Every virtue inclines to stupidity, every stupidity to virtue; "stupid to the point of sanctity," they say in Russia, - let us be careful lest out of pure honesty we eventually become saints and bores!
A living being seeks, above all, to discharge its strength. Life is will to power.
It quite often happens that the old man is subject to the delusion of a great moral renewal and rebirth, and from this experience he passes judgments on the work and course of his life, as if he had only now become clear-sighted; and yet the inspiration behind this feeling of well-being and these confident judgements is not wisdom, but weariness .
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.
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.
Only the most acute and active animals are capable of boredom.
What makes one heroic? - Going out to meet at the same time one's highest suffering and one's highest hope.
Why is it that wellnesses are not as contagious as illnesses--generally speaking, but also especially regarding taste? Or are there epidemics of health?
At heart I am a warrior.
People who feel insecure in social situations never miss a chance to exhibit their dominance over close, submissive friends, whomthey put down publicly, in front of everyone--by teasing, for example.
To explore the whole sphere of the modern soul, to have sat in every nook- my ambition, my torture, and my happiness
Not the intensity but the duration of high feelings makes high men.
I am rather tired, and no longer young enough to pillage the night to make up for the deficit of hours in the day..." JRR Tolkien, Letter # 174
You cannot learn to fly by flying. First you must learn to walk, to run, to climb, to dance.
Nay! Alas for us all! And for all that walk in the world in these after-days. For such is the way of it: to find and lose, as it seems to those whose boat is on the running stream. But I count you blessed [...] for your loss you suffer of your own free will, and you might have chosen otherwise. But you have not forsaken your companions, and the least reward that you shall have is that the memory of Lothlórien shall remain ever clear and unstained in your heart, and shall neither fade nor grow stale.
Men subsequently put whatever is newly learned or experienced to use as a plowshare, perhaps even as a weapon: but women immediately include it among their ornaments.
Life, and you, and I, and all of us together became for a while interesing to ourselves once more.
If all alms were given only from pity, all beggars would have starved long ago.
Doing ill to those on whom we have to make our power felt; for pain is a far more sensitive means for that purpose than pleasure: pain always asks concerning the cause, while pleasure is inclined to keep within itself and not look backward.
I will not walk backward in life.
The great works are produced in such an ecstasy of love that they must always be unworthy of it, however great their worth otherwise.
Fair speech may hide a foul heart.
There was some murmuring, but also some grins on the faces of the men looking on: the sight of their Captain sitting on the ground and eye to eye with a young hobbit, legs well apart, bristling with wrath, was one beyond their experience.
A physician who treated me as a nervous case for a while said in the end "No! It is not a matter of your nerves; it is I who am nervous".
Unpleasant, even dangerous, qualities can be found in every nation and every individual: it is cruel to demand that the Jew be an exception. In him, these qualities may even be dangerous and revolting to an unusual degree; and perhaps the young stock-exchange Jew is altogether the most disgusting invention of mankind.
No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.
We have art so that we shall not die of reality.
Pain makes hens and poets cackle.
When one has not had a good father, one must create one.
I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago, and of people who will see a world that I shall never know.
Memory says, 'I did that.' Pride replies, 'I could not have done that.' Eventually, memory yields.
Assuming that rapture is nature's play with man, the Dionysian artist's creative activity is the play with rapture.
Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach honesty.
I want to be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.
I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.
Generally speaking, the greater a woman's beauty, the greater her modesty.
How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which has to be overcome, by the effort it costs to stay aloft. One would have to seek the highest type of free man where the greatest resistance is constantly being overcome: five steps from tyranny, near the threshold of the danger of servitude.
Little by little, one travels far
Ah, how little you know of human happiness - you comfortable and benevolent people! For happiness and unhappiness are brother and sister - or even twins who grow up together - or in your case - remain small together!
One who has given up any hope of winning a fight or has clearly lost it wants his style in fighting to be admired all the more.
The courage of all one really knows comes but late in life.
I knew that danger lay ahead, of course; but I did not expect to meet it in our own Shire. Can't a hobbit walk from the Water to the River in peace?" "But it is not your own Shire," said Gildor. "Others dwelt here before hobbits were; and others will dwell here again when hobbits are no more. The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.
And yet their wills did not yield, and they struggled on.
The living is merely a type of what is dead, and a very rare type.
Philosophical systems are wholly true for their founders only.
It is difficult to live among people because silence is so difficult.
At the bottom of all these noble races the beast of prey, the splendid blond beast, prowling about avidly in search of spoil and victory.
I am one thing, my writings are another.
Moralities and religions are the principal means by which one can make whatever one wishes out of man, provided one possesses a superfluity of creative forces and can assert one's will over long periods of time in the form of legislation and customs.
Haldir had gone on and was now climbing to the high flet. As Frodo prepared to follow him, he laid his hand upon the tree beside the ladder: never before had he been so suddenly and so keenly aware of the feel and texture of a tree's skin and of the life within it. He felt a delight in wood and the touch of it, neither as forester nor as carpenter; it was the delight of the living tree itself.
I can still stand on life's narrowest footing: but who would I be were I to show you this art. Would you like to see a ropedancer?
I am not a 'democrat' only because 'humility' and equality are spiritual principles corrupted by the attempt to mechanize and formalize them, with the result that we get not universal smallness and humility, but universal greatness and pride, till some Orc gets hold of a ring of power--and then we get and are getting slavery.
I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things, Sam.
The surest aid in combating the male's disease of self-contempt is to be loved by a clever woman.
The elimination of the will altogether and the switching off of the emotions all and sundry, is tantamount to the elimination of reason: intellectual castration.
One should not be deceived: great spirits are skeptics ... Strength, FREEDOM which is born of the strength and overstrength of the spirit, proves itself by skepticism. Men of conviction are not worthy of the least consideration in fundamental questions of value and disvalue. Convictions are prisons.
A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.
I obviously do everything to be "hard to understand" myself
The Greeks, with their truly healthy culture, have once and for all justified philosophy simply by having engaged in it, and having engaged in it more fully than any other people.
The best way to give assistance to those who are deeply embarrassed and to calm them down is to praise them decisively.
