Part ii Quotes
261 quotes
"It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence."
"A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal."
"It is to do nothing that the elect exist. Action is limited and relative. Unlimited and absolute is the vision of him who sits at ease and watches, who walks in loneliness and dreams."
"It is chiefly, I regret to say, through journalism that such people find expression. I regret it because there is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not."
"To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability."
"There is no sin except stupidity."
"Ah! Don't say you agree with me. When people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong."
"England has done one thing; it has invented and established Public Opinion, which is an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force."
"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."
"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."
"Criticism will annihilate race-prejudices by insisting upon the unity of the human mind in the variety of its forms."
"If you have hitherto believed that life was one of the highest value and now see yourselves disappointed, do you at once have to reduce it to the lowest possible price?"
"Merchant and pirate...for a long period are one and the same person...Even to-day mercantile morality is really nothing but a refinement on piratical morality."
"Die mutter der Ausschweifung ist nicht die Freude, sondern die Freudlosigkeit."
"Mancher wird nur deshalb kein Denker, weil sein Gedächtnis zu gut ist."
"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."
"A witticism is an epigram on the death of a feeling."
"The value of many men and books rests solely on their faculty for compelling all to speak out the most hidden and intimate things."
"On the heights it is warmer than people in the valleys suppose, especially in winter. The thinker recognises the full import of this simile."
"It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms."
"Im Gebirge der Wahrheit kletterst du nie umsonst: Entweder du kommst schon heute weiter hinauf oder übst deine Kräfte, um morgen höher steigen zu können."
"He that prefers the beautiful to the useful in life will undoubtedly, like children who prefer sweetmeats to bread, destroy his digestion and acquire a very fretful outlook on the world."
"The good generally displeases us when it is beyond our ken."
"Every one who enjoys thinks that the principal thing to the tree is the fruit, but in point of fact the principal thing to it is the seed.—Herein lies the difference between them that create and them that enjoy."
"It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many million of faces there should be none alike."
"There is surely a Physiognomy, which those experienced and Master Mendicants observe… For there are mystically in our faces certain Characters that carry in them the motto of our Souls, wherein he that cannot read A.B.C. may read our natures."
"I intend no Monopoly, but a Community in Learning; I study not for my own sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves."
"They that endeavour to abolish vice destroy also virtue, for contraries, though they destroy one another, are yet the life of one another."
"But how shall we expect charity towards others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves? Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world, yet is every man his greatest enemy, and as it were, his own executioner."
"I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar act of coition; It is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life, nor is there anything that will more deject his cooled imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of folly he hath committed."
"I can look a whole day with delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of a horse. It is my temper, & I like it the better, to affect all harmony, and sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is a music wherever there is a harmony, order or proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres."
"I can cure the gout or stone in some, sooner than Divinity, Pride, or Avarice in others"
"We all labour against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases."
"There is no man alone, because every man is a Microcosm, and carries the whole world about him."
"For the world, I count it not an Inn, but a Hospital, and a place, not to live, but to die in."
"Men that look upon my outside, perusing only my condition, and fortunes, do err in my altitude; for I am above Atlas his shoulders."
"There is surely a piece of Divinity within us, something that was before the Elements, and owes no homage unto the Sun."
"I am in no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of company, yet in one dream I can compose a whole Comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof."
"The world that I regard is my selfe, it is the Microcosme of mine owne frame, that I cast mine eye on; for the other, I use it but like my Globe, and turne it round sometimes for my recreation. Men that look upon my outside, perusing onely my condition, and fortunes, do erre in my altitude; for I am above Atlas his shoulders."
"We term sleep a death, and yet it is waking that kills us, and destroys those spirits that are the house of life."
"I thanke God for my happy Dreams|dreames, as I doe for my good rest, for there is a satisfaction in them unto reasonable desires, and such as can be content with a fit of happinesse; and surely it is not a melancholy conceite to thinke we are all asleepe in this world, and that the conceits of this life are as meare dreames to those of the next, as the Phantasmes of the night, to the conceit of the day. There is an equall delusion in both, and the one doth but seeme to bee the embleme or picture of the other;"
"Aristotle whilst he labours to refute the ideas of Plato, falls upon one himself: for his summum bonum, is a Chimera, and there is no such thing as his Felicity."
"They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill, what never dies. Nor can Spirits ever be divided that love and live in the same Divine Principle; the Root and Record of their Friendship. If Absence be not death, neither is theirs. Death is but Crossing the World, as Friends do the Seas; They live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is Omnipresent. In this Divine Glass, they see Face to Face; and their Converse is Free, as well as Pure. This is the Comfort of Friends, that though they may be said to Die, yet their Friendship and Society are, in the best Sense, ever present, because Immortal."
"Where charity keeps pace with grain, industry is blessed, but to slave to get, and keep it sordidly, is a sin against Providence, a vice in government and an injury to their neighbours."
"Wenn die Macht gnädig wird und herabkommt ins Sichtbare: Schönheit heiße ich solches Herabkommen. Und von niemandem will ich so als von dir gerade Schönheit, du Gewaltiger: deine Güte sei deine letzte Selbst-Überwältigung. Alles Böse traue ich dir zu: darum will ich von dir das Gute. Wahrlich, ich lachte oft der Schwächlinge, welche sich gut glauben, weil sie lahme Tatzen haben!"
"Wenn es Götter gäbe, wie hielte ich's aus, kein Gott zu sein! Also gibt es keine Götter."
"It moves my heart for those priests. They also go against my taste; but that is the small matter to me, since I am among men. But I suffer and have suffered with them: prisoners are they to me, and stigmatised ones. He whom they call Saviour put them in fetters:- In fetters of false values and fatuous words! Oh, that some one would save them from their Saviour!"
"Also aber rate ich euch, meine Freunde: misstraut Allen, in welchen der Trieb, zu strafen, mächtig ist! Das ist Volk schlechter Art und Abkunft; aus ihren Gesichtern blickt der Henker und der Spürhund. Misstraut allen Denen, die viel von ihrer Gerechtigkeit reden! Wahrlich, ihren Seelen fehlt es nicht nur an Honig. Und wenn sie sich selber 'die Guten und Gerechten' nennen, so vergesst nicht, dass ihnen zum Pharisäer Nichts fehlt als — Macht!"
"Und wer von uns Dichtern hätte nicht seinen Wein verfälscht? Manch giftiger Mischmasch geschah in unsern Kellern, manches Unbeschreibliche ward da getan."
"Ach, es gibt so viel Dinge zwischen Himmel und Erde, von denen sich nur die Dichter etwas haben träumen lassen. Und zumal ü b e r dem Himmel: denn alle Götter sind Dichter-Gleichnis, Dichter-Erschleichnis! Wahrlich, immer zieht es uns hinan - nämlich zum Reich der Wolken: auf diese setzen wir unsre bunten Bälge und heißen sie dann Götter und Übermenschen: - Sind sie doch gerade leicht genug für diese Stühle! - alle diese Götter und Übermenschen. Ach, wie bin ich all des Unzulänglichen müde, das durchaus Ereignis sein soll! Ach, wie bin ich der Dichter müde!"
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