The Only Excuse For God

There Is A Rollicking Kindness That Looks Like Malice.

We Praise Or Blame As One Or The Other Affords More Opportunity For Exhibiting Our Power Of Judgement.

The Significance Of Language For The Evolution Of Culture Lies In This, That Mankind Set Up In Language A Separate World Beside The Other World, A Place It Took To Be So Firmly Set That, Standing Upon It, It Could Lift The Rest Of The World Off Its Hinges And Make Itself Master Of It. To The Extent That Man Has For Long Ages Believed In The Concepts And Names Of Things As In Aeternae Veritates He Has Appropriated To Himself That Pride By Which He Raised Himself Above The Animal: He Really Thought That In Language He Possessed Knowledge Of The World.

Examine The Life Of The Best And Most Productive Men And Nations, And Ask Yourselves Whether A Tree Which Is To Grow Proudly Skywards Can Dispense With Bad Weather And Storms. Whether Misfortune And Opposition, Or Every Kind Of Hatred, Jealousy, Stubbornness, Distrust, Severity, Greed, And Violence Do Not Belong To The Favourable Conditions Without Which A Great Growth Even Of Virtue Is Hardly Possible?

For One Thing Is Needful: That A Human Being Should Attain Satisfaction With Himself, Whether It Be By Means Of This Or That Poetry Or Art; Only Then Is A Human Being At All Tolerable To Behold. Whoever Is Dissatisfied With Himself Is Constantly Ready For Revenge, And We Others Will Be His Victims, If Only By Having To Endure His Ugly Sight.