FROM THE ZURAU APHORISMS
1
The true path is along a rope, not a rope suspended way up in the air, but rather only just over the ground. It seems more like a tripwire than a tightrope.
6
The decisive moment of human development is continually at hand. This is why those movements of revolutionary thought that declare everything preceding to be an irrelevance are correct — because as yet nothing has happened.
11/12
The variety of views that one may have, say, of an apple the view of the small boy who has to crane is neck for a glimpse of the apple on the table, and the view of the master of the house who picks up the apple and hands it to a guest.
20
Leopards break into the temple and drink all the sacrificial vessels dry; it keeps happening; in the end, it can be calculated in advance and is incorporated into the ritual.
22
You are the exercise, the task. No student far and wide.
30
Goodness is in a certain sense comfortless.
35
There is no possessing, only an existing, only an existing that yearns for its final breath, for asphyxiation.
36
Earlier, I didn't understand why I got no answer to my question, today I don't understand how I presumed to ask a question. But then I didn't presume, I only asked.
41
The disproportion of the world seems fortunately to be merely numerical.
42
To let one's hate — and disgust-filled head slump onto one's chest.
48
Belief in progress doesn't mean belief in progress that has already occurred. That would not require belief.
52
In the struggle between yourself and the world, hold the world's coat.
62
The fact that the only world is a constructed world takes away hope and gives us certainty.
69
Theoretically there is no consummate possibility of felicity: to believe in the indestructible in oneself, and then not to go looking for it.
77
Dealings with people bring about self-scrutiny.
78
The spirit only becomes free at the point where it ceases to be invoked as a support.
90
Two alternatives: either to make oneself infinitesimally small, or to be so. The former is perfection and hence inaction; the latter a beginning and therefore action.
93
No psychology ever again!
95
Evil is sometimes like a tool in your hand, recognized or unrecognized, you are able, if you have the will to do it, to set it aside, without being opposed.
96
The joys of this life are not its joys, but our fear of climbing into a higher life; the torments of this life are not its torments, but our self-torment on account of this fear.
Schocken Books
