Quotes About Ressentiment

ressentiment is at its heart a yearning for revenge motivated by a desire to "anaesthetize pain through emotion

The slave revolt in morality begins when 'ressentiment' itself becomes creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of natures that are denied the true reaction, that of deeds, and compensate themselves with an imaginary revenge. While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is outside, what is different, what is not itself; and this No is its creative deed.

Jung believed that every act of social propriety was accompanied by its evil twin, its unconscious shadow. Nietzsche investigated the role played by what he termed ressentiment in motivating what were ostensibly selfless actions -- and, often, exhibited all too publically.

Jung believed that every act of social propriety was accompanied by its evil twin, its unconscious shadow. Nietzsche investigated the role played by what he he termed *ressentiment* in motivating what were ostensibly selfish actions -- and, often, exhibited all too publically.

Jung believed that every act of social propriety was accompanied by its evil twin, its unconscious shadow. Nietzsche investigated the role played by what he termed ressentiment in motivating what were ostensibly selfish actions -- and, often, exhibited all too publically.

We can bear ideas and events only when laundered by commentary, like the dirty money concealed by banking secrecy. 'In the heart and the belly it continues to sing its poisonous song - Better to kill a child than to harbour unsatisfied desires within oneself' (Kenzaburo Oe). Ressentiment is an empty, useless passion only if it assumes a sentimental form.

Ressentiment must therefore be strongest in a society like ours, where approximately equal rights (political and otherwise) or formal social equality, publicly recognized, go hand in hand with wide factual differences in power, property, and education.

It is peculiar to "ressentiment criticism" that it does not seriously desire that its demands be fulfilled. It does not want to cure the evil. The evil is merely the pretext for the criticism.

Ressentiment is always to some degree a determinant of the romantic type of mind. At least this is so when the romantic nostalgia for some past era (Hellas, the Middle Ages, etc.) is not primarily based on the values of that period, but on the wish to escape from the present. Then all praise of the "past" has the implied purpose of downgrading present-day reality.