Posts tagged either/or
Posts tagged either/or
No one comes back from the dead, no one has entered the world without crying; no one is asked when he wishes to enter life, nor when he wishes to leave.
Come when you want - always welcome; stay as long as you want - always the agreeable guest; go when you want - always well commended.
You regard duty as the enemy of love, I regard it as its friend.
Ask yourself, and keep on asking until you find the answer, for one can recognize a thing many times and acknowledge it, one can want a thing many times and attempt it, yet only the deep inner movement, only the indescribable motions of the heart, only these convince you that what you have recognized ‘belongs unto you,’ that no power can take it from you; for only the truth that edifies is truth for you.
If the history of your inner development contains something unutterable, or if your life has made you privy to secrets - in short, if in one way or another you have gorged yourself on a secret which cannot be dragged out of you without costing you your life, then never marry. Either you will feel tied to a being who has no suspicion of what is going on inside you, and your marriage then becomes an uncomely misalliance, or you bind yourself to a being who is anxiously aware of this, who at every instant sees these shadow-images on the wall.
One thing I thank God with all my soul for is that she is the only one I have ever loved, the first. And one thing I pray God with all my heart for is that He will give me the strength never to want to love another.
Alas! you are indeed a strange being. Child one moment, old man the next, at one moment reflecting with tremendous seriousness upon the most exalted scientific problems, on how you will give your life to them, the next a love-struck fool.
How empty is life and without meaning. - We bury a man, we follow him to the grave, we throw three spades of earth on him, we ride out in a coach, we ride home in a coach, we take comfort in the thought that a long life awaits us. But how long is threescore years and ten? Why not finish it at once?
Whatever can be the meaning of this life? If we divide mankind into two large classes, we can say that one works for a living, the other has no need to. But working for one’s living can’t be the meaning of life; to suppose that constantly procuring the conditions of life should be the answer to the question of the meaning of what they make possible is a contradiction. Usually the lives of the other class have no meaning either, beyond that of consuming the said conditions. To say that the meaning of life is to die seems again to be a contradiction.
When two people fall in love and suspect they are made for each other, the thing is to have the courage to break it off, for by continuing they only have everything to lose and nothing to gain. It seems a paradox and is so, for feeling, not for understanding.
