Διόνυσος Ελευθέριος > Διόνυσος's Quotes

“Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Nietzsche hat mich kaputt gemacht.”
― Martin Heidegger

“One cannot refute what one has not thoroughly understood.”
― Leo Strauss

“But it is not only the difficulty and labor which men take in finding out of truth, nor again that when it is found it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself.”
― Francis Bacon, The Essays

“Solomon saith, 'He that considereth the wind, shall not sow, and he that looketh to the clouds, shall not reap.' A wise man will make more opportunities, than he finds.”
― Francis Bacon, The Essays

“That which yields is not always weak.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart

“Salomon saith, There is no new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Salomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion.”
― Francis Bacon, The Essays

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Did all this make sense?”
― Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund

“Atheism is a religion like abstinence is a sex position.”
― Bill Maher

“I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth; I am a citizen of the world.”
― Eugene Debs, Writings of Eugene V. Debs

“Ξένος: διὸ δὴ καὶ τότ᾽ ἤδη θεὸς ὁ κοσμήσας αὐτόν, καθορῶν ἐν ἀπορίαις ὄντα, κηδόμενος ἵνα μὴ χειμασθεὶς ὑπὸ ταραχῆς διαλυθεὶς εἰς τὸν τῆς ἀνομοιότητος ἄπειρον ὄντα πόντον δύῃ, πάλιν ἔφεδρος αὐτοῦ τῶν πηδαλίων γιγνόμενος, τὰ νοσήσαντα καὶ λυθέντα ἐν τῇ καθ᾽ ἑαυτὸν προτέρᾳ περιόδῳ στρέψας, κοσμεῖ τε καὶ ἐπανορθῶν ἀθάνατον αὐτὸν καὶ ἀγήρων ἀπεργάζεται.”
― Plato, The Statesman

“Wer sich einmal anschaulich macht, wie nach Sokrates, dem Mystagogen der Wissenschaft, eine Philosophenschule nach der anderen, wie Welle auf Welle, sich ablöst, wie eine nie geahnte Universalität der Wissensgier in dem weitesten Bereich der gebildeten Welt und als eigentliche Aufgabe für jeden höher Befähigten die Wissenschaft auf die hohe See führte, von der sie niemals seitdem wieder völlig vertrieben werden konnte, wie durch diese Universalität erst ein gemeinsames Netz des Gedankens über den gesammten Erdball, ja mit Ausblicken auf die Gesetzlichkeit eines ganzen Sonnensystems, gespannt wurde; wer dies Alles, sammt der erstaunlich hohen Wissenspyramide der Gegenwart, sich vergegenwärtigt, der kann sich nicht entbrechen, in Sokrates den einen Wendepunkt und Wirbel der sogenannten Weltgeschichte zu sehen.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie. Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen I - IV. Nachgelassene Schriften 1870 - 1873

“Existentialism is a 'movement' which like all such movements has a flabby periphery and a hard center. That center is the thought of Heidegger.”
― Leo Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy

“[339] Vita femina. To see the ultimate beauties in a work-all knowledge and good-will is not enough; it requires the rarest, good chance for the veil of clouds to move for once from the summits, and for the sun to shine on them. We must not only stand at precisely the right place to see this, our very soul itself must have pulled away the veil from its heights, and must be in need of an external expression and simile, so as to have a hold and remain master of itself. All these, however, are so rarely united at the same time that I am inclined to believe that the highest summit of all that is good, be it work, deed, man, or nature, has hitherto remained for most people, and even for the best, as something concealed and shrouded-that, however, which unveils itself to us, unveils itself to us but once. The Greeks indeed prayed: "Twice and thrice, everything beautiful!" Ah, they had their good reason to call on the Gods, for ungodly actuality does not furnish us with the beautiful at all, or only does so once! I mean to say that the world is overfull of beautiful things, but it is nevertheless poor, very poor, in beautiful moments, and in the unveiling of those beautiful things. But perhaps this is the greatest charm of life: it puts a gold- embroidered veil of lovely potentialities over itself, promising, resisting, modest, mocking, sympathetic, seductive. Yes, life is a woman!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”
― Heraclitus

“He who hasn't tasted bitter things hasn't earned sweet things.”
― Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics and Other Essays

“I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“I also enjoy canoeing, and I suppose you will smile when I say that I especially like it on moonlight nights. I cannot, it is true, see the moon climb up the sky behind the pines and steal softly across the heavens, making a shining path for us to follow; but I know she is there, and as I lie back among the pillows and put my hand in the water, I fancy that I feel the shimmer of her garments as she passes. Sometimes a daring little fish slips between my fingers, and often a pond-lily presses shyly against my hand. Frequently, as we emerge from the shelter of a cove or inlet, I am suddenly conscious of the spaciousness of the air about me. A luminous warmth seems to enfold me. Whether it comes from the trees which have been heated by the sun, or from the water, I can never discover. I have had the same strange sensation even in the heart of the city. I have felt it on cold, stormy days and at night. It is like the kiss of warm lips on my face.”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

“The multiplication of technologies in the name of efficiency is actually eradicating free time by making it possible to maximize the time and place for production and minimize the unstructured travel time in between…Too, the rhetoric of efficiency around these technologies suggests that what cannot be quantified cannot be valued-that that vast array of pleasures which fall into the category of doing nothing in particular, of woolgathering, cloud-gazing, wandering, window-shopping, are nothing but voids to be filled by something more definite, more production, or faster-paced…I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought or thoughtfulness.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

“Is pessimism necessarily a sign of decline, decay, malformation, of tired and debilitated instincts—as was the case among the Indians and appears to be the case amongst us 'modern men' and Europeans? Is there a pessimism of strength? An intellectual preference for the hard, gruesome, malevolent and problematic aspects of existence which comes from a feeling of well-being, from overflowing health, from an abundance of existence? Is there perhaps such a thing as suffering from superabundance itself? Is there a tempting bravery in the sharpest eye which demands the terrifying as its foe, as a worthy foe against which it can test its strength and from which it intends to learn the meaning of fear?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“In the course of its development, civilization eliminates heroism.”
― Jean Lartéguy

“The truth about eros is terrifying.”
― Seth Benardete, The Symposium

“This is the antinomy: insofar as we believe in morality we pass sentence on existence.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

“There must be darkness to see the stars.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore

“In innocence there is no strength against evil [...] but there is strength in it for good.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore

“If one's lot is cast among fools it is necessary to study folly.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“There are words which close a conversation as with an iron door.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“But the discoverer of will to power and of the most spiritual will to power, the discoverer of the way of all beings and of the highest beings, finds a new responsibility given to him for ending the tyranny of malleable and immalleable nature, for willing an order that is 'true to the earth' after discovering what is unalterable. This new responsibility requires a courage quite unlike that of popular existentialism faced with grim mortality. Nietzsche's courage takes its bearings not from considerations of personal authenticity, but from concern for the future of mankind. But Nietzsche's courage is also not the courage that invents ever new ways to deconstruct what is already standing or coming to stand. […] The courage Nietzsche requires of himself is courage for a new act of ordering, a new daylight wisdom whose relation to night wisdom is not refusal or horror, a daylight wisdom that is true to the earth seen from the inside as will to power and nothing besides.”
― Laurence Lampert, Nietzsche's Teaching: An Interpretation of "Thus Spoke Zarathustra"

“We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”
― Georg Hegel