James Dawson

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Alchemy: The Surp...
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Yes To Life In Sp...
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Cien años de soledad
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Friedrich Nietzsche
“You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power—how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live—is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"—how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise—and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves—Stoicism is self-tyranny—Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature?... But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Fyodor Dostoevsky
“When they became wicked, they started to talk about brotherhood and humaneness and understood these ideas. When they became criminals, they invented justice and lay down complete codes of law to maintain it, and to secure these codes they erected a guillotine. They remembered only a tiny bit of what they had lost; they didn’t even want to believe that they had once been innocent and happy. They even laughed at the possibility of this former happiness of theirs and called it a dream.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

J.R.R. Tolkien
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“You can’t, if you can’t feel it, if it never
Rises from the soul, and sways
The heart of every single hearer,
With deepest power, in simple ways.
You’ll sit forever, gluing things together,
Cooking up a stew from other’s scraps,
Blowing on a miserable fire,
Made from your heap of dying ash.
Let apes and children praise your art,
If their admiration’s to your taste,
But you’ll never speak from heart to heart,
Unless it rises up from your heart’s space.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part

Friedrich Nietzsche
“For dancing in any form cannot be divorced from a noble education, being able to dance with the feet, with concepts, with words: do I still have to say that one has to be able to dance with the pen – that writing has to be learned?”
Friedrich Nietzsche

1160710 Practical Philosophy — 18 members — last activity May 24, 2021 10:33AM
This is a book club for those interested in reading with a practical purpose with a genuine passion for ideas and discussions. I am by no means an ex ...more
206623 Existential Book Club — 1527 members — last activity May 03, 2026 03:51PM
This a book club for anybody interested in reading existentialist literature and fiction. Every month I'll be putting up a new text either by an exist ...more
137714 Political Philosophy and Ethics — 6445 members — last activity May 27, 2026 02:05PM
Study and discussion of the important questions of ethical and political philosophy from Confucius and Socrates to the present. Rules (see also the ...more
1108466 Blooming Books: Reading for Growth (Self-Development Book Club) — 2085 members — last activity May 10, 2026 12:50PM
📚 #No.1 non-fiction group on Goodreads for self-development & growth! Do you read self‑development books but struggle to apply the ideas? 👋 Wel ...more
1113994 Group Moderators Support Network: Finding & Growing your Bookish Tribe — 142 members — last activity Dec 07, 2025 04:41AM
👋 Welcome to the brand new community for Moderators & Co-Moderators to Create, Grow, and get Engagement within their Goodreads groups. 📚 ...more
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