“Live As On A Mountain. Let Men See.”

“Men exist for the sake of one another”

[...] Consider that everything is opinion, and opinion is in thy power. [...] He who does not know what the world is, does not know where he is. And he who does not know for what purpose the world exists, does not know who he is, nor what the world is. But he who has failed in any one of these things could not even say for what purpose he exists himself. What then dost thou think of him who avoids or seeks the praise of those who applaud, of men who know not either where they are or who they are?

 [...] Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today inquisitive, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill. [...] Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them. [...] Very little is needed to make a happy life. [...] Know the joy of life by piling good deed on good deed until no rift or cranny appears between them. [...] Have I done something for the general interest? Well then I have had my reward. Let this always be present to thy mind, and never stop doing such good.  [...] He who fears death either fears to lose all sensation or fears new sensations. In reality, you will either feel nothing at all, and therefore nothing evil, or else, if you can feel any sensations, you will be a new creature, and so will not have ceased to have life. [...] Live as on a mountain. Let men see, let them know a real man who lives according to nature. If they cannot endure him, let them kill him. For that is better than to live thus." - Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121 – murdered 180 AD): Meditations

Eternal Recurrence of the Same | Friedrich Nietzsche

» I am all the names in history. «

» What, if some day or night, a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life, as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh … must return to you — all in the same succession and sequence — even this spider and this moonlight between the trees and even this moment and I myself. 

The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over again and again — and you with it, speck of dust!’ Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god, and never have I heard anything more divine!’ If this thought were to gain possession of you, it would change you as you are, or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, “do you want this once more and innumerable times more?” would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal? «

Aphorism § 341 - Die fröhliche Wissenschaft

Friedrich W. Nietzsche

1882