Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul.

Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul.

The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire

The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire

Better not to be at all
Than not to be noble.

Better not to be at all
Than not to be noble.

There is nothing noble in being superior to some other person. The true nobility is in being superior to your read more

There is nothing noble in being superior to some other person. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self.

Be aristocracy the only joy:
Let commerce perish--let the world expire.

Be aristocracy the only joy:
Let commerce perish--let the world expire.

It is perhaps common in the world for individuals and nations to suffer for their noble qualities more than for read more

It is perhaps common in the world for individuals and nations to suffer for their noble qualities more than for their ignoble ones. For nobility is an occasion for pride, the most treacherous of sentiments.

Whoe'er amidst the sons
Of reason, valor, liberty and virtue,
Displays distinguished merit, is a noble
read more

Whoe'er amidst the sons
Of reason, valor, liberty and virtue,
Displays distinguished merit, is a noble
Of Nature's own creating.

War alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and imposes the stamp of nobility upon the peoples read more

War alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and imposes the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to make it.

Respect the man of noble races other than your own, who carries out, in a different place, a combat parallel read more

Respect the man of noble races other than your own, who carries out, in a different place, a combat parallel to yours -- to ours. He is your ally. He is our ally, be he at the other end of the world. Love all living things whose humble task is not opposed in any way to yours, to ours: men with simple hearts, honest, without vanity and malice, and all the animals, because they are beautiful, without exception and without exception indifferent to whatever "idea" there may be. Love them, and you will see the eternal in the glance of their eyes of jet, amber, or emerald. Love also the trees, the plants, the water that runs though the meadow and on to the sea without knowing where it goes; love the mountain, the desert, the forest, the immense sky, full of light or full of clouds; because all these exceed man and reveal the eternal to you.