I have heard
many such things: miserable comforters are ye all.
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History, in [Nietzsche’s] view, belongs to him who is fighting a great fight, and who needs examples, teachers and comforters, but cannot find them among his contemporaries. Without history the mountain chain of great men’s great moments, which runs through millennia, could not stand clearly and vividly before me.
georg brandesGo gather by the humming sea Some twisted, echo-harboring shell, And to its lips thy story tell, And they thy comforters will be, rewarding in melodious guile fretful words a little while, Till they shall singing fade in ruth And dies a pearly brotherhood; For words alone are certain good: Sin, then, for this is also sooth.
Books are delightful when prosperity happily smiles; when adversity threatens, they are inseparable comforters. They give strength to human compacts, nor are grave opinions brought forward without books. Arts and sciences, the benefits of which no mind can calculate, depend upon books.