Literary Passages

Following are a couple of passages from books that I have really enjoyed:

"Nobody, up to now, has doubted that the 'good' man represents a higher value than the 'evil,' in terms of promoting and benifitting mankind generally, even taking the long view. But suppose the exact opposite were true. What if the 'good' man represents not merely a retrogression but even a danger, a temptation, a narcotic drug enabling the present to live at the expense of the future? More comfortable, less hazardous, perhaps, but also baser, more petty -- so morality itself would be responsible for man, as a species, failing to reach the peak of magnificence of which he is capable?"
-Friedrich Nietsche, The Geneology of Morals

"It is our noticing them that puts things in a room, our growing used to them that takes them away again and clears a space for us... The clock -- whereas at home I heard mine tick only a few seconds a week, when coming out of some profound meditation -- continued without a moments interruption to utter, in an unknown tongue, a series of observations which must have been most uncomplimentary to myself."
-Marcel Prouse, Within a Budding Grove