Various

“ Too much of the stuff that passes as criticism is merely a “personal attitude,” a channel for expressing a prejudice for (often) something too big for the critic’s grasp. How often, too, does one grow a bit heart-weary on hearing some big personality, some fine intellect limit itself to one vision—its own.
Why not throw that attitude aside as an outworn garment, and welcome any force, simply and gladly, that can stimulate a spark of life-urge within us? A more courageous and intense love of truth, of men, of life. ”

“ Not to merit a reward, heavenly or earthly, will we give, will we assemble in ourselves the highest gifts, to lay them down as offerings upon the altars of men, but we will give to return thanks for all that we have undeservedly received. Bickering and calculating as to whether we have had our just dues, haggling over hopes which have not done what they promised, we will have none of this, but thanks, thanks, that as men we have gained some material from the saddest life, created joys out of its pains, wealth and worth out of its weakness and loss. ”

“ What impelled Nietzsche to his depreciation of this whole species of beneficence was something different, something deeper. All these gifts, great and numerical as they may be, are alms, and who has only alms to give to man is a poor man, and Zarathustra feels—well, listen to what he says to the saint!
Zarathustra answered: “I love men.”
“Why,” said the saint, “did I go to the forest and desert? Was it not because I loved men greatly over-much? Now I love God: men I love not. Man is a thing far too imperfect for me. Love of men would kill me.” ”

“ It is just into terrible inertia—this every day and every day humdrum conservatistic acceptance of things as they are—that The Little Review comes with its laughter of the gods; it is so joyous, so fearless, so sure of its purpose, and hurls itself against it with its vital young blood and its burning young heart, and pleads with it for a re-creation of ideals in living, life, and art, and a bigger comprehension of what life and art can mean to the individual and to the race, if the individual will only open his heart and mind to these limitless freedoms. ”

“ A thought of our own which we have acquired; a light of our own, which we have kindled in our innermost being; a lofty enthusiasm for what is great; an energetic aversion to all that is common and base,—this is our true wealth, the gift that enriches us while it is given to others. Poor indeed are the people who can give only alms; rich indeed are those who give themselves to men, who proffer their most intimate gifts to men, who say to men’s hidden hearts and hopes: Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, I give unto thee! ”

“ Havelock Ellis was writing and preaching these ideas longer than twenty-five years ago. In questions of love, marriage, and the possible beauty of human relations, she is a splendid, unhurrying pioneer. It would be impossible to measure the courage, the fine perseverance, it has taken to work on patiently and forcefully in the midst of leering society, infallible misunderstanding, and a great ocean of evil-mindedness. What daring! to speak plainly of the beauty of love-passion. And how hopeless! Here, evolution endlessly proves itself a laggard process. ”

“ You may be rich, immeasurably rich, not for yourself indeed, but for others, that you may communicate to them, give to them and yet never give out! Be debtor of life, that in your poverty you may make many rich. Be debtor of love, that you may never be able to pay your great eternal debt. Confessing and obligating yourself to such debt, your life gains that eternal worth which increases the more you spend of it, which receives, the more you give of it. Poor, yet having all things; poor, yet making many rich—also sprach Paulus-Nietzsche. ”

“ We may not covet either our neighbor’s automobile or his wife, but frequently we do covet, in spite of good intentions, the happiness that he derives from that automobile and that wife. Particularly weak are we when we look down love’s highway and see what we believe to be limitless and ideal joy. The little orbit in which we move seems sadly askew, and it takes a book like Mary Austin’s Love and the Soul Maker to make us understand that all the topsy-turviness of the present is but the labor-pain of a saner, truer, happier future. ”

“ But he must create this wealth himself. He must wrest wealth from all values. He must coerce all things to himself and into himself. All these things must stream back from the well of living water within him as the gifts of his love. Insatiably does the soul seek after treasures and gems because her virtue is insatiable in her will to give. This is the soul’s thirst to be an offering and a gift, and hence she thirsts to house all wealth in herself.
Vulgar souls give what they have, noble souls what they are—this is the well known saying that mirrors the meaning of Nietzsche. ”

“ If, with freer vision and with broader heart, your eye has become alert and keen for human folly and lamentation, and these attack you as cowardice and disgust of life, then you take this as a gift that you will not have gratis, you will give something as counter-gift and thanks: a more energetic will, that will go to the bottom of folly and grief, with the fineness of feeling which has been bestowed upon you—you will dig deeper, search out more earnestly the genuine values of life, so that your cowardice and your ennui at life may become a new strength and a new joy for life. ”

“ If you feel your hands tied, if the world seems a prison at whose bars you lunge, but whose rods you cannot break, if then a horrible feebleness befalls you, and your best will confesses that you are too weak,—then take this, too, as a gift for which you learn to give thanks, for even the restriction of your power creates a new freedom, the pressure of the impossible ceases with your learning, thus, the possible, the necessary, of your life. ”

“ There are several young people whose love affairs become mutually mixed, but ultimately untangled—all of which is done by means of conversations, jerky, exclamatory, unrestrained. This method is true to life because such chatter is exactly the way modern people talk, but nevertheless our ears ache with it, and we find ourselves longing for a paragraph of straightaway description or narration, which never comes.
The frivolous and empty atmosphere is all well enough for a relish, but it is unsatisfying as a total, particularly from one who can give too much that is worth while. ”

“ But his soul was filled with impatience and longing for those he loved; for he had still many gifts for them. For this is the hardest: to shut one’s open hand because of love.
It is the business of the very few to be independent: it is the privilege of the strong, and whoever attempts it, even with the best regret but without being obliged to do so, proves that he is probably not only strong, but also daring beyond measure. He enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies a thousand-fold the dangers which life itself already brings with it ”

“ True, an artist reveals his best in his artistic creation; you discover autobiographical contours of Goethe in Faust and Werther; Tolstoy’s restless searchings are mirrored in Besukhov, in Levin, in Nekhludov; Zarathustra and Ecce Homo allow you a glimpse into the very crater of Vesuvius-Nietzsche. Yet through this medium you see the artist in his royal garb, so to speak, in his regalia; he seldom appears to you in his unceremonious morning-gown and slippers, to let you contemplate him not at his best but in his quotidian intimate aspect. ”

“ Real civilization means for us a right conventionalizing of our original state of nature, just such a conventionalizing as the true artist imposes on natural forms. The law-giver and reformer of social customs must have, however, the artist soul, the artist eye in directing this process, if the light of the race is not to go out. So, art is not alone the expression, but in turn the great conservator and transmitter of the finer sensibilities of a people. ”