Die Welt des Glücklichen ist eine andere als die des Unglücklichen.
The world of the happy is quite different from the world of the unhappy.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), 6.43.
A prophet such as we could use again today, strong, zealous, angry and gloomy in opposition to the leaders, the masses, indeed the whole world.
Felix Mendelssohn, referring to Elijah (from the Book of Kings), to his pastor Julius Schubring, 1846, regarding the composer’s Elijah published that year.
The way in which man approaches his failure determines what he will become.
Karl Jaspers, Way to Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy (1951), Ralph Mannheim, translator.
And do you agree with me, that the first condition of an artist should be to bear respect towards what is great, and to bow to it and acknowledge it, and not attempt to extinguish great flames for the sake of making his own rushlight burn more brightly?
Felix Mendelssohn, in a letter to to Wilhelm Taubert, August 27, 1831, cited from Reisebriefe von Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Aus den Jahren 1830 bis 1832 (Leipzig: Hermann Mendelssohn, 1862) p. 256; translation from Emil Naumann (trans. F. Praeger) The History of Music (London: Cassell, 1886) vol. 2, p. 1052-53.
The word “beauty” is as easy to use as the word “degenerate.” Both come in handy when one does or does not agree with you.
Charles Ives, Essays Before a Sonata (1920), p. 77.
President Abraham Lincoln, according to Gore Vidal’s historical novel, Lincoln, addressing his Secretary of Treasury’s “personal desire to have printed on […] bank notes […] ‘In God we Trust’”:
“Well,” said Lincoln, getting to his feet, “if you are going to put a Biblical tag on the greenback, I would suggest that of Peter and John: ‘Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee.’”
Gore Vidal, Lincoln (1984), chapter six.
What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.
Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (1963), ch. 2.
We are sorely deficient in talking with each other and listening to each other. We lack mobility, criticism and self-criticism. We incline to doctrinism. What makes it worse is that so many people do not really want to think. They want only slogans and obedience. They ask no questions and they give no answers, except by repeating drilled-in phrases. They can only assert and obey, neither probe nor apprehend. Thus they cannot be convinced, either.
Karl Jaspers, The Question of German Guilt (1947), E.B. Ashton, translator.
Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity.
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (1958), part 3, chapter 16.
What though Reason forged your scheme?
Herman Melville, the complete epigram titled “A Reasonable Constitution” in Collected Poems of Herman Melville, Howard P. Vincent Ed. (Chicago 1947).
’Twas Reason dreamed the Utopia’s dream:
’Tis dream to think that Reason can
Govern the reasoning creature, man.