
“The self-surmounter can never put up with the man who has ceased to be dissatisfied with himself.”
Source: The Outsider (1956), p. 139
The Dietetics of the Soul; Or, True Mental Discipline (1838)
“The self-surmounter can never put up with the man who has ceased to be dissatisfied with himself.”
Source: The Outsider (1956), p. 139
“Poetry is an effort of a dissatisfied man to find satisfaction through words.”
As quoted in Wallace Stevens and the Limits of Reading and Writing (2002) by by Bart Eeckhout Ch. 12 "Poeticizing Epistemology", p. 268
Bert Williams, The comic side of trouble, January 1918, American Magazine 85, 33-34, 58-60. Quoted in From traveling show to vaudeville: theatrical spectacle in America, 1830-1910, 2003, Robert M. Lewis, JHU Press, ISBN 0801870879.
Speech (26 September 1891); as quoted in Peter Kropotkin : From Prince to Rebel (1990) by George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, p. 269
The Analects, The Doctrine of the Mean
Context: The way which the superior man pursues, reaches wide and far, and yet is secret. Common men and women, however ignorant, may intermeddle with the knowledge of it; yet in its utmost reaches, there is that which even the sage does not know. Common men and women, however much below the ordinary standard of character, can carry it into practice; yet in its utmost reaches, there is that which even the sage is not able to carry into practice. Great as heaven and earth are, men still find some things in them with which to be dissatisfied. Thus it is that, were the superior man to speak of his way in all its greatness, nothing in the world would be found able to embrace it, and were he to speak of it in its minuteness, nothing in the world would be found able to split it.
Characterizations of Existentialism (1944)