“The exercise of freedom consists in stripping oneself of one's own will.”
Léon Bloy (1846–1917) French writer, poet and essayist
Source: Pilgrim of the Absolute (1947), p. 292
Letter to Wilhelm Fliess (15 October 1897), as quoted in Origins of Psychoanalysis
1890s
“The exercise of freedom consists in stripping oneself of one's own will.”
Léon Bloy (1846–1917) French writer, poet and essayist
Source: Pilgrim of the Absolute (1947), p. 292
Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) Indian philosopher
What Life Has Taught Me
Autobiography of Swami Sivananda (1958)
“An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.”
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America
Leon R. Kass (1939) American academic
Looking for an Honest Man (2009)
Context: Diogenes … refuses to be taken in by complacent popular belief that we already know human goodness from our daily experience, or by confident professorial claims that we can capture the mystery of our humanity in definitions. But mocking or not, and perhaps speaking better than he knew, Diogenes gave elegantly simple expression to the humanist quest for self-knowledge: I seek the human being — my human being, your human being, our humanity. In fact, the embellished version of Diogenes' question comes to the same thing: To seek an honest man is, at once, to seek a human being worthy of the name, an honest-to-goodness exemplar of the idea of humanity, a truthful and truth-speaking embodiment of the animal having the power of articulate speech.
Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer
Original: (it) Essere sinceri è difficile. La sincerità ha i suoi costi. Per questo, essere sinceri, fa la differenza.
Source: prevale.net
“Originality is being different from oneself, not others.”
Philip Larkin (1922–1985) English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian
Source: Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica
“A good honest and painfull sermon.”
Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) English naval administrator and member of parliament
March 17, 1661
"Painful" here means "painstakingly written".
Diary
“The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself, in spite of being unacceptable.”
Paul Tillich (1886–1965) German-American theologian and philosopher
