From da736e6b76bebf051fb8dcdc8c5197ebf5af8b81 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: clinton Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2008 06:05:12 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] Some more pretentious quotes --- Wisdom.muse | 66 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 66 insertions(+) diff --git a/Wisdom.muse b/Wisdom.muse index 23358ba..467e15b 100644 --- a/Wisdom.muse +++ b/Wisdom.muse @@ -134,3 +134,69 @@ perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. 18 For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. + +* Søren Kierkegaard + +** Either/Or I + + +A feature in which our age certainly excels that age in Greece is that +our age is more depressed and therefore deeper in despair. Thus, our +age is sufficiently depressed to know that there is something called +responsibility and that this means something. Therefore, although +everyone wants to rule, no one wants to have responsibility. It is +still fresh in our memory that a French statesman, when offered a +portfolio the second time, declared that he would accept it but on the +condition that the secretary of state be made responsible. It is well +known that the king in France is not responsible, but the prime +minister is; the prime minister does not wish to be responsible but +wants to be prime minister provided that the secretary of state will +be responsible; ultimately it ends, of course, with the watchmen or +street commissioners becoming responsible. Would not this inverted +story of responsibility be an appropriate subject for Aristophanes! On +the other hand, why are the government and the governors so afraid of +assuming responsibility, unless it is because they fear an opposition +party that in turn continually pushes away responsibility on a similar +scale. When one imagines these two powers face to face with each other +but unable to catch hold of each other because the one is always +disappearing and is replaced by the other--such a situation would +certainly not be without comic power. + + +* Nietzsche + +** Beyond Good and Evil + +**30.** Our highest insights must---and should---sound +like follies and sometimes like crimes when they are heard without +permission by those who are not predisposed and predestined for +them. The difference between the exoteric and the esoteric, formerly +known to philosophers---among the Indians as among the Greek, +Persians, and Muslims, in short, wherever one believed in an order of +rank and *not* in equality and equal rights---does not so much +consists in this, that the exoteric approach comes from the outside +and sees, estimates, measures, and judges from the outside, not the +inside; what is much more essential is that the exoteric approach sees +things from below, the esoteric looks *down from above*. There +are heights of the soul from which even tragedy ceases to look tragic; +and rolling together all the woe of the world---who could dare to +decide whether its sight would *necessarily* seduce us and +compel us to feel pity and thus double this woe? + +What serves the higher type of men as nourishment or delectation must +almost be poison for a very different and inferior type. The virtues +of the common man might perhaps signify vices and weaknesses in a +philosopher. It could be possible that a man of a high type, when +degenerating and perishing, might only at that point acquire qualities +that would require those in the lower sphere into which he had sunk to +begin to venerate him like a saint. There are books that have opposite +values for soul and health, depending on whether the lower soul, the +lower vitality, or the higher and more vigorous ones turn to them: in +the former case, these books are dangerous and lead to crumbling and +disintegration; in the latter, heralds' cries that call the bravest to +*their* courage. Books for all the world are always +foul-smelling books: the smell of small people clings to them. Where +the people eat and drink, even where they venerate, it usually +stinks. One should not go to church if one wants to breathe +*pure* air. + -- 2.20.1