Quoting from the greats

Date published: 2/1/2007

This week, we're going to try something a little different: idea theft.

I'm going to pick out some of my favorite quotes and we will discuss them a bit. People say things in many different ways, and my ways of saying things are hardly the only ways you should be listening to. Heck, someone might disagree with the above statement and still mean the same thing I did. Such is the silly, symbolic world of language.

While these quotes fit into an all-encompassing whole in my mind (or hole in my mind, depending on how you want to look at it), their different styles and articulations are different lenses through which similar truth is viewed. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Our first quote comes from the quote-master, a man who wrote his books in sometimes only paragraph-long aphorisms, begging to be quoted. This is none other than Friedrich Nietzsche, or, for those who've seen pictures of him, that intense-looking walrus-man.

"For what purpose humanity is there should not even concern us: why you are there, that you should ask yourself: and if you have no ready answer, then set for yourself goals, high and noble goals, and perish in pursuit of them! I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible. "

Nietzsche is a master of the italic font and exclamation point. He is also known to rock the dash pretty deftly. His excitement and passion are palpable in this passage (as in all his writing), and I just find it wonderfully inspiring.

Rarely do we get someone who feels as sincere as Nietzsche when he writes. One can imagine him walking in the fields of Switzerland, carrying his leather-bound notebook and scribbling such a thought after laughing aloud with ecstasy.

Our second quote comes from one of Nietzsche's heroes, Michel de Montaigne. Considered by many to be the founder of the essay, Montaigne wrote a collection of these essays (the French word means "attempts") on such wildly varying topics as "On Cannibalism," "Upon Some Verses of Virgil" and "On the Education of Children," from which this quotation comes:

Date published: 2/1/2007