Various

“ Nietzsche does not speak of the second advent of the Christ, of a recurrence of a single item of being, but of an eternal recurrence of all things, of all men, all moments and happenings of all life! Eternal return—to live life so that we would live each and all of it over again—to live it all so that it would be worth being not once but once again forever and forever—to be joint creator of a cosmos in which what is shall be fit—to be once yet again everlastingly—that is our, and Being’s, final flawless test, passing which, no Great White Throne may fill us with dismay! ”

“ This realistic man of modern poetry, the more really he is apprehended, stands before us as the embodiment of a necessity, a necessity that transcends the individual, yet lives and weaves in him, a necessity that enunciates the law of life in the destiny of the individual—power of darkness or dawn of a new day! But necessity, law of life, this is but another name for eternity. ”

“ Behind us lies the whole long grim past, a huge grave, with countless gravestones—the silent city of the dead which holds all that has been ever dear to the heart, all youth with their glad faces and forms, all glances of love, all divine moments. And all the dead compel all the living to conflict that the living may be controlled by life and not by death. From their graves the dead direct their deadliest shafts at the heart, at the living, to drag them down into the embrace of death. But something stirs in man that cannot be wounded, cannot be buried—man’s will. ”

“ All that lends true worth to the life that now is and is to be, is contained in this song. A present eternity we seek as the one thing needful. What we love must be near us, we must feel it and grasp it. Be it never so remote, it is the magic of love to bring the remote nigh our hearts, or, better still, to conquer space and time, so that there is no near and no far, only a life and love that is eternal!
To create such Ewigkeitsmenschen is the great goal of the new life, the prophecy of a new culture. ”

“ The only person who really thinks he “knows it all” is that misguided soul who is always asking for advice, always giving advice, and eternally ignoring both that which he gives and which he receives. He is as muddled as a clear pool that has been stirred up with a stick; but the ripples convince him that the stirring-up has touched many shores. The person to whom the stigma of “knowing it all” is most often attached is he who believes that he knows something about himself and very little about anybody else. ”

“ His treasures in time, will not his heart be there also, seeking its right and content there? Money ruling the world, time ruling money, why talk of eternity at all? A jolly hour, a sprig of mirth plucked by the way, is not that what the man of modern culture longs for, is it not enough to satisfy such longing as his? The earth overpopulated as it is with Augenblicksmenschen, as Nietzsche would say, and not with Ewigkeitsmenschen, why recall the love and hope of a long lost past? ”

“ Literature died, for literature can but praise life. Music died, for music can but praise life, and the lugubrious Dies Irae was heard in the fanes. What use had a world for art when the creed current among men was that life is a mean and miserable thing? So amid lugubrious chant and solemn procession the dusk thickened until the moment of deepest night was reached in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. In the fifteenth century the dawn began in Italy, and sculptors and painters turned their eyes toward Greece. ”

“ No weakness, no stumbling and falling, would we wish out of our life, because in the eternal illumination, power grows from all these experiences which enables us to mount above them, and gives us the victory in every bitter battle of life. No, our life is not lived from the right point of view, until we can sing it out in the song whose name is—Recurrence! We do not know the worth of the honor until we can dedicate to it that song whose meaning is: “In alle Ewigkeit!”
Ye say that a good cause will even sanctify war! I tell you, it is the good war that sanctifies every cause!—Nietzsche. ”

“ There is your modern poet. At first sight he seems to lack the illumination of that eternal light which never was on land or sea. You see the scorching sun beating upon the lone pilgrim as he plods through the burning sand to a goalless goal. You see faded, pale shadows. You do not meet with an idea that makes you feel that the poet yearns to interpret some eternal thought to this life of ours. ”

“ Then there flashes from the love of eternity a clear light which kindles the light of the future: we ourselves are this light! Our existence is the cloud hanging heavily over the hills, cloud with prophetic and positive light, from which redeeming beams shall break. ”

“ The natural history of art is this—first the artist, then the intelligent critic, then the appreciative public.
The function of the critic is to be a warrior for the artist. He must understand profoundly, he must be quick to detect and denounce artistic insincerity, he must declare the man who has attained the magic of real aesthetic rightness. The recognition of artistic excellence does not proceed by the scaffolding of academicism; it is instinctive, just as its creation was instinctive, emotional. The critic may, if he likes, oppose the artist, but his first duty is to make him known. ”

“ The coming of the moving-picture has only aggravated a problem which was previously acute. The crisis is here; for that we must be grateful to the films and the cheap magazines. Shall the rule of the people produce nothing better than a race of commercial craftsmen whose only thought is to make money by exploiting the least worthy instincts of the people? Or shall we produce at least a few courageous leaders who, speaking out of their own authority, shall lead the people after them? The faithful can, while they are waiting, keep alive the sacred fires and scan the horizon for the new prophet. ”

“ As it is, he will never have to see his great hopes dwindle. He will never have to bolster himself against disillusion.
Adonais has known the sweet of life—he has known the glory of youth, and the gay companionship of men, and the taste of good liquor in the mouth. He has known the joy of hard work, and the joy of roaming the streets, idle and curious, feeling the beauty of the world; he has known the joy of love. ”

“ But look again, and you will see that the keen observant eye of your artist serves an artist’s heart, seeks and finds eternity, and directs our slower vision to the eternal mystery he has found, the most inspiring of all mysteries—viz., greatness in the least and lowest, glory and beauty in the offensive and repellant, invaluable human worth and nobility in the depraved and downtrodden! ”

“ The present, with all the kaleidoscopic changes of life’s little day, makes ready its own recurrence, each part of time being but a ring linked with the next, the whole becoming the ring of eternity, the true marriage ring of humanity—the seal and stay of an eternal bond between man and Ever-creative, Ever-reincarnating Life! ”

“ We need men who survey the great connections of the world from peak to peak and overbridge them with their own souls, men who release destiny from its isolation and articulate it in the eternal cycle of human life, men whose own being contains all life according to its eternal substance, uttering their “yea and amen” to all that is called life as they blissfully surrender to the beauty of existence. ”

“ We may not forget that Professor Münsterberg, of Harvard, has written a great book bearing the impressive title, The Eternal Values. Nor may we be blind to the evidence that the thought so clearly and singularly espoused by the bearers of the better ideals of our new time is that of the imminent and constant eternity in the human heart, as unfolded by Spinoza and Schleiermacher and Nietzsche. Indeed, the question as to what values are eternal values, this eternity question, is central in our modern culture. ”

“ They were dead like the old man in the painting, save that they could still read the old books he could read no more, and still spoke and heard the old words he could speak and hear no more, and still passed the judgment of the dead, which he could no more pass, upon the mighty life of the world outside that throbbed and thundered and clamored and roared the wonderful anthem of human labor to the fatherly justice of the Sun. ”

“ Perfect love casts out fear. This is the eternity of love. The godless one would lead the German heart, and all hearts, from “Donnerworte” and “Schwerte,” from the fear of eternity to the love of eternity.
That is what Nietzsche would do. But is such an undertaking worth while in a day like ours? What does man care about eternity—his life so swift and short that he does not know on one day what he did or thought or wanted the day before? ”

“ Very superficial indeed would be our evaluation of modern life, most un-understood indeed would be the riddle of the soul of this life, did we ignore the ever clearer, ever mightier longing for eternity in this soul’s abyss, and the unification of all deeper spirits upon the high task of giving an eternal content to our culture. ”

“ Every fire goes out when its time comes. My grief is great, so great that when I look around me I say to myself: good heavens, what has become of everything else that’s large and great? Where has it all gone to? The forest is small, the house is small, the mountain is small, the whole earth is small, a mere poppy seed. You have to walk cautiously and look out, lest you reach the end and drop off. ”

“ Instead, life speaks only of itself and from itself. This is an abomination in the eyes of those who call themselves Ewigkeitsmenschen. They call it naturalistic, materialistic art. They upbraid an era in which a poet may dare to dissociate his poetry from the eternal ideal. Then you look again, you read more carefully, and you see the whole matter differently. The eternity that men claimed for their thought is indeed gone. But eternity itself, the eternity of life, that is not gone, that abides. ”

“ Church, monarchy, marriage, property, these are to my mind four old venerable institutions which mankind will have to reform from the foundations in order to be able to breathe freely. And of these marriage alone kills the individuality, paralyzes liberty and is the embodiment of a paradox. But the shocking thing about it is that humanity is still too coarse to be able to shake it off. The most emancipated writers, so called, still speak of marriage with a devout and virtuous air which maddens me. ”

“ Our spiritual world is tangled up in mechanism. No sooner does a fresh wind make itself known than we try to imprison it in a system, to impale it with a classification. Let us have done with these futilities. The important joy is to feel the mysterious and dynamic glory of the wind. We need in our criticism, as in our literature, more insight, more emotion, more of the power that is produced by virility and the corresponding female quality for which there is as yet no adequate name. The heightening of consciousness, the intensifying of essential values—these shall be our critical aims. ”

“ Then we would not only live our life over again precisely as we lived it, we would live it in the light of the eternity again, ever again. No error, and folly would we then wish out of our life, because in this love of eternity it is precisely from error and folly that the truth grows which lights our faith. ”

“ A daughter is born, and from some remote ancestor she inherits a love of the conventional. Can you picture to yourself what the suffering would be to see the daughter you love an outcast always from the things she cares for through what you call the grand passion—nothing more or less than the supreme selfishness of two human beings, no matter what you and the girl you are privileged to quote from “think you believe”? ”

“ And who, through love of eternity, controls future and past, finds the earth quivering with new creative words, is himself such a word, even binds good and evil together, making the evilest worthy of being the sauce of life. ”