The Forehead Of The Morning

The Sicilian language is the only one in Europe that has no future tense.

... one that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning ...

We are not concerned with how to live in this day and age, but how to live against this day and age

A bore is a person who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company

Coke users are game for anything. They just have to go to the toilet first

Reading Clausewitz makes you take your own thoughts a little less seriously

All the good in the world might have already been done

Strict individuals do not exist, but unsharp observables in conjunction with almost repeatable and weakly disturbing measurements allow for the definition of unsharp individuals, which arguably suffices for all practical purposes

Realism is the idea that systems have properties regardless of whether they are observed or not observed. So the whole question is to know what property means.

The physicist, when he first imagines his life as a physicist, sees himself as someone who has an object outside of himself, say a clock, and will open it to understand how it works inside. His role is to discover the way that world works, but he must do this by altering it as little as possible

Many worlds theories have notorious difficulties handling probability: how can we say that one outcome is more probable than another if both actually occur? 

If nothing exists until it is observed, then there can be no observers to do the necessary observing, and nothing will ever exist

No agents, no probabilities

That which is generally if unconsciously acknowledged requires no name

We laugh every time a person gives the impression of being a thing

There is no theoretical account of humor that is not itself (on a higher level) somewhat funny and therefore incomplete

Motion which in ordinary language is called 'slow' has been interrupted by more moments of rest. Motion which ordinarily is called 'quick' has been interrupted by fewer moments of rest

Wagner's art is an appeal to inartistic people. It is calculated not to produce an artistic effect but an effect upon the nerves in general

Dramatists are constructive geniuses, they are not inventive and original as the epic poets are. Drama presupposes a coarser and more democratic public

Wagner's art is for those who are conscious of an essential blunder in the conduct of their lives. They feel that they have checked a great nature by a base occupation, or squandered it through idle pursuits, a conventional marriage, etc etc

Surplus power is the only proof of power

We are never understood – hence our authority

Errors of haste are seldom committed singly

In all ages the wisest have always agreed in their judgment of life: it is no good

The value of life cannot be estimated. A living man cannot do so, because he is a contending party. Nor can a dead man estimate it, for other reasons

Reality shows us a marvellous wealth of types, and a luxuriant variety of forms and changes. Yet every wretched moral loafer who comes along cries: ‘No! Man should be different!’

The whole domain of morality and religion may be classified under the rubric 'imaginary causes'

Wherever men try to trace responsibility home to anyone, it is the instinct of punishment which is active

Architecture is an oratory of power by means of form

Selfishness has as much value as the physiological value of the person who practises it. Its may be of great worth; it may be worthless and contemptible

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a whole book — what everyone else does not say in a whole book

Wagner and Cosima playfully addressed each other by Schopenhauerian love-names. He was Will (Will) and she was Vorstell (Representation)

The grandeur of the Greek heroes is shown by their lack of resentment at being the entertainment of the gods

Christianity embodies a disgust for life disguised as a belief in an ‘other’ or a ‘better’ life