rechtboese.ch

Es ist gar nicht so einfach, etwas zu tun, das nicht in Tätigkeit oder Beruf ausartet. Tätigkeit oder Beruf sind die Klippen des heutigen Geschlechts. Sie machen den Menschen passiv, sie verweben ihn in die große Leinewand der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, bis er zu vergessen anfängt, daß er der Mittelpunkt der Welt ist.

Statt zu bedenken, daß es nur auf ihn ankommt, erfindet er sich die isolationshemmende, gesellschaftsbildende und religionabtötende Vorstellung, es komme auf den Chef an, den Vorgesetzten oder die Schwiegermutter oder den Minister oder sonst irgendeine außenstehende Persönlichkeit. Das ist grundfalsch. Das verdirbt unsere Zeit. Das entgöttert uns und macht uns zur Kreatur, da wir vordem selber uns schufen, selber uns bildeten. Doch genug!

Unsere ganze Zivilisation ist für den Lebenden gemacht, und über den Lebenden hinaus für die Kommenden. Von der Natur haben die Menschen diese Ungerechtigkeit gegen die Lebenden gelernt, von der Natur, die mit Leichnamen düngt. Aber für Sterbende ist kein Raum unter Menschen. Die Toten haben ihren Platz, wo man sie rasch verscharrt. 
Aber dem Sterbenden ist keine Funktion gelassen.

It is admitted that the presence of people who refuse to enter in the great handicap race for sixpenny pieces, is at one an insult and a disenchantment for those who do.

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It is a sore thing to have laboured along and scaled the arduous hill-tops, and when all is done find humanity indifferent to your achievement.

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A fact is not called a fact, but a piece of gossip, if it does not fall into one of your scholastic categories. An inquiry must be in some acknowledged direction, with a name to go by; or else you are not inquiring at all, only lounging; and the workhouse is too good for you. It is supposed that all knowledge is at the bottom of a well, or the far end of a telescope. Sainte-Beuve, as he grew older, came to regard all experience as a single great book, in which to study for a few years ere we go hence; and it seemed all one to him whether you should read Chapter xx., which is the differential calculus, or in Chapter xxxix., which is hearing the band play in the gardens. As a matter of fact, an intelligent person, looking out of his eyes and hearkening in his ears, with a smile on his face all the time, will get more true education than many another in a life of heroic vigils.

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Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality; and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity. There is a sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scarcely conscious of living except in the exercise of some conventional occupations. Bring these fellows into the country or set them aboard a ship, and you will see how they pine for their desk or their study. They have no curiosity; they cannot give themselves over to random provocations; the do not take pleasure in the exercise of their faculties for its own sake; and unless Necessity lays about them with a stick, they will even stand still. It is no good speaking to such folk; the cannot be idle, their nature is not generous enough; and they pass those hours in a sort of coma, which are not dedicated to furious moiling in the gold-mill. When they do not require to go to office, when they are not hungry and have no mind to drink, the whole breathing world is a blank to them. If they have to wait an hour or so for a train, they fall into a stupid trance with their eyes open.

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Before he was breeched, he might have clambered on the boxes; when he was twenty, he would have stared at the girls; but now the pipe is smoked out, the snuff-box empty, and my gentleman sits bolt upright upon a bench, with lamentable eyes. This does not appeal to me as being Success in Life.

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There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty to be happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves, or when they are disclosed, surprise nobody so much as the benefactor.

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When nature is “so careless of the single life,” why should we coddle ourselves into the fancy that our own is of exceptional importance?

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The ends for which they gave away their priceless youth, for all they know, may be chimerical or hurtful; the glory and riches they expect may never come, or may find them indifferent; and they and the world they inhabit are so inconsiderable that the mind freezes at the thought.