Itself Quotes (page 92)
One measures oncoming old age by its deepening of Proust, and its deepening by Proust. How to read a novel? Lovingly, if it shows itself capable of accomodating one's love; and jealously, because it can become the image of one's limitations in time and space, and yet can give the Proustian blessing of more life.
Harold Bloom
The whole attitude of 'man against the world', of man as a 'world-negating' principle, of a man as the measure of the value of things, as judge of the world who places existence itself on his scales and finds it too light - the monstrous stupidity of this attitude has finally dawned on us and we are sick of it; we laugh as soon as we encounter the juxtaposition of 'man and world', separated by the sublime presumptuosness of the little word 'and!' But by laughing, haven't we simply taken...
Friedrich Nietzsche
Physiologists should think before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength--life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results.
Friedrich Nietzsche
For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an ‘ism becomes so involved in reaction against other ‘isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive, constructive survey of actual needs, problems, and possibilities.
John Dewey
That I discovered the deed that intends me, that, this movement of my freedom, reveals the mystery to me. But this, too, that I cannot accomplish it the way I intended it, this resistance also reveals the mystery to me. He that forgets all being caused as he decides from the depths, he that puts aside possessions and cloak and steps bare before the countenance--this free human being encounters fate as the counter-image of his freedom. It is not his limit but his completion; freedom and fate...
Martin Buber