Without myth, however, every culture loses its healthy creative natural power: it is only a horizon encompassed with myth that rounds off to unity a social movement.
Or shall I go out as a light does, not first blown out by the wind, but grown tired and weary of itself - a burnt out light? Or finally, shall I blow myself out, so as not to burn out?
A woman does not want the truth; what is truth to women? From the beginning, nothing has been more alien, repugnant, and hostile to woman than the truth - her great art is the lie, her highest concern is mere appearance and beauty.
Those who are failures from the start, downtrodden, crushed -- it is they, the weakest, who must undermine life among men, who call into question and poison most dangerously our trust in life, in man, and in ourselves.
In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that no imaginable chance will for a second time gather together into a unity so strangely variegated an assortment as he is: he knows it but hides it like a bad conscience.