Echoes

Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.

We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away.

You are neither right nor wrong because people agree with you.

The practically cognized present is no knife-edge, but a saddle-back, with a certain breadth of its own on which we sit perched, and from which we look in two directions into time. The unit of composition of our perception of time is a duration, with a bow and a stern, as it were — a rearward- and a forward-looking end.

Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it.

When an opinion has taken root in a democracy and established itself in the minds of the majority, it afterward persists by itself, needing no effort to maintain it since no one attacks it. Those who at first rejected it as false come in the end to adopt it as accepted, and even those who still at the bottom of their hearts oppose it keep their views to themselves, taking great care to avoid a dangerous and futile contest.

Everything changes; nothing perishes.

Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.

It may be observed, that provinces amid the vicissitudes to which they are subject, pass from order into confusion, and afterward recur to a state of order again; for the nature of mundane affairs not allowing them to continue in an even course, when they have arrived at their greatest perfection, they soon begin to decline. In the same manner, having been reduced by disorder, and sunk to their utmost state of depression, unable to descend lower, they, of necessity, reascend; and thus from good they gradually decline to evil, and from evil again return to good. The reason is, that valor produces peace; peace, repose; repose, disorder; disorder, ruin; so from disorder order springs; from order virtue, and from this, glory and good fortune.

Everything in excess is opposed to nature.

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.

In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.

The greater the man, the less is he opinionative, he depends upon events and circumstances.

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

Against that positivism which stops before phenomena, saying "there are only facts," I should say: no, it is precisely facts that do not exist, only interpretations...

The space between heaven and earth is like a bellows: empty, yet inexhaustible. The more it is worked, the more it yields. Many words count for little — hold fast to the center.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.

The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.

Anyone who holds a true opinion without understanding is like a blind man on the right road.

The love of Heaven and Earth is impartial, and they demand nothing from the myriad things. The love of the sages is impartial, and they demand nothing from the people. The cooperation between Heaven and Earth is much like how a bellows works! Within the emptiness there is limitless potential; in moving, it keeps producing without end. Complaining too much only leads to misfortune. It is better to stay in the center of serenity.

Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.

The crowd is untruth.