Quotes, Excerpts, Anecdotes.

Marcus Aurelius wrote:

He who does not know what the world is, does not know where he is. And he who does not know for what purpose the world exists, does not know who he is, nor what the world is. But he who has failed in anyone of these things could not even say for what purpose he exists himself. What then dost thou think of him who (avoids or) seeks the praise of those who applaud, of men who know not either where they are or who they are?

Jason Kohne (No White Guilt) wrote:

Being abstractionist, a 'nationalist' but not for any particular people. It's like being for the forest but not for the trees.

Eric Hoffer wrote:

In this godless age, as much as in any preceding religious age, man is still preoccupied with the saving of his soul. The discrediting of established religions by "enlightenment" did not result in a weakening of the religious impulse. A traditional religion canalizes and routinizes the quest for salvation. When such a religion is discredited, the individual must do his own soul-saving and he is at it twenty four hours a day. There is an eruption of fanaticism in all departments of life--in business, politics, literature, art, science and even in lovemaking and sport. The elimination of the sacerdotal outlet results, thus in a general infection and inflammation of the social body.

Ancient Proverb wrote:

Either fly as far as you can from men, or else, laughing at the world and the men who are in it, make yourself a fool in many things

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote:

Every stage of life corresponds to a certain philosophy. A child appears as a realist; for it is certain of the existence of pears and apples as it is of its own being. A young man, caught up in the storm of his inner passions, has to pay attention to himself, look and feel ahead; he is transformed into an idealist. A grown man, on the other hand, has every reason to be a sceptic; he is well advised to doubt whether the means he has chosen to achieve his purpose can really be right. Before actions and in the course of action he has every reason to keep his mind flexible so that he will not have to grieve later on about a wrong choice. An old man, however, will always avow mysticism. He sees that so much seems to depend on chance: unreason succeeds, reason fails, fortune and misfortune unexpectedly come to the same thing in the end; this is how things are, how they were, and old age comes to rest in him who is, who was and ever will be.

Nassim Taleb wrote:

An idea starts to get interesting when you get scared of taking it to its logical conclusion.

Erudition without bullshit, intellect without cowardice, courage without prudence, mathematics without nerdiness, scholarship without academia, intelligence without shrewdness, religiosity without intolerance, elegance without softness, sociality without dependence, enjoyment without addiction, religion without tolerance, and, above all, nothing without skin in the game.

Bogdan Žerajić wrote:

He who wants to live, let him die. He who wants to die, let him live.

Seneca wrote:

The great man has occasionally, albeit with a disdainful expression, condescended to look on you, whoever you are; he has deigned to listen to your words, he has allowed you to walk at his side. But you never thought fit to look on yourself or to listen to yourself, and so you've no reason to expect a return from anyone for those attentions of yours, since you offered them not because you wanted another's company but because you were incapable of communing with yourself

Antonio Porchia wrote:

The chains that bind us most closely are the ones we have broken.

He who makes a paradise of his bread, makes a hell of his hunger.

Man is weak and when he makes strength his profession he is weaker.

Yes, one must suffer, even in vain, so as not to have lived in vain.

Suffering is above, not below; and everyone thinks that suffering is below. And everyone wants to rise.

When the superficial wearies me, it wearies me so much that i need an abyss in order to rest.

Georg Christoph Litchtenburg wrote:

The peasant who believes the moon is no bigger than a plough wheel reflects that at a distance of a few miles a whole church appears only as a white speck but the moon on the contrary seems always to be the same size: what prevents him from connecting these ideas, which are all presented to him distinctly? In his ordinary life he does in fact connect ideas and perhaps does so by more artificial connections than these. This reflection should make the philosopher pay heed: perhaps in some of the connections he makes he is still a peasant. We think early in life but we do not know we are thinking, any more than we know we are growing or digesting; many ordinary people never do discover it. Close observation of external things easily leads back to the point of observation: ourselves; and conversely he who is for once wholly aware of himself easily proceeds from that to observing the things around him. Be attentive, feel nothing in vain, measure and compare: this is the whole law of philosophy.

--Minds detached from an external world must be strange creatures; for since the ground of every thought lies in the mind, such minds would be capable of the strangest combinations of ideas. We call people mad when the regulation of their conceptions no longer corresponds to the sequence of events in our regular world; for which reason, a careful observation of nature, or of mathematics is certainly the most effective specific against madness; nature is, so to speak, the guide-rope by which our thoughts are led so that they shall not wander away.

--It is easy to construct a landscape out of a mass of disorderly lines, but disorderly sounds cannot be made into music.

Iain Mcgilchrist wrote:

If one had to characterise the difference overall, is something like this. Experience is forever in motion, ramifying and unpredictable. In order for us to know anything at all, that thing must have enduring properties. If all things flow and one can never step into the same river twice – Heraclitus’s phrase is, I believe, a brilliant evocation of the core reality of the right hemisphere’s world – one will always be taken unawares by experience: since nothing is ever being repeated, nothing can ever be known. We have to find a way of fixing it as it flies, stepping back from the immediacy of experience, stepping outside the flow. Hence the brain has to attend to the world in two completely different ways, and in so doing to bring two different worlds into being. In the one, that of the right hemisphere, we experience the live, complex, embodied world of individual, always unique, beings, forever in flux, a net of interdependencies, forming and reforming wholes, a world with which we are deeply connected. In the other, that of the left hemisphere, we “experience” our experience in a special way: a “represented” version of it, containing now static, separable, bounded, but essentially fragmented entities, grouped into classes on which predictions can be based. This kind of attention isolates, fixes and makes each thing explicit by bringing it under the spotlight of attention. In doing so it renders things inert, mechanical, lifeless. But it also enables us for the first time to know, and consequently to learn and to make things. This gives us power.

Franz Kafka wrote:

The conception of the infinite plenitude and the expanse of the universe is the result of taking to an extreme a combination of strenuous creativity and free contemplation.

--It isn't necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don't even listen, just wait. Don't wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you to be unmasked, it can do no other, it will writhe before you in ecstasy.

The hero is a tragic figure. He is a man who has chosen to have a glorious but brief life, rather than a comfortable but ordinary life. The hero is a man who knows that one day or another, he will have to give his life.

— Alain de Benoist (@Daily_Benoist) [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

They are only superhumans in terms of testosterone. In the literal sense, they are "augmented men", as the proponents of "superhumanism" imagine them. We are a thousand leagues from Achilles or Siegfried. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

— Alain de Benoist (@Daily_Benoist) [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

I urge all white people in this era to look into the mirror and to ask themselves, “What do you know about what you are?” And if you don’t know enough, put your hand on that mirror, and move towards greater knowledge of what you can become.

— Alain de Benoist (@Daily_Benoist) [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Arthur Schopenhauer wrote:

A mother had, for their education and betterment, given her children Aesop's Fables to read. Very soon, however, they brought the book back to her, and the eldest, who was very knowing and precocious, said: "This is not a book for us! It's much too childish and silly. We've got past believing that foxes, wolves and ravens can talk: we're far too grown-up for such nonsense!"--Who cannot see in this hopeful lad the future 'enlightened Rationalist'?

Babylon 5 wrote:

The Vorlons ask "Who are you?"
The Shadows ask "What do you want?"

This is an era that is neo-primitive by the very fact of its modernity, profoundly empty by virtue of its excess. This is an era where everything is simulacrum and foreclosed experience, where everything is spectacle but there are no eyes left to see.

— Alain de Benoist (@Daily_Benoist) [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

It is a society where beauty is dying, a society at the end of history, a society of the last man where everything is collapsing into the sunset—of the absolute transatlantic West and a once great history. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

— Alain de Benoist (@Daily_Benoist) [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von wrote:

It is after all the greatest art to limit and isolate oneself.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg wrote:

There is a great difference between still believing something and again believing it. Still to believe that the moon influences the plants betrays stupidity and superstition. But again to believe it, displays philosophy and reflection.

Alexander Anderson wrote:

Demons do not cry. You became a demon, because you couldn't cry anymore right? Humans cry and when their tears finally run dry, there's nothing left, not a demon nor a monster and one final prayer for death. So, laugh demon. Laugh that arrogant laugh of your and remember I beat you to it.

Seneca wrote:

Certain maladies must be treated while the patient is kept in ignorance; knowledge of their disease has caused the death of many

"Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" is the 18th century version of "Live, Laugh, Love" and just as vapid

— Faceberg (@thefaceberg) [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]