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Things are never beautiful by themselves but appear so to anyone who projects on to them his superabundance of life. But just as unconscious activity is unaware of itself as such, so man ‘forgets himself’ as the cause of these ‘beauties’ and imagines that the world itself is laden with them.

— Sarah Kofman Nietzsche et la métaphore (1972)

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More quotes by Sarah Kofman

Dialectics and reflection play the same role for the philosopher as does verse for the poet.

Nietzsche et la métaphore (1972)

A ‘good’ style is one which can communicate through signs a certain inner state symptomatic of a certain taste (such a communication presupposing a listener or reader with the same taste).

Nietzsche et la métaphore (1972)

The new philosopher does not put metaphor to rhetorical use but subordinates it … to the strategic objective of using non-stereotyped metaphors in order to unmask the metaphors which constitute every concept.

Nietzsche et la métaphore (1972)

The philosopher does not just ‘play’ with metaphors: his play is of a ‘formidable seriousness’, for it is designed to oppose modernity’s hatred for art, to obliterate precisely the opposition between play and seriousness, dream and reality.

Nietzsche et la métaphore (1972)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Sarah Kofman (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.