“What has here happened is that the instinct of cruelty, which has turned inwards, has become self-torture, and all man’s animal instincts have been reinterpreted as guilt towards God. Every Nay man utters to his nature, to his real being, he flings out as a Yea, an affirmation of reality applied to God’s sanctity”

— Georg Brandes

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 40

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Georg Brandes 40

Danish literature critic and scholar 1842–1927

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