Therefore if egoism has a firm hold of a man and masters him, whether it be in the form of joy, or triumph, or lust, or hope, or frantic grief, or annoyance, or anger, or fear, or suspicion, or passion of any kind – he is in the devil’s clutches and how he got into them does not matter. What is needful is that he should make haste to get out of them; and here, again, it does not matter how.
A man may begin by following the craving of desire, until he comes to see how hollow and unreal a thing is life, how deceitful are its pleasures, what horrible aspects it possesses; and this it is that makes people hermits, penitents, Magdalenes.
The paltry character of most men compels the few who have any merit or genius to behave as though they did not know their own value, and consequently did not know other people’s want of value; for it is only on this condition that the mob acquiesces in tolerating merit. A virtue has been made out of this necessity, and it is called modesty.
Het zou handig zijn wanneer je boeken koopt dat je de tijd om ze te lezen erbij kon kopen.
Life is a stage where the worst actor plays the king while the best actor the beggar.
The peculiar characteristic of the philistine is a dull, dry kind of gravity, akin to that of animals. Nothing really pleases, or excites, or interests him, for sensual pleasure is quickly exhausted, and the society of philistines soon becomes burdensome, and one may even get tired of playing cards.
The actual facts of morality are too much on my side for me to fear that my theory can ever be replaced or upset by any other.
This is in the highest degree the case with many of Goethe’s and Byron’s poems, which are obviously founded upon actual facts; where it is open to a foolish reader to envy the poet because so many delightful things happened to him, instead of envying that mighty power of phantasy which was capable of turning a fairly common experience into something so great and beautiful.
To be irritated by trifles, a man must be well off; for in misfortunes trifles are unfelt. SECTION.
Far-sighted, rational deliberation usually comes out in favour of one decision, while immediate inclination comes out for the other. As long as we have to be passive, the balance seems tilted in favour of reason; but we can see in advance how strongly we will be pulled by the other side when the opportunity for acting arises.
You can never read bad literature too little, nor good literature too much.
There are tree main bulwarks of defence against new thoughts: to pay no heed, to give no credence, and finally to assert that it had already long existed.
The truth is that we ought to be wretched, and are so.
If life – the craving for which is the very essence of our being – were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing. But as it is, we take no delight in existence except when we are struggling for something; and then distance and difficulties to be overcome make our goal look as if it would satisfy us.
The way to keep down hatred and contempt is certainly not to look for a man’s alleged “dignity,” but, on the contrary, to regard him as an object of pity.
Accordingly, the loss of the beloved one through a rival, or through death, is the greatest pain of all to those passionately in love; just because it is of a transcendental nature, since it affects him not merely as an individual, but also assails him in his essentia aeterna, in the life of the species, in whose special will and service he was here called. This is why jealousy is so tormenting and bitter, and the giving up of the loved one the greatest of all sacrifices.
Therefore it has always been said that music is the language of feeling and of passion, as words are the language of reason.
The cause of laughter in every case is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real objects which have been thought through it in some relation, and laughter itself is just the expression of this incongruity... All laughter then is occasioned by a paradox... This, briefly stated, is the true explanation of the ludicrous.
Intellectual effort for its own sake, they call eccentricity.
You should deal sternly and despotically with your memory, so that it does not unlearn obedience; if, for example, you cannot call something to mind, a line of poetry or a word perhaps, you should not go and look it up in a book, but periodically plague your memory with it for weeks on end until your memory has done its duty. For the longer you have had to rack your brains for something the more firmly will it stay once you have got it.