Nvscnti > Nvscnti's Quotes

“A happy life is impossible, the highest thing that man can aspire to is a heroic life; such as a man lives, who is always fighting against unequal odds for the good of others; and wins in the end without any thanks. After the battle is over, he stands like the Prince in the re corvo of Gozzi, with dignity and nobility in his eyes, but turned to stone. His memory remains, and will be reverenced as a hero's; his will, that has been mortified all his life by toiling and struggling, by evil payment and ingratitude, is absorbed into Nirvana.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”
― Jack London

“If the truth shall kill them, let them die.”
― Immanuel Kant

“beauty is an ultimate value—something that we pursue for its own sake, and for the pursuit of which no further reason need be given. Beauty should therefore be compared to truth and goodness, one member of a trio of ultimate values which justify our rational inclinations.”
― Roger Scruton, Beauty: A Very Short Introduction

“Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth, the Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.”
― George Gordon Byron, Manfred

“As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together.
We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”
― Max Planck

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
― Albert Camus

“Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse.”
― Sophocles

“O man! Attend!
What does deep midnight's voice contend?
I slept my sleep,
And now awake at dreaming's end:
The world is deep,
And deeper than day can comprehend.
Deep is its woe,
Joy—deeper than heart's agony:
Woe says: Fade! Go!
But all joy wants eternity,
Wants deep, wants deep eternity.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“The movements which work revolutions in the world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant's heart on the hillside. For them the earth is not an exploitable ground but the living mother.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit quiet in a room alone.”
― Blaise Pascal

“Вы смотрите вверх, когда взыскуете высоты. А я смотрю вниз, ибо я возвысился.

Кто из вас сможет смеяться и в то же время оставаться на высоте?

Кто поднялся на высочайшие горы, тот смеется над всякой трагедией — и на сцене, и в жизни.”
― Фридрих Ницше, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“Only great pain, the long, slow pain that takes its time... compels us to descend to our ultimate depths... I doubt that such pain makes us "better"; but I know it makes us more profound... In the end, lest what is most important remain unsaid: from such abysses, from such severe sickness, one returns newborn, having shed one's skin... with merrier senses, with a second dangerous innocence in joy, more childlike and yet a hundred times subtler than one has ever been before.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“The man who fears death will never do anything worthy of a man who is alive; but he who knows that these were the conditions drawn up for him when he was conceived will live according to this rule and at the same time, through the same strength of mind, he will ensure that none of what happens to him will come unexpectedly.”
― Seneca, Dialogues and Essays

“Untroubled, scornful, outrageous - that is how wisdom wants us to be: she is a woman and never loves anyone but a warrior.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“Every moment of life wants to tell us something, but we do not want to hear what it has to say: when we are alone and quiet we are afraid that something will be whispered into our ear and hence we despise quiet and drug ourselves with sociability.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Unpublished Writings from the Period of Unfashionable Observations

“The devotion of the greatest is to encounter risk and danger and play dice for death.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“What belongs to greatness. — Who will attain anything great if he does not find in himself the strength and the will to inflict great suffering? Being able to suffer is the least thing; weak women and even slaves often achieve virtuosity in that. But not to perish of internal distress and uncertainty when one inflicts great suffering and hears the cry of this suffering — that is great, that belongs to greatness.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“Free, dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thought would I hear of, and not that thou hast escaped from a yoke.

Art thou one ENTITLED to escape from a yoke? Many a one hath cast away his final worth when he hath cast away his servitude.

Free from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra! Clearly, however, shall thine eye show unto me: free FOR WHAT?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“War is father of all, and king of all. He renders some gods, others men; he makes some slaves, others free.”
― Heraclitus, Fragments

“It is infinitely more appealing to be a criminal than a bourgeois.”
― Ernst Jünger, Der Arbeiter: Herrschaft und Gestalt