"Ressentiment is a sense of hostility directed toward an object or person that one identifies as the cause of one's frustration, that is, an assignment of blame for one's frustration."
"The sense of weakness, inferiority complex, and jealousy in the face of the 'cause' generates a rejecting/justifying value system, or morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of one's frustration."
"This value system is then used as a means of justifying one's own weaknesses by identifying the source of envy as objectively inferior, serving as a defense mechanism that prevents the resentful individual from addressing and overcoming their insecurities and flaws."
"The ego creates an enemy in order to insulate itself from culpability."
"[The observer] tries to treat [the subject of ressentiment] as a joke, and if that fails, to regard it as an insult, and when that fails, to dismiss it as nothing at all."--Kierkegaard
"Ressentiment becomes the constituent principle of want of character, which from utter wretchedness tries to sneak itself a position, all the time safeguarding itself by conceding that it is less than nothing."--Kierkegaard
"Ressentiment is the process of leveling, and while a passionate age storms ahead setting up new things and tearing down old, raising and demolishing as it goes, a reflective and passionless age does exactly the contrary; it hinders and stifles all action; it levels."--K
"Leveling shuns upheavals. In a burst of momentary enthusiasm people might, in their despondency, even long for a misfortune in order to feel the powers of life, but the apathy which follows is no more helped by a disturbance than an engineer leveling a piece of land."--K
"At its maximum the leveling process is a deathly silence in which one can hear one’s own heart beat, a silence which nothing can pierce, in which everything is engulfed, powerless to resist."--K
"Ressentiment is a reassignment of the pain that accompanies a sense of one's own inferiority/failure on to an external scapegoat. The ego creates the illusion of an enemy, a cause that can be 'blamed' for one's own inferiority/failure."
"Thus, one was thwarted not by a failure in oneself, but rather by an external 'evil.'"
"The more a person is active, strong-willed, and dynamic, the less time is left for contemplating all that is done to them, and their reactions become less compulsive. Their reaction is a short action: it is not a prolonged filling of their intellect [with ressentiment]."
"After the weaker side has won out over the stronger, there is in ressentiment a sense of disappointment that the rewards of victory are much less than was expected. The former long-time past resentment at weak is increased by an inadequate outcome, leading to ressentiment."
"Ressentiment is a self-defeating turn of mind which is non-productive and ultimately a waste of time and energy. Maturity informs most of us that sustained hatred hurts the hater far more than the object of our hate."
"Ressentiment is a self-poisoning of the mind which has quite definite causes and consequences. It is a lasting mental attitude, caused by the systematic repression of certain emotions and affects which, as such are normal components of human nature..."--Scheler
"...Their repression leads to the constant tendency to indulge in certain kinds of value delusions and corresponding value judgments. The emotions and affects primarily concerned are revenge, hatred, malice, envy, the impulse to detract, and spite."--Scheler
"Ressentiment begins in admiration and respect, but ends in coveting of those qualities of another: advantages afforded by their beauty, intelligence, charm, wit, personality, education, talent, skills, possessions, wealth, work achievement, family affiliation and the like."
"Ressentiment triggers a tendency in people which Scheler termed 'Man's Inherent Fundamental Moral Weakness': a sense of hopelessness which pre-disposes a person to regress and seek surrogates of lower value as a source of solace."
"[Ressentiment often] occurs either due to psychological contagion—and the spiritual venom of ressentiment is extremely contagious – or to the violent suppression of an impulse which subsequently revolts by 'embittering' and 'poisoning' the personality."--Scheler
"Pathological ressentiment is Value Delusion: 'a tendency to belittle/degrade/dismiss genuine values and their bearers.' This is non-productive as 'ressentiment doesn't lead to affirmation of counter-values as ressentiment-imbued people secretly crave the values they denounce.'"
"Emotionally, ressentiment turns happiness to sadness, compassion to hate, hope to despair, self-respect to shame, love and acceptance to rejection, resolve to dread, and so on down throughout the human emotional strata."
"Ressentiment leads to never fully achieving the desired lasting satisfaction produced though one's own ressentiment-driven unethical actions. 'Retaliation' no longer yields any good. 'In true ressentiment there is no emotive satisfaction but only a life-long anger and anguish.'"
"[Ressentiment in public] usually takes the forms of incendiary rhetoric, scapegoat tactics, class warfare, partisan politics, propaganda, closed minded political ideology, jingoism, violence, and waging unjust war."
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