Tao Te Ching
Romain Rolland
1866 – 1944 CE
“The moral consciousness of Europe”
Novelist, historian, dramatist, and mystic; Rolland had a subtle but profound influence on his time. Hermann Hesse dedicated his book, Siddhartha to him and Rolland’s influence shines out through those pages. A student of Swami Vivekananda his understanding and appreciation of Eastern mysticism became an important influence on his friend, Sigmund Freud who began his book, Civilization and its Discontents with a discussion of Rolland’s description of an "oceanic feeling.” Addressing social ills through art and theater, he wrote and staged plays like The Time Will Come, a pacifist drama that explores the cause and effect relationship between capitalism and imperialism as well as exposing the evils of concentration camps and and the inhumane treatment of enemy civilians. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915.
Lineages
French Historians / Journalists
Eras
Western
Post-Romantic Age (1850 – 2018 CE)Gilded Age (1860 – 1900 CE)
Great Depression (1929 – 1941 CE)
Victorian (1837 – 1901 CE)
Roaring Twenties (1920 – 1929 CE)
Chinese
Qing dynasty (1644 – 1912 CE)Unlisted Sources
Above the Battle
Jean Christophe
Jean Christophe Vol I
Michelangelo, 1900
Reflections, 1915-1940
Quotes by Romain Rolland (15 quotes)
“I would rather have this life of combat than moral calm and mournful stupor. God give me struggle, enemies, howling crowds, all the combat of which I am capable.”
from Reflections, 1915-1940
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“Let us seek truth everywhere; let us scatter it to the winds of heaven where it will blow, find new ground, and germinate in this wide universe of souls.”
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“I distrust official charity. All charity should be done by stealth.”
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“Discussion is impossible with someone who claims not to seek the truth, but already to possess it.”
from Above the Battle
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“Be reverent before the dawning day. Do not think of what will be in a year, or in ten years. Think of to-day.”
from Jean Christophe Vol I
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“The greatest book is the one whose vital impact opens up other viewpoints, and from writer to reader spreads the fire that is fed by the various essences, until it becomes a vast conflagration leaping from forest to forest.”
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“No one ever reads a book. He reads himself through books, either to discover or to control himself.”
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“But perhaps there are in us forces other than mind and heart, other even than the senses—mysterious forces which take hold of us in the moments when the others are asleep.”
from Jean Christophe Vol I
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“Islands of memory begin to rise above the river life. At first they are little uncharted islands, rocks just peeping above the surface of the waters. Round about them and behind in the twilight of the dawn stretches the great untroubled sheet of water; then new islands, touched to gold by the sun.”
from Jean Christophe Vol I
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“Everything is music for the born musician.”
from Jean Christophe
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“The public will only stand genius in infinitesimal doses, sprinkled with mannerisms and fashionable literature...A ‘fashionable genius’!—doesn't that make you laugh?..what a waste of power!”
from Jean Christophe Vol I
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“Most men die at twenty or thirty; thereafter they are only reflections of themselves: for the rest of their lives they are aping themselves, repeating from day to day more and more mechanically and affectedly what they said and did and thought and loved when they were alive.”
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“Michelangelo discovered that the essence of his genius was drawn toward sculpture with an irresistible force… if painting has immortalized him, it is in spite of himself. He never wished to be considered as anything but a sculptor.”
from Michelangelo, 1900
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“No one work can be detached from a life and studied separately. They are all fragments of one monument. The mistake that most historians make is to mutilate this genius by dividing it into different pieces.”
from Michelangelo, 1900
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