A collection of quotes by Jos.
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An unemployed existence is a worse negation of life than death itself.
Jos
Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be.
Rancor is an outpouring of a feeling of inferiority.
This leads us to note down in our psychological chart of the mass-man of today two fundamental traits: the free expansion of his vital desires, and, therefore, of his personality; and his radical ingratitude towards all that has made possible the ease of his existence. These traits together make up the well-known psychology of the spoilt child.
To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.
Liberalism -- it is well to recall this today -- is the supreme form of generosity; it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities and hence it is the noblest cry that has ever resounded in this planet. It announces the determination to share existence with the enemy; more than that, with an enemy which is weak.
There may be as much nobility in being last as in being first, because the two positions are equally necessary in the world, the one to complement the other.
The good is, like nature, an immense landscape in which man advances through centuries of exploration.
An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.
The mass believes that it has the right to impose and to give force of law to notions born in the caf
Life is an operation which is done in a forward direction. One lives toward the future, because to live consists inexorably in doing, in each individual life making itself.
Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.
The essence of man is, discontent, divine discontent; a sort of love without a beloved, the ache we feel in a member we no longer have.
I am I plus my surroundings and if I do not preserve the latter, I do not preserve myself.
Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do.
Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt.
By speaking, by thinking, we undertake to clarify things, and that forces us to exacerbate them, dislocate them, schematize them. Every concept is in itself an exaggeration.
Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort.
The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities, my capacities.
We distinguish the excellent man from the common man by saying that the former is the one who makes great demands on himself, and the latter who makes no demands on himself.