The Compleat Heretic's Epigraphs 2014

This page was last modified on 17 January 2015.

Contents

2 January 2014 8 January 2014 15 January 2014 22 January 2014 5 February 2014 12 February 2014 2 March 2014 13 March 2014 26 March 2014 9 April 2014 23 April 2014 3 June 2014 11 June 2014 18 June 2014 25 June 2014 2 July 2014 6 August 2014 13 August 2014 19 August 2014 27 August 2014 18 September 2014 24 September 2014 1 October 2014 8 October 2014 15 October 2014 22 October 2014 29 October 2014 12 December 2014 28 December 2014

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 912 Wallace Stevens, "The Snow Man" Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 910 Matt Wallace, "An Interview with a Pro-Life Atheist" Hermann Hesse, Demian Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, "Why I Write Such Good Books," 3 Wallace Stevens, "Sunday Morning" Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance" Matt Wallace, "Seeing the Light; or, How I Became a Godless Heathen" Alice Cooper, "School's Out" Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, 1 Wallace Stevens, "Sunday Morning" Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, "Of the Bestowing Virtue," 2 Matt Wallace, "Independence Day Oath" Henry David Thoreau, Walden, "Reading" Henry David Thoreau, Walden, "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For" Homer, The Odyssey, "The Kingdom of the Dead" Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Divinity School Address" Wallace Stevens, "Sunday Morning" Matt Wallace, "Being All I Could Be; or, Descent into Madness" Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 297 Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, "Expeditions of an Untimely Man," 38 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, Foreword Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, "Why I Am So Clever," 10 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 341 Wallace Stevens, "Sunday Morning" T. S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

2 January 2014
The most desirable thing is still under all circumstances a hard discipline at the proper time, i.e., at that age at which it still makes one proud to see that much is demanded of one. For this is what distinguishes the hard school as a good school from all others: that much is demanded; and sternly demanded; that the good, even the exceptional, is demanded as the norm; that praise is rare, that indulgence is nonexistent; that blame is apportioned sharply, objectively, without regard for talent or antecedents.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 912   (Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, trans.)

On 2 January 1986, as a 24-year-old college-boy PFC, I began my four-year enlistment.
And though I've spent far more of the past 28 years sitting in a college classroom than
wearing a military uniform, the United States Army was the best school I ever attended.

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8 January 2014
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

— Wallace Stevens, "The Snow Man," lines 13-15

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15 January 2014
Type of my disciples.— To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities—I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not—that one endures.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 910   (Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, trans.)

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22 January 2014
As a pro-life Secular Humanist atheist, my opposition to abortion is not based on "Christian values" or any religious considerations. My primary motivation is my high regard for life and its uniqueness. Unlike Christians and other religionists, I realize that the choice isn't between this mortal life and some purported postmortal "eternal life," but between life and death, existence and nonexistence, being and not being. Even in its totality, with joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, triumph and failure, life is preferable to the alternative which is no alternative at all. As an atheist, I understand that which affirms life is good and is to be supported and that which denies life is evil and is to be opposed. Abortion is the denial of life to its individual victims and a denial of life writ large. Abortion is the ultimate denial of life. I oppose abortion not because "the Bible tells me so," but, in the words of the tagline of my nontheistic/nonreligious pro-life website, Atheist and Agnostic Pro-Life League, "because life is all there is and all that matters, and abortion destroys the life of an innocent human being." I oppose abortion because it is a denial of both the humanity and the human rights of the most innocent and most vulnerable members of the human family. I oppose abortion because to do otherwise would be a denial of my own humanity.

— Matt Wallace, "An Interview with a Pro-Life Atheist"

41 Years of Life Denied: Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton (22 January 1973)

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5 February 2014
Yes, it was beyond imagining. But it could be dreamed, anticipated, sensed. A few times I had a foretaste of it—in an hour of absolute stillness. Then I would gaze into myself and confront the image of my fate. Its eyes would be full of wisdom, full of madness, they would radiate love or deep malice, it was all the same. You were not allowed to choose or desire any one of them. You were only allowed to desire yourself, only your fate.

— Hermann Hesse, Demian   (Michael Roloff and Michael Lebeck, trans.)

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12 February 2014
[. . .] Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished.
And this is a damnable doctrine.

— Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin (written 28 May - 3 August 1876)

On the 205th anniversary of the birth of Charles Robert Darwin (12 February 1809 - 19 April 1882)

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2 March 2014
All "feminism," too—also in men—closes the door: it will never permit entrance into this labyrinth of audacious insights. One must never have spared oneself, one must have acquired hardness as a habit to be cheerful and in good spirits in the midst of nothing but hard truths. When I imagine a perfect reader, he always turns into a monster of courage and curiosity; moreover, supple, cunning, cautious; a born adventurer and discoverer. In the end, I could not say better to whom alone I am speaking at bottom than Zarathustra said it: to whom alone will he relate his riddle?

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, "Why I Write Such Good Books," 3   (Walter Kaufmann, trans.)

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13 March 2014
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.

— Wallace Stevens, "Sunday Morning," lines 110-113

Happy Vernal Equinox! And woe unto you who is not of the Sun, for we live in an old chaos of the sun!
(It's the real reason for the season, you know . . .)

In honor of the Spring Equinox, 20 March 2014, 1257 EDT

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26 March 2014
The two old men were silent for a long time. Then as Govinda was preparing to go, he said: "I thank you, Siddhartha, for telling me something of your thoughts. Some of them are strange thoughts. I cannot grasp them all immediately. However, I thank you, and wish you many peaceful days."
Inwardly, however, he thought: Siddhartha is a strange man and he expresses strange thoughts. His ideas seem crazy. How different do the Illustrious One's doctrines sound! They are clear, straightforward, comprehensible; they contain nothing strange, wild or laughable. But Siddhartha's hands and feet, his eyes, his brow, his breathing, his smile, his greeting, his gait affect me differently from his thoughts. Never, since the time our Illustrious Gotama passed into Nirvana, have I ever met a man with the exception of Siddhartha about whom I felt: This is a holy man! His ideas may be strange, his words may sound foolish, but his glance and his hand, his skin and his hair, all radiate a purity, serenity, gentleness and saintliness which I have never seen in any man since the recent death of our illustrious teacher.
While Govinda was thinking these thoughts and there was conflict in his heart he again bowed to Siddhartha, full of affection towards him. He bowed low before the quietly seated man.

— Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha   (Hilda Rosner, trans.)

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9 April 2014
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested—"But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the devil's child, I will live then from the devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if everything were titular and ephemeral but he.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"

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23 April 2014
The process which had begun approximately six months earlier reached its conclusion on a gorgeous spring day. While I can't recall the precise date, it happened on a warm and sunny day during the first week of May 1974, give or take a week or two. I was a month or so past my thirteenth birthday. The oak trees on my junior high school's campus were full of new, dark green leaves which blocked out the noonday sun. I was walking back to Language Arts/Social Studies class after lunch when I had this sensation of seeing a brilliant white light that momentarily blinded me. Simultaneously, I realized that there was no God. I "saw the light," and I became an atheist! Concurrently, I expanded the concept of "God" beyond the Christian God and understood "God" to be a metaphor which referred to every deity ever imagined. By extension, "God" also included all supernatural beings and entities (angels, demons, souls, ghosts, etc.) and anything purported to exist outside of the material world as well. Thus, I fully accepted the natural world as the real world and utterly rejected the purported supernatural realm as a phantasm. Suddenly, everything made sense; I felt as though I had been let in on one of the great secrets of the Cosmos. This experience was, and remains, the most intellectually and emotionally satisfying of my life. As poet Wallace Stevens once noted, "To see the gods dispelled in mid-air and dissolve like clouds is one of the great human experiences."

— Matt Wallace, "Seeing the Light; or, How I Became a Godless Heathen"

On the 40th anniversary of my conversion to atheism

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3 June 2014
Well we got no choice
All the girls and boys
Makin' all that noise
'Cause they found new toys.
Well we can't salute ya
Can't find a flag
If that don't suit ya
That's a drag.
School's out for summer
School's out forever . . .

— Alice Cooper, "School's Out"

On the 35th Anniversary (6 June 2014) of the East Forsyth Senior High School Class of 1979 wondering if our Graduation was ever going to end, but with 719 diplomas to be presented, we simply had to wait, and wait, and wait, and wait to crank "School's Out" . . .

GO FIGHTING EAGLES!

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11 June 2014
We were brave enough, we spared neither ourselves nor others: but for long we did not know where to apply our courage. We became gloomy, we were called fatalists. Our fatality – was the plentitude, the tension, the blocking-up of our forces. We thirsted for lightning and action, of all things we kept ourselves furthest from the happiness of the weaklings, from 'resignation'. . . . There was a thunderstorm in our air, the nature which we are grew dark – for we had no road. Formula of our happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal . . .

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, 1   (R. J. Hollingdale, trans.)

As I have always loved thunderstorms, while sitting on my stoop indulging in last night's glorious, terrific, midnight thunderstorm, I slipped back to 1979 when my 18-year-old self first read these words which I have long since recognized as part diagnosis and part prophecy . . .

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18 June 2014
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.

— Wallace Stevens, "Sunday Morning," lines 110-113

Happy Summer Solstice! And woe unto you who is not of the Sun, for we live in an old chaos of the sun!

In honor of the Summer Solstice, 21 June 2014, 0651 EDT

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25 June 2014
Not only the reason of millennia – the madness of millennia too breaks out in us. It is dangerous to be an heir.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, "Of the Bestowing Virtue," 2   (R. J. Hollingdale, trans.)

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2 July 2014
Upon my annual rereading of The Declaration of Independence on its 235th anniversary, I both claim my Right and affirm my Duty to oppose and abolish any Government which seeks to alienate me from my unalienable Rights as a Human Being, using the Ballot Box so long as it is available, and failing that, the Box Magazine when Necessity constrains me.

Long Live the Republic! Long Live the Revolution!

— Matt Wallace, "Independence Day Oath" (4 July 2011)

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6 August 2014
It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us. How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life.

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden, "Reading"

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13 August 2014
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden, "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For"

(Please compare Growing Up Connected.)

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19 August 2014
At last he came. The shade of the famous Theban prophet,
holding a golden scepter, knew me at once and hailed me:
'Royal son of Laertes, Odysseus, master of exploits,
man of pain, what now, what brings you here,
forsaking the light of day
to see this joyless kingdom of the dead?
Stand back from the trench—put up your sharp sword
so I can drink the blood and tell you all the truth.'

— Homer, The Odyssey, "The Kingdom of the Dead," lines 100-107   (Robert Fagles, trans.)

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27 August 2014
It is very certain that it is the effect of conversation with the beauty of the soul, to beget a desire and need to impart to others the same knowledge and love. If utterance is denied, the thought lies like a burden on the man. Always the seer is a sayer. Somehow his dream is told. Somehow he publishes it with solemn joy. Sometimes with pencil on canvas; sometimes with chisel on stone; sometimes in towers and aisles of granite, his soul's worship is builded; sometimes in anthems of indefinite music; but clearest and most permanent, in words.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Divinity School Address"

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18 September 2014
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.

— Wallace Stevens, "Sunday Morning," lines 110-113

Happy Autumnal Equinox! And woe unto you who is not of the Sun, for we live in an old chaos of the sun!

In honor of the Fall Equinox, 22 September 2014, 2229 EDT

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24 September 2014
On 28 September 1985, I raised my right hand and swore this oath of enlistment in the U.S. Army:

"I, James Matthew Wallace, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice."

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1 October 2014
The ability to contradict.— Everybody knows nowadays that the ability to accept criticism and contradiction is a sign of high culture. Some people actually realize that higher human beings desire and provoke contradiction in order to receive some hint about their own injustices of which they are as yet unaware. But the ability to contradict, the attainment of a good conscience when one feels hostile to what is accustomed, traditional, and hallowed—that is still more excellent and constitutes what is really great, new, and amazing in our culture; this is the step of steps of the liberated spirit: Who knows that?

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 297   (Walter Kaufmann, trans.)

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8 October 2014
My conception of freedom. – [. . .] For what is freedom? That one has the will to self-responsibility. That one preserves the distance which divides us. That one has become more indifferent to hardship, toil, privation, even to life. That one is ready to sacrifice men to one's cause, oneself not excepted. Freedom means that the manly instincts that delight in war and victory have gained mastery over the other instincts – for example, over the instinct for 'happiness'. The man who has become free – and how much more the mind that has become free – spurns the contemptible sort of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, women, Englishmen and other democrats. The free man is a warrior.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, "Expeditions of an Untimely Man," 38   (R. J. Hollingdale, trans.)

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15 October 2014
This book belongs to the very few. Perhaps none of them is even living yet. Possibly they are the readers who understand my Zarathustra: how could I confound myself with those for whom there are ears listening today? – Only the day after tomorrow belongs to me. Some are born posthumously.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, Foreword   (R. J. Hollingdale, trans.)

On the 170th anniversary of the birth of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 - 25 August 1900)

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22 October 2014
My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary—but love it.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, "Why I Am So Clever," 10   (Walter Kaufmann, trans.)

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29 October 2014
The greatest weight.— What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!"
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine." If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, "Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?" would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 341   (Walter Kaufmann, trans.)

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12 December 2014
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.

— Wallace Stevens, "Sunday Morning," lines 110-113

Happy Winter Solstice! And woe unto you who is not of the Sun, for we live in an old chaos of the sun!
(It's the real reason for the season, you know . . .)

In honor of the Winter Solstice, 21 December 2014, 1803 EST

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28 December 2014
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

— T. S. Eliot, "Little Gidding," lines 214-216

Happy Old Year! Happy New Year!

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