“God gave to man the desire for knowledge for the sake of tormenting him.”
Arthur Schopenhauer’s Favorite Novels
A novel will be the higher and nobler the more inner and less outer life depicts… The art lies in setting the inner life into the most violent motion with the smallest possible expenditure of outer life: for it is the inner life which is the real object of our interest. – The task of the novelist is not to narrate great events but to make small ones interesting.
Georges Simenon on Human Nature
I have watched the awakening of intelligence in each of my four children. It is so quick, so impressive, that one wonders how such a progression can end . . . in what we are.…
Eugene Ionesco on Human Condition
In a book dedicated to Samuel Beckett, Les Cahiers de l’Herne there is a short text on Beckett by another great thinker: Eugene Ionesco. Here is a part of it: … It is not from…
Literature Books That Inspire John Gray’s Philosophy
The title of the post is really not the luckiest. What do I mean by “literature books that inspired John Gray’s philosophy”? From the moment I started reading John Gray’s books, starting with the Straw…
Leo Tolstoy’s Four Ways Out Of The Misery of Human Condition
If you are a fan of great spiritual confessions or autobiographies such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Reveries of the Solitary Walker or Augustine’s Confessions, a book that should delight you is Leo Tolstoy’s A Confession. It…
G. K. Chesterton & John Fowles on Mysteries and Staying Sane
Near the end of chapter 1 of The Magus, John Fowles writes the following: It poured with rain the day I left. But I was filled with excitement, a strange exuberant sense of taking wing.…
The 6 Most Insightful Philosophy Books About Human Nature [Updated 2021]
The six books presented here are chosen based on one criteria: the depth and elaboration of thoughts oh human nature and human condition. They are not strictly philosophical; for example La Rochefoucauld’s Maxims might be…
Henry Miller Quotes: Timeless Wisdom from “Stand Still Like The Hummingbird” (Part 1)
I am at my best when nobody knows me, nobody recognizes me. When I am just another nobody, in other words. Henry Miller, My Life as an Echo I finally got my hands on Henry…