Great Throughts Treasury

"The artisan or scientist or the follower of whatever discipline who has the habit of comparing himself not with other followers but with the discipline itself will have a lower opinion of himself, the more excellent he is."

"A white-haired, weak old man—barefoot and half naked with a ponderous load on his back, through valleys, over mountains and sharp rocks, across deep sands and chasms, in wind and seething storm, in burning or in freezing weather—runs, runs panting on, plunging through bogs and torrents, falls down, gets up, and hurries, hurries on without a stop or rest, his body cut and bleeding, till he arrives there where his path and so much labor aimed—the abyss, horrid, immense, wherein, in falling, he unremembers all. Such, O virgin moon, is this, our mortal life."

"And my heart wrenches in me at the thought that everything the world contains goes by and hardly leaves a trace. The festive day has fled, the common day comes on, and Time takes with it every human happening. Where are the sounds of all those ancient men? The shouts of our illustrious ancestors, and the great empire of that Rome—the arms, the clashing noise which rang throughout the earth and ocean? All is peace and silence now, the world is still, and of them we talk no more."

"And thus it is in this immensity my thought is drowned: and sweet to me the foundering in this sea."

"And when I see the stars burn in the sky—I say within myself: “Wherefore those many lights, this endless air, this infinite, deep vault? And this tremendous solitude, what does it mean? And who am I?” And so I go reflecting: What splendid, measureless a home is this for so innumerable a family!"

"And when I hear the wind come blowing through the trees, I pit its voice against that boundless silence and summon up eternity, and the dead seasons, and the present one, alive with all its sound."

"As a man's desires grow cooler, he becomes better equipped to deal with other men or to succeed in society. Nature, with her usual benevolence, has ordained that men shall not learn to live until they lose the motives for living."

"Beneath that deadly burden, you will bow that head so innocent, not stubbornly, but neither until then bent down to supplicate in useless cowardice the killer who will come. Nor shall you swell with mad pride toward the stars or toward the wasteland here."

"Conserve energy -- make love more slowly."

"Creatures naturally hate their fellow-creatures, and whenever their own interest requires it, harm them. We cannot therefore avoid hatred and injuries from men, while to a great extent we can avoid their scorn. This is why there is usually little point in the respect which young people and those new to the world pay to those they come across, not through mean-mindedness or any other form of self-interest, but through a benevolent desire not to provoke enmity and to win hearts. They do not fulfill this desire, and in some ways they harm their own repute, because the person who is so respected comes to have a greater idea of himself, and he who pays the respect a lesser idea of himself. He who does not look to men for usefulness or fame, should not look for love either, since he will not obtain it. If he wants my opinion, he should preserve his own dignity completely, giving to everyone no more than his due. Thus he will be somewhat more hated and persecuted than otherwise, but not often despised."

"Children find everything in nothing; men find nothing in everything."

"Death is not evil, for it frees man from all ills and takes away his desires along with desire's rewards. Old age is the supreme evil, for it deprives man of all pleasures while allowing his appetites to remain, and it brings with it every possible sorrow. Yet men fear death and desire old age."

"Death is not an evil, because it frees us from all evils, and while it takes away good things, it takes away also the desire for them. Old age is the supreme evil, because it deprives us of all pleasures, leaving us only the appetite for them, and it brings with it all sufferings. Nevertheless, we fear death, and we desire old age."

"Devil, don't you know you are as beautiful as an Angel?"

"Everything since Homer has improved, except poetry."

"Enjoy every minute. There's plenty of time to be dead."

"Every man remembers his childhood as a kind of mythical age, just as every nation's childhood is its mythical age."

"Freedom is the dream you dream while putting thought in chains again --"

"He who has the courage to laugh is almost as much the master of the world as he who is ready to die."

"He who travels much has this advantage over others – that the things he remembers soon become remote, so that in a short time they acquire the vague and poetical quality which is only given to other things by time. He who has not traveled at all has this disadvantage – that all his memories are of things present somewhere, since the places with which all his memories are concerned are present."

"I began to feel my unhappiness in a much gloomier manner. I began to abandon hope, and reflect deeply on things... to become a philosopher by profession (from the poet I was), to feel the necessary unhappiness of the world instead of knowing it."

"If in this moment I were to go mad, my madness would consist of sitting always with my eyes staring, my mouth open, and my hands between my knees, without laughing or crying, or even moving except for sheer necessity. I haven't the least urge to conceive a desire, not even for death… This is the first time that noia (boredom or spleen) not only presses and tires me but harries and rips like the sharpest pain."

"I get up and I bless the light thin clouds and the first twittering of birds, and the breathing air and smiling face of the hills."

"If man did not suffer, the world itself might be destroyed."

"If the best company is that which we leave feeling most satisfied with ourselves, it follows that it is the company we leave most bored."

"I say that the world is a league of scoundrels against the men of good will, and of the petty against the generous."

"I will admit that virtue—like everything else beautiful and great—is nothing but an illusion. But if it were a shared illusion, if all men believed and wanted to be good, if they were compassionate, generous, high-minded, full of enthusiasm, in a word, if everyone were sensible (for I make no distinction between sensibility and what we call virtue),wouldn't people be happier?"

"In all climates, under all skies, man's happiness is always somewhere else."

"If those few truly worthy men who seek glory were to know, one by one, the people who make up that public by which the seeker of glory strives with a thousand hardships to be esteemed, it is believable that they would grow cold in their endeavor or perhaps abandon it altogether."

"Illusions, however weakened and unmasked by reason, still remain and form the chief part of our life."

"If you analyze well your most poetic impressions and imaginings—the ones that most exalt you and pull you outside of yourself and of the real world—you would find that they and the pleasure they cause (at least after childhood) consist totally or chiefly in remembrance."

"It is not our disadvantages or shortcomings that are ridiculous, but rather the studious way we try to hide them, and our desire to act as if they did not exist."

"In this place everything I see or hear starts up an image of sweet remembrance, sweet in itself yet with intrusive pain: the consciousness of present time, the vain desire to hold that very past, though it was sad, the uttering of the words, “I was.”"

"In time, the heart grows sated with all things, with sleep and dance, with song and love—those pleasures far more dear than are the sounds of words. But in the end the heart feels no satiety with words."

"It was always dear to me, this solitary hill, and this hedgerow here, that closes out my view, from so much of the ultimate horizon. But sitting here, and watching here, in thought, I create interminable spaces, greater than human silences, and deepest quiet, where the heart barely fails to terrify. When I hear the wind, blowing among these leaves, I go on to compare that infinite silence with this voice, and I remember the eternal and the dead seasons, and the living present, and its sound, so that in this immensity my thoughts are drowned, and shipwreck seems sweet to me in this sea."

"Man (like the other animals) is not born to enjoy life, but only to perpetuate life, to communicate it to others who come after, to conserve it. Neither he himself, nor life, nor any object of this world is actually made for him, but, on the contrary, he exists completely for life. Terrifying, but a true proposition of all metaphysics."

"No one is so completely disenchanted with the world, or knows it so thoroughly, or is so utterly disgusted with it, that when it begins to smile upon him he does not become partially reconciled to it."

"Nature, with her customary beneficence, has ordained that man shall not learn how to live until the reasons for living are stolen from him, that he shall find no enjoyment until he has become incapable of vivid pleasure."

"Old age is the supreme evil, for it deprives man of all pleasures while allowing his appetites to remain, and it brings with it every possible sorrow. Yet men fear death and desire old age."

"Men are ready to suffer anything from others or from heaven itself, provided that, when it comes to words, they are untouched."

"No human trait deserves less tolerance in everyday life, and gets less, than intolerance."

"Pleasure is always in the past or in the future, never in the present."

"People are ridiculous only when they try or seem to be that which they are not."

"Perhaps whatever state or shape there be, in cradle or in lair, the day of birth for creatures born is dark."

"Rather, to be precise, the order that is in the world, and the realization that evil is in the order, that this order could not exist without evil makes the existence of [Rousseau's] idea inconceivable. Animals destined as food for other species. Inborn envy and hatred of the living toward their similars… Other wrongs more serious and basic in the very system of nature, as noted elsewhere by me, etc… what hope is there when evil is ordinary? In an order, I say, where evil is essential?"

"Rest, rest forever. You have beaten long enough. Nothing is worth your smallest motion, nor the earth your sighs. This life is bitterness. And vacuum, nothing else. The world is mud."

"Real misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the real world since it is experience of life, and not philosophy, which produces real hatred of mankind."

"The end of pain we take as happiness."

"The greater part of the people we assign to educate our sons we know for certain are not educated. Yet we do not doubt that they can give what they have not received, a thing which cannot be otherwise acquired."

"The most certain way to hide from others the limits of our knowledge is not to go beyond them."