Circling the Square

Entries on my blog that have no citation are always originally by me.
Copyright, James R. Hauck, 2010:


"Man, desiring no longer to be the image of God, becomes the image of the machine."
— Nicholas Berdyaev, The Fate of Man in the Modern World, 1935.
cf. my own: "Man, the semi-permanent extension of a machine."

I remember Dr. Jerry Allen saying many, many years ago, regarding Night Thoughts by Edward Young and thinking about fine leather-bound editions, such as the Complete Works of Churchill, that someone should do "The Day Thoughts of Dwight David Eisenhower."

They asked him why he was crying and he replied: "Someone has just bought a book which he doesn't even intend to read — and it reminds me that I have never really read a book."

In biblical days a man wise enough to see the "end of days" was deemed a prophet, but now that it is plainly there for all to see — where's the profit?

To say we did not speak is to say more than was not said.

If all preachers had to be saints — there would be no organized religion.

If everything would forego eating on the same day — nothing would die.

"Life contains a number of vivid sense-pleasures, and the gap of despondency and boredom between them can be filled more or less adequately by hard work, sleep, the movies, drink and daydreaming. Old age brings lethargy, and morphia will help you at the end. Life is not so bad, if you have plenty of luck, a good physique and not too much imagination. The disciplines proposed by the spiritual teachers are drastic, and the lazy will shrink back from them. They are tedious, also, and this will discourage the impatient. Their immediate results are not showy, and this will deter the ambitious. Their practice is apt to make you appear ridiculous to your neighbors. Vanity, sloth and desire will all intervene to prevent a man from setting his foot upon the path of religious effort."
— Christopher Isherwood, "Hypothesis and Belief"