Quotes

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Look at a rock, a hammer, a bush, a horse, a man: all created, decaying, bounded, individual, separate-existing. Existence is the same in all.
The many forms that arise and decay: that is life.
The eternal succession, of which each form is only a stage: this is existence.
Man is the only one who seeks in the variables what can be fixed by name: he has meaning.
Man is the only one who digs beneath the individual and conditional in himself, to the common and unconditional existence: he has a soul.

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To live more, much more, with grass, plants, and fruit. Less, much less fatty and black meat! Eat plenty of fish and rye bread every day. Never drink during the day, no spirits of any kind, and if you do drink, only in the evening, only after meals, only pure wine, never at any other time, and nothing else. If you have drunk wine in one day, do not touch the wine glass for twenty-four hours afterward. To hear the rush of your blood, when with sincere desire it wants to mingle with the rhythm of another body's blood. To turn away from all casual temptation. To know when you want something, you, your body, your taste, your temper, and when you are hungry or thirsty or sensually curious out of gluttony, vanity, or boredom.

To live according to the real needs of your body and the measure of your character.

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The extent of human meanness is so unlimited, its heat so burning, its ingenuity so original and varied, its formulae of expression so surprising, that sometimes we are stunned and feel that it is the greatest human power. But later on we find that whenever human meanness comes to the fore, human help comes at once. Most of the time, the will to help is more helpless than the will to be mean, more timid, more hesitant. The power of help is more difficult to organize. But it comes, without being asked or called upon, sometimes very bashfully, and at the same time you must see that, against meanness, the human will also organizes help. Sometimes too late. Sometimes imperfectly. But ultimately triumphant. This is my experience.

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Tired of living? Yes, one day you will feel you have taken on too great a task when you were born to be human on this earth. There was too much opposition, too much unpredictability, too much hostility, too much meanness, too much hopelessness, too much task, too much suffering, too much disappointment. But don't you think, don't you feel, that it was this hopelessness, this " too", this "much" that gave your life meaning and dignity? Don't you feel that you had a task, a personal task? Don't you feel that nature, which so senselessly exaggerates and wastes, has honored you by creating you as a human being and by imposing your task on earth on a human scale? What can you be but weary? That was your job: to live and be exhausted.

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If there is a rule of life in our lives, we must adhere to it at all costs; for the life of a grown man is made up of rules and ways of life like a building of solidly assembled bricks, and it is not advisable to shake this structure by moving one or another brick out of place. Beyond forty years, our lives will be filled with rules that others may regard as rigid: we know that their real purpose is to defend against anarchy. Waking up, going to bed, entertainment, working hours, relationships with people, all of these are governed by strict laws over time.

And if we break these laws, our consciences are filled with guilt. It is not true that a lifestyle can be "spontaneous". You yourself may be spontaneous at times, your decisions, your passions, and your ideas may be voluntary: but your way of life, independent of all that, cannot be voluntary and idea-like. If people don't like you living in one way or another, in a different way from the way they would like, imagine, or in a different way from the way you once, by some necessity or misunderstanding, promised them: don't mind. You do not live for the people. But if you sin against your own laws, you will bitterly regret this disloyalty. Even in your sins and faults, keep the system that follows from the laws of your life. In the eyes of the world, you may fail at any time. We must not be weak before ourselves; for that is the true fall.

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The greatest heroism is to stick to your job, no matter what the world says. And even more truly heroic is to destroy your work if you feel you have failed to do perfectly what you contracted yourself to do. Live between the two intentions, don't talk about it, live fully to your task, and remain ruthless to your work. It takes strength not only to create; it takes strength to judge your work. Remain harsher on your work than the world can ever be.

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Because there are many kinds of stupidity. There are intelligent people in whose souls the flickering light of reason has gone out because they were born and brought up in unfortunate circumstances. There are men who are fools because they cannot control their bodies, they are dulled by passion, and the flame of their souls is stifled by the pride of the senses. Some people are fools who are simply victims of their environment. They are to be pitied. But true stupidity is rare, and all the more dangerous and hopeless. Man is by nature an intelligent being. True, dark, hopeless stupidity must be regarded with the interest of some ancient and fearful natural phenomenon, like the two-headed calf, like a distorted, incomprehensible idea of nature that makes - literally - no sense at all. Real stupidity is insoluble. What is missing in the soul and body of such a man? The Holy Spirit or certain juices, glandular products? Iodine? The sex hormone? We do not know exactly. But what we do know is that the real fools are to be avoided by all means, to be shielded against without attracting attention. Do not try to convince such people, because they are not benign. Kind, poor fools are benevolent; the stupid man is malevolent. Fools are the poor children of God; stupid men are the allies of hell. They are destiny, to be endured.

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Don't brush away the sadness. It comes without reason; perhaps you grow old in such moments, perhaps you have understood something, or you say goodbye to something in a quarter of an hour of sadness. And yet, sadness beautifies life. It is not necessary to wander the earthly spaces with an artificial world-weariness, with head bowed, contemplating the hopeless transience of life and all its phenomena, pining for the phantoms of apparent joys. First, the joys that vanish may never have been real joys. Remember... Then: sadness, in an unexpected moment, covers the world before your eyes with a wonderful silvery mist, and everything becomes nobler, objects and memories. Sadness is a great power. You see everything from a distance as if you had reached a peak while wandering. Things will be more mysterious, simpler, and truer in this noble mist and pearly glow. At once you feel more human. Like listening to music without a melody. The world is sad too. And how vile, how trivial, how burping and insufferable would be a world completely content, how sad would be the world without sadness!

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Somewhere they are waiting, and the time is passing, morning or afternoon, and you are not yet finished with your work. Are you in a hurry? Are you distracted, casually attending to the only meaning of your life, your work, because they are waiting somewhere? Let them wait. No one and nothing is important but your work. Nor is time important - don't let time interfere with your work.

Is the time of day not important, just as it is not important who is waiting and for what purpose? Nor is it important that you can do something for your health by leaving your workplace early, taking a walk in the good weather, or visiting one of the many healthy and refreshing spas where you can revitalize your body. Nor is your lover, the powerful or influential man whose friendship you miss by keeping him waiting. Nothing and no one is important, for you will die anyway, and you must do your work until then. Listen only to that; not to the clock or the calendar.

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Any reading that teaches a position and attitude toward death has a humiliating and discouraging aftertaste. All these "ars beatae moriendi"*, the pagan sages of antiquity, the Christian sages of the Middle Ages, the Stoics, the religious, the humanists, and the naturalists of modern times, all try to convince us that death is not to be feared at all. Some offer as a defense and conduct pride and sublime dignity, others wise meekness and acquiescence, others indifference, some enthusiasm, longing, as if death were some supreme good, the ticket to an afterlife which we cannot be too eager to redeem. So speaks Seneca when he teaches indifference because he shows us how nothing, fallible and unremarkable is all that we leave in life; so Boetius, the Christian; so Huxley, the naturalist, when he sees life and death as two versions of a kind of chemical process. Every wise man strives to take some human stand against the horror of death.

This effort is human, and touching. That is why it is hopeless. Think of the wise men dying. And they say in vain: "death is but a change" - they cannot soothe our hearts, nor their hearts before them, with this wisdom. Their minds may know this truth; their hearts remain restless. Seneca died a prisoner. Do not be afraid to die. Do not be ashamed to confess that it pains you to leave this hideous and great certainty, life, for the unknown and sinisterly incomprehensible uncertainty that is death, cessation, nothingness. Be afraid, by all means. Don't complain, but be afraid. Otherwise, if it lightens your soul, you can complain. Don't want to die "with dignity", meaning as a liar. Die as you have lived: like a man, and therefore somewhat heroically, and also cowardly.

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Behind knowledge is monotony. When you know something real about life, you become calm and monotonous.

This monotony does not complain. It doesn't accuse, it doesn't demand revenge, satisfaction or explanation. All that is human is hopeless. Only the divine is complete, only the soul is not hopeless. What can man desire but monotony if he addresses the divine with human desires? The initiated man is silent. He knows that he cannot be helped. All he can do is to do no harm to others or to himself. He who lives towards death, who lives among men, who lives therefore in injustice, what can he hope for? If he can train his heart to a kind of calm and humility, it is almost a consolation and serenity.

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Think of life as the giant snake. If you keep it at a distance, you can admire its dancing curves and the rhythmic pattern of its skin, and you can care for it and feed it. If you keep it to yourself, it will coil upon you and you will no longer delight in it, and not you will feed it, but your flesh and blood.
Do not keep life from you by hiding from it, for it will creep after you unnoticed, or unexpectedly crush your hiding place. There is no escaping it, not even into death.
Keep life so at a distance from you that you may have dominion over it: as the serpent is dominated by the snake charmer with his whistle music.
The music that makes the serpent of life tame and obey, emanates from the naked, boundless soul, stripped of finite needs.
Neither in idleness of hermitage nor in activity you can't conquer life; only in yourself, if you arrange your feeble qualities to conform to the perfect measure.
If you achieve this: your idleness is as active as the sunshine; your activity is as idle as the change of the weather.

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Why is there a snake at the entrance of the pharmacy? In its place, the modern man could paint some cheerful little pigs, almost bursting with health.
Why is there a blindfolded goddess over the judge's chair? The man of today could take the blindfold off the goddess's eyes: let her be like a saleswoman seeking to please the public.
Why is there a crucified corpse on the altar? The modern man could have replaced it with a street vendor offering his wares.

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The natural need of childhood: freedom. And today's child is caged by constraints.
The natural need of adulthood: life. And today's adult either barely lives, or lives at the expense of himself and others, on hidden paths.
The natural need of old age: rest. And today's old man, as if his earlier needs could not be satisfied, wants freedom and life even at the edge of the grave.

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There are no two worlds, only one, showing to our external perception the changing series of symptoms, to our internal cognition the constant essence.
In the temporal and changing, it is perception that adjusts us; in the timeless and unchanging, it is imagination.
He who immerses himself in the basic layer of himself, the unchanging: no matter how many times he repeats it, no matter how much he knows the unchanging, he still has no perception of it. What he knows there: he does not experience, but imagines; only the unchanging leads the imagination just as the changing series of symptoms leads the perception.
Sensory experience is possible only of the variable, solid knowledge only of the constant. There is no sensory experience of the essence, only knowledge based on inner cognition; there is no solid knowledge of the phenomena, only temporary knowledge.
If the variable "is", the constant is only an idea; if the constant "is", the variable is only a ghost. "There is eternity" and "there is no eternity", "God is" and "God is not", are equally valid, whether viewed from the constant or from the variable.

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Whoever reaches out to the infinite currents behind his person will gradually notice that his bodily senses are being peculiarly enriched. Whomever you pay close attention to with your eyes, ears, or in any other way, his form and present state are almost reflected in you, and also that of the phenomena that are passing or persisting. When you speak to someone, you perceive not only their words, but what emanates from their being; and they think you are a mind-reader. And all that is reflected in you in this way is as if it were colour; not only does your eye see colour, but an inner, hidden eye does too.
The souls of inanimate objects are dark purple, of plants green, of animals dark yellow, brown, reddish. The dullness is brown, the spiritual richness is the play of grey in bright light colours. The colour of agile souls is paler, more articulated, more variable; that of ponderous souls is darker, more uniform, more constant. The basic colour of a child's soul is like a luminous pearl; that of a man is a cold greyish-blue, which is mostly darkened, faded, browned, reddened; that of a woman is purplish-red, and this is mostly inclined very early to the colour of a withered petal. The few men who grow old in such a way that their old age is a noble withering, not a forced fading: all the colour of ore, silver, bronze, gold.
The spiritual sense of colour is in fact there for everyone, but not everyone takes care of it and not everyone develops it in themselves. One can feel flaring anger as red, helpless anger as poison green and bright lemon yellow, daydreaming as purple and pink, broad cheerfulness as red, quiet cheerfulness as metallic light, boredom as pale grey, sorrow as dark blue, hopelessness as black.

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The lamp cannot see its own light. Honey does not feel its own sweetness.

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The value of life can only be given by the service we give to the cause of the people. This may sound a bit harsh and general, but it is the only truth I have come to know with all its consequences. No one can sit in the flower field, like Ferdinand the bull, and smell the beautiful flowers with impunity. You are a man, therefore you must live like a man and among men.

You live like a man if you live justly. If at the bottom of all your actions and words is the intention: not to harm people. If you try - without ostentation or vanity - to help people. Sometimes just by not being silent about simple truths. Sometimes just by not telling what others lie about. Sometimes just by not saying yes when everyone is shouting, "Yes, yes!" A lifetime of consistently not agreeing with what people lie about is greater heroism than occasionally protesting it loudly and banging your chest.

On your deathbed, you will rest easy only if you have served the truth every day, with all your consciousness. Sometimes justice is very simple and petty. But you do not be picky. That is the value of life.

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In company, we must beware of people who never speak to their neighbours but always to the whole company, who want their every word to be heard by all present, who are stingily careful not to let a single word roll under the table, who are always telling stories, who give lectures to prove their excellence and charm the company. Such people are well liked and welcome in company, because they occupy the minds of those present, and provide an interesting and sometimes jovial atmosphere for those assembled. But these people are false prophets: it is not what they say that is important to them, nor is it important to them to persuade those to whom they speak; it is only the satisfaction of their own vanity that is important to them. The company of such people is to be carefully avoided.

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Because it is not only laziness for doing the right thing exists. Another vice is the eagerness to do good, the over-enthusiasm with which some people are always jumping out of their seats, or out of their jobs, or out of their circumstances, to do something good - wiping away a tear on the run, settle a death or a marital crisis on the phone, shake hands with a bereaved parent in passing, expressing condolences for the death of a child, and generally intervene, but only so nimbly and casually, in the misery of others. A cancer patient is told to eat lots of watermelons, and someone who is bankrupt is advised to watch Chaplin's latest film. These merchants of kindness and compassion are peddling a poor and not entirely harmless commodity. They give glucose from starch to the suffering. Do not accept their goodness, spit out the cheap candy they offer you.