How prone poor Humanity is to dam up the minutest remnants of its freedom, and build an artificial roof to prevent it looking up to the clear blue sky.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on humanity's tendency to limit its own freedoms and aspirations through self-imposed constraints.
E. T. A. Hoffmann's quote suggests that people often restrict their own freedoms by creating artificial barriers. These barriers prevent them from reaching for higher aspirations and understanding the broader world around them, symbolized by the 'clear blue sky.' It implies a critique of how society or individuals may confine themselves and miss the potential for greater freedom and enlightenment.
In practice
During a motivational speech about self-limiting beliefs.
Why should not a writer be permitted to make use of the levers of fear, terror and horror because some feeble soul here and there finds it more than it can bear? Shall there be no strong meat at table because there happen to be some guests there whose stomachs are weak, or who have spoiled their own digestions?
When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior.
Such is my veneration for every religion that reveals the attributes of the Deity, or a future state of rewards and punishments, that I had rather see the opinions of Confucius or Mahomed inculcated upon our youth than see them grow up wholly devoid of a system of religious principles.
When you cry and weep, when you are miserable, you are alone. When you celebrate, the whole existence participates with you. Only in celebration do we meet the ultimate, the eternal. Only in celebration do we go beyond the circle of birth and death.
Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think heβs honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but heβs great in the eyes of others.
Once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments.
We have the same soul at 60 that we had at 40, and the same soul at 25 that we had when we were 5.
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