"If Napolean had been as intelligent as Spinoza,
he would have lived in a garret and written four books."
~ Anatole France
"Woe to him who in passing should hurl an insult at this gentle and pensive head. He would be punished, as all vulgar souls are punished, by his very vulgarity, and by his incapacity to conceive what is divine. This man, from his granite pedestal, will point out to all men the way of blessedness which he found; and ages hence, the cultivated traveler, passing by this spot, will say in his heart, 'The truest vision ever had of God came, perhaps, here.'"
~ Ernest Renan, in 1882,
at the unveiling of the statue of Spinoza in Hague
"Life is short, but truth works far and lives long; let us speak the truth."
~ Schopenhauer
"He was absolutely alone, with not a single friend; and between one and none there lies an infinity.'
~ Nietzsche, Schopenhauer As Educator
"But Lou Salome did not return his love; his eyes were too sharp and deep for comfort... Nietzsche fled in despair... In truth, he was naive, enthusiastic, romantic, tender to the point of simplicity; his war against tenderness was an attempt to exorcise a virtue which had led to... a wound that never healed... There was so much of Plato in Nietzsche; he feared that art would unteach men to be hard; being tender-minded, he [was] dangerously close to practicing Christianity... yet, in his quiet hours, he knew... that Parsifal's gentleness was as necessary as Siegfried's strength, and that in some cosmic way these cruel oppositions merged into wholesome creative unities. He liked to think of this "stellar friendship" that still bound him, silently... And when, in a lucid moment of his final insanity, he saw a picture of the long-dead Wagner, he said softly, "Him I loved much.""
~ Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy"
No comments:
Post a Comment