Quotes by Max Scheler

“Ressentiment must therefore be strongest in a society like ours, where approximately equal rights (political and otherwise) or formal social equality, publicly recognized, go hand in hand with wide...”

“It is peculiar to ressentiment criticism that it does not seriously desire that its demands be fulfilled. It does not want to cure the evil. The evil is merely the pretext for the criticism.”

“The noble person has a completely naïve and non-reflective awareness of his own value and of his fullness of being, an obscure conviction which enriches every conscious moment of his existence, as ...”

“The medieval peasant prior to the 13th century does not compare himself to the feudal lord, nor does the artisan compare himself to the knight. … From the king down to the hangman and the prostitut...”

“If the awareness of our limitations begins to limit or to dim our value consciousness as well—as happens, for instance, in old age with regard to the values of youth—then we have already started th...”

“The old maid with her repressed cravings for tenderness, sex, and propagation, is rarely quite free of ressentiment. What we call prudery, in contrast with true modesty, is but one of the numerous ...”

“The process of aging can only be fruitful and satisfactory if the important transitions are accompanied by free resignation, by the renunciation of the values proper to the preceding stage of life....”

“Even after his conversion, the true 'apostate' is not primarily committed to the positive contents of his new belief and to the realization of its aims. He is motivated by the struggle against the ...”

“To a lesser degree, a secret ressentiment underlies every way of thinking which attributes creative power to mere negation and criticism. Thus modern philosophy is deeply penetrated by a whole type...”

“All the seemingly positive valuations and judgments of ressentiment are hidden devaluations and negations.”

“Ressentiment is always to some degree a determinant of the romantic type of mind. At least this is so when the romantic nostalgia for some past era (Hellas, the Middle Ages, etc.) is not primarily ...”

“We have a tendency to overcome any strong tension between desire and impotence by depreciating or denying the positive value of the desired object.”

“When we cannot obtain a thing, we comfort ourselves with the reassuring thought that it is not worth nearly as much as we believed.”

“To its very core, the mind of ressentiment man is filled with envy, the impulse to detract, malice, and secret vindictiveness. These affects have become fixed attitudes, detached from all determina...”

“The man of ressentiment cannot justify or even understand his own existence and sense of life in terms of positive values such as power, health, beauty, freedom, and independence. Weakness, fear, a...”

“Beyond all conscious lying and falsifying, there is a deeper organic mendacity. Here the falsification is not formed in consciousness, but at the same stage of the mental process as the impressions...”

“In the ancient notion of love, on the other hand, there is an element of anxiety. The noble fears the descent to the less noble, is afraid of being infected and pulled down. The sage of antiquity d...”

“The fake love of ressentiment man offers no real help, since for his perverted sense of values, evils like sickness and poverty have become goods.”

“The important thing is not the amount of welfare, it is that there should be a maximum of love among men. The act of helping is the direct and adequate expression of love, not its meaning or purpos...”

“Antiquity believed that the forces of love in the universe were limited. Therefore they were to be used sparingly,and everyone was to be loved only according to his value.”