Without myth, however, every culture loses its healthy creative natural power: it is only a horizon encompassed with myth that rounds off to unity a social movement.
What is wanted - whether this is admitted or not - is nothing less than a fundamental remolding, indeed weakening and abolition of the individual: one never tires of enumerating and indicating all that is evil and inimical, prodigal, costly, extravagant in the form individual existence has assumed hitherto, one hopes to manage more cheaply, more safely, more equitably, more uniformly if there exist only large bodies and their members.
The sexes deceive themselves about one another: the reason being that at bottom they honor and love only themselves (or their ownideal, to express it more agreeably). Thus man wants woman to be peaceable--but woman is essentially, like the cat, not peaceable, however well she may have trained herself to assume the appearance of peace.
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.
One can promise actions, but not feelings, for the latter are involuntary. He who promises to love forever or hate forever or be forever faithful to someone is promising something that is not in his power.
Anti-theses.- The most senile thing ever thought about man is contained in the celebrated saying 'the ego is always hateful'; the most childish is the even more celebrated 'love thy neighbor as thyself'. - In the former, knowledge of human nature has ceased, in the latter it has not yet even begun.
One must have all the virtues to sleep well. Shall I bear false witness? Shall I commit adultery? Shall I covet my neighbor's maid? All that would go ill with good sleep.