular by affecting to be less intellectual than we really are.

Henry Bulwer, as cited in Dietetics of the Soul
Our studies ought to be all put purposeless. They want to be pursued with chastity, like mathematics.
Lord Acton, as cited in Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974), p. 31
Critics have as wrong notions of Reason as those bigots have of God: for that Genius is not confined to times
or climates; but, as the common gift of Nature, is extended throughout all ages and countries: that indeed this
intellectual light, like the material light of the sun, may not shine at all times, and in every place with equal
splendour; but be sometimes clouded with popular ignorance; and sometimes again eclipsed by the
discountenance of the great; yet it shall still recover itself; and, by breaking through the strongest of these
impediments, manifest the eternity of its nature.
William Roscoe, commentary on Alexander Pope’s verse “Wit, like faith, by each man is apply’d/To one small sect, and all are damn’d beside.”
Works of Alexander Pope (1847), p. 356
Homo sum humani a me nihil alienum puto.

Terence- Heautontimoroumenous
I am a man and nothing human is foreign to me.
Terence- Heautontimoroumenous
That on which you so pride yourself will be your ruin, you who think yourself to be somebody.
Menander- fragment of the Empipragmene, from Stobaeus- Of Arrogance
Wherever noble men cry out, let every soul obey.

Hafiz, Ghazal 98
Wisdom, virtue, morality, all these have fallen out of fashion: everybody worships at the shrine of
commerce.
Charles Fourier, The Theory of the Four Movements (1808), G. Jones, ed. (1966), p. 269
Always conduct with the score in your head, not your head in the score.
Hans von Bülow, as cited in Hans Von Bülow: A Life and Times (2009)
980
Prima sapientiae clavis definitur, assidua scilicet seu frequens interrogatio … Dubitando enim ad
inquisitionem venimus; inquirendo veritatem percipimus.
Constant and frequent questioning is the first key to wisdom … For through doubting we are led to inquire,
and by inquiry we perceive the truth.
Peter Abelard, Sic et Non, Prologus; translation from Frank Pierrepont Graves A History of Education During the Middle Ages and the Transition to
Modern Times (1918)
Man wants but little here below, nor wants that little long.
Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield (1766)
Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice
enough to accuse.
How happy he who crowns in shades like these,

A youth of labour with an age of ease.
Das ist das Geheimnis des Glücks und der Tugend: zu lieben, was man verpflichtet ist zu tun.
Aldous Huxley
Wer seinem höheren Selbst nicht angehört hat, spricht immer von »Pflichterfüllung«.
Nietzsche
Wolle nur, was du sollst, so kannst du, was du willst.

Friedrich Rückert
The worst evil of all is to say that neither good nor evil is anything in itself, but that they are only-matters of
human opinion.
Justin Martyr
We, who once took pleasure in fornication, now embrace self-control; we, who . . . valued the acquisition of
wealth and possessions above everything else, now put what we have into a common fund, and share with
everyone in need; we, who hated and killed one another, and would not share our lives with certain people
because of their ethnic differences from us, now live intimately with them.
Justin Martyr
I do not want to be a ruler; I am not anxious to be rich; I decline military command; I detest sexual
promiscuity; I am not impelled by any insatiable love of money to go to sea; I do not contend for reputation;
I am free from an insane thirst for fame; I despise death; I am superior to every form of disease; grief does
not consume my soul. If I am a slave, I endure slavery; if I am free, I do not boast of my fortunate birth. . . .
Why are you “destined” so often to grasp for things, and often to die? Die to the world, repudiating the
insanity that pervades it. Live to God, and by apprehending God, apprehend your own nature as a spiritual
being created in his image.
Tatian, Address to the Greeks , cited by Elaine Pagels in The Origin of Satan
Remarquez un grand défaut des éducations ordinaires: on met tout le plaisir d'un côté , et tout l'ennui de
l'autre; tout l'ennui dans l'étude, tout le plaisir dans les divertissements.
The greatest defect of common education is, that we are in the habit of putting pleasure all on one side,
and weariness on the other; all weariness in study, all pleasure in idleness.
François Fénelon, De l'éducation des filles, ch. 5
God's treasury where He keeps His children's gifts will be like many a mother's store of relics of her children,
full of things of no value to others, but precious in His eyes for the love's sake that was in them.
François Fénelon
981
Carefully purify your conscience from daily faults; suffer no sin to dwell in your heart; small as it may seem,
it obscures the light of grace, weighs down the soul, and hinders that constant communion with Jesus Christ
which it should be your pleasure to cultivate.
François Fénelon
Pure love is in the will alone; it is no sentimental love, for the imagination has no part in it; it loves, if we
may so express it, without feeling, as faith believes without seeing.
François Fénelon
As young men, when they knit and shape perfectly, do seldom grow to a further stature; so knowledge, while
it is in aphorisms and observations, it is in growth; but when it once is comprehended in exact methods, it
may perchance be further polished and illustrated, and accommodated for use and practice ; but it increaseth
no more in bulk and substance.
Bacon, Advancement of Learning
If then I am addressing one of that numerous class, who read to be told what to think, let me advise you to
meddle with the book no further. You wish to buy a house ready furnished: do not come to look for it in a
stonequarry. But if you are building up your opinions for yourself, and only want to be provided with
materials, you may meet with many things in these pages to suit you.
Julius and Augustus Hare, Guesses at Truth (1835)
Man without religion is the creature of circumstances: Religion is above all circumstances, and will lift him
up above them.
Incentives to virtuous energy are a sort of moon to the moral world. Their borrowed light is but a dimmer
substitute for the life-giving rays of religion.
But if science may be vilified by representing h as opposed to religion, or trammelled by mistaken notions of
the danger of free enquiry, there is yet another mode by which it may be degraded from its native dignity,
and that is by placing it in the light of a mere appendage to and caterer for our pampered appetites. The
question "cui bono" to what practical end and advantage do your researches tend? is one which the
speculative philosopher who loves knowledge for its own sake, and enjoys, as a rational being should enjoy,
the mere contemplation of harmonious and mutually dependent truths, can seldom hear without a sense of
humiliation. He feels that there is a lofty and disinterested pleasure in his speculations which ought to exempt
them from such questioning; communicating as they do to his own mind the purest happiness (after the
exercise of the benevolent and moral feelings) of which human nature is susceptible, and tending to the
injury of no one, he might surely allege this as a sufficient and direct reply to those who, having themselves
little capacity, and less relish for intellectual pursuits, are constantly repeating upon him this enquiry.
John Frederick William Herschel, A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1831), Chapter 1
Science is the knowledge of many, orderly and methodically digested and arranged, so as to become
attainable by one.
John Frederick William Herschel, A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1831), Chapter 2
The French philosophize with their wit; the English, with their emotions; the Germans alone are cold-
blooded enough to philosophize with their intellect.
Moses Mendelssohn, Letter to G. E. Lessing, February 27, 1758, in Moses Mendelssohn, E. Jospe, trans. (1975), p. 54
I have come to the conclusion that our rich people are unsuited for friendship.
Moses Mendelssohn, Letter to Fromet Guggenheim, February 27, 1758, in Moses Mendelssohn, E. Jospe, trans. (1975), p. 60
982
As we approach a certain age, even the unpleasant and bothersome aspects of domesticity appear less
frightening than the emptiness of an old age bereft of marital companionship. No young, lively and outgoing
person can imagine such lonely emptiness. He must accept its eventual reality on faith; for if he were to wait
until he experiences it himself, it would be too late.
Moses Mendelssohn, Letter to Herz Homberg, March 15, 1784, in Moses Mendelssohn, E. Jospe, trans. (1975), p. 62
I deeply regret that I must withdraw my son from his scientific studies in order to turn him into a slave of
Mammon.
Moses Mendelssohn, Letter to Elise Reimarus, October 4, 1785, in Moses Mendelssohn, E. Jospe, trans. (1975), p. 66
I believe that any individual must follow his own convictions, and that he may feel wholly certain thereby
not to displease his Creator. Yet I would caution him to make the most conscientious use of his God-given
mental powers in examining the genuineness of these convictions. Once we have scrutinized our own
conscience to the best of our ability, however, we need neither reproach ourselves nor expect to be
reproached by our judge even if, in the end, our beliefs should turn out to be erroneous.
We must, however, not permit mere difficulties or doubts to influence our practical conduct. As long as we
don not feel completely sure in our thinking, we must, in matters of observance, hold on to the tradition in
which we were raised and which was handed down to us by men worthy of our respect. We must not dare to
introduce even the smallest innovation or change until we can be certain that we stand firmly on solid
ground.
Moses Mendelssohn, Letter to Paulus Best, April 24, 1773, in Moses Mendelssohn, E. Jospe, trans. (1975), p. 70
I do therefore, once for all, desire whoever shall think it worth his while, to understand what I have written
concerning vision, that he'd not stick in this or that phrase, or manner of expression; but candidly collect my
meaning from the whole sum and tenor of my discourse; and laying aside the words, as much as possible,
consider the bare notions themselves.
Bishop Berkeley, An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision
Rhetoric is not one of those branches of study in which we can trace with interest a progressive improvement
from age to age.
Richard Whately
Attend me briefly while I now disclose

How art of fable telling first arose.
Unhappy slaves, in servitude confined,
Dared not to harsh masters show their mind,
But under veiling of fable’s dress
Contrived their thoughts and feelings to express,
Escaping still their lords’ affronted wrath.
So Aesop did; I widen out his path.
Phaedrus, as cited in Vico, New Science, T. Bergin, trans. (1984)
983
I looked to find a man who walked with God,
Like the translated patriarch of old;—
Though gladdened millions on His footstool trod,
Yet none with him did such sweet converse hold;
I heard the wind in low complaint go by
That none his melodies like him could hear;
Day unto day spoke wisdom from on high,
Yet none like David turned a willing ear;
God walked alone unhonored through the earth;
For Him no heart-built temple open stood,
The soul forgetful of her nobler birth
Had hewn him lofty shrines of stone and wood,
And left unfinished and in ruins still
The only temple he delights to fill.
Jones Very, “Enoch”
Grammar, perfectly understood, enables us, not only to express our meaning fully and clearly, but so to
express it as to enable us to defy the ingenuity of man to give to our words any other meaning than that
which we ourselves intend them to express.
William Cobbett, A Grammar of the English Language (1818), p. 14
… nouns of number, or multitude, such as Mob, Parliament, Rabble, House of Commons, Regiment, Court
of King's Bench, Den of Thieves, and the like.
Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think what you shall write.
Say in his heart (what poets do but sing),

That glad poverty’s an honest thing.
William Stewart Rose, Epistle to John Hookam Freere, cited in “A. Marvell,” Old England's Worthies: A Gallery of Portraits (1847)
The more opportunities there are in a Society for some persons to live upon the toil of others, and the less
those others may enjoy the fruits of their work themselves, the more is diligence killed, the former become
insolent, the latter despairing, and both negligent.
Anders Chydenius, The National Gain (1765), §20
My heart is not a mirror

To reflect what others will.
The Book of Songs, 26
Religion does not consist alone in reverence or adoration for a special object; but it makes that reverence the
controlling and prompting influence of all other faculties of the mind. Thus there can be a religion of
intellect, of love, of every department of the human mind; and a religion of life combines the whole of
human existence, and makes up the sum of every department of earthly life.
Cora Hatch, “The Religion of Life,” Discourses on Religion, Morals, Philosophy and Metaphysics (1858)
There is a true, religious devotion in the mind and feelings of that man whose soul springs forth in beauty
and power, whose physical form is upright and symmetrical, and who, in fulfilling the laws of health, fulfils
the laws of Deity. There is a true religion in the intellectual man, who, penetrating deeply into the earth, and
air, and sky, for scientific investigation, culls all the treasures of thought and beauty, and stores them up in
his memory as sacred and divine.
984
A religion of bigotry and sectarianism … becomes, not a religion of life, but a religion of one special
department and thus a man may be religious on one plane and entirely irreligious on another.
There is certainly a religion which belongs to the physical form, and which should be regarded in
degree as much as that which belongs to the soul. It is as much a duty for every man and woman to
perfect fully their physical form as for them to continually search for immortality.
Your theology has taught you to believe that any religion, to be perfected, must be so at the sacrifice of the
physical form or powers. Hence, the ancient religionists confined themselves within the cloistered cells of
monasteries, and there with true devoutness of feeling they sought to perfect the immortality of the soul by
crucifying the body. Health, life, intellect—all were sacrificed to this fanaticism for a happy immortality. …
Ask any religionist what constitutes true and perfect religion, and he will tell you it is that which crucifies the
human part and cultivates the divine.
When you endeavor to perfect every department of that form—physically, mentally, spiritually—then you
are fulfilling the laws of true religion. Can a soul perfect itself in every department, when the physical form
is groaning under disease, and continually decaying in consequence of the endeavor to crucify it? Never. The
soul must spring forth spontaneously, and the form must be subservient to the slightest thought and feeling of
the soul.
There is true religion in that man who, instead of endeavoring to perfect but one department of his nature,
makes his physical, mental, social, and moral life, equal. Cultivate your physical nature, perfect your life, and
in that proportion your soul will be perfect. Cultivate strength, vigor, power, manliness, and symmetry, and
in that proportion the soul can think greater thoughts.
Reason is a religious duty and quality of the mind; and exercise of the judgment upon all occasions and
subjects is true and most divine worship.
Religion can not be defined as belonging to any special faculty; and even reverence and worship are but local
manifestations of the religious element, and can not be said to be true religion unless they extend through
every department of the mind. Religion, properly considered, is that subtle agent of the soul which aspires to
perfection in whatever way it is to be attained; and seeks to worship God because he is infinite, and is what
man is for ever aspiring to become.
Wise men of old gave the soul a feminine name. Indeed she is female in her nature as well. She even has her
womb. As long as she was alone with the father, she was virgin and in form androgynous. But when she fell
down into a body and came to this life, then she fell into the hands of many robbers. And the wanton
creatures passed her from one to another. … Some made use of her by force, while others did so by seducing
her with a gift. In short, they defiled her, and she [lost] her virginity.
“The Exegesis of the Soul,” from the Nag Hammadi Library, W. Robinson, trans.
She [the soul] prostituted herself and gave herself to one and all, considering each one she was about to
embrace to be her husband. … They deceive her for a long time, pretending to be faithful, true husbands, as
if they greatly respected her. And after all this they abandon her and go. She then becomes a poor desolate
widow, without help; not even a measure of food was left her from the time of her affliction. For from them
she gained nothing except the defilements they gave her while they had sexual intercourse with her.
“The Exegesis of the Soul,” from the Nag Hammadi Library, W. Robinson, trans.
985
Woe to him who receives; for if one receives who has need, he is guiltless; but he who receives not having
need shall pay the penalty.
Didache: The Lord's Teaching Through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations, Chapter 1
My child, be not an observer of omens, since it leads to idolatry. Be neither an enchanter, nor an astrologer,
nor a purifier, nor be willing to took at these things, for out of all these idolatry is engendered.
Didache: The Lord's Teaching Through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations, Chapter 3
Bad company ruins good morals.

1 Corinthians 15:33 (saying derived from a lost play by Menander)
Genügsamkeit ist natürlicher Reichtum, Luxus ist künstliche Armut.

Sokrates
Being good is the same as being a philosopher. If you obey your father, you will follow the will of a man; if
you choose the philosopher's life, the will of God. It is plain, therefore, that your duty lies in the pursuit of
philosophy.
Gaius Musonius Rufus, Fragment 16 "What is the best provision for old age," in Moral Exhortation (1986), p. 32
It is a great commandment [mitzvah] to be happy always.

Nachman of Breslov, Likutey Moharan II, 24
The essence of wisdom is to realize how far from wisdom you are.
Nachman of Breslov, Likutey Moharan II, 83
986

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A COMMONPLACE BOOK

Theognis of Megara (6th Century BC) ........................................................................................................................ 12

Gautama Buddha (c. 563-483 BC) .............................................................................................................................. 13

Kongzi [Confucius] (551-479 BC) ................................................................................................................................ 16

Heraclitus (535-475 BC) ............................................................................................................................................. 19

Sophocles (496-406 BC) ............................................................................................................................................. 21

Euripides (480-406 BC)............................................................................................................................................... 22

Democritus (460-370BC) ............................................................................................................................................ 22

Old Testament (c. 450 BC-200 BC) ............................................................................................................................. 23

Aristophanes (446-386 BC) ........................................................................................................................................ 30

Xenophon (430-354 BC) ............................................................................................................................................. 30

Plato (428-348 BC) ..................................................................................................................................................... 36

Diogenes of Sinope (404-323BC) ................................................................................................................................ 53

Aristotle (384-322 BC)................................................................................................................................................ 53

Theophrastus (371-287 BC)........................................................................................................................................ 58

Xun Zi (312BC-230BC) ................................................................................................................................................ 59

Epicurus (341-270 BC) ................................................................................................................................................ 60

Sextus The Pythagorean (c. 300 BC) ........................................................................................................................... 62

Publius Syrus (1st century BC) ................................................................................................................................... 63

Gaius Valerius Catullus (84-54 BC) ............................................................................................................................. 76

Virgil (70-19 BC) ......................................................................................................................................................... 76

Horace (65 BC - 8 BC) ................................................................................................................................................. 76

Seneca (54 BC-39 AD) ................................................................................................................................................ 80

Ovid (43 BC-17 AD) .................................................................................................................................................... 87

Philo (20 BC-50 AD) ................................................................................................................................................... 88

Apollonius of Tyana (c. 15 -100 AD) ........................................................................................................................... 93

Aulus Persius Flaccus (34 AD–62 AD) ......................................................................................................................... 96

Quintilian (35 AD–100 AD)......................................................................................................................................... 96

Dio Chrysostom (40-115 AD)...................................................................................................................................... 97

Plutarch (46 AD–120 AD) ........................................................................................................................................... 98

Epictetus (55-135 AD) .............................................................................................................................................. 102

Tacitus (56-117 AD) ................................................................................................................................................. 106

Pliny (61-113 AD) ..................................................................................................................................................... 106

Cicero (106-43 BC) ................................................................................................................................................... 107

Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD) ................................................................................................................................. 111

New Testament (c. 50-150 AD) ................................................................................................................................ 117

New Testament Apocrypha ..................................................................................................................................... 132

Lucian (125-180 AD) ................................................................................................................................................ 134

Tertullian (c. 155-230) ............................................................................................................................................. 135

Sextus Empiricus (160-210 AD) ................................................................................................................................ 135

Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus (2nd century AD) ................................................................................................. 136

Origen (185-254)...................................................................................................................................................... 136

Plotinus (c. 204-270 AD) .......................................................................................................................................... 137

Iamblichus (245-325AD) .......................................................................................................................................... 137

Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 297-373) ..................................................................................................................... 138

Diogenes Laertius (c. 300 AD) .................................................................................................................................. 139

Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 335-395) ................................................................................................................................ 141

Ambrose (340-397) .................................................................................................................................................. 143

Augustine (354-430) ................................................................................................................................................ 143

Basil of Caesarea (329-379 AD) ................................................................................................................................ 151

Pirkei Avot (3rd Century AD) ................................................................................................................................... 153

Stobaeus (5th Century AD) ...................................................................................................................................... 155

Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib (599-661) ............................................................................................................................. 156

Santideva (8th century AD)...................................................................................................................................... 157

Francis of Assisi (1181-1226).................................................................................................................................... 160

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) .................................................................................................................................. 161

Meister Eckhart, a.k.a. Eckhart von Hochheim (1260-1328) ..................................................................................... 162

Dante Aligheri (1265-1321) ...................................................................................................................................... 164

Petrarch, a.k.a. Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) ..................................................................................................... 164

Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471) ................................................................................................................................. 167

Petr Chelčický (1390-1460) ...................................................................................................................................... 167

Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) .................................................................................................................................. 168

Erasmus (1466-1536) ............................................................................................................................................... 168

Martin Luther (1483-1546) ...................................................................................................................................... 171