Existentialists

"The only thing the young should be taught is that there is virtually nothing to be hoped for from life. One dreams of a Catalogue of Disappointments which would include all the disillusionments reserved for each and every one of us, to be posted in the schools."

"I pride myself on my capacity to perceive the transitory character of everything. An odd gift which has spoiled all my joys; better: all my sensations."

"Once we begin to want, we fall under the jurisdiction of the Devil."

"It is a great force, and a great fortune, to be able to live without any ambition whatever. I aspire to it, but the very fact of so aspiring still participates in ambition."

"It's not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late."

"When you know quite absolutely that everything is unreal, you then cannot see why you should take the trouble to prove it."

"I have all the defects of other people yet everything they do seems to me inconceivable."

"What are you waiting for in order to give up?"

"The farther men get from God, the farther they advance into the knowledge of religions."

"An aphorism? Fire without flames. Understandable that no one tries to warm himself at it."

"All my life, I have lived with the feeling that I have been kept from my true place. If the expression "metaphysical exile" had no meaning, my existence alone would afford it one."

"We had nothing to say to one another, and while I was manufacturing my phrases I felt that earth was falling through space and that I was falling with it at a speed that made me dizzy."

"Everything turns on pain; the rest is accessory, even nonexistent, for we remember only what hurts. Painful sensations being the only real ones, it is virtually useless to experience others."

"Late at night. I feel like falling into a frenzy, doing some unprecedented thing to release myself, but I don't see against whom, against what..."

"The ideal being? An angel ravaged by humor."

"Every thought derives from a thwarted sensation."

"Progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard to its predecessor."

"One cannot live without motives. I have no motives left, and I am living."

"Buddhism calls anger "corruption of the mind," Manicheism "root of the tree of death." I know this, but what good does it do me to know?"

"As art sinks into paralysis, artists multiply. This anomaly ceases to be one if we realize that art, on its way to exhaustion, has become both impossible and easy."

"Self-pity is not as sterile as we suppose. Once we feel its mere onset, we assume a thinker's attitude, and come to think of it, we come to think!"

"Fear is the antidote to boredom: the remedy must be stronger than the disease."

"There is nothing to say about anything. So there can be no limit to the number of books."

"We dread the future only when we are not sure we can kill ourselves when we want to."

"Imaginary pains are by far the most real we suffer, since we feel a constant need for them and invent them because there is no way of doing without them."

"O thou who art able to write a Book, which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name City-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name Conqueror or City-burner! Thou too art a Conqueror and Victor; but of the true sort, namely over the Devil: thou too hast built what will outlast all marble and metal, and be a wonder-bringing City of the Mind, a Temple and Seminary and Prophetic Mount, whereto all kindreds of the Earth will pilgrim."

""December, 1846.—Accustomed to the infinite wit and exuberant richness of his writings, his talk is still an amazement and a splendour scarcely to be faced with steady eyes. He does not converse;—only harangues. It is the usual misfortune of such marked men,—happily not one invariable or inevitable,—that they cannot allow other minds room to breathe, and show themselves in their atmosphere, and thus miss the refreshment and instruction which the greatest never cease to need from the experience of the humblest. "Carlyle allows no one a chance, but bears down all opposition, not only by his wit and onset of words, resistless in their sharpness as so many bayonets, but by actual physical superiority,—raising his voice, and rushing on his opponent with a torrent of sound. This is not in the least from unwillingness to allow freedom to others. On the contrary, no man would more enjoy a manly resistance to his thought. But it is the impulse of a mind accustomed to follow out its own impulse, as the hawk its prey, and which knows not how to stop in the chase. Carlyle, indeed, is arrogant and overbearing; but in his arrogance there is no littleness,—no self-love. It is the heroic arrogance of some old Scandinavian conqueror;—it is his nature, and the untameable impulse that has given him power to crush the dragons."

""All Carlyle's talk, that evening, was a defence of mere force,—success the test of right;—if people would not behave well, put collars round their necks;—find a hero, and let them be his slaves. It was very Titanic, and anti-celestial."

""A few words will be expected here as to Mr. Carlyle's manner as a lecturer. In so far as his mere manner is concerned, I can scarcely bestow on him a word of commendation. There is something in his manner which, if I may use a rather quaint term, must seem very uncouth to London audiences of the most respectable class, accustomed as they are to the polished deportment[A] which is usually exhibited in Willis's or the Hanover Rooms. When he enters the room, and proceeds to the sort of rostrum whence he delivers his lectures, he is, according to the usual practice in such cases, generally received with applause; but he very rarely takes any more notice of the mark of approbation thus bestowed upon him, than if he were altogether unconscious of it. And the same seeming want of respect for his audience, or, at any rate, the same disregard for what I believe he considers the troublesome forms of politeness, is visible at the commencement of his lecture. Having ascended his desk, he gives a hearty rub to his hands, and plunges at once into his subject. He reads very closely, which, indeed, must be expected, considering the nature of the topics which he undertakes to discuss. He is not prodigal of gesture with his arms or body; but there is something in his eye and countenance which indicates great earnestness of purpose, and the most intense interest in his subject. You can almost fancy, in some of his more enthusiastic and energetic moments, that you see his inmost soul in his face. At times, indeed very often, he so unnaturally distorts his features, as to give to his countenance a very unpleasant expression. On such occasions, you would imagine that he was suddenly seized with some violent paroxysms of pain. He is one of the most ungraceful speakers I have ever heard address a public assemblage of persons. In addition to the awkwardness of his general manner, he 'makes mouths,' which would of themselves be sufficient to mar the agreeableness of his delivery. And his manner of speaking, and the ungracefulness of his gesticulation, are greatly aggravated by his strong Scotch accent. Even to the generality of Scotchmen his pronunciation is harsh in no ordinary degree. Need I say, then, what it must be to an English ear?"

"Mr. Carlyle delivered the first of a course of lectures on German Literature, at Willis's Rooms, on Tuesday, to a very crowded and yet a select audience of both sexes. Mr. Carlyle may be deficient in the mere mechanism of oratory; but this minor defect is far more than counterbalanced by his perfect mastery of his subject, the originality of his manner, the perspicuity of his language, his simple but genuine eloquence, and his vigorous grasp of a large and difficult question. No person of taste or judgment could hear him without feeling that the lecturer is a man of genius, deeply imbued with his great argument." "This course of lectures," says a writer already quoted, "was well attended by the fashionables of the West End; and though they saw in his manner something exceedingly awkward, they could not fail to discern in his matter the impress of a mind of great originality and superior gifts."

"It was in the spring of 1837 that Carlyle's first great historical work appeared, "The French Revolution:—Vol. I., The Bastile; Vol. II, The Constitution; Vol. III., The Guillotine." The publication of this book produced a profound impression on the public mind. A history abounding in vivid and graphic descriptions, it was at the same time a gorgeous "prose epic." It is perhaps the most readable of all Carlyle's works, and indeed is one of the most remarkable books of the age. There is no other account of the French Revolution that can be compared with it for intensity of feeling and profoundness of thought."

"The translation of "Wilhelm Meister," in 1824,[A] was the first real introduction of Goethe to the reading world of Great Britain. It appeared without the name of the translator, but its merits were too palpable to be overlooked, though some critics objected to the strong infusion of German phraseology which had been imported into the English version. This acquired idiom never left our author, even in his original works, although the "Life of Schiller," written but a few months before, is almost entirely free from the peculiarity."

"The following is from the article on Necker:— "As an author, Necker displays much irregular force of imagination, united with considerable perspicuity and compass of thought; though his speculations are deformed by an undue attachment to certain leading ideas, which, harmonizing with his habits of mind, had acquired an excessive preponderance in the course of his long and uncontroverted meditations. He possessed extensive knowledge, and his works bespeak a philosophical spirit; but their great and characteristic excellence proceeds from that glow of fresh and youthful admiration for everything that is amiable or august in the character of man, which, in Necker's heart, survived all the blighting vicissitudes it had passed through, combining, in a singular union, the fervour of the stripling with the experience of the sage."[A] [Footnote A: "In the earliest authorship of Mr. Carlyle," says Mr. James Russell Lowell, alluding to these papers, "we find some not obscure hints of the future man."

"He had already written several articles and essays, and a few of them had appeared in print; but they gave little promise or indication of the power he was afterwards to exhibit."

"[U]nder no circumstances, and no matter how completely time and events disprove his lurid vaticinations, should the English-speaking world forget this man, nor fail to hold in honor his unsurpass'd conscience, his unique method, and his honest fame. Never were convictions more earnest and genuine. Never was there less of a flunkey or temporizer. Never had political progressivism a foe it could more heartily respect."

"Never had beauty been so forgotten; style was poisoned at the fount of thought by Carlyle, whose sentences were confused disasters like railway accidents, and by Herbert Spencer, who wrote as though he were the offspring of two Times leaders; among novelists only Robert Louis Stevenson loved words..."

"I have read – nay, I have bought! – Carlyle's Latter Day Pamphlets, and look on my eight shillings as very much thrown away. To me, it appears that the grain of sense is so smothered up in a sack of the sheerest trash, that the former is valueless. He does not himself know what he wants. He has one idea – a hatred of spoken and acted falsehood; and on that he harps through the whole eight pamphlets. I look on him as a man who was always in danger of going mad in literature and who has now done so."

"Thomas Carlyle supposed that power should be entrusted unconditionally to great men, heroes who were laws to themselves, not responsible to the institutions or prejudices of inferior men. When a nation is so fortunate as to breed a great man (he thought), it should not seek to limit the expression of his greatness; it should be happy to forward his design. This doctrine rang musically in German ears, in a time of gloom and defeat, when Germans despaired of political institutions and their own capacity to use them. It was acceptable to Hitler, whom we have seen listening with egotistical relish to readings from Carlyle's History of Frederick the Great in the Bunker in Berlin. Hitler, like Carlyle, believed in "historical greatness", which to him was more important than the happiness or survival of a people; and he conceived of himself as a great man,—in which he was surely not mistaken; for it is absurd to suggest that one who made such a stir in the world was of ordinary stature. The Germans accepted him as the Messiah for whom they were waiting, and in the hours of his apparent success they sacrificed their political institutions to him; for they believed not in them, but in the man."

"Goebbels told Schwerin von Krosigk [in April 1945 in the Führerbunker] how he had recently been reading aloud to the Fuehrer, to solace him in his universal discomfiture. He was reading from his favourite book, Carlyle's History of Frederick the Great; and the chapter he was reading described "how the great king himself no longer saw any way out of his difficulties, no longer had any plan; how all his generals and ministers were convinced that his downfall was at hand; how the enemy was already counting Prussia as destroyed; how the future hung dark before him, and in his last letter to his minister, Count Finckenstein, he gave himself one last respite: if there was no change by February 15th, he would give it up and take poison. 'Brave king!' says Carlyle, 'wait yet a little while, and the days of your suffering will be over. Already the sun of your good fortune stands behind the clouds, and soon will rise upon you.' On February 12th the Czarina died; the Miracle of the House of Brandenburg had come to pass." At this touching tale, said Goebbels, "tears stood in the Fuehrer's eyes.""

"Carlyle regarded liberty as an aristocratic fad which would be blown away when the people came into their own. Liberty is indeed the touchstone of every man's career. Do you respect the judgements of others as much as your own? Or are you so confident of your own judgement that you would trample that of everyone else under foot? Macaulay gave the answer for liberty, Carlyle for tyranny. The worse cause had the more powerful advocate. All the same, it was the worse cause."

"You do not read his books; you experience them, and what you experience in them is the storm of the world. He was a nihilist, a destroyer, despite his doctrine of toil and the heroic virtues. He once found a perfect subject, the French Revolution. That really was the end of a world, and Carlyle wrote of it like a man possessed."

"Carlyle senses the masses, as no other writer has ever done; he expressed their outlook against his own conscious convictions... In the French Revolution there is no fault or weakness at all; it is a book without peer."

"Carlyle is surely the greatest figure in our modern literature... Carlyle's enormous personality, his capacity for influencing others for good and ill, have made him the greatest moral and intellectual force of his age. To him we owe the indifference to mere political shibboleths, the lull in party warfare, which is the note of our age. He gave no definite answer to any question, but he gave us the impetus which led others to seek for solutions. His literary influence on Froude and Mill, Mr Ruskin and Mr Lecky, and numbers of others was tremendous. The place which was occupied by Swift in the eighteenth century is held by Carlyle in the nineteenth, and though every line that he has written should cease to be read, he will still be remembered as the greatest of literary figures in an age of great men of letters."

"Those who still think that Carlyle was in some sense more or less Liberal should read his chapter on Democracy in Past and Present. Most of it is occupied with praise of William the Conqueror, and with a description of the pleasant lives enjoyed by serfs in his day. Then comes a definition of liberty : “ The true liberty of a man , you would say, consisted in his finding out, or being forced to find out, the right path, and to walk thereon"...He passes on to the statement that democracy " means despair of finding any Heroes to govern you, and contented putting up with the want of them." The chapter ends by stating, in eloquent prophetical language, that, when democracy shall have run its full course, the problem that will remain is " that of finding government by your Real-Superiors." Is there one word in all this to which Hitler would not subscribe?"

"Liberty he attached less importance to than economic security: in that a true man of the people. "Liberty, I am told, is a divine thing. Liberty, when it becomes the 'Liberty to die by starvation' is not so divine." It is here that Carlyle links up with the socialist trend of thought in his age."

"Carlyle appealed to the conscience and political interest of the rulers; Marx and Engels did their best to organise the workers to push themselves. (They must have been wonderfully disillusioned after a lifetime of entertaining such hopes of them.) Carlyle, with more immediate point, tells the ruling class that since they are in possession of the land, they owe it good governance; and if they did not do their duty, worse consequences would follow. He always had the vision of the French Revolution at the back of his mind."

"In the first place that appalling style, with its repetitiveness, its overemphasis, its perpetual note of adjuration, its shrillness and exaggeration, with no soft tones at all, the trumpets always braying and that rather discordantly: it makes him almost impossible to read... Yet for all his defects Carlyle was unmistakably a man of genius. He was that very unattractive kind of genius, a prophet. All prophets are misfits; and that throws a flood of light on the source and conditioning of their "message"."

"If you want one great name in English literature that sums up all that England does not stand for, a bitter spirit, sour, an extravagant, a worshipper of force and of the führerprinzip, it can be said in one name: Carlyle."

"He saw human life and earthly happenings against a vast background of mystic spiritualism, of eternities and immensities; he was an individualist, to whom the development of the race depends on great personal virtues, on heroic abnegation and self-sacrificing activity. His rugged independence made it difficult for his contemporaries to 'place' him; he resolutely refused to be labelled, or to be identified with any specific intellectual, literary or political creed."

"Carlyle, unquestionably, was the strongest moral force in the English literature of the nineteenth century... He laughed to scorn the pretensions of scientific materialism to undermine man's faith in the unseen; he heaped obloquy on the much vaunted science of political economy; he championed the spiritual against the material, demanded respect for justice and for the moral law and insisted on the supreme need of reverence—reverence, as Goethe had taught him, not merely for what is above us, but, also, for what is on the earth, beside us and beneath us."