Lou Andreas-Salome Quotes on Mind
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 mind, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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Attributed to Lou Andreas-Salome:
“Health and illness are not opposites; they are the two faces of every life.”
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Attributed to Lou Andreas-Salome:
“The narcissism of the soul is the original form of its love of life.”
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“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; translation by Frank Beck, 2022 -
“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.”
Diary entry, August 14, 1882; cited in Rudolph Binion's Frau Lou (Princeton University Press, 1968) p. 79, translation by Rudolph Binion