"This is good too, very good," he said, "listen to this: 'A man should be proud of suffering. All suffering is a reminder of high estate.' Fine! Eighty years before Nietzsche. But that is not the sentence I meant. Wait a moment, here I have it. This: 'Most men will not swim before they are able to.' Is not that witty? Naturally, they won't swim! They are born for the solid earth, not for the water. And naturally they won't think. They are made for life, not for thought. Yes, and he who thinks, what's more, he who makes thought his business, he may go far in it, but he has bartered the solid earth for the water all the same, and one day he will drown."
- from the preface of Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse.
No comments:
Post a Comment