The Unbearable Lightness of Being

If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness.
...
Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.

Rudeness, a virtue

One will see that I would not like to see rudeness undervalued, it is the most humane form of contradiction by far and, in the midst of modern tendermindedness, one of our foremost virtues.

The Opposite of a Décadent

And in what does one really recognize that someone has turned out well! In that a human being who has turned out well does our senses good: that he is carved out of wood at once hard, delicate and sweet-smelling. He has a taste only for what is beneficial to him; his pleasure, his joy ceases where the measure of what is beneficial is overstepped. He divines cures for injuries, he employs ill chances to his own advantage; what does not kill him makes him stronger. Out of everything he sees, hears, experiences he instinctively collects together his sum: he is a principle of selection, he rejects much. He is always in his company, whether he traffics with books, people or landscapes: he does honour when he chooses, when he admits, when he trusts. He reacts slowly to every kind of stimulus, with that slowness which a protracted caution and a willed pride have bread in him - he tests an approaching stimulus, he is far from going out to meet it. He believes in neither 'misfortune' nor in 'guilt': he knows how to forget - he is strong enough for everything to have to turn out for the best for him. Very well, I am the opposite of a décadent: for I have just described myself.

The Importance of Belief

You are my believers: but of what importance are all believers?
You had not yet sought yourselves when you found me. Thus, do all believers; therefore all belief is of so little account.
Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you...

Truth

How much truth can a spirit bear,
how much truth can a spirit dare?

Another Sunny Day

Another sunny day, I met you up in the garden

You were digging plants, I dug you, beg your pardon

I took a photograph of you in the herbaceous border

It broke the heart of men and flowers and girls and trees

Another rainy day, we're trapped inside with a train set

Chocolate on the boil, steamy windows when we met

You've got the attic window looking out on the cathedral

And on a Sunday evening bells ring out in the dusk

Another day in June, we'll pick eleven for football

We're playing for our lives the referee gives us fuck all

I saw you in the corner of my eye on the sidelines

Your dark mascara bids me to historical deeds

Now everybody's gone you picked me up for a long drive

We take the tourist route the nights are light until midnight

We took the evening ferry over to the peninsula

We found the avenue of trees went up to the hill

That crazy avenue of trees, I'm living there still

There's something in my eye a little midge so beguiling

Sacrificed his life to bring us both eye to eye

I heard the Eskimos remove obstructions with tongues, dear

You missed my eye, I wonder why, I didn't complain

You missed my eye, I wonder why, please do it again

The lovin is a mess what happened to all of the feeling?

I thought it was for real; babies, rings and fools kneeling

And words of pledging trust and lifetimes stretching forever

So what went wrong? It was a lie, it crumbled apart

Ghost figures of past, present, future haunting the heart

I'd rather be hated for who I am,

...than loved for what I'm not"

                                            --A. Lin