Mean Quotes - Page 756

A deep meaning often lies in old customs.

He who is usually self-sufficient becomes exceptionally vain and keenly alive to fame and praise when he is physically ill. The more he loses himself the more he has to endeavor to regain his position by means of the opinion of others.

Those moralists, on the other hand, who, following in the footsteps of Socrates, offer the individual a morality of self-control and temperance as a means to his own advantage, as his personal key to happiness, are the exceptions.

The woman and the genius do not work. Up to now, woman has been mankind's supreme luxury. In all those moments when we do our best, we do not work. Work is merely a means to these moments.

Of what is great one must either be silent or speak with greatness. With greatness--that means cynically and with innocence.

By means of music the very passions, enjoy themselves.

For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with himself, whether it be by means of this or that poetry or art; only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is constantly ready for revenge, and we others will be his victims, if only by having to endure his ugly sight.

"God", "immortality of the soul", "redemption", "beyond" - Without exception, concepts to which I have never devoted any attention, or time; not even as a child. Perhaps I have never been childlike enough for them? I do not by any means know atheism as a result; even less as an event: It is a matter of course with me, from instinct. I am too inquisitive, too questionable, too exuberant to stand for any gross answer. God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers - at bottom merely a gross prohibition for us: you shall not think!

Actual philosophers... are commanders and law-givers: they say "thus it shall be!", it is they who determine the Wherefore and Whither of mankind, and they possess for this task the preliminary work of all the philosophical laborers, of all those who have subdued the past - they reach for the future with creative hand, and everything that is or has been becomes for them a means, an instrument, a hammer.

Sleep is no mean art.

"Faith" as an imperative is a veto against science-in praxi, it means lies at any price.

We grow hostile to many an artist or writer, not because we finally come to see he has deceived us, but because he thought no subtler means were required to ensnare us.

Many other such substitutes for war will be discovered, but perhaps precisely thereby it will become more and more obvious that such a highly cultivated and therefore necessarily enfeebled humanity as that of modern Europe not only needs wars, but the greatest and most terrible wars, consequently occasional relapses into barbarism, lest, by the means of culture, it should lose its culture and its very existence.

Anecdote: Greatness Means Leading the Way. No stream is large and copious of itself, but becomes great by receiving and leading on so many tributary streams. It is so, also, with all intellectual greatness, It is only a question of someone indicating the direction to be followed by so many affluent; not whether he was richly or poorly gifted originally.

Dharma is a sanskrit word. It simply means that which is right, that which is correct, that which is the divine law.

An enlightened person doesn't know it all. Enlightenment simply means walking beyond this and all worlds into nirvana, which is beyond knowledge and ignorance.

Trivial Pursuit means that you've got nothing going on in your life. Trivial Pursuit is more than a board game. It is the way most people live. Their lives are trivial pursuits.

Being a Buddhist monk means never losing one's optimism in spite of all difficulties. It also means being harder on yourself than any of your teachers ever were.

Tantra means the avoidance of a set or defined form of spirituality. Tantra is intuitive self-discovery.

What does it mean to be psychic? Essentially it means to feel, rather than think all the time.

Being psychic does not necessarily mean seeing an event that has not yet occurred. It is rather seeing the inner nature of something.

Grandmother pointed out my brother Perry, my sister Sarah, and my sister Eliza, who stood in the group. I had never seen my brother nor my sisters before; and, though I had sometimes heard of them, and felt a curious interest in them, I really did not understand what they were to me, or I to them. We were brothers and sisters, but what of that? Why should they be attached to me, or I to them? Brothers and sisters were by blood; but slavery had made us strangers. I heard the words brother and sisters, and knew they must mean something; but slavery had robbed these terms of their true meaning.

If you talk about sin, you don't have to use the first person singular, but speak out of that part of yourself which knows what it means to become estranged from people you love. Speak in your own voice about things that you in your own life have in one way or another experienced.

Here, waltzes are called works! And Strauss and Lanner, who play them for dancing, are called Kapellmeistern. This does not mean that everyone thinks like that; indeed, nearly everyone laughs about it; but only waltzes get printed.

One can disintegrate the world by means of very strong light. For weak eyes the world becomes solid, for still weaker eyes it seems to develop fists, for eyes weaker still it becomes shamefaced and smashes anyone who dares to gaze upon it.