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Sections (Content) :
• 1
Disciple of Socrates: You are a stupid fellow, by Jove! who have kicked against the door so very carelessly, and have caused the miscarriage of an idea which I had conceived.
• 2
Strepsiades: ...But why in the world do these people look upon the ground?
Disciples of Socrates: They are in search of the things below the earth.
Strepsiades: Then they are searching for roots.
• 3
...heavenly Clouds, great divinities to idle men; who supply us with thought and argument, and intelligence and humbug, and circumlocution, and ability to hoax, and comprehension.
• 4
Now meditate and examine closely; and roll yourself about in every way, having wrapped yourself up; and quickly, when you fall into a difficulty, spring to another mental contrivance. But let delightful sleep be absent from your eyes.
• 5
The European, the good European, as you call him, is without doubt a skilled mechanic, a good scientist, an excellent watch maker... but in religious questions he cannot compete... Luther, Calvin, General Booth are stupid fools...
Those minor prophets, Ariophiles, try to demonstrate that the Arian, the German, is a man of tempered intelligence and common sense. This may be possible, but this sort of person did not invent religion. Without doubt religions were created by the insane visionary, feverish, exalted types.
• 6
...how great are the obligations due from mankind to that philosopher, who, from the obscurity of his closet, had the courage to scatter among the multitude the seeds of useful truths, so long unfruitful!
• 7
...the discourses of fanatics, which rouse the passions of the curious multitude, and gain strength from the number of their hearers, who, though deaf to calm and solid reasoning, are always affected by obscure and mysterious enthusiasm.
• 8
A great man, who is persecuted by that world he hath enlightened, and to whom we are indebted for many important truths, hath most amply detailed the principal maxims of useful education. This chiefly consists in presenting to the mind a small number of select objects, in substituting the originals for the copies both of physical and moral phenomena, in leading the pupil to virtue by the easy road of sentiment, and in withholding him from evil by the infallible power of necessary inconveniences, rather than by command, which only obtains a counterfeit and momentary obedience.
• 9
...the collectivist stage of society is still in the making and can only impress the keener minds of the proletariat as well as of those persons who for some reason or other are dissatisfied with the prevailing condition of things. They are like persons with a keener vision, with a better equipped eye, or standing on a high eminence, and can, therefore perceive the full glory of the sun at its dawn, while the dwellers of the dale are still in the dark.
• 10
The Reds had a nasty habit of using too many different computers from too many different generations and countries.
• 11
You may fail to reach your goal, but run the race nevertheless. Put forth your strength in so high a business. Strive on with your last breath.
• 12
On my light wings I soar off to Olympus; in its capricious flight my Muse flutters along the thousand paths of poetry in turn...
• 13
To look within is always exciting, and the results may be explosive.
• 14
...alchemy served as the hope of the bewildered chemical worker, and it provided the inspiration to stay at the fires when the potters and the weavers had gone home.
• 15
It is only the truly virtuous man, who can love, or who can hate, others.
• 16
If a man in the morning hear the right way, he may die in the evening without regret.
• 17
My doctrines make no way. I will get upon a raft, and float about on the sea.
• 18
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.
• 19
No matter what the weather, rain or shine, it's my habit every evening at about five o'clock to take a walk around the Palais Royal. I'm the one you see dreaming on the bench in Argenson's Alley, always alone. I talk to myself about politics, love, taste, or philosophy. I let my spirit roam at will, allowing it to follow the first idea, wise or foolish, which presents itself, just as we see our dissolute young men on Foy's Walk following in the footsteps of a prostitute with a smiling face, an inviting air, and a turned-up nose, then leaving her for another, going after all of them and sticking to none. For me, my thoughts are my prostitutes.
• 20
...men of genius are usually odd...
• 21
...I know nothing as stubborn as a philosopher.
• 22
At one point, he's a young girl crying-portraying all her mannerisms-at another point he's a priest, he's a king, he's a tyrant-he threatens, commands, loses his temper. He's a slave. He obeys. He calms down, he laments, he complains, he laughs-never straying from the tone, rhythm, or sense of the words or the character of the song.
All the men pushing wood [playing chess and checkers] had left their chess boards and gathered around him. The windows of the cafe were filled up on the outside by passersby who'd been stopped by the sound. People gave out bursts of laughter strong enough to break open the ceiling. But he didn't notice a thing. He continued, in the grip of some mental fit, of an enthusiasm so closely related to madness that it's uncertain whether he'll come out of it. It might be necessary to throw him into a cab and take him straight to the lunatic asylum. As he was singing snatches from Lamentations by Jomelli, he brought out the most beautiful parts of each piece with precision, truth, and an incredible warmth. That beautiful recitative in which the prophet describes the desolation of Jerusalem he bathed in a flood of tears which brought tears to everyone's eyes. Everything was there-the delicacy of the song, the force of expression, the sorrow. He stressed those places where the composer had particularly demonstrated his great mastery. If he stopped the singing part, it was to take up the part of the instruments, which he left suddenly to return to the vocals, moving from one to the other in such a way as to maintain the connections and the overall unity, taking hold of our souls and keeping them suspended in the most unusual situation which I've ever experienced. Did I admire him? Oh yes, I admired him! Was I touched with pity? I was touched with pity.
[...] He cried, he laughed, he sighed, he looked tender or calm or angry-a woman who was swooning in grief, an unhappy man left in total despair, a temple being built, birds calming down at sunset, waters either murmuring in a cool lonely place or descending in a torrent from the high mountains, a storm, a tempest, the cries of those who are going to die intermingled with the whistling winds, the bursts of thunder, the night, with its shadows-silent and dark-for sounds do depict even silence.
• 23
A small minority are enabled by their constitution to find happiness, in spite of everything, along the path of love. But far-reaching mental changes in the function of love are necessary before this can happen. These people make themselves independent of their object's acquiescence by displacing what they mainly value from being loved on to loving; they protect themselves against the loss of the object by directing their love, not to single objects but to all men alike; and they avoid the uncertainties and disappointments of genital love by turning away from its sexual aims and transforming the instinct into an impulse with an inhibited aim. What they bring about in themselves in this way is a state of evenly suspended, steadfast, affectionate feeling, which has little external resemblance any more to the stormy agitations of genital love, from which it is nevertheless derived.
• 24
High strung, like a violin string, they weep and moan for life, so relentless, so cruel, so terribly inhuman. In a desperate moment the string breaks. Untuned ears hear nothing but discord. But those who feel the agonized cry understand its harmony; they hear in it the fulfillment of the most compelling moment of human nature.
Such is the psychology of political violence.
• 25
The reflections of philosophy are too subtle and distant to take place in common life, or eradicate any affection. The air is too fine to breathe in, where it is above the winds and clouds of the atmosphere.
• 26
The greater part of mankind may be divided into two classes; that of shallow thinkers, who fall short of the truth; and that of abstruse thinkers, who go beyond it. The latter class are by far the most rare: and I may add, by far the most useful and valuable.... At worst, what they say is uncommon; and if it should cost some pains to comprehend it, one has, however, the pleasure of hearing something that is new. An author is little to be valued, who tells us nothing but what we can learn from every coffee-house conversation.
• 27
...the ancients maintained, that in order to reach the gift of prophecy, a certain divine fury or madness was requisite...
• 28
The greater part of mankind may be divided into two classes; that of shallow thinkers, who fall short of the truth; and that of abstruse thinkers, who go beyond it. The latter class are by far the most rare: and I may add, by far the most useful and valuable.
• 29
All people of shallow thought are apt to decry even those of solid understanding, as abstruse thinkers, and metaphysicians, and refiners; and never will allow any thing to be just which is beyond their own weak conceptions. There are some cases, I own, where an extraordinary refinement affords a strong presumption of falsehood, and where no reasoning is to be trusted but what is natural and easy.
• 30
He was a man without a country and, finally, without a church.
• 31
Men of courage, not satisfied with words, but ever searching for the means to transform them into action,--men of integrity for whom the act is one with the idea, for whom prison, exile, and death are preferable to a life contrary to their principles,--intrepid souls who know that it is necessary to dare in order to succeed,-- these are the lonely sentinels who enter the battle long before the masses are sufficiently roused to raise openly the banner of insurrection and to march, arms in hand, to the conquest of their rights.
• 32
From this evening on my energies were offered to the ancient underground society of alchemists, artists, mystics, alienated visionaries, dropouts, and disenchanted young, the sons arising.
• 33
...this one spent half of his time digging in the earth down by the dry riverbed and the other half jotting mysteriously in a small book. Obviously a witch, and probably not to be trusted.
• 34
"Why?" the abbot whispered almost in awe. "Why do you take the burden of a people and its past upon yourself alone?"
The hermit's eyes flared a brief warning, but he swallowed a throaty sound and lowered his face into his hands. "You fish in dark waters."
"Forgive me."
• 35
...there is unmistakable evidence that much of the enjoyment of life still attainable is being married by a chronic restlessness to realize something bigger and better. Yet there are no circumstances which suggest that for today's bon vivants the experience of life as a whole is any richer than it was for yesterday's bon vivants, a skeptical view of things no less applicable to the future.
• 36
....they not only find this study [of philosophy] highly agreeable, but think that such inquiries are very acceptable to the Author of nature; and imagine that as He, like the inventors of curious engines among mankind, has exposed this great machine of the universe to the view of the only creatures capable of contemplating it, so an exact and curious observer, who admires His workmanship, is much more acceptable to Him than one of the herd, who, like a beast incapable of reason, looks on this glorious scene with the eyes of a dull and unconcerned spectator.
• 37
This is the behavior of a nervous person; he has within him great resources for thought and action but one is very often wrong about him because his actions are so unpredictable. His mental indecision and physical torpor are deceptive signs; they often indicate that he is preparing for some explosive action in the future.
• 38
Will they be new friends of "truth," these coming philosophers? Very probably, for all philosophers hitherto have loved their truths. But assuredly they will not be dogmatists.
• 39
In antiquity when a man read -- which was seldom enough -- he read something to himself, and in a loud voice; they were surprised when any one read silently, and sought secretly the reason of it.
• 40
...the martyrdom of KNOWLEDGE ABOUT LOVE: the martyrdom of the most innocent and most craving heart, that never had enough of any human love, that DEMANDED love, that demanded inexorably and frantically to be loved and nothing else, with terrible outbursts against those who refused him their love; the story of a poor soul insatiated and insatiable in love, that had to invent hell to send thither those who WOULD NOT love him...
• 41
...imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity.
• 42
And are not those who are verily and indeed wanting in the knowledge of the true being of each thing, and who have in their souls no clear pattern, and are unable as with a painter's eye to look at the absolute truth and to that original to repair, and having perfect vision of the other world to order the laws about beauty, goodness, justice in this, if not already ordered, and to guard and preserve the order of them -- are not such persons, I ask, simply blind?
• 43
...professors of education must be wrong when they say that they can put a knowledge into the soul which was not there before, like sight into blind eyes.... the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or in other words, of the good.
• 44
...he [the Democratic man] lives from day to day indulging the appetite of the hour; and sometimes he is lapped in drink and strains of the flute; then he becomes a water-drinker, and tries to get thin; then he takes a turn at gymnastics; sometimes idling and neglecting everything, then once more living the life of a philosopher; often he is busy with politics, and starts to his feet and says and does whatever comes into his head; and, if he is emulous of any one who is a warrior, off he is in that direction, or of men of business, once more in that. His life has neither law nor order; and this distracted existence he terms joy and bliss and freedom; and so he goes on.
• 45
The newsboy is forever restless. He works only when the crowds are thickest; he shapes all his habits to suit the changing, irregular life of the metropolis, and its life makes the life of his boyhood. Sometimes this spirit of the street gets into his blood, and he molds his whole later existence into an unceasing passion for travel. In New York today there are some five thousand newsboys. Hundreds are homeless, and of these some are constantly wandering -- to Chicago, San Francisco, and New Orleans, to London and the cities of the Continent, wandering always -- but returning always, sooner or later, to what they think the greatest town on earth, to the home that taught them to be homeless.
• 46
...it has been given to few to discover the causes of things.
• 47
They were madmen; but they had in them that little flame which never dies.
• 48
...those who work with no expectation of seeing results cannot be disappointed; they are beyond the scope of failure, and may even meet, as we did, with some small and unforeseen success. The [Humanitarian] League was thus, in the true sense of the term, a Forlorn Hope; that is, a troop of venturesome pioneers, who were quite untrammeled by “prospects,” and whose whim it was to open out a path by which others might eventually follow.
• 49
Keep the faculty of mental effect alive by exercise, and develop moral courage which gives one calm in storms and fearlessness under persecution.
• 50
...from the beginning of time governments persistently sought to stifle all new ideas as well as to suppress all attempts of their expression. We look back with horror at the persecutions champions of new ideas have endured at the hands of authority.
• 51
The man next on the bench may have a tale to tell of religious persecution that drove him from other lands to liberty and his push-cart on Rivington Street. He talks politics with a slant toward weird theories, and reads books on political philosophy you have put off reading -- say till next winter. They are trying at the Education Alliance to set him on the right track because they know the great fear and suspicion that besets him after sudden release from social and political repression.
• 52
He to whom everything centers in knowing and conducting himself as a free spirit gives little heed to how scantily he is supplied meanwhile, and does not reflect at all on how he must make his arrangements to have a thoroughly free or enjoyable life.... his doing is always thinking...
• 53
...where is it to get this spiritual world? Where but out of itself? It must reveal itself; and the words that it speaks, the revelations in which it unveils itself, these are its world. As a visionary lives and has his world only in the visionary pictures that he himself creates, as a crazy man generates for himself his own dream-world, without which he could not be crazy, so the spirit must create for itself its spirit world, and is not spirit until it creates it.
Thus its creations make it spirit, and by its creatures we know it, the creator; in them it lives, they are its world.
• 54
...there are intellectual vagabonds too, to whom the hereditary dwelling-place of their fathers seems too cramped and oppressive for them to be willing to satisfy themselves with the limited space any more: instead of keeping within the limits of a temperate style of thinking, and taking as inviolable truth what furnishes comfort and tranquility to thousands, they overlap all bounds of the traditional and run wild with their impudent criticism and untamed mania for doubt, these extravagating vagabonds. They form the class of the unstable, restless, changeable, of the proletariat, and, if they give voice to their unsettled nature, are called "unruly fellows."
• 55
What a difference between freedom and ownness! One can get rid of a great many things, one yet does not get rid of all; one becomes free from much, not from everything. Inwardly one may be free in spite of the condition of slavery, although, too, it is again only from all sorts of things, not from everything; but from the whip, the domineering temper, of the master, one does not as slave become free. "Freedom lives only in the realm of dreams!'' Ownness, on the contrary, is my whole being and existence, it is I myself. I am free from what I am rid of, owner of what I have in my power or what I control. My own I am at all times and under all circumstances, if I know how to have myself and do not throw myself away on others. To be free is something that I cannot truly will, because I cannot make it, cannot create it: I can only wish it and - aspire toward it, for it remains an ideal, a spook. The fetters of reality cut the sharpest welts in my flesh every moment. But my own I remain. Given up as serf to a master, I think only of myself and my advantage; his blows strike me indeed, I am not free from them; but I endure them only for my benefit, perhaps in order to deceive him and make him secure by the semblance of patience, or, again, not to draw worse upon myself by contumacy. But, as I keep my eye on myself and my selfishness, I take by the forelock the first good opportunity to trample the slaveholder into the dust. That I then become free from him and his whip is only the consequence of my antecedent egoism. Here one perhaps says I was "free" even in the condition of slavery - namely, "intrinsically" or "inwardly." But "intrinsically free" is not "really free," and "inwardly" is not "outwardly." I was own, on the other hand, my own, altogether, inwardly and outwardly. Under the dominion of a cruel master my body is not "free" from torments and lashes; but it is my bones that moan under the torture, my fibers that quiver under the blows, and I moan because my body moans. That I sigh and shiver proves that I have not yet lost myself, that I am still my own. My leg is not "free" from the master's stick, but it is my leg and is inseparable. Let him tear it off me and look and see if he still has my leg! He retains in his hand nothing but the - corpse of my leg, which is as little my leg as a dead dog is still a dog: a dog has a pulsating heart, a so-called dead dog has none and is therefore no longer a dog.
• 56
Now, as society can regard only labors for the common benefit, human labors, he who does anything unique remains without its care; indeed, he may find himself disturbed by its intervention. The unique person will work himself forth out of society all right, but society brings forth no unique person.
• 57
Many of us would rather worship athletes and actors than world-shaking heroes; the latter tend to scare us a little and bore us a lot.
• 58
As for the comparative demand which men make on life, it is an important difference between two, that the one is satisfied with a level success, that his marks can all be hit by point-blank shots, but the other, however low and unsuccessful his life may be, constantly elevates his aim, though at a very slight angle to the horizon. I should much rather be the last man...
• 59
Sure enough, a hero in the midst of us cowards is always so dreaded. He is just that thing. He shows himself superior to nature. He has a spark of divinity in him.
• 60
The multitude of men look satisfied and pleased; as if enjoying a full banquet, as if mounted on a tower in spring. I alone seem listless and still, my desires having as yet given no indication of their presence. I am like an infant which has not yet smiled. I look dejected and forlorn, as if I had no home to go to. The multitude of men all have enough and to spare. I alone seem to have lost everything. My mind is that of a stupid man; I am in a state of chaos.
Ordinary men look bright and intelligent, while I alone seem to be benighted. They look full of discrimination, while I alone am dull and confused. I seem to be carried about as on the sea, drifting as if I had nowhere to rest. All men have their spheres of action, while I alone seem dull and incapable, like a rude borderer. Thus, I alone am different from other men, but I value the nursing-mother, the Tao.
• 61
Those who stand at the beginning of new things secure less public acclaim than those who bring to final statement a body of new truth or who bring into practical use various new technical devices.
• 62
It is no paradox to say that in our most theoretical moods we may be nearest to our most practical applications.
Chronology :
April 12, 2020 : Eccentric Thought -- Added.
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