The question about epistemology was a bit difficult to answer, because both the first and last answers can be combined. The meaning "it's created by whoever has the strength to impose it" on himself and those around him, but historically the "deepest truths" may "have always...
... been partially concealed, and reading well is an art few master". Perhaps careful reading of old texts can reveal to you the truths of the authors, but it is within the realm of your power to adopt them and make them part of your existence.
“Always attack. Even in defense, attack. The attacking arm possesses the initiative and thus commands the action. To attack makes men brave; to defend makes them timorous.”
Steven Pressfield, “The Virtues of War”
“Feelings ran high both in Germany, where Zarathustra was pushed to new sales records as a ‘must’ for the soldier’s knapsack”
Alexander Nehamas, prologue in Kaufmann's, “Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist”, Princeton University Press, 1950.
[17.8.1812] Napoleon (watching Smolensk burn): It's like Vesuvius erupting! Don't you think this is a beautiful sight, Mr. Grand Equerry?
Caulaincourt: Horrible, Sire.
Napoleon: Bah! Remember, gentlemen, what a Roman emperor said: "The corpse of an enemy always smells sweet."
Great Heathens series returns after too long hiatus for perhaps the archetype of such a category of man: THOMAS TAYLOR, the English Neoplatonist. Everyone has read his translations, but read to see his own beliefs, his open worship of the gods—in 1700's England!
Enjoi, link:
... artist had seen the setting sun reflected deep in some valley. And nothing but lions and peonies would suffice to capture it."
Yukio Mishima,"Runaway Horses"
"Why lions and peonies? Perhaps because that sort of red and blue pattern, like the reflection of glowing evening clouds upon the dark waters of a marsh covering a valley floor, was a sunset burst of color that rose out of the very nadir of humiliation. No doubt the tattoo...
“Why so soft, so pliant and yielding? Why is there so much denial, self-denial, in your hearts?
So little destiny in your eyes? And if you do not want to be destinies and inexorable ones, how can you one day triumph with me?”
Friedrich Nietzsche, “Twilight of the Idols”
“But he still only asked the spring starlight, the breeze,
What great thing or small thing his history would borrow
From that Game with Death he would play on the morrow.”
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Drawing by Eugene Damblans, Belgium Front 1914: German soldiers on the Yser.
"The moment the individual succeeds in living as a hero, even if it is the final moment of his earthly life, weighs infinitely more on the scale of values than a protracted existence spent consuming monotonously among the trivialities of cities."
Julius Evola