A peculiar characteristic of our times is the combination of significant scenes with insignificant actors.
The bothersome aspect of this spectacle is the association of such trivial stature with such enormous functional power. These are the men who make the masses tremble, whose decisions determine the fate of millions.
— Ernst Jünger
The bothersome aspect of this spectacle is the association of such trivial stature with such enormous functional power. These are the men who make the masses tremble, whose decisions determine the fate of millions.
— Ernst Jünger
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— Mad Men
"I'm not a solution to your problems, I'm another problem"
At the age of thirty-eight, on the last day of February, his birthday, Michel de Montaigne, long weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire, retired to the bosom of the learned virgins, where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life, now more than half run out. If the fates permit, he will complete this abode, this sweet ancestral retreat; and he has consecrated it to his freedom, tranquility, and leisure.
— A Latin inscription on the wall of his study
— A Latin inscription on the wall of his study
In practice, thousands of little women in their villages have lived more gentle, more equable and more constant lives than Cicero.
I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.
Our life is part folly, part wisdom. Whoever writes about it only reverently and according to the rules leaves out more than half of it.
Αθηνά
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
The only "good" way to get rid of a temptation is to channel it—in Freud's words—by way of sublimation; to turn the burning desire into fuel for a good life. This turns brutality, impulsivity and anger into controlled violence, it turns lust and passion into noble love and constructive relationships, and turns recklessness into courage.
Simply yielding to one's impulses is a form of animality, since animals have no choice but to yield to their impulses, because they lack fore-thought. And savagery is nothing but a form of animality.
Simply yielding to one's impulses is a form of animality, since animals have no choice but to yield to their impulses, because they lack fore-thought. And savagery is nothing but a form of animality.