Philosopher's contemplation continuation p5

“The insatiable will always finds a way to detain its creatures in life and compel them to live on, by means of an illusion spread over things.” “Knowledge kills action, for action requires a state of being in which we are covered with the veil of illusion.” It is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified. “[The art of ] tragedy transforms those repulsive thoughts about the terrible or absurd nature of existence into representations with which man can live.” “One has to take a somewhat bold and dangerous line with this existence: especially as, whatever happens, we are bound to lose it.” “We labor at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life because it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.” Life has not been devised by morality: it wants deception, it lives on deception. “Consider the cattle, grazing as they pass you by: they do not know what is meant by yesterday or today, they leap about, eat, rest, digest, leap about again, and so from morn till night and from day to day, fettered to the moment and its pleasure or displeasure, and thus neither melancholy nor bored. This is a hard sight for man to see; for, though he thinks himself better than the animals because he is human, he cannot help envying them their happiness – what they have, a life neither bored nor painful, is precisely what he wants, yet he cannot have it because he refuses to be like an animal…” “Amazingly, the most obvious question fails to occur to our scholars: what is their work, their hurry, their painful frenzy supposed to be for?” “Every tradition grows ever more venerable — the more remote its origin, the more confused that origin is. The reverence due to it increases from generation to generation. The tradition finally becomes holy and inspires awe.” “To escape boredom, man works either beyond what his usual needs require, or else he invents play, that is, work that is designed to quiet no need other than that for working in general.” “Christianity came into existence to lighten the heart, but now it needs to burden the heart to start with so it can lighten it afterwards. Consequently, it will perish.” In reality, hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man. “A few hours’ mountain climbing make of a rogue and a saint two fairly equal creatures.” “Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.” The first opinion that occurs to us when we are suddenly asked about a matter is usually not our own, but only the customary one, appropriate to our caste, position, or parentage; our own opinions seldom swim near the surface. “A man far oftener appears to have a decided character from persistently following his temperament than from persistently following his principles.”