All languages that derive from Latin form the word "compassion" by combining the prefix meaning "with" (com-) and the root meaning "suffering" (Late Latin, passio). In other languages - Czech, Polish, German, and Swedish, for instance - this word is translated by a noun formed of an equivalent prefix combined with the word that means "feeling" (Czech, sou-cit; Polish, wspol-czucie; German, Mitgefuhl; Swedish, med-kansla).
- funny in Chinese is 同情 - meaning 同: same, 情: feeling. guess Chinese is not derived from Latin teehee XD
Einmal ist keinmal - What happened but once, might as well not have happened at all. if we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all.
Es muss sein - It must be.
... he closed his eyes. The pleasure suffusing his body called for darkness. That darkness was pure, perfect, thoughtless, visionless; that darkness was without end, without borders; that darkenss was the infinite we each carry within us. (Yes, if you're looking for infinity, just close your eyes!)
And at the moment he felt pleasure suffusing his body, Franz himself dissolved into the infinity of his darkness, himself becoming infinite. But the larger a man grows in his own inner darkness, the more his outer form diminishes. A man with closed eyes is a wreck of a man.
There is always the small part that is unimaginable... What is unique about the "I" hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person. All we are able to imagine is what makes everyone like everyone else, what people have in common. The Individual "I" is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered, conquered.
...there was nothing more difficult to capture than the human "I". There are many more resemblances between Hitler and Einstein or Brazhnev and Solzhenitsyn than there are differences. Using numbers, we might say that there is one-millionth part dissimilarity to nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine millionths parts similarity.
To be sure, the millionth part dissimilarity is present in all areas of human existence, but in all areas other than sex it is exposed and needs no one to discover it, needs no scalpel... Only in sexuality does the millionth part dissimilarity becomes precious, because, not accessible in public, it must be conquered. As recently as fifty years ago this form of conquest took considerable time (weeks, even months!), and the worth of the conquered object was proportional to the time the conquest took.
Men who pursue a multitude of women fit neatly into two categories. Some seek their own subjective and unchanging dream of a woman in all women. Others are prompted by a desire to possess the endless variety of the objective female world.
The obsession of the former is lyrical: what they seek in women is themselves, their ideal, and since an ideal is by definition something that can never be found, they are disappointed again and again. The disappointment that propels them from woman to woman gives their inconstancy a kind of romantic excuse, so that many sentimental women are touched by their unbridled philandering.
The obsession of the latter is epic, and women see nothing the least bit touching in it: the man projects no subjective ideal on women, and since everything interests him, nothing can disappoint him. This inability to be disappointed has something scandalous about it. The obesession of the epic womanizer strikes people as lacking in redemption (redemption by disappointment).
The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful.
I have said before that metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.
We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under.
The first catergory longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public.
...
The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. They are the tireless hosts of cocktail and parites and dinners. They are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. This happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. People in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need.
...
Then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the people they love. Their situation is as dangerous as the situation of the people in the first category. One day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark.
...
And finally there is a fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers...
There's no particular merit in being nice to one's fellow man... We can never establish with certainty what part of our relations with others is the result of our emotions - love, antipahty, charity, or malice - and what part is predetermined by the constant power play among individuals.
True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.
Mandkind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.
Another image also comes to mind: Nietzsche leaving his hotel in Turin. Seeing a horse and a coachman beating it with a whip, Nietzsche went up to the horse and, before the coachman's very eyes, put his arms around the horse's neck and burst into tears.
That took place in 1889, when Nietzsche, too, had removed himself from the world of people. In other words, it was at the time when his mental illness had just erupted. But for that very reason I feel his gesture has broad implications: Nietzsche was trying to apologize to the horse for Descartes. His lunacy (that is, his final break with mankind) began at the very moment he burst into tears over the horse.
And that is the Nietzsche I love... I see [him]...stepping down from the road along which mankind, "the master and proprietor of nature", marches onward.
-L
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