Lou Andreas-Salome Quotes on Knowledge
Lou Andreas-Salome was a Russian-born German writer, philosopher, and psychoanalyst, whose intimate intellectual companionship with Friedrich Nietzsche, Paul Ree, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Sigmund Freud placed her at the center of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century European thought. This page collects quotes attributed to Lou Andreas-Salome on the topic of knowledge, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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Attributed to Lou Andreas-Salome:
“A philosophy that has not first been lived has not yet been thought.”
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“Letter to her former teacher, Hendrik Gillot, March 26, 1882; translation by Frank Beck, 2022”
I can neither live according to models, nor shall I ever be able to provide a model for anyone else. On the contrary, what I shall quite certainly do is to shape my own life according to myself, whatever may come of it. In this I have no principle to put forth, but something much more wonderful -- something that is within oneself and is hot with sheer life, and rejoices and wants to come out. -
“Letter to her former teacher, Hendrik Gillot, March 26, 1882; translation by Frank Beck, 2022”
You also write: you had always thought that such complete devotion to purely intellectual goals was only meant to be a "transition" for me. What do you mean by "transition"? If other goals stand behind it, for which I must give up the most glorious and difficult thing on Earth, namely freedom, then I want to stay in this transition, because I won't give that up. -
“Letter to her former teacher, Hendrik Gillot, March 26, 1882; cited in Lou Andreas-Salome's Anneliese's House (Boydell and Brewer, 2021) p. 216, translation by Frank Beck and Raleigh Whitinger”
Let us see whether the vast majority of the so-called "insurmountable barriers" that the world draws are not harmless chalk lines! -
“Diary entry, August 14, 1882; cited in Rudolph Binion's Frau Lou (Princeton University Press, 1968) p. 79, translation by Rudolph Binion”
Conversing with Nietzsche is uncommonly lovely . . . The content of a conversation of ours really exists in what is not quite spoken but emerges from our each approaching the other half way. He gave me his hand and said earnestly and with feeling, "Never forget that it would be a calamity if you did not carve a memorial to your full innermost mind in the time left to you.