On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)
<span class="plainlinks"> Foreword, 'Tales of Transformation: English Translation of Tagore's Chitrangada and Chandalika', Lopamudra Banerjee, (2018). https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07DQPD8F4/</span>
From Prose
Nietzsche's Zarathustra (1988), p. 40
Alternative translation:
The children of Adam are limbs of a whole
Having been created of one essence.
When the calamity of time afflicts one limb
The other limbs cannot remain at rest.
If you have no sympathy for the troubles of others
You are not worthy to be called by the name of "man".
Source: Gulistan (1258), Chapter 1, story 10
Art of the 20th century, Part 1 by Karl Ruhrberg, Klaus Honnef, Manfred Schneckenburger, Ingo F. Walther, Christiane Fricke (2000) p. 627.
Speech to the House of Commons in London, United Kingdom. As quoted in "The House of Commons (London)" http://www.aina.org/news/20080423181206.htm (24 April 2008), by R. Malek-Yonan, Assyrian International News Agency.
Source: Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971), p. 14 (Quote is from Marx, Early Writings (1964), p. 148).
Socrates, pp. 147–8
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)
Source: Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784), Ch. V Section II - Containing Observations on the Providence and Agency of God, as it Respects the Natural and Moral World, with Strictures on Revelation in General
Context: The idea of a God we infer from our experimental dependence on something superior to ourselves in wisdom, power and goodness, which we call God; our senses discover to us the works of God which we call nature, and which is a manifest demonstration of his invisible essence. Thus it is from the works of nature that we deduce the knowledge of a God, and not because we have, or can have any immediate knowledge of, or revelation from him.
Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)
Context: I cannot help thinking that historians, looking back from the far future, will record this age as the Third Renaissance. We who are lost in it, working or looking on, can neither tell what we are doing, nor where standing; but we cannot help observing, that, just as in the Greek Renaissance, worn-out Pagan orthodoxy was penetrated by new philosophy; just as in the Italian Renaissance, Pagan philosophy, reasserting itself, fertilised again an already too inbred Christian creed; so now Orthodoxy fertilised by Science is producing a fresh and fuller conception of life — a love of Perfection, not for hope of reward, not for fear of punishment, but for Perfection's sake. Slowly, under our feet, beneath our consciousness, is forming that new philosophy, and it is in times of new philosophies that Art, itself in essence always a discovery, must flourish. Those whose sacred suns and moons are ever in the past, tell us that our Art is going to the dogs; and it is, indeed, true that we are in confusion! The waters are broken, and every nerve and sinew of the artist is strained to discover his own safety. It is an age of stir and change, a season of new wine and old bottles. Yet, assuredly, in spite of breakages and waste, a wine worth the drinking is all the time being made.
1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Context: In every wise struggle for human betterment one of the main objects, and often the only object, has been to achieve in large measure equality of opportunity. In the struggle for this great end, nations rise from barbarism to civilization, and through it people press forward from one stage of enlightenment to the next. One of the chief factors in progress is the destruction of special privilege. The essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been, and must always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or their fellows. That is what you fought for in the Civil War, and that is what we strive for now.
Session 899, Page 225
Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment, Volume One (1986)
Introduction.
Magick Book IV : Liber ABA, Part III : Magick in Theory and Practice (1929)
Context: The essence of
MAGICK
is simple enough in all conscience. It is not otherwise with the art of government. The Aim is simply prosperity; but the theory is tangled, and the practice beset with briars.
In the same way
MAGICK
is merely to be and to do. I should add: "to suffer". For Magick is the verb; and it is part of the Training to use the passive voice. This is, however, a matter of Initiation rather than of Magick in its ordinary sense. It is not my fault if being is baffling, and doing desperate!
Card XXI : The World
The Symbolism of the Tarot (1913)
Context: The vision disappeared as suddenly as it appeared. A weird silence fell on me. "What does it mean?" I asked in wonder.
"It is the image of the world," the voice said, "but it can be understood only after the Temple has been entered. This is a vision of the world in the circle of Time, amidst the four principles. But thou seest differently because thou seest the world outside thyself. Learn to see it in thyself and thou wilt understand the infinite essence, hidden in all illusory forms. Understand that the world which thou knowest is only one of the aspects of the infinite world, and things and phenomena are merely hierolgyphics of deeper ideas."
Source: Less Than Nothing (2012), Chapter One (The Drink Before), Vacillating The Semblances
Context: The implicit lesson of Plato is not that everything is appearance, that it is not possible to draw a clear line of separation between appearance and reality (that would have meant the victory of Sophism), but that essence is "appearance as appearance,"that essence appears in contrast to appearance within appearance; that the distinction between appearance and essence has to be inscribed into appearance itself. Insofar as the gap between essence and appearance is inherent to appearance, in other words, infsofar as essence is nothing but appearance reflected into itself, appearance is appearance against the background of nothing - everything appears ultimately out of nothing.
"Through the Gates of the Silver Key " - written with E. Hoffman Price, October 1932 - Apr 1933; first published in Weird Tales, Vol. 24, No. 1 (July 1934)<!-- p. 60-85 -->
Fiction
Context: It was an All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self — not merely a thing of one Space-Time continuum, but allied to the ultimate animating essence of existence's whole unbounded sweep — the last, utter sweep which has no confines and which outreaches fancy and mathematics alike. It was perhaps that which certain secret cults of earth have whispered of as YOG-SOTHOTH, and which has been a deity under other names; that which the crustaceans of Yuggoth worship as the Beyond-One, and which the vaporous brains of the spiral nebulae know by an untranslatable Sign...
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Philosophy of Right translated by SW Dyde Queen’s University Canada 1896 p. 123
Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820/1821)
Context: The good is the idea, or unity of the conception of the will with the particular will. Abstract right, well-being, the subjectivity of consciousness, and the contingency of external reality, are in their independent and separate existences superseded in this unity, although in their real essence they are contained in it and preserved. This unity is realized freedom, the absolute final cause of the world. Addition.—Every stage is properly the idea, but the earlier steps contain the idea only in more abstract form. The I, as person, is already the idea, although in its most abstract guise. The good is the idea more completely determined; it is the unity of the conception of will with the particular will. It is not something abstractly right, but has a real content, whose substance constitutes both right and well-being.
Indian Spirituality and Life (1919)
Context: The fundamental idea of all Indian religion is one common to the highest human thinking everywhere. The supreme truth of all that is is a Being or an existence beyond the mental and physical appearances we contact here. Beyond mind, life and body there is a Spirit and Self containing all that is finite and infinite, surpassing all that is relative, a supreme Absolute, originating and supporting all that is transient, a one Eternal. A one transcendent, universal, original and sempiternal Divinity or divine Essence, Consciousness, Force and Bliss is the fount and continent and inhabitant of things.
Soul, nature, life are only a manifestation or partial phenomenon of this self-aware Eternity and this conscious Eternal.
Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics
Context: Affirmation of the world, which means affirmation of the will-to-live that manifests itself around me, is only possible if I devote myself to other life. From an inner necessity, I exert myself in producing values and practising ethics in the world and on the world even though I do not understand the meaning of the world. For in world- and life-affirmation and in ethics I carry out the will of the universal will-to-live which reveals itself in me. I live my life in God, in the mysterious divine personality which I do not know as such in the world, but only experience as mysterious Will within myself.
Rational thinking which is free from assumptions ends therefore in mysticism. To relate oneself in the spirit of reverence for life to the multiform manifestations of the will-to-live which together constitute the world is ethical mysticism. All profound world-view is mysticism, the essence of which is just this: that out of my unsophisticated and naïve existence in the world there comes, as a result of thought about self and the world, spiritual self-devotion to the mysterious infinite Will which is continuously manifested in the universe.
Rousseau's Theory of the State (1873)
Context: We … have humanity divided into an indefinite number of foreign states, all hostile and threatened by each other. There is no common right, no social contract of any kind between them; otherwise they would cease to be independent states and become the federated members of one great state. But unless this great state were to embrace all of humanity, it would be confronted with other great states, each federated within, each maintaining the same posture of inevitable hostility. War would still remain the supreme law, an unavoidable condition of human survival.
Every state, federated or not, would therefore seek to become the most powerful. It must devour lest it be devoured, conquer lest it be conquered, enslave lest it be enslaved, since two powers, similar and yet alien to each other, could not coexist without mutual destruction.
The State, therefore, is the most flagrant, the most cynical, and the most complete negation of humanity. It shatters the universal solidarity of all men on the earth, and brings some of them into association only for the purpose of destroying, conquering, and enslaving all the rest. It protects its own citizens only; it recognises human rights, humanity, civilisation within its own confines alone. Since it recognises no rights outside itself, it logically arrogates to itself the right to exercise the most ferocious inhumanity toward all foreign populations, which it can plunder, exterminate, or enslave at will. If it does show itself generous and humane toward them, it is never through a sense of duty, for it has no duties except to itself in the first place, and then to those of its members who have freely formed it, who freely continue to constitute it or even, as always happens in the long run, those who have become its subjects. As there is no international law in existence, and as it could never exist in a meaningful and realistic way without undermining to its foundations the very principle of the absolute sovereignty of the State, the State can have no duties toward foreign populations. Hence, if it treats a conquered people in a humane fashion, if it plunders or exterminates it halfway only, if it does not reduce it to the lowest degree of slavery, this may be a political act inspired by prudence, or even by pure magnanimity, but it is never done from a sense of duty, for the State has an absolute right to dispose of a conquered people at will.
This flagrant negation of humanity which constitutes the very essence of the State is, from the standpoint of the State, its supreme duty and its greatest virtue. It bears the name patriotism, and it constitutes the entire transcendent morality of the State. We call it transcendent morality because it usually goes beyond the level of human morality and justice, either of the community or of the private individual, and by that same token often finds itself in contradiction with these. Thus, to offend, to oppress, to despoil, to plunder, to assassinate or enslave one's fellowman is ordinarily regarded as a crime. In public life, on the other hand, from the standpoint of patriotism, when these things are done for the greater glory of the State, for the preservation or the extension of its power, it is all transformed into duty and virtue. And this virtue, this duty, are obligatory for each patriotic citizen; everyone is supposed to exercise them not against foreigners only but against one's own fellow citizens, members or subjects of the State like himself, whenever the welfare of the State demands it.
This explains why, since the birth of the State, the world of politics has always been and continues to be the stage for unlimited rascality and brigandage, brigandage and rascality which, by the way, are held in high esteem, since they are sanctified by patriotism, by the transcendent morality and the supreme interest of the State. This explains why the entire history of ancient and modern states is merely a series of revolting crimes; why kings and ministers, past and present, of all times and all countries — statesmen, diplomats, bureaucrats, and warriors — if judged from the standpoint of simple morality and human justice, have a hundred, a thousand times over earned their sentence to hard labour or to the gallows. There is no horror, no cruelty, sacrilege, or perjury, no imposture, no infamous transaction, no cynical robbery, no bold plunder or shabby betrayal that has not been or is not daily being perpetrated by the representatives of the states, under no other pretext than those elastic words, so convenient and yet so terrible: "for reasons of state."
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
Context: Amid the vastness of the things among which we live, the existence of nothingness holds the first place; its function extends over all things that have no existence, and its essence, as regards time, lies precisely between the past and the future, and has nothing in the present. This nothingness has the part equal to the whole, and the whole to the part, the divisible to the indivisible; and the product of the sum is the same whether we divide or multiply, and in addition as in subtraction; as is proved by arithmeticians by their tenth figure which represents zero; and its power has not extension among the things of Nature.
Algernon, Act I
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
"The Power of Money in Bourgeois Society"
Source: Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, p. 105, The Marx-Engels Reader
The Deliverance from Error https://www.amazon.com/Al-Ghazalis-Path-Sufism-Deliverance-al-Munqidh/dp/1887752307, p: 20-21
The Power of Now (1997)
Source: Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic and Philosophy as a Whole, p. 64.
Source: Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
“What is the essence of life? To serve others and to do good.”
Often given as a saying of Aristotle with no reference.
Disputed
Source: Binyamin Abrahamov.Ibn Al-Arabi's Fusus Al-Hikam: An Annotated Translation of "The Bezels of Wisdom" p. 92, كلَّ تجلٍّ يعطي خلقًا جديدًا ويذهب بخلق: فذهابه هو الفناء عند التجلِّي والبقاء لما يعطيه التجلِّي الآخر Bezels of Wisdom (فصوص الحكم) https://archive.org/details/abeer_20160509/page/n127/mode/2up
Source: Statism and Anarchy (1873)
Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Chapter 2 Beyond the Thinking Mind
Source: The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness
“Self trust is the essence of heroism.”
Success
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Variant: Self-trust is the first secret of success.
“Women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves.”
Source: Gift from the Sea
“The essence of wisdom is to know when to be doing, and when it's useless even to try”
Source: The Last Enchantment
“Existence is prior to essence.”
Part 4, chapter 1
Being and Nothingness (1943)
Variant: Existence precedes and rules essence.
Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 135, “Taglios: The Mad Season” (p. 747)
Source: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
Source: The Age of Uncertainty (1977), Chapter 12, p. 330
“Is not general incivility the very essence of love?”
Variant: Could there be finer symptoms? Is not general incivility the very essence of love?
Source: Pride and Prejudice
“Absence of Quality is the essence of squareness.”
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
“The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person.”
Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
“I feel that the essence of dance is the expression of mankind — the landscape of the human soul.”
I Am A Dancer (1952)
Source: Blood Memory
Context: I feel that the essence of dance is the expression of mankind — the landscape of the human soul. I hope that every dance I do reveals something of myself or some wonderful thing a human being can be.
“For feeling, not events, is to me the essence of history.”
Source: The Last Vampire
Source: Existentialism Is a Humanism, lecture http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm (1946)
Context: What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing – as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.
Source: Obedience to Authority
Source: Modern Primitives: An Investigation of Contemporary Adornment and Ritual
“The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself.”
“The purposeful destruction of information is the essence of intelligent work.”
Source: The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence
“The Essence of Knowledge is, having it, to use it.”
“PHILOSOPHY essential nature or essence.”
The New Oxford American Dictionary
“The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.”
Source: 2000s, 2001, Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001)
Source: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
“What a bog and labyrinth the human essence is… We are all overbrained and overemotioned.”
Source: Airships
“A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.”
Source: Lord of the Silver Bow
Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
Source: A Plague of Secrets
Source: Where Angels Fear to Tread
Un désespoir paisible, sans convulsions de colère et sans reproches au ciel est la sagesse même.
Page 32 http://books.google.com/books?id=BVdHAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Un+d%C3%A9sespoir+paisible,+sans+convulsions+de+col%C3%A8re+et+sans+reproches+au+ciel+est+la+sagesse+m%C3%AAme%22&pg=PA32#v=onepage.
Journal d'un poète (1867)
Source: The Void Captain's Tale (1983), Chapter 16 (p. 208)
Source: Die Mathematik die Fackelträgerin einer neuen Zeit (Stuttgart, 1889), p. 40.
Source: The Veneration of Life: Through the Disease to the Soul (1999), p. 9
Quoted in Steven Daly, "The Maverick King," Vanity Fair (November 2004)
"Getting on with It" (p.103)
There's a Country in My Cellar (1990)
“Celibacy is the essence of vulgarity.”
Rome, or Reason?, p. 61 http://www.archive.org/stream/thegreatcontrove00ingeuoft/thegreatcontrove00ingeuoft_djvu.txt
The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
