The Art of Tetman Callis

“I ask myself what my body really wants from music generally.  I believe it wants to have relief: so that all animal functions should be accelerated by means of light, bold, unfettered, self-assured rhythms; so that brazen, leaden life should be gilded by means of golden, good, tender harmonies.  My melancholy would fain rest its […]

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“Although the most intelligent judges of the witches, and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchcraft, the guilt, nevertheless, was not there.  So it is with all guilt.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (trans. Common)

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“Of what account is a book that never carries us away beyond all books?”– Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (trans. Common)

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“The proof of any art’s lasting value is a comprehensive emotional necessity: it’s something that a person needed to do and which awakens and satisfies corresponding needs in us.” – Peter Schjeldahl, “Shapes of Things”

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“The writers we absorb when we’re young bind us to them, sometimes lightly, sometimes with iron.  In time, the bonds fall away, but if you look very closely you can sometimes make out the pale white groove of a faded scar, or the telltale chalky red of old rust.” – Daniel Mendelsohn, “The American Boy”

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“There is only one way to learn to write and that is by reading.  Don’t read for duty, try all the good stuff though, sample it, then devour what stimulates and enriches you.  This will seep in to your own work, which may be derivative at first but this does not matter.  Your own style […]

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“It behoveth thee not to grieve for that which must happen: for who can avert, by his wisdom, the decrees of fate?  No one can leave the  way marked out for him by Providence.  Existence and non-existence, pleasure and pain all have Time for their root.  Time createth all things and Time destroyeth all creatures.  […]

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“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.” —Susan Sontag, On Photography

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“There are in all nine virtues, and when we say that a man possesses these virtues it is as much as to say that he begins to do such and such things. They are liberality combined with dignity, mildness combined with firmness, bluntness combined with respect, aptness for government combined with caution, docility combined with […]

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“The higher we soar, the smaller we seem to those who cannot fly.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak (trans. Hollingdale)

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“Whenever a person reveals something, one can ask: what is it supposed to conceal?  From what is it supposed to divert the eyes?  What prejudice is it supposed to arouse?  And additionally: how far does the subtlety of this dissimulation go?  And in what way has it failed?” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak (trans. Hollingdale)

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“In our youth we take our teachers and guides from the time in which we happen to live and the circle in which we happen to move: we are thoughtlessly confident that the times we live in are bound to have teachers better suited to us than to anyone else and that we are bound […]

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“The poor sheep say to their shepherd: ‘go on ahead and we shall never lack the courage to follow you’.  The poor shepherd, however, thinks to himself: ‘follow me and I shall never lack the courage to lead you’.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak (trans. Hollingdale)

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“If one stays silent for a year one unlearns chattering and learns to speak.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak (trans. Hollingdale)

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“Poor, happy and independent!—these things can go together; poor, happy and a slave!—these things can also go together—and I can think of no better news I could give to our factory slaves: provided, that is, they do not feel it to be in general a disgrace to be thus used, and used up, as a […]

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“Above all, in every state it is necessary, both by the laws and every other method possible, to prevent those who are employed by the public from being venal.” — Aristotle, A Treatise on Government (trans. Ellis)

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“It is a general maxim in democracies, oligarchies, monarchies, and indeed in all governments, not to let any one acquire a rank far superior to the rest of the community, but rather to endeavour to confer moderate honours for a continuance than great ones for a short time; for these latter spoil men, for it […]

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“Governments are sometimes preserved not only by having the means of their corruption at a great distance, but also by its being very near them; for those who are alarmed at some impending evil keep a stricter hand over the state; for which reason it is necessary for those who have the guardianship of the […]

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“In well-tempered governments it requires as much care as anything whatsoever, that nothing be done contrary to law: and this ought chiefly to be attended to in matters of small consequence; for an illegality that approaches insensibly, approaches secretly.” — Aristotle, A Treatise on Government (trans. Ellis)

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“Those who would establish aristocratical governments are mistaken not only in giving too much power to the rich, but also in deceiving the common people; for at last, instead of an imaginary good, they must feel a real evil, for the encroachments of the rich are more destructive to the state than those of the […]

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“How little Christianity educates the sense of honesty and justice can be gauged fairly well from the character of its scholars’ writings: they present their conjectures as boldly as if they were dogmas and are rarely in any honest perplexity over the interpretation of a passage in the Bible.  Again and again they say ‘I […]

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“Of all pleasures, which is the greatest for the men of that little, constantly imperilled community which is in a constant state of war and where the sternest morality prevails?—for souls, that is to say, which are full of strength, revengefulness, hostility, deceit and suspicion, ready for the most fearful things and made hard by […]

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“Maybe it wouldn’t much matter where we ended up.  Chinese ports are busy, and if the time in port is too short no one would get off anyway.  Some of the men said they wouldn’t go ashore even if there was time.  It was expensive, and possibly dangerous.  Ordinary Seaman Alvin Piamonte said the Mafia […]

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“If alms were bestowed only out of pity all the beggars would have starved to death.  The greatest bestower of alms is cowardice.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (trans. Hollingdale)

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“A lack of self-mastery in small things brings about a crumbling of the capacity for it in great ones.  Every day is ill employed, and a danger for the next day, in which one has not denied oneself some small thing at least once: this gymnastic is indispensable if one wants to preserve in oneself […]

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“All criminals force society back to a stage of culture earlier than the one at which it happens to be standing: they have a retrogressive effect.  Consider the instruments society is obliged to create and maintain for itself for the sake of its own defence: the sly police agents, the prison warders, the executioners; do […]

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“It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (trans. Hollingdale)

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“So long as you are praised think only that you are not yet on your own path but on that of another.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (trans. Hollingdale)

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