Sanela Weblog

Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic

Hold your tongue or you won't understand anything. If there is no God, then I am God

If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not with truth

Do a man dirt, yourself you hurt

The best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons

To study the meaning of man and of life — I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man

The more I detest men individually, the more ardent becomes my love for humanity

It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy

It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt

The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half

Russia was a slave in Europe but would be a master in Asia

If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you

To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her

The characteristics of our romantics are to understand everything, to see everything and to see it often incomparably more clearly than our most realistic minds see it

To be acutely conscious is a disease, a real, honest-to-goodness disease

Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. The best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful

When in the course of all these thousands of years has man ever acted in accordance with his own interests?

The formula 'two plus two equals five' is not without its attractions

Do you know that ages will pass and mankind will proclaim in its wisdom and science that there is no crime, therefore no sin, but that there are only hungry people: 'Feed them first and then demand virtue f rom them!' — that is what they will inscribe on their banner, which they will raise against you and which will destroy your temple

Even there, in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one may bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are to blame for them

Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has others which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But finally there are still others which a man is even afraid to tell himself, and every decent man has a considerable number of such things stored away. That is, one can even say that the more decent he is, the greater the number of such things in his mind

If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground

It was not only that I could not become spiteful, I did not know how to become anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect. Now, I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes anything

So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone - to worship

To care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it's good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things

Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most

Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it — that is what you must do

Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel

Talking nonsense is man's only privilege that distinguishes him from all other organisms

Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those they have slain

Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery

The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man

It wasn't the New World that mattered ... Columbus died almost without seeing it; and not really knowing what he had discovered. It's life that matters, nothing but life — the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all. But what's the use of talking! I suspect that all I'm saying now is so like the usual commonplaces that I shall certainly be taken for a lower-form schoolboy sending in his essay on "sunrise", or they'll say perhaps that I had something to say, but that I did not know how to "explain" it. But I'll add, that there is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one's idea for thirty-five years; there's something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you forever; and with it you will die, without communicating to anyone perhaps the most important of your ideas. But if I too have failed to convey all that has been tormenting me for the last six months, it will, anyway, be understood that I have paid very dearly for attaining my present "last conviction." This is what I felt necessary, for certain objects of my own, to put forward in my "Explanation". However, I will continue

Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man...

If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force - maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral; everything would be lawful, even cannibalism

Roman Catholicism is even worse than Atheism itself, in my opinion! Yes, that's my opinion! Atheism only preaches a negation, but Catholicism goes further: it preaches a distorted Christ, a Christ calumniated and defamed by themselves, the opposite of Christ! It preaches the Antichrist, I declare it does, I assure you it does! This is the conviction I have long held, and it has distressed me, myself...

I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness

A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart

People talk sometimes of a bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it

Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also

To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well. I consider you the most honest and truthful of men, more honest and truthful than anyone; and if they say that your mind... that is, that you're sometimes afflicted in your mind, it's unjust. I made up my mind about that, and disputed with others, because, though you really are mentally afflicted (you won't be angry with that, of course; I'm speaking from a higher point of view), yet the mind that matters is better in you than in any of them. It's something, in fact, they have never dreamed of. For there are two sorts of mind: one that matters, and one that doesn't matter

There are two sorts of mind: one that matters, and one that doesn't matter

Fathers and teachers, I ponder, "What is hell?" I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love

In most cases, people, even the most vicious, are much more naive and simple-minded than we assume them to be. And this is true of ourselves too

On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering. We cannot love otherwise, and we know of no other sort of love. I want suffering in order to love. I long, I thirst, this very instant, to kiss with tears the earth that I have left, and I don't want, I won't accept life on any other

Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy. It's only that

I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared