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“In a community coursed through by energies every road leads to a worthwhile goal, provided one doesn't hesitate or reflect too long. Targets are short-term, but since life is short too, results are maximized, which is all people need to be happy, because the soul is formed by what you accomplish, whereas what you desire without achieving it merely warps the soul. Happiness depends very little on what we want, but only on achieving whatever it is.”
― The Man Without Qualities
― The Man Without Qualities
“The difference between a normal person and an insane one is precisely that the normal person has all the diseases of the mind, while the madman has only one!”
― The Man Without Qualities
― The Man Without Qualities
“Too much possibility is the attempt by the person to overvalue the powers of the symbolic self. It reflects the attempt to exaggerate one half of the human dualism at the expense of the other. In this sense, what we call schizophrenia is an attempt by the symbolic self to deny the limitations of the finite body; in doing so, the entire person is pulled off balance and destroyed. It is as though the freedom of creativity that stems from within the symbolic self cannot be contained by the body, and the person is torn apart. This is how we understand schizophrenia today, as the split of self and body, a split in which the self is unanchored, unlimited, not bound enough to everyday Things, not contained enough in dependable physical behavior.”
― The Denial of Death
― The Denial of Death
“Life is everything. Life is God. Everything shifts and moves, and this movement is God. And while there is life, there is delight in the self-awareness of the divinity. To love life is to love God. The hardest and most blissful thing is to love this life in one's suffering, in the guiltlessness of suffering.”
― War and Peace
― War and Peace
“But if there is a sense of reality, and no one will doubt that it has its
justification for existing, then there must also be something we can call a
sense of possibility.
Whoever has it does not say, for instance:
Here this or that has happened, will happen, must happen;
but he invents:
Here this or that might, could, or ought to happen.
If he is told that something is the way it is, he will think: Well, it could probably just as well be otherwise.
[...]
Such possibilists are said to inhabit a more delicate medium, a hazy medium of mist, fantasy, daydreams, and the subjunctive mood.
Children who show this tendency are dealt with firmly and warned
that such persons are cranks, dreamers, weaklings, know-it-alls,
or troublemakers.
Such fools are also called idealists by those who wish to praise them.
But all this clearly applies only to their weak subspecies, those
who cannot comprehend reality or who, in their melancholic condition,
avoid it. These are people in whom the lack of a sense of reality
is a real deficiency.”
― The Man Without Qualities
justification for existing, then there must also be something we can call a
sense of possibility.
Whoever has it does not say, for instance:
Here this or that has happened, will happen, must happen;
but he invents:
Here this or that might, could, or ought to happen.
If he is told that something is the way it is, he will think: Well, it could probably just as well be otherwise.
[...]
Such possibilists are said to inhabit a more delicate medium, a hazy medium of mist, fantasy, daydreams, and the subjunctive mood.
Children who show this tendency are dealt with firmly and warned
that such persons are cranks, dreamers, weaklings, know-it-alls,
or troublemakers.
Such fools are also called idealists by those who wish to praise them.
But all this clearly applies only to their weak subspecies, those
who cannot comprehend reality or who, in their melancholic condition,
avoid it. These are people in whom the lack of a sense of reality
is a real deficiency.”
― The Man Without Qualities
Elisabeth’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Elisabeth’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Polls voted on by Elisabeth
Lists liked by Elisabeth
