Philologist Quotes

“Man's maturity: to have regained the seriousness that he had as a child at play.”

“What is originality? To see something that is as yet without a name, that is as yet impossible to designate, even though it staresus in the face. The way it usually is with people, it is a thing's name that makes it perceptible to them in the first place.--For the most part, the original ones have also been the name-givers.”

“Warfare is the father of all good things, it is also the father of good prose!”

“Wherever primitive man put up a word, he believed he had made a discovery. How utterly mistaken he really was! He had touched a problem, and while supposing he had solved it, he had created and obstacle to its solution. Now, with every new knowledge we stumble over flint-like and petrified words and, in so doing, break a leg sooner than a word.”

“He who denies his own vanity usually possesses it in so brutal a form that he instinctively shuts his eyes to avoid the necessity of despising himself.”

“Along the journey we commonly forget its goal. Almost every vocation is chosen and entered upon as a means to a purpose but is ultimately continued as a final purpose in itself. Forgetting our objectives is the most frequent stupidity in which we indulge ourselves.”

“Sometimes it is harder to accede to a thing than it is to see its truth.”

“It is a distinction to have many virtues, but a hard lot.”

“...throw roses into the abyss and say: 'here is my thanks to the monster who didn't succeed in swallowing me alive.”

“That is an artist as I would have an artist be, modest in his needs: he really wants only two things, his bread and his art--panemet Circen.”

“One receives as reward for much ennui, despondency, boredom -such as a solitude without friends, books, duties, passions must bring with it -those quarter-hours of profoundest contemplation within oneself and nature. He who completely entrenches himself against boredom also entrenches himself against himself: he will never get to drink the strongest refreshing draught from his own innermost fountain.”

“Man alone resists the direction of gravitation: he constantly wants to fall--upwards.”

“Most of the time in married life is taken up by talk.”

“My abyss speaks, I have turned my ultimate depth inside out into the light.”

“Inexperienced girls flatter themselves with the notion that it is in their power to make a man happy.”

“Although you have so far demonstrated little faith in my ability to pay, I yet hope to demonstrate that I am somebody who pays his debts-for example, to you.”

“I believe only in French culture and consider everything in Europe that calls itself 'culture' a misunderstanding, not to speak of German culture.”

“Sometimes in our relationship to another human being the proper balance of friendship is restored when we put a few grains of impropriety onto our own side of the scale.”

“The man who does not wish to be one of the mass only needs to cease to be easy on himself.”

“Freedom of Will-that is the expression for the complex state of delight of the person exercising volition, who commands and at the same time identifies himself with the executor of the order-who, as such, enjoys also the triumph over obstacles, but thinks within himself that it was really his own will that overcame them. In this way the person exercising volition adds the feelings of delight of his successful executive instruments, the useful underwills or under-souls-indeed, our body is but a social structure composed of many souls-to his feelings of delight as commander.”

“Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.”

“Every week we ought to have one hour for recieving letters, then go take a bath.”

“A moral system valid for all is basically immoral.”

“Discontent is the seed of ethics.”

“Comparing man and woman on the whole, one may say: woman would not possess a genius for ornamentation if she did not also possessan instinct for the secondary role.”