A nation usually renews its youth on a political sick-bed, and there finds again the spirit which it had gradually lost in seeking and maintaining power.
We can speak very much to the purpose and yet in such a way that the whole world cries out in contradiction: namely, when we are not speaking to the whole world.
There are expressions and bulls-eyes of the spirit, there are epigrams, a little handful of words, in which a whole culture, a whole society is suddenly crystallized.
Parasitism is the only practice of the church; with its ideal of anaemia, its holiness, draining all blood, all love, all hope for life; the beyond as the will to negate every reality; the cross as the mark of recognition for the most subterranean conspiracy that ever existed-against health, beauty, whatever has turned out well, courage, spirit, graciousness of the soul, against life itself.
To get into just those situations where sham virtues will not suffice, but rather where, as with the ropedancer on his rope, one either falls or stands--or gets down.
Giving style” to one’s character - a great and rare art! It is exercised by those who see all the strengths and weaknesses of their own natures and then comprehend them in an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason and even weakness delights the eye.
Men have hitherto treated women like birds which have strayed down to them from the heights; as something more delicate, more fragile, more savage, stranger, sweeter, soulful--but as something which has to be caged up so that it shall not fly away.