Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself.
Interpretation
Humans reflect upon and reinterpret the world around them through creativity.
This quote suggests that humanity is not separate from nature but rather an extension of it, capable of reflecting on and creating meaning from the natural world. It emphasizes the idea that our creative endeavors are a way of understanding and interacting with the universe, highlighting both our connection to nature and our unique ability to engage in self-reflection and creativity.
In practice
In a discussion about art, one might quote this to emphasize how artists interpret the world around them.
Prudishness is pretense of innocence without innocence. Women have to remain prudish as long as men are sentimental, dense, and evil enough to demand of them eternal innocence and lack of education. For innocence is the only thing which can ennoble lack of education.
A classical work doesn't ever have to be understood entirely. But those who are educated and who are still educating themselves must desire to learn more and more from it.
If you want to see mankind fully, look at a family. Within the family minds become organically one, and for this reason the family is total poetry.
He who does not become familiar with nature through love will never know her.
Religion can emerge in all forms of feeling: here wild anger, there the sweetest pain; here consuming hatred, there the childlike smile of serene humility.
A priest is he who lives solely in the realm of the invisible, for whom all that is visible has only the truth of an allegory.
Freedom is the recognition of necessity.
Nobody in France would ever say 'He's a Jewish novelist' or 'She's a black novelist,' even though people do write about those subjects. It would look absurd to a French person to go into a bookstore and see a 'Gay Studies' section.
You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It's not if, it's when.
Men are naturally most impressed by diseases which have obvious manifestations, yet some of their worst enemies creep on them unobtrusively.
The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.
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