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Truth is the secret of eloquence and of virtue, the basis of moral authority; it is the highest summit of art and of life.

Ibid.

Life is the apprenticeship to progressive renunciation, to the steady diminution of our claims, of our hopes, of our powers, of our liberty.

Ibid.

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.

Ibid.

A man without passion is only a latent force, only a possibility, like a stone waiting for the blow from the iron to give forth sparks.

Ibid.

The efficacy of religion lies precisely in what is not rational, philosophic or eternal; its efficacy lies in the unforeseen, the miraculous, the extraordinary. Thus religion attracts more devotion according as it demands more faith, that is to say, as it becomes more incredible to the profane mind. The philosopher aspires to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light. Mystery on the other hand is demanded and pursued by the religious instinct; mystery constitutes the essence of worship, the power of proselytism. When the cross became the "foolishness" of the cross, it took possession of the masses.

66

Ibid.

If ignorance and passion are the foes of popular morality, it must be confessed that moral indifference is the malady of the cultivated classes. The modern separation of enlightenment and virtue, of thought and conscience, of the intellectual aristocracy from the honest and common crowd is the greatest danger that can threaten liberty.

Ibid.

HENRYK IBSEN. 1828-1906.

Only the spirit of rebellion craves for happiness in this life. What right have we human beings to happiness?

Ghosts.

What we have inherited from our fathers and mothers is not all that 'walks in us.' There are all sorts of dead ideas and lifeless old beliefs. They have no tangibility, but they haunt us all the same and we can not get rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper I seem to see Ghosts gliding between the lines. Ghosts must be all over the country, as thick as the sands of the sea. Ibid. One should never put on one's best trousers to go out in to fight for freedom. The Enemy of the People.

COUNT LYOF NIKOLAYEVITCH TOLSTOI.

1828-1910.

All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Anna Karénina. Part i. Chap. i.

There is one evident, indubitable manifestation of the Divinity, and that is the laws of right which are made known to the world through Revelation.

Ibid. Part viii. Chap. iz.

Error is the force that welds men together; truth is communicated to men only by deeds of truth.

My Religion.

Chap. zii. The happiness of men consists in life. And life is in labor. What is to be done? Chap. xxxviii. The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people. Ibid. Chap. xl. Note. The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God; and this can be done only by means of the acknowledgment and profession of the truth by each one of us. The Kingdom of God. Chap. xii.

Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen. What is Art? Chap. viii.

FRIEDRICH WILHELM NIETZSCHE.

1844-1900.

I teach you the Overman. Man is something which shall be surpassed. Thus Spake Zarathustra. The good generally displeases us when it is beyond our ken.

Everyone who enjoys thinks that the principal thing to the tree is the fruit, but in point of fact the principal thing to it is the seed. - Herein lies the difference between them that create and them that enjoy.

He that prefers the beautiful to the useful in life will, undoubtedly, like children who prefer sweetmeats to bread, destroy his digestion and acquire a very fretful outlook on the world.

On the heights it is warmer than people in the valleys suppose, especially in winter. The thinker recognizes the full import of this simile.

In the mountains of truth, you never climb in vain. Either you already reach a higher point today, or you exercise your strength in order to be able to climb higher tomorrow.

The value of many men and books rests solely on their faculty for compelling all to speak out the most hidden and intimate things.

Merchant and pirate were for a long period one and the same person. Even today mercantile morality is really nothing but a refinement of piratical morality.

Many a man fails to become a thinker for the sole reason that his memory is too good.

MAURICE MAETERLINCK. 1864

Maxims.

The future is a world limited by ourselves; in it we discover only what concerns us and, sometimes, by chance, what interests those whom we love the most.

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Men's weaknesses are often necessary to the purposes of life. Joyzelle. Act ii.

All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing. A day will come when science will turn upon its error and no longer hesitate to shorten our woes. A day will come when it will dare and act with certainty; when life, grown wiser, will depart silently at its hour, knowing that it has reached its term. Our Eternity.

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Malebranche would have it that not a soul is left; We humbly think that there still are hearts.1

Chantecler.

Prélude.

Without doubt

I can teach crowing: for I gobble.2

Ibid. Act i. Sc. 2.

I fall back dazzled at beholding myself all rosy red, At having, I myself, caused the sun to rise.3

And sounding in advance its victory,

Ibid. Act ii. Sc. 3.

My song jets forth so clear, so proud, so peremptory,
That the horizon, seized with a rosy trembling,

Obeys me.4

1 Malebranche dirait qu'il n'y a plus une âme:

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Ebloui de me voir moi même tout vermeil
Et d'avoir, moi, le coq, fait élever le soleil.

4 Et sonnant d'avance sa victoire,

Mon chant jaillit si net, si fier, si peremptoire,
Que l'horizon, saisi d'un rose tremblement,
M'obéit.

Ibid.

MISCELLANEOUS TRANSLATIONS.

Absolutism tempered by assassination.1

A Cadmean victory.2

After us the deluge.3

All is lost save honour.1

Appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober.5

Architecture is frozen music.

1 Count Münster, Hanoverian envoy at St. Petersburg, discovered that Russian civilization is "merely artificial," and first published to Europe the short description of the Russian Constitution, that it is "absolutism tempered by assassination."

2 A Greek proverb. A Cadmean victory was one in which the victors suffered as much as their enemies.

Συμμισγόντων δὲ τῇ ναυμαχίῃ, Καδμείη τις νίκη τοῖσι Φωκαιεῦσι ἐγέ VETO.- HERODOTUS: i. 166.

Where two discourse, if the one's anger rise,
The man who lets the contest fall is wise.

EURIPIDES: Fragment 656. Protesilaus. 8 On the authority of Madame de Hausset ("Mémoires," p. 19), this phrase is ascribed to Madame de Pompadour. Larouse ("Fleurs Historiques") attributes it to Louis XV.

4 It was from the imperial camp near Pavia that Francis I., before leaving for Pizzighettone, wrote to his mother the memorable letter which, thanks to tradition, has become altered to the form of this sublime laconism : "Madame, tout est perdu fors l'honneur."

The true expression is, “Madame, pour vous faire savoir comme se porte le reste de mon infortune, de toutes choses ne m'est demeuré que l'honneur et la vie qui est sauvé."— MARTIN: Histoire de France, tome

viii.

The correction of this expression was first made by Sismondi, vol. xvi. pp. 241, 242. The letter itself is printed entire in Dulaure's "Histoire de Paris": "Pour vous avertir comment se porte le ressort de mon infortune, de toutes choses ne m'est demeuré que l'honneur et la vie, — qui est sauvé."

5 Inserit se tantis viris mulier alienigeni sanguinis: quæ a Philippo rege temulento immerenter damnata, Provocarem ad Philippum, inquit, sed sobrium. - VALERIUS MAXIMUS: Lib. vi. c. 2.

• Since it [architecture] is music in space, as it were a frozen music. If architecture in general is frozen music. - SCHELLING: Philosophie der Kunst, pp. 576, 593.

La vue d'un tel monument est comme une musique continuelle et fixée. - MADAME DE STAËL: Corinne, livre iv. chap. 3.

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