A Higher Reach

     “O Lord Most High, Creator of the Cosmos, Spinner of Galaxies, Soul of Electromagnetic Waves, Inhaler and Exhaler of Inconceivable Volumes of Vacuum, Spitter of Fire and Rock, Trifler with Millennia — what could we do for Thee that Thou couldst not do for Thyself one octillion times better? Nothing. What could we do or say that could possibly interest Thee? Nothing. Oh, Mankind, rejoice in the apathy of our Creator, for it makes us free and truthful and dignified at last. No longer can a fool like Malachi Constant point to a ridiculous accident of good luck and say, ‘Somebody up there likes me.’ And no longer can a tyrant say, ‘God wants this or that to happen, and anybody who doesn’t help this or that to happen is against God.’ O Lord Most High, what a glorious weapon is Thy Apathy, for we have unsheathed it, have thrust and slashed mightily with it, and the claptrap that has so often enslaved us or driven us into the madhouse lies slain!”
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr, The Sirens of Titan, p. 215.

     Of all that is written I love only what a man has written with his blood. Write with blood, and you will experience that blood is spirit.
     It is not easily possible to understand the blood of another: I hate reading idlers. Whoever knows the reader will henceforth do nothing for the reader. Another century of readers — and the spirit itself will stink.
     That everyone may learn to read, in the long run corrupts not only writing but also thinking. Once the spirit was God, then he became man, and now he even becomes rabble.
     Whoever writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read but to be learned by heart. In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak: but for that one must have long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks — and those who are addressed, tall and lofty. The air thin and pure, danger near, and the spirit full of gay sarcasm: these go well together….
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, First Part, “On Reading and Writing,” pp. 152-153.

     God is a conjecture; but I desire that your conjectures should be limited by what is thinkable. Could you think a god? But this is what the will to truth should mean to you: that everything be changed into what is thinkable for man, visible for man, feelable by man. You should think through your own senses to their consequences. And what you have called world, that shall be created only by you: your reason, your image, your will, your love shall thus be realized. And verily, for your own bliss, you lovers of knowledge.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Ibid., Second Part, “Upon the Blessed Isles,” p. 198.

     “Believe me, friend Hellishnoise: the greatest events — they are not our loudest but our stillest hours. Not around the inventors of new noise, but around the inventors of new values does the world revolve; it revolves inaudibly.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Ibid., “On Great Events,” p. 243.

     I love the valiant; but it is not enough to wield a broadsword, one must also know against whom. And often there is more valor when one refrains and passes by, in order to save oneself for the worthier enemy. You shall have only enemies who are to bee hated, but not enemies to be despised: you must be proud of your enemy; thus I taught once before. For the worthier enemy, O my friends, you shall save yourselves; therefore you must pass by much — especially much rabble who raise a din in your ears about people and about peoples. Keep your eyes undefiled by their pro and con! There is much justice, much injustice; and whoever looks on becomes angry….
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Ibid., Third Part, #21, p. 321.