Useful/favorite maxims

What are the most useful maxims on any subject you know of?

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Satyr wrote:

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Thank you!


Do you (or anyone else) happen to know where these maxims, or other maxims, are discussed more indebth and explained? I would think there might be cultural/period differences in how to understand them. Are they discussed on the forums?

KTS apparently is a warning to not follow the opinion of others/masses (according to Suda) - I always thought KTS meant to know your potential and who you are and nothing more.

I think you can't get to know yourself if you don't get to know the world at the same time.
There is no self(-awareness) if there is no other to differentiate it from.

Yes...and know-thyself means to know the entire process, before you were born, which involves the world, as (inter)action.

My advice, if I were to give any, is to live, as much as you can; experience, as much as possible, fully aware.
Then, later, analyse, digest, process, before you begin to read others.
I began reading philosophy in my late twenties.

The knowledge did not congeal itself, inside of me, until I met Lyssa.
She put it into context

Have found that reading others can evoke structural support for missing ties, towards locating tensile strength, which cause(s) can be traced to a myriad of embryonic developments, but what I have in mind here is creative courage, originality. From here, the driven can try to design, making its own tracks, which may just be a form of refining.

Less is more

Live lightly

Tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you who you are.

Nietzsche wrote:

Of War and Warriors

We do not wish to be spared by our best enemies, nor by those whom we love from the very heart. So let me tell you the truth!
  My brothers in war! I love you from the very heart, I am and have always been of your kind. And I am also your best enemy. So let me tell you the truth!
  I know the hatred and envy of your hearts. You are not great enough not to know hatred and envy. So be great enough not to be ashamed of them!
  And if you cannot be saints of knowledge, at least be its warriors. They are the companions and forerunners of such sainthood.
  I see many soldiers: if only I could see many warriors! What they wear is called uniform: may what they conceal with it not be uniform too!
  You should be such men as are always looking for an enemy -- for your enemy. And with some of you there is hate at first sight.
  You should seek your enemy, you should wage your war -- a war for your opinions. And if your opinion is defeated, your honesty should still cry triumph over that!
  You should love peace as a means to new wars. And the short peace more than the long.
  I do not exhort you to work but to battle. I do not exhort you to peace, but to victory. May your work be a battle, may your peace be a victory!
  One can be silent and sit still only when one has arrow and bow: otherwise one babbles and quarrels. May your peace be a victory!
  You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I tell you: it is the good war that hallows every cause.
  War and courage have done more great things than charity. Not your pity but your bravery has saved the unfortunate up to now.
  'What is good?' you ask. To be brave is good. Let the little girls say: 'To be good is to be what is pretty and at the same time touching.'
  They call you heartless: but your heart is true, and I love the modesty of your kind-heartedness. You feel ashamed of your flow, while others feel ashamed of their ebb.
  Are you ugly? Very well, my brothers! Take the sublime about you, the mantle of the ugly!
  And when your soul grows great, it grows arrogant, and there is wickedness in your sublimity. I know you.
  In wickedness, the arrogant and the weak man meet. But they misunderstand one another. I know you.
  You may have enemies whom you hate, but not enemies whom you despise. You must be proud of your enemy: then the success of your enemy shall be your success too.
  To rebel -- that shows nobility in a slave. Let your nobility show itself in obeying! Let even your commanding be an obeying!
  To a good warrior, 'thou shalt' sounds more agreeable than 'I will'. And everything that is dear to you, you should first have commanded to you.
  Let your love towards life be love towards your highest hope: and let your highest hope be the highest idea of life!
  But you should let me commend to you your highest idea -- and it is: Man is something that should be overcome.
  Thus live your life of obedience and war! What good is long life? What warrior wants to be spared?
  I do not spare you, I love you from the very heart, my brothers in war!

(Thus Spoke Zarathustra)

Not to say the below is the most important line, but it may be easy to overlook.

"You feel ashamed of your flow, while others feel ashamed of their ebb."

I take it to mean, Let your shame be focused forward with your becoming, not with your past as manifested in the present.

It helps remind me that whenever I'm ashamed, rather than to focus my shame on what is, to focus it on what might be or might continue to be. Rather than be ashamed of a supposed "mistake", I'm ashamed of any action that leads me to believe I might repeat it.

"They call you heartless: but your heart is true, and I love the modesty of your kind-heartedness. You feel ashamed of your flow, while others feel ashamed of their ebb."

I don't know about those translations...

Here's what is written in the original -
"Man nennt euch herzlos: aber euer Herz ist echt, und ich liebe die Scham eurer Herzlichkeit. Ihr schämt euch eurer Flut, und andere schämen sich ihrer Ebbe."

I would translate it to -
They call you heartless: but your heart is true, and I love the shame (you experience) of your warmth/heartiness. You feel ashamed of your flow, and others feel ashamed of their ebb.

What I think it means is that there are people who are kind at heart but they feel ashamed about it.
While other kinds of people feel ashamed about not feeling that kindness in a given moment.

For example someone sees something or hears something which they rationalize that it should break their heart but it doesn't, they feel nothing and then they feel ashamed about this not feeling anything.
They are pre-occupied with what they 'should' feel and not with what they do feel.

While the other kind of people he describes are ashamed of feeling for something or someone they think that they should feel nothing for.

I believe your right, I did wonder what the relationship was between the first line of that passage and the last, but assumed that there wasn't much of one. The line about the ebb and flow, taken by itself, still seems to be a very useful way of remembering to try to fully embrace one's past/present and the past/present in general, and to leave one's discontent to be in the context of what one can do going forwards.

Anfang wrote:

They are pre-occupied with what they 'should' feel and not with what they do feel.

Wouldn't someone be potentially pre-occupied in the way you say, not just if he's ashamed of feeling too little, but also if he's ashamed of feeling too much?

From the Satyrisms thread:

Satyr wrote:

The past (nature), tells you who you are in relation to the present, the world.
The future (ideal), tells you who you want to become in relation to the present, the world.

In all cases honesty, the reduction of corruptive influences (emotion, self-interest, egotism), will give you more a more objective, lucid, evaluation.

Know Thyself indicates a honest evaluation of past, avoiding over- and under-estimations).
Awareness of world, the convergence of your subjective interpretation of reality with reality, the objective) indicates an honest evaluation (judgement) of future possibilities (probabilities), in relation to the present - past manifesting as presence (appearance).

It is this clarity of thought which is called objectivity.

Regarding evaluation it seems one would best notice one's emotions, but not be lead by them. Regarding action it seems emotions should be directed, which is why shame should be directed away from the past/present, where it's of no use, and directed towards the future.

Yes...there is no way to ignore emotions other than by some kind of brain damage, or a traumatic effect.

Emotions are automatic.

To not be affected by them means to know when you are directed by their force, and when you have gained control over them, using them to direct yourself - this is passion.

The modern in his confusion thinks that passion is the same as his emotional thinking which then pretends to be cold and rational.
They suppress emotions, as if these emotions have not already corrupted their thinking.

Using emotion is the same as in martial arts, using the attackers momentum and mass to direct him towards a desirable position. You do not deny the other, nor suppress him...you let him flow and you direct.

The difference between Judeo-Christian and secular humanism asceticism and pagan, Hellenic asceticism.
You do not reject, ignore, dismiss other....you control him by first mastering yourself.

Controlling emotions in reaction to world means you gain control of self within world.

It is why I say that Might is Right is an arrogant declaration from those who have lost all control over self, and are now dependent on other to validate them.
The sentence exposes a deep submission to other, who si then to be punished for having such a power of self - it is power through other.

Right is Might indicates a humility before world, which is accepted and then understood, so as to slowly gain power within it.
One gains power over self, and this power is translated over a bearing, a way of being, which then overpowers others, unintentionally.

I've also explained why masculinity is a control over the feminine inside every man.
Females sense this and react to it - they give themselves to this inexplicable force.
To try to make women submit, to try to trick them with pretences and lies, only exposes your weakness before them; a weakness of your feminine side over your masculinity which then overcompensates trying to hide this fact - hyper-masculinity.

Stuart- wrote:

Anfang wrote:

They are pre-occupied with what they 'should' feel and not with what they do feel.

Wouldn't someone be potentially pre-occupied in the way you say, not just if he's ashamed of feeling too little, but also if he's ashamed of feeling too much?

Hm, for one they do not only feel this shame, but they also feel this flow of kind-heartedness.
While the others only feel the shame because of the not feeling anything (else).

But I'm not saying that being 'pre-occupied' is the, or one of the, key differences here.
I just thought of two possible scenarios to illustrate what I think this ebb and flow is referring to.
At the same time I think that those two kinds of people are quite different.

'They call you heartless'
'You feel ashamed of your flow'
That makes me think of tough love.


Feeling ashamed of the ebb reminds me of sentimentality, somewhat.

Oscar Wilde wrote:

A sentimentalist is simply one who wants to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it. We think we can have our emotions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing emotions have to be paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine. The intellectual and emotional life of ordinary people is a very contemptible affair. Just as they borrow their ideas from a sort of circulating library of thought—-the  Zeitgeist of an age that has no soul—-and send them back soiled at the end of each week, so they always try to get their emotions on credit, and refuse to pay the bill when it comes in. You should pass out of that conception of life. As soon as you have to pay for an emotion you will know its quality, and be the better for such knowledge. And remember that the sentimentalist is always a cynic at heart. Indeed, sentimentality is merely the bank holiday of cynicism.

Maybe they're a stretch, but I have some ideas that tie together your interpretation and my initial one.

Anfang wrote:

That makes me think of tough love.

When one thinks of tough love, one often thinks of some who won't show pity towards someone's lamentations, but rather will ask him to coldly get the facts as to why whatever ordeal happened, then almost demand that he look ahead. It seems showing tough love towards oneself is no different.

Oscar Wilde wrote:

A sentimentalist is simply one who wants to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.

One who focuses his shame on the past, is in a sense, wishing it away, rather than dealing with it - paying for it - in a realistic way, which is going forward.

I'd know exactly what Wilde means by paying for an emotion, but a good way to avoid paying for anything is to get validation. Whether one gets emotional validation or one's parking validated. When another validates one emotionally, he then becomes reliant on continued emotional validation. It may be accurate to say that society, itself, often is what offers that validation, just like a society often offers so much else to people for no apparent cost. (Still, the hidden costs being very great, even if one never becomes aware of them.)

Shame is about hiding something.

The described warrior type hides his heartiness, which means, he has a heart and since he has a heart he will act the way someone with a heart acts but he also tries to conceal this heartiness.
To try to conceal it is to master it. If he had no heart then he would not try to hide it, there would be nothing to hide in that regard.

The ebb people don't have as much heart as they would like to have, or as they would like other people to believe that they have. They try to hide from others their lack of heartiness which can be done by pretending to be kind-hearted when you are actually not.

The warrior masters what is there due to the past.
The magician creates an illusion, he works with ideas which will affect the course of the future.