The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.
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There are ages in which the rational man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of intuition, the other with scorn for abstraction. The latter is just as irrational as the former is inartistic. They both desire to rule over life: the former, by knowing how to meet his principle needs by means of foresight, prudence, and regularity; the latter, by disregarding these needs and, as an "overjoyed hero," counting as real only that life which has been disguised as illusion and beauty.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Wisdom)
The states in which we infuse a transfiguration and a fullness into things and poetize about them until they reflect back our fullness and joy in life. Three elements principally: sexuality, intoxication and cruelty, all belonging to the oldest festal joys.
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The 'kingdom of God' is not something one waits for; it has no yesterday or tomorrow, it does not come 'in a thousand years', it is an experience within a heart; it is everywhere, it is nowhere...
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One kind of honesty has been unknown to all founders of religions and their likes, they have never made of their experiences a matter of conscience and knowledge. "What did I really experience? What happened in me and around me then? Was my mind sufficiently alert? Was my will bent against fantasy?" None of them has asked such questions, none of our dear religious people asks such questions even now: they feel, rather, a thirst for things which are contrary to reason and do not put too many difficulties in the way of satisfying it, thus they experience "miracles" and "rebirths" and hear the voices of angels!
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But for Socrates, tragedy did not even seem to "tell what's true", quite apart from the fact that it addresses "those without much wit", not the philosopher: another reason for giving it a wide berth. Like Plato, he numbered it among the flattering arts which represent only the agreeable, not the useful, and therefore required that his disciples abstain most rigidly from such unphilosophical stimuli, with such success that the young tragedian, Plato, burnt his writings in order to become a pupil of Socrates.
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A small garden, figs, a little cheese, and, along with this, three or four good friends; such was luxury to Epicurus.
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To the mediocre, mediocrity is a form of happiness.
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Nobody dies nowadays of fatal truths: there are too many antidotes to them.
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One had better put on gloves before handling the New Testament. The presence of so much filth makes it highly advisable.
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