HKB
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Often appears with: perception and the senses · fate, destiny, and necessity · walden pond evenings · visitor traces · the fear of death · the city and urban life · symbolic nature imagery · spiritual friendship · spiritual awakening and danger · self-sufficiency · self-overcoming · psychology of aspiration and fear
Usually: wonder (5) · narrative (2) · the stranger's arrival (2) · curiosity (2) · detachment (2) · argument (1) · description (1) · reflection (1) · reunion (1) · rivalry (1)
“He who climbeth on the highest mountains, laugheth at all tragic plays and tragic realities.” Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None · precept
Zarathustra narrates how Zarathustra encounters a youth avoiding him near a tree on the hills of “The Pied Cow,” using the image of roots struggling downward to explain the youth’s envy and fear of solitude.
I learned to walk; since then have I let myself run. I learned to fly; since then I do not need pushing in order to move from a spot. Now am I light, now do I fly; now do I see myself under myself. Now there danceth a God in me.— Thus spake Zarathustra. VIII. THE TREE ON THE HILL. Zarathustra’s eye had perceived that a certain youth avoided him. And as he walked alone one evening over the hills surrounding the to…
Zarathustra quotes that those who climb highest mountains laugh at tragic plays and realities, and then shifts into his mountaineering journey and last wandering.
“Who among you can at the same time laugh and be exalted? “He who climbeth on the highest mountains, laugheth at all tragic plays and tragic realities.”—ZARATHUSTRA, I., “Reading and Writing.” XLV. THE WANDERER. Then, when it was about midnight, Zarathustra went his way over the ridge of the isle, that he might arrive early in the morning at the other coast; because there he meant to embark. For there was a good r…
Emerson claims it is foolish to fear too-spiritual friendship, insists people and places call out our own nature, and describes friendships as Janus-faced ties that both challenge and lead us to a higher reunion.
you the first-born of the world,—those rare pilgrims whereof only one or two wander in nature at once, and before whom the vulgar great show as spectres and shadows merely. It is foolish to be afraid of making our ties too spiritual, as if so we could lose any genuine love. Whatever correction of our popular views we make from insight, nature will be sure to bear us out in, and though it seem to rob us of some joy, …
In a sensory, calming evening, he describes his solitude at Walden, visitors leaving flower or evergreen cards and traces, and his vast personal horizon where woods and pond feel like an independent world.
Solitude This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself. As I walk along the stony shore of the pond in my shirt sleeves, though it is cool as well as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special to attract me, all the elements are unusually congenial to me. The bullfrogs trump to usher in the nig…
Epictetus argues that true solitude is not mere being alone but helplessness; a person should learn self-sufficiency like Zeus, and should use reason to endure fear and distraction.
stronger than yourself; the contest is unequal between a charming young girl and a beginner in philosophy. The earthen pitcher, as the saying is, and the rock do not agree. WHAT SOLITUDE IS, AND WHAT KIND OF PERSON A SOLITARY MAN IS.—Solitude is a certain condition of a helpless man. For because a man is alone, he is not for that reason also solitary; just as though a man is among numbers, he is not therefore not so…