Quote collection
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"What is the cause of historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the sum total of wills transferred to one person. On what condition are the willso fo the masses transferred to one person? On condition that the person express the will of the whole people. That is, power is power. That is, power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand."
"Regard the society of women as a necessary unpleasantness of social life, and avoid it as much as possible."
"Never did Christ utter a single word attesting to a personal resurrection and a life beyond the grave."
"Three things are needed to educate the peasantry: schools, schools, and schools."
"Happiness consists in always aspiring perfection, the pause in any level in perfection is the pause of happiness"
"... in marriage the great thing was love, and that with love one would always be happy, for happiness rests only on oneself."
"Kings are the slaves of history."
"Honest work is much better than a mansion."
"People understand the meaning of eating lies in the nourishment of the body only when they cease to consider that the object of that activity is pleasure. ...People understand the meaning of art only when they cease to consider that the aim of that activity is beauty, i.e., pleasure."
"Though it is possible to utter words only with the intention to fulfill the will of God, it is very difficult not to think about the impression which they will produce on men and not to form them accordingly. But deeds you can do quite unknown to men, only for God. And such deeds are the greatest joy that a man can experience."
"But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest."
"He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. "Where is it? What death?" There was no fear because there was no death. In place of death there was light."
"Music makes me forget myself, my true condition, it carries me off into another state of being, one that isn't my own."
"The business of art lies just in this, -- to make that understood and felt which, in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible."
"If you want to be happy, be happy."
"In order to correctly define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and consider it as one of the conditions of human life. ...Reflecting on it in this way, we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of effective communication between people."
"He looked at her as a man might look at a faded flower he had plucked, in which it was difficult for him to trace the beauty that had made him pick and so destroy it"
"He liked to fish; he seemed to take pride in being able to like such a stupid occupation."
"I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be. -Dolly"
"The idea shared by many that life is a vale of tears is just as false as the idea shared by the great majority, the idea to which youth and health and riches incline you, that life is a place of entertainment."