Nicotine is one of the greatest gifts and the greatest scourge of modern life: the devil invented it, against boredom, and man cannot do anything about it as long as there is boredom on earth. It's a strong coin poison, and it's also stupid. Every time I smoked a lot of cigarettes one day so I could work, the next day I'm half stupid and can't work. In addition, it can cause anxiety, sweating, palpitations and other life-threatening complications in our lives. Nothing can be done about it. Tobacco smoke covers the world with a kind of beneficial mist; the ordinary intoxication of the moments is this bitter happiness and oblivion - who is strong enough to renounce it, or renounce it a moment earlier than absolutely necessary? Because one day it is necessary... The heart, the optic nerves, the stomach, the intestines, everything rebels against it. Then we throw away the bitter cob, we gain weight right away, we become healthy, fat and unhappy. But until that! It's as if we're sucking the bitter tea of some evil and yet blissful ancestor all day long! And life needs both play and poison; otherwise it's just health and exercise, not life.
During the air raid, I learned that the feeling of fear that struck me in the first quarter of an hour at the sound of the bombs exploding nearby is much more humiliating and unworthy of a human being, and it is not worth surrendering our souls and nerves to. That's why I taught myself - which is the only true meaning of all our intentions and thoughts - that you shouldn't be afraid of anything, because those who are afraid at the moment of danger have learned, read and thought to no avail before, in the peaceful period of life, despite the experience filtered by human life about the value and naturalness of death. He who is afraid cheats: he cheated himself throughout his life, because he did not really prepare for death with a strong soul. Therefore I trained myself never again to fear anything that might threaten me from men or nature; I only fear what I may sin against myself; I fear the word of my conscience; for our actions follow.
The crowd, as a social force, has become so powerful in my time that there is no cave, attitude, or attitude where we can retreat from it. Of course, the one who is offended by the fact of the crowd and takes refuge in a whiny behavior of some petty and squeamish individualism is unreasonable and foolish. The crowd is here, like the rain, the wind, the earth. He has to be reckoned with. But Aristotle says: "The great multitude shows a spirit of slavery and follows the life of brutes." This statement was made two and a half thousand years ago; it is more valid today than ever.
In our time, the human audience has reached such hopeless proportions that there is no longer any pedagogical method that can effectively fight against it. The reflexes of the crowd are no longer human in the sense in which we came to know the human in the sense of Christian education and classical ancient education. You can't argue with them; like arguing with drunkards or lunatics who only stammer out their obsessions in response. Their emotions cannot be influenced; they feel differently than people have until now. Compassion, compassion is distorted in their souls; greed, bloodthirst reign in their nerves, the unlimited and greedily foaming, sad desire for pleasure: Human commonness has no limits anymore. There is one more reason for every anthropomorphic person to stubbornly and courageously stay where they are, to think and feel as befits a human.
There is only one satisfaction, yes, only one satisfaction in life: to do the quiet, sideline, but professionally accomplished work for which your inclinations and abilities have been assigned, not to run away from this work into a vain "role", to accept it with the peace of mind that your work is up to the opportunity it was accurate and perhaps useful to people. This is the most that life can give.
After the age of forty, it is advisable to inhale cigarette smoke through smoke filters. These smoke filter snuffs filled with a mineral insert only absorb a small proportion of the nicotine and the combustion products of cigarette paper, but they still help to some extent. They do not protect against nicotine poisoning, but they relieve morning cough and mucous hoarseness. I recommend to everyone.
I've never understood men who can lust and long for a woman. They say, “What are you doing now? Does he love someone else?" Or: "Why isn't he with me?" Or: "How long will it be mine?" These feelings are unknown to me in their true, tragic significance, at least they are unknown now, I cannot say of course that I did not go through such pathological crises when I was younger. But now I cannot understand that someone can commit suicide in a because of a woman's infidelity or coldness. After puberty, during my manhood, I lived with women as kind and necessary companions, who sometimes joined me in the great tasks of life in enduring the very difficult fate, the human fate. But otherwise I did not expect loyalty from them, nor special kindness, nor sacrifices. I was delighted with their tenderness, the exciting and soothing intoxicating power of their bodies, their quick wits, their instinctive and sometimes heroic tempers, I watched their tenacious and meticulous skill as they tried to record human feelings - with insane childishness. But when they left my room or my life, I didn't think That's my nature, and I think that's the only decent behavior oh man; and I am grateful to my fate for blessing me with such a nature.
In times like ours, when everything happens not only horizontally, but also vertically, one does the right thing if one learns to live with the caution of a front-line soldier. Because being smart, not petty, but calculating movements, caring about space, situation, danger, acting in the direction of the least resistance, not attacking ahead of time, but brave and calm at the moment of attack is clear courage. Being a soldier in battle is a dangerous task, but it is no less dangerous to be a citizen in the age of total, vertical assaults of life. And we live in such an era. Therefore, let us calculate our movements, day and night, at every possible opportunity, so that in the great struggle, which is appointed for warriors, we do not waste our strength unnecessarily. We must fight day and night. Our work, our entertainment, our reading, our concepts of life, our knowledge and experiences, all these are weapons in this struggle. So let's take our place in the modest and dangerous cover, in the lair of our lives, watch the enemy's every move, and don't waste our energy or ammunition prematurely. And in the meantime, if the sky is starry and the enemy is sleeping, let's look at the stars too.
You have to learn to listen, and this is perhaps the hardest part. One always speaks more with one word. You can't listen enough. Also because all talk is hopeless. Even the written and recorded word is so hopeless! Look around the world: what was the use of the many written words, advice, persuasive attempts? He didn't use anything. What can you expect from telling someone something? You can hope for nothing. That's why listen, always listen more and more consistently than you speak, don't try to artificially convince others, because that's impossible - the truth only has some educational power if you discover it yourself - and don't want to show off that you know something. I say it again, listen. In peace and war, listen. And if you have spoken, rinse your mouth afterwards. And when you have spoken wrongly and you are tormented by guilt, do not push this guilt away; face it, hard; say: “I have spoken again, and I have spoken improperly, too much, impulsively, or vainly; that's how it happened, I can't help it; but in the future I will be tougher and listen." Listen, because God listens too, and he knows why? It is wisest to listen.
Know, with all the strength of your heart and consciousness, that you cannot count on anyone in moments of crisis. There is no relative, friend, loved one that you really know; at the big moment, everyone drops the mask, shows their raw selfishness, and you are left alone when you most need someone to stand by you and help you with a kind word and an encouraging look. You don't expect more from anyone; but you don't get that in danger either.
Live gently and patiently among people, but do not rely on anyone's help. Raise yourself to be lonely and strong. Know that no one will ever help you. And don't sweat it. You are human, so you cannot expect anything from people; and this is natural.
The writer should not expect anything from the world. Everything that the world can give - money, wealth, recognition, order of merit, social awards - affects his work, his mental balance, and the moral power of his work. The writer should not want to be a social authority; his work loses exactly as much moral weight as it rises in social esteem. The writer cannot have any title or rank; the only title or rank he can have is his name. And his only wealth in the world is his work. And do not collect money, nor movable and immovable valuables; organize your life in such a way that you have more and more freedom in your work, that you don't have to write a single line that you don't feel like writing, and that you only accept payment that, according to your best faith, you can consider as the value of your written work, regardless of compromise, social or fashionable aspects. And don't care if you "like" what he writes or not - and don't care what will happen to his work during his life and after his death. The writer should remain poor. And if sometimes the gold is scattered after him with a shovel, he should have the strength to turn away from success. And if they put a greedy hand on your chest, reject the intruders with one hand. Never politicize; always judge; and, of course, judge yourself first and most strictly. Otherwise, you have no right to call yourself a writer.
The human substance is poisonous and should only be consumed with the utmost care and caution. The human substance that lives in the souls of men; which forms the substance of their souls; it is the intangible and yet real substance that causes them not to be trees, not animals, but men. This stuff is like poison. This is a harmful substance. Man is not a harmless creature, but dangerous, like cyanide or a fly-killing hawk. A person does not poison his fellow man with the substance of his soul only if he has no way to do so, if the experiment is dangerous or difficult for him. But as soon as he has the means to do so - even without interest, purpose or profit - he immediately sprinkles his poison in the world. Human matter is so poisonous that only the smallest doses can be tolerated without mortal danger. Only with reason can you become somewhat indifferent, with reason and the awareness of hopelessness. Because man is hopeless, it is not possible to train him for his true duties, it is not possible to neutralize the ancient poison in his soul. Man is the danger of the world.
In order for a human creation to be perfect and to dazzle and delight people with its timeless brilliance, something else is needed in addition to talent, theme, and perfection of design. There is also some fairy element in the masterpiece, which shines through the whole thing with its wonderful light, as gently and hauntingly as the northern light shines in the summer night, unreal and yet luminous, because you can see and read next to it. The masterpiece must be real, precise, smart, purposeful, proportionate, carefully crafted, faithfully executed - and there must be something else. It should also be fairy-like. And with all self-awareness, be self-forgetful. It should be built according to engineering rules, but there should also be chaos in it, for a coffee spoonful of the primordial nebula, which dusts in the wake of the constellations, with golden grains. Without fairy tales, there are only "great" or "perfect" works. A true masterpiece is sometimes not so perfect. It just radiates, "just a dream" is also in it, the light of the stars, the fairy. And this is the part of the task, when the artist can no longer help his work; the last brush stroke, the fairy, is done by God.
I could never imagine God, probably because he is not human and earthly, but divine. When man imagines and expresses God in the form of a picture or statue, he always imagines and expresses some kind of bearded ancestor, a kind of tribal chief, with a lot of hair, in a peplum, with a woolly beard, like a rabbi or a French school inspector. This is how the Greeks and Romans depicted Zeus and Jupiter, and this is how Christianity depicts the Father. This representation has always confused me and filled me with a sense of shame. I could not feel such an anthropomorphic God, who has a wavy beard and a nose, which he obviously blows from time to time, as a real God. Among the representations of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, only the idea of the Holy Spirit seemed worthy of God. God created and administers the world, and therefore it is certain that the world also resembles Rea - but God cannot be human, because otherwise he would have to go to the barber. This single-mindedness always irritated me. My God has no beard or peplum. It is behind all things as Power and Intelligence. For me, God is the Intention that permeates the world. This Intention is conscious. That is why I can talk to him, without false ideas, just as the tiny mind talks to the ultimate, capital Mind.
Because people are completely unpredictable. Even if you know a person for thirty years, you cannot predict how he will behave in success or in bad luck. You know a person's character, his everyday habits, his mind, his heart, his reflexes - the person remains wonderful and mysterious, even if he is otherwise half-stupid. Perhaps he responds to the blow with screams and shouts of joy, success sometimes breaks him and depresses him. Sometimes people start to get angry for quite inexplicable reasons; for example, they have endured grief, humiliation, financial, physical or moral misfortune, but then in a moment they start murdering or snarling and screaming because the tram doesn't come on time or their shoes are tight. Balanced, moderate people respond to some roadside remark in a very special way: as if you have touched a secret wound in their being. There are those who can't stand the ringing of the phone and ask for a different hand before being led to the prison. Animals, stones, and plants are also more regular and predictable, and storms and earthquakes are more reliable than a person. People are wonderful.
It is not only advisable to consciously change and modify life situations, but also the lifestyle. Sometimes even an insignificant journey or a change of location of a few kilometers can get us out of our usual, sometimes excruciating and unbearable, helplessness. Sometimes it is enough to travel to Esztergom, and we have different thoughts about life, we see our tasks more clearly. Travel changes ideas, the French say. The different room where we lay our heads to sleep, the strange faces, the changed kitchen, all of this starts a kind of reconciliation and refreshment process in our souls.
This is exactly how we need to change the rhythm of our lives. Not violently. Not on a whim. But consciously, instinctively, when we feel that we have stopped in a certain way of life. If you have stubbornly woken up at dawn, arrange your sleep and wake-up cycle by waking up in the morning for a while. If you go to bed early and feel that your life has reached a dead end, go to bed after midnight. If you have been doing your most important work in the morning, if you can, try to switch the rhythm of your work to the afternoon period. Those who are tired in the evening should rest during the day and work at night. Those who napped after lunch should now sleep half an hour before lunch. Just don't stiffen up in life situations, just don't wear slippers and grow a beard, and always make sure that the creative forces of the world find you in constant readiness and expectation! It doesn't take much. This is the art of the careful interplay of hearing, heart, attention, instinct and intellect. And one of the secrets of life.
Because there is something more and more valuable than knowledge, reason, yes, more precious than goodness. There is a kind of tact that is the highest level of human performance. The kind of tenderness that is invisible, colorless and tasteless, and yet indispensable, like boiled water in an infectious and epidemic region, without which a person dies of thirst or becomes ill. That tact and tenderness, which, like hearing some wonderful music, forever warns a person, what is much and what is little in human things, what is free and what is excessive, what hurts the other and what is so good that we become enemies if we give it to him and cannot thank you? This is the tact that not only knows the right words and emphasis, but also the tenderness of listening. There are rare people who know this. Those who have distilled and ennobled goodness, which is always selfishness, and never cause pain with their friendship or sympathy, are not pregnant with their approach, never say a word more than the other can bear, and as if they had separate, very delicate hearing organs, are they carried in such a way that what can hurt the other person? And they can always talk about something else. And they hear everything that is dangerous among people as keenly as the electric listening ears detect the invisible enemy machine birds approaching at high altitude, among the clouds. He perceives tact and tenderness superhumanly. Yes, these two abilities are superhuman.
Being a guest is one of the most delicious and exhausting forms of slavery. Because the housemates uselessly say: "With us, the guest does what he wants! Get up and lie down when you want! He eats what he wants! You don't have to worry about the housemates!..." – of course, the guests and housemates don't do anything other than take care of each other from morning to night, observe each other's wishes and lifestyles, adapt to each other. And yet the housemates are freer because they are at home, acting with a kind of established order of terror on the guest, who is forced to behave as if he is doing what he wants from morning to night, even though he is doing nothing else than adapting to the household. It is strangely rude to invite someone to stay in the countryside for the whole day or even the night, for several days. This is an assassination against the taste, habits, time, hobbies, work and discipline of a free man. "Don't wear anything but a nightgown and a toothbrush!" - say the housemates; and lo and behold, you have already been exiled from your life for a day or two, deprived of your freedom of action and often even of thought.
Being a guest is slavery. It is extremely rude and selfish to invite someone as a guest. Even accepting a dinner invitation is a burdensome, boring and tiring duty. It is best to meet our friends in restaurants at nine in the evening and then go home at eleven, so that everyone has paid their own bill. Everything else is assassination and selfishness.
Of course, it doesn't hurt to have a certain work plan. Just don't artificially set this plan. One day, this work plan will emerge from waiting, studies, inclinations, the order of ordinary days and the inspiration of extraordinary moments. Never give in to tempting ideas. The idea flashes, and with certain skills, you can actually build something out of it, which has a shape, which is as if it were a real work of art. But it remains an idea, even if you execute it perfectly. Real work, personal and fatal, is different. You have to wait until everything has matured and followed before you actually write or do what you are supposed to do. In such cases, remain relentless and consistent with yourself and your work. But the main condition for all intellectual creative work is the mental and nervous state that Goethe called Schauder *. If you don't get this shiver while working, you will only create something appropriate and regular. Without Schauder, there is no work.
You have a role that is yours alone; and this is your contract with God. But you are also a component in the great structure of the world, not much more, not more important than a screw or a wire, which is one of the auxiliary tools of some secondary and subordinate process in this infinitely complicated machine. Never forget your role, which is yours alone and personal, and never forget that you do not count for much more in the Whole than a part, bolt or wire.
Find out how to make a holiday out of every day, even the most ordinary, bleak weekday, if only for a moment! With a kind word. By fair action. With a polite gesture. You don't need much for a human holiday. You can sneak some magical element into every day, you can treat yourself to a fifteen-hour experience of the truth of a book, the satisfaction of learning some obscure concept, comforting or exploring your surroundings. Life will be richer, more festive and more human if you fill a few minutes of everyday life with the extraordinary, the human, the benevolent and the polite; so with the holiday.
You must know that people cling to the mediocre, the confusing and the buttery, the illusions and the clean half-knowledge, i.e. the uneducated, for a reason. Because education means uncovering and enduring the truth - the true knowledge of all things. And the truth is always very hard to bear. Education, that is, knowledge of reality and truth, requires extraordinary courage. A person knows the truth with his whole heart, destiny, and being. A person can only be cultivated for life and death. People are always more willing to settle for a veiled explanation of some unpleasant truth, i.e., ignorance, than the raw, simple, basic truth that is education. People secretly know that everything that is true and human, therefore real, is conceived in blood, sweat and passion, but they prefer to kiss, with downcast eyes, that the children will be brought by the stork. This makes it more attractive and comfortable. But the freshman does not bring education.
Whenever the temptation comes and speaks to you, which promises friendship, passion, confidentiality, a bond, know: the material from which such a bond is made is perishable, because it is human material. What today is an oath, tomorrow is a grudge, what today is passion and desire, tomorrow an incomprehensible and distorted memory, what today is loyalty, tomorrow a sad duty. Temptation smiles uselessly, promises, hopes. The desire to share the loneliness of life with someone completely and trustingly lives in your heart until death. You can't do that because you're human. Always know this.
Before you form an opinion on the extraordinary, throw it into the mill of everyday use and grind it there for a while. Have you met an extremely beautiful woman whose beauty blinds you and amazes you? Just watch this extraordinary beauty for a while in the refraction of everyday light, and you will learn at once that all beauty is hopeless and sad, not worth caring about. Are you dazzled by a person's extraordinary spirit? Examine what he said in everyday practice, and you will understand at once that wisdom is not extraordinary and incomprehensible, but something very simple and natural. Have you met someone with extraordinary power? Just think how fragile this man's power is, on Monday and Tuesday - he can be killed by an assassin, a political trend, or even a tiny infectious microbe! Have you encountered extraordinary human kindness? Then marvel and remain in awe. But that doesn't happen to you often.
Write down and pronounce every word in such a way that it can withstand the test of worldly reality. Perhaps this is the secret of writing and life. Because the word is useless in the literary volume if it cannot withstand the atmospheric pressure of reality in the secular volume.
Like a sailor whose ship has been caught in a great storm, and at the same time he sees that the ropes of the sails are strained, the great wings of the sails swell dangerously from the maddened breath of the orca, the wires crack and crackle, and on the raging and dancing ship deck, amid the roaring and crashing waves, swaying , rushes to the sails and ropes with the last of his strength in order to relax from all this: you too know, in the dangerous and stormy moments of your life, that you cannot bear the great tensions, you have to relax the human bonds and relationships, otherwise everything will break and tear. In such cases, throw everything aside: work, human aspects, lifestyle, and trust yourself to fate and the storm. Such storms arise in every life and in every stage of life, when everything that was binding until then cannot withstand the tension of the storm of passionate emotions. Relax and wait. The storm will stop in the morning.
It is not at all certain that the Spartans, when they threw the children with careless bodies from the Tarpeian rock*, did not throw down strong, powerful souls at the same time as the emaciated bodies. I have always loved stunted children, and felt not only a natural tenderness for such defenseless, small, pale creatures, but also a certain respect and attraction. It is not at all certain that the greatest efforts of humanity are performed by wrestlers with perfect bodies, flawless gladiators, yes, I think that the stunted ones also have work to do in the world, and perhaps their work is not so last. Of course, I'm not saying that we breed the stunted; all I'm saying is, let's leave it up to life to decide what it has planned for people, and let's believe that even the puny can have something to do in our world. Perhaps life has singled them out for such huge tasks, the burden of which would make a gladiator crumble. So the Tarpej rock is never a solution. Life knows more precisely than the Spartans who it keeps as collaborators for its goals and who it discards.
A liar always talks fast, grinding and fighting. He is very careful to embellish the side detail of the lie with every shade of verisimilitude. He meticulously describes the clothing of someone he has not met, but lies about him that he has just seen. Desperately lies like a good student who blows the lesson.
A liar has no real imagination; most of the time he lies without a purpose; he doesn't know that the simplest reality is much more interesting than anything he can make up.
Be careful not to miss the moment, which is only your moment, the fatefully appointed period of the execution of your work. Convenience, fluff, cowardice, and laziness sometimes delay the completion of your task, even though you know deep in your heart that time is saturated with what he wants to say through you, and you cannot miss a single moment, because someone else will say it for you, and not the way you want to say it. you believe it is good and true. In science, art, literature, and public life, there are such urgent moments when a truth is ripe and must be spoken. And if you feel that fate has fatefully chosen you for this task, don't delay like the bad actor who misses the end of the scene.
Not only do you have work, you also have time. And within that time, you have your moment, which should not be missed.
If I look into my heart and carefully examine all that I have experienced in being with people, I have to say that all human association is hopeless, and the person who wants to live correctly and does personal work, for which he, and only him, has been designated by fate, acts sensibly. , if you live completely alone. All tender human feelings are transformed in practice into selfishness; it is wiser to stay alone, even if it is sometimes very painful and difficult. There is no woman, no friend, no human relationship that does not humble you over time. Stay polite and lonely because people are hopeless.
Of course, you cannot advise a shoe salesman or an upstanding banker, or the vast majority of people in general, to live alone; the vast majority of people are meant to live in community, in family and among friends, and multiply until the end of time. That's the law and that's okay. But for a person with a creative spirit, the real task of his life is not to nurture his family or friendships, but his work, for which he needs a completely clean atmosphere. Where people breathe, the air will be cloudy, choked and impure. That's why you stay alone when you have things to do, in your work and in your life.
But as long as you believe that somewhere there is a heart beating for you, forgive people. A human heart that feels selflessly towards you is enough to forgive all those whose selfish and selfish hearts you have come to know; it is enough to forgive the totality of people. It doesn't take much to be reconciled in the midst of this hopelessness. One person is enough. And it's not true that you haven't met this person either. You were just nervous, or impatient and greedy, and moved on. Because you are human, and because this is the human heart.