Quotes Part of Nietzsche and Emerson's consolation for the self-conciousness of the underground man. "Howelse could this people, so sensitive, so vehement in its desires, so singularly constituted for suffering, how could they have endured existance, if it had not been revealed to them in their gods, surrounded with a higher glory? The same impulse which calls art into being, as the comlpement and consumation of existance, seducing one into a continuation of life, was also the cause of the Olympian world which the Hellenic "will" made use of as a transfiguring mirror. Thus do the gods justify hte life of man, in that they themselves live it ... Existance under the bright sunshine of such gods is regarded as desireable in itself, and the real grief of the Homeric men is caused by parting from it, especially by early parting: so that now, reversing the wisdom of Silenus, we might say of the greeks that "to die early is worst of them all, the next worse - some day to die at all." "The fact narrated must correspond to something in me to be credible or intelligible. We as we read must become greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner, must fasten these images to some secret reality in our experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly. What befell Asdrubal or Ceasar Borgia is as much an illustration of the mind's powers and deprevations as what has befallen us. Each new law and political movement has meaning for you. Stand before each of its tablets and say, "Under this mask did my Proteus nature hide itself." This remedies the defect of our to great nearness to ourselves. This throws our actions into perspective: and as crabs, goats, scorpions, the balace and the waterpot lose their meanness when hung as signs in the zodiac, so I can se my own vices without heat in the distant persons of Solomon, Alcibiades and Catiline." "This mountain makes the entire region it dominates attractive and significant in every way; having said this to ourselves for the hunderth time, we are so unreasonable and thankfully disposed toward it that we suppose that it, the bestower of such delight, must itself be the most delightful thing in the region - and so we climb it and are disapointed. Suddenly themountain itself and the entire landscape around us, beneth us.seem to have ost their magic; we had forgotten that certain types of greatness, like certain types of goodness, want to be beheld only from a distance and always from below, not from above - only thus do they have an effect. Perhaps you know people near you who ought to veiw themselves only from a distance in order to find themselves at all tolerable or attractive and invogorating; self-knowlage is something they should be advised against. Whe dealing with people who are bashful about their feelings, one has to beable to disimulate; they feel a sudden hatred towards anyone who catches them in a tender or enthusiastic or elevated feeling, as if he had seen their secrets. If one wants to do them good in such moments, one should make them laugh or utter some cold, jocular sarcasm: then their feeling freeze and they regain power over themselves. But I am giving the moral before the story. There was a time in our lives when we were so close that nothing seemed to obstruct our friendship and brotherhood, and only a small footbridge separated us. Just as you were about to step on it, I asked you, "Do you want to cross the footbridge to me?" - but then you didnt want to anymore, and when I asked again, you were silent. Since then mountains and torrential rivers, and everything which separates and alienates, have been cast between us, and even if we wanted to reach each other, we couldnt anymore! But when you think of that little footbridge now, you have no words anymore - onlt sobs of bewildrement."