Human, All Too Human Volume Ii Part 31

TO LIVE AS FAR AS POSSIBLE WITHOUT A FOLLOWING.-How small is the importance of followers we first grasp when we have ceased to be the followers of our followers.

368.

OBSCURING ONESELF.-We must understand how to obscure ourselves in order to get rid of the gnat-swarms of pestering admirers.

369.

ENNUI.-There is an ennui of the most subtle and cultured brains, to which the best that the world can offer has become stale. Accustomed to eat ever more and more recherche fare and to feel disgust at coa.r.s.er diet, they are in danger of dying of hunger. For the very best exists but in small quant.i.ties, and has sometimes become inaccessible or hard as stone, so that even good teeth can no longer bite it.

 

370.

THE DANGER IN ADMIRATION.-The admiration of a quality or of an art may be so strong as to deter us from aspiring to possess that quality or art.

371.

WHAT IS REQUIRED OF ART.-One man wants to enjoy himself by means of art, another for a time to get out of or above himself.-To meet both requirements there exists a twofold species of artists.

372.

SECESSIONS.-Whoever secedes from us offends not us, perhaps, but certainly our adherents.

373.

AFTER DEATH.-It is only long after the death of a man that we find it inconceivable that he should be missed-in the case of really great men, only after decades. Those who are honest usually think when any one dies that he is not much missed, and that the pompous funeral oration is a piece of hypocrisy. Necessity first teaches the necessariness of an individual, and the proper epitaph is a belated sigh.

374.

LEAVING IN HADES.-We must leave many things in the Hades of half-conscious feeling, and not try to release them from their shadow-existence, or else they will become, as thoughts and words, our demoniacal tyrants, with cruel l.u.s.t after our blood.

375.

NEAR TO BEGGARY.-Even the richest intellect sometimes mislays the key to the room in which his h.o.a.rded treasures repose. He is then like the poorest of the poor, who must beg to get a living.

376.

CHAIN-THINKERS.-To him who has thought a great deal, every new thought that he hears or reads at once a.s.sumes the form of a chain.

377.

PITY.-In the gilded sheath of pity is sometimes hidden the dagger of envy.

378.

WHAT IS GENIUS?-To aspire to a lofty aim and to will the means to that aim.

379.

VANITY OF COMBATANTS.-He who has no hope of victory in a combat, or who is obviously worsted, is all the more desirous that his style of fighting should be admired.