Thoughts Out of Season, Volume 5T.N. Foulis, 1910 - 204 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
action adiaphora artist beast become believe blind called Christianity danger David Strauss desire Diogenes Laertius earth egoism Empedocles Epigoni eternal everything excess of history existence fact false fear feel force forget FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE future genius German culture give Goethe Greek happiness hate Heinrich von Kleist Heraclitus higher highest historical power historical sense honesty honour human idea impulse inner instinct judge judgment justice knowledge learned live look mankind means memento mori Mephistopheles merely modern monumental history moral nature ness never Nietzsche object once one's OSCAR LEVY past petrifaction Philistine philosophy Plato present professor reason religion savant Schopen Schopenhauer Schopenhauer's soul speak spirit stand strength strong suffering super-historical thing thinker thou thought tion true truth turn uncon understand unhistorical universal university philosophy virtue whole wish words world-process youth
Popular passages
Page 196 - Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end. There is not a piece of science but its flank may be- turned to-morrow; there is not any literary reputation, not the so-called eternal names of fame, that may not be revised and condemned.
Page 11 - Ask yourself, ask any of your acquaintance, whether they would live over again the last ten or twenty years of their life. No! but the next twenty, they say, will be better: And from the dregs of life, hope to receive What the first sprightly running could not give.
Page 189 - Every sort of philosophy has been systematized, and yet as these philosophies utterly contradict one another, most of them cannot be true. Unproved abstract principles without number have been eagerly caught up by sanguine men, and then carefully spun out into books and theories, which were to explain the whole world. But the world goes clear against these abstractions, and it must do so, as they require it to go in antagonistic directions.
Page 26 - Man must have the strength to break up the past; and apply it too, in order to live. He must bring the past to the bar of judgment, interrogate it remorselessly, and finally condemn it.
Page 22 - SECONDLY, history is necessary to the man of conservative and reverent nature, who looks back to the origins of his existence with love and trust; through it, he gives thanks for life. He is careful to preserve what survives from ancient days, and will reproduce the conditions of his own upbringing for those who come after him; thus he does life a service. The possession of his ancestors' furniture changes its meaning in his soul : for his soul is rather possessed by it.
Page 6 - CONSIDER the herds that are feeding yonder: they know not the meaning of yesterday or to-day; they graze and ruminate, move or rest, from morning to night, from day to day, taken up with their little loves and hates, at the mercy of the moment, feeling neither melancholy nor satiety. Man cannot see them without regret, for even in the pride of his humanity he looks enviously on the beast's happiness. He wishes simply to live without satiety or pain, like the beast; yet it is all in vain, for he will...
Page 31 - In reality they care as little about the great thing that is already here, as that which is about to arise : their lives are evidence of that. Monumental history is the cloak under which their hatred of present power and greatness masquerades as an extreme admiration of the past : the real meaning of this way of viewing history is disguised as its opposite ; whether they wish it or no, they are acting as though their motto were, " let the dead bury the — living.
Page 55 - The unrestrained historical sense, pushed to its logical extreme, uproots the future, because it destroys illusions and robs existing things of the only atmosphere in which they can live.
Page 49 - But it is only a superstition to say that the picture given to such a man by the object really shows the truth of things. Unless it be that objects are expected in such moments to paint or photograph themselves by their own activity on a purely passive medium!
Page 101 - At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth ; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvellously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.