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We ought to learn from the kine one thing: ruminating.
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From the State the exceptional individual cannot expect much. He is seldom benefited by being taken into its service; the only certain advantage it can give him is complete independence. Only real culture will prevent him being too early tired out or used up, and will spare him the exhausting struggle against culture-philistinism.
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The saying, "The Magyar is much too lazy to be bored," is worth thinking about. Only the most subtle and active animals are capable of boredom.--A theme for a great poet would be God's boredom on the seventh day of creation.
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We are franker towards others than towards ourselves.
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What a dissimilarity we see in walking, swimming, and flying. And yet it is one and the same motion: it is just that the load- bearing capacity of the earth differs from that of the water, and that that of the water differs from that of the air! Thus we should also learn to fly as thinkers--and not imagine that we are thereby becoming idle dreamers!
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Learning from one's enemies is the best way to love them, for it puts one into a grateful mood toward them.
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We are all afraid of the truth.
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Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.
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Every achievement, every step forward in knowledge, is the consequence of courage, of toughness towards oneself, of sincerity to oneself.
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Whoever thought that he had understood something of me had merely construed something out of me, after his own image.
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Stupidity in a woman is unfeminine.
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The strong individual loves the earth so much he lusts for recurrence. He can smile in the face of the most terrible thought: meaningless, aimless existence recurring eternally. The second characteristic of such a man is that he has the strength to recognize - and to live with the recognition - that the world is valueless in itself and that all values are human ones. He creates himself by fashioning his own values; he has the pride to live by the values he wills.
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Creation is the great redemption from suffering and all life's growing light. But the creator must be suffering if needed and accept much change.
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Thinking evil is making evil.
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The charm of the Platonic mode of thought ... consisted precisely in the resistance to the obvious evidence of the senses.
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Christianity has the rancor of the sick at its very core-the instinct against the healthy, against health. Everything that is well-constructed, proud, gallant and, above all, beautiful gives offense to its ears and eyes.
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That grand drama in a hundred acts, which is reserved for the next two centuries of Europe-the most terrible, most questionable and perhaps also the most hopeful of all dramas.
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Both classically- and romantically-minded spirits-inasmuch as these two species always exist-occupy themselves with a vision of the future: but the former do so out of a strength of their age, the latter out of its weakness.
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Again and again I am brought up against it, and again and again I resist it: I don't want to believe it, even though it is almost palpable: the vast majority lack an intellectual conscience; indeed, it often seems to me that to demand such a thing is to be in the most populous cities as solitary as in the desert.
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The most unambiguous sign that a person holds men in low esteem is this, that he either acknowledges them merely as means to his ends or does not acknowledge them at all.
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A soul which knows that it is loved, but does not itself love, betrays its sediment: its dregs come up.
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Whoever, at any time, has undertaken to build a new heaven has found the strength for it in his own hell.
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Among austere men intimacy involves shame--and is something precious.
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What does it matter whether I am shown to be right! I am right too much!--And he who laughs best today will also laugh last.