....He who would sail the sea of life must become a navigator; he must learn to reckon with wind and tide, with laws and limits. A Columbus does not flout the laws, he extends them. Nor does he set sail for an imaginary world. He discovers a new world accidentally. But such accidents are the legitimate fruits of daring. This daring is not recklessness but the product of inner certitude.
— Henry Miller, Time of the Assassins, p. 141.
.... Life is the infinite domain of the possible. The idol of the many arms, the dance of death, these are not at all allegories of the perpetual flux of the universe. They are beings, impregnated with an inhuman life which has made those arms necessary. They should be contemplated as giant crustaceans brought up from the depths of the sea are contemplated. Both are disconcerting to us, show us suddenly how much simplicity there is in us, inspire in us the idea of an existence without ties to our own. But the former are only figures with weapons made of sand, while the others are superhuman intercessors.
— André Malraux, The Temptation of the West, p. 86.
If you will not hear reason, she will surely rap your knuckles.
— Benjamin Franklin
The passage from intuition to reflection, from knowledge of the real to expression of that knowledge in viable form is always precarious and difficult. It is, in short, a kind of translation, not from one language into another, but from one state of existence into another, from the receptive into the creative, from the purely sensuous impression into the purely reflective and cultural act.
This gap, of course, is simply another representation of the mind-body gap, which all idealist philosophers and mechanists are so eager to get rid of: the first by abolishing the body and the second by abolishing the mind. Unfortunately, though they can contrive this abolition easily enough in words, it remains very definite to our experience.
— Joyce Cary, Art and Reality, p. 42.
This is an old tale. The child genius goes to school and becomes a dull man. What we have to ask is why this conflict occurs; if it is inevitable, how anything real can pass the gap between intuition and the expression, the work of art; and, in short, whether art is not, as dictators like to believe, purely subjective and fantastic, the dangerous amusement of a lot of egotistic parasites.
— Ibid., p. 45.
It appeals very strongly to that deep and strange passion which we find in every generation for what is called the return to nature. Every day we hear abuse of civilization and all its culture by the simple-lifer who wants to live like Thoreau and put off the corruption of the world. But Thoreau was a highly educated man. The real simple-lifer, the aboriginal, leads a very hard life by rules and tabus far more oppressive than those of any citizen of London or New York. It is the man of culture, the scholar, who really simplifies his life. It is only the very wise and learned men who have the freedom of a quiet mind, and they do not achieve it by running away from civilization, and denouncing its culture and its scholarship.
— Ibid., p. 53.
I am an acme of things accomplished, and I am encloser of things to be.
— Walt Whitman
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Life From Religion
To live among ordinary men and yet to be alone with God, to speak profane language and yet draw the strength to live from the source of existence, from the "upper root" of the soul — it is a paradox which only the mystical devotee is able to realize in his life and which makes him the center of the community of men.
— Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, p. 343.
Scripture is like a man and has flesh [according to the literal meaning], soul [according to the allegorical interpretation] and spirit [in accordance with the mystery].
— Origen, De principiis, IV, 2, 4, p. 312, in On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, Gershom Scholem, footnote on p. 46.
Those who have painted pictures of an organized heaven have, implicitly or otherwise, appealed to the esthetic sense in man to try to gain ascent to their plans. We know now that a completely planned heaven is either impossible or unbearable. We know that it is not true that design can come only out of planning. Out of luxuriant waste, winnowed by selection, come designs more beautiful and in greater variety than ever man could plan. This is the lesson of nature that Darwin has spelled out for us. Man, now that he makes himself, cannot do better than to emulate nature's example in allowing for waste and encouraging novelty. There is a grandeur in this new view of life as a complex of adjustive systems that produce adaptiveness without foresight, design without planning and progress without dictation. From the simplest means, man, now master of his own fate, may evolve societies of a variety and novelty — yes, and even of beauty — that no man living can now foresee.
— Garret Hardin, "Nature and Man's Fate," in The Mystery of Matter, L. B. Young (ed.), p. 577.
When I am in doubt as to whom I love more, those who resist or those who surrender, I know that they are one and the same. One thing is certain, God does not want us to come to Him in innocence. We are to know sin and evil, we are to stray from the path, to get lost, to become defiant and desperate: we are to resist, in order that the surrender be complete and abject. It is our privilege as free spirits to elect for God with eyes wide-open, with hearts brimming over, with a desire that outweighs all desires. The innocent one! God has no use for him. He is the one who "plays at Paradise for eternity." To become ever more conscious, ever more gravid with knowledge, to become more and more burdened with guilt — that is man's privilege. No man is free of guilt; to whatever level one attains one is beset with new responsibilities, new sins. In destroying man's innocence God converted man into a potential ally. Through reason and will He gave him the power of choice. And man in his wisdom always chooses God.
— Henry Miller, Time of the Assassins, pp. 110-111.
I suppose any writer who transcends conventional literature is religious in so far as he does transcend it. That is why you can never actually base an educational system on the "Hundred Best Books." A hundred of the truest insights into life as it is would destroy any educational system and its society along with it.
— Henry Miller, Nights of Love and Laughter, p. 12.
— Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, p. 343.
Scripture is like a man and has flesh [according to the literal meaning], soul [according to the allegorical interpretation] and spirit [in accordance with the mystery].
— Origen, De principiis, IV, 2, 4, p. 312, in On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, Gershom Scholem, footnote on p. 46.
Those who have painted pictures of an organized heaven have, implicitly or otherwise, appealed to the esthetic sense in man to try to gain ascent to their plans. We know now that a completely planned heaven is either impossible or unbearable. We know that it is not true that design can come only out of planning. Out of luxuriant waste, winnowed by selection, come designs more beautiful and in greater variety than ever man could plan. This is the lesson of nature that Darwin has spelled out for us. Man, now that he makes himself, cannot do better than to emulate nature's example in allowing for waste and encouraging novelty. There is a grandeur in this new view of life as a complex of adjustive systems that produce adaptiveness without foresight, design without planning and progress without dictation. From the simplest means, man, now master of his own fate, may evolve societies of a variety and novelty — yes, and even of beauty — that no man living can now foresee.
— Garret Hardin, "Nature and Man's Fate," in The Mystery of Matter, L. B. Young (ed.), p. 577.
When I am in doubt as to whom I love more, those who resist or those who surrender, I know that they are one and the same. One thing is certain, God does not want us to come to Him in innocence. We are to know sin and evil, we are to stray from the path, to get lost, to become defiant and desperate: we are to resist, in order that the surrender be complete and abject. It is our privilege as free spirits to elect for God with eyes wide-open, with hearts brimming over, with a desire that outweighs all desires. The innocent one! God has no use for him. He is the one who "plays at Paradise for eternity." To become ever more conscious, ever more gravid with knowledge, to become more and more burdened with guilt — that is man's privilege. No man is free of guilt; to whatever level one attains one is beset with new responsibilities, new sins. In destroying man's innocence God converted man into a potential ally. Through reason and will He gave him the power of choice. And man in his wisdom always chooses God.
— Henry Miller, Time of the Assassins, pp. 110-111.
I suppose any writer who transcends conventional literature is religious in so far as he does transcend it. That is why you can never actually base an educational system on the "Hundred Best Books." A hundred of the truest insights into life as it is would destroy any educational system and its society along with it.
— Henry Miller, Nights of Love and Laughter, p. 12.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Re: New Life
What a monument of human smallness is the idea of the philosopher king. What a contrast between it and the simplicity and humaneness of Socrates, who warned the statesman against the danger of being dazzled by his own power, excellence, and wisdom, and who tried to teach him what matters most — that we are all frail human beings. What a decline from this world of irony and reason and truthfulness down to Plato's kingdom of the sage whose magical powers raise him high above ordinary men; although not quite high enough to forego the use of lies, or to neglect the sorry trade of every shaman — the selling of spells, of breeding spells, in exchange for power over his fellow-men.
— Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. I, p. 156.
But of course human nature may be displayed before you and if you have not the eyes to see you will learn nothing. If you are hidebound with prejudice, if your temper is sentimental, you can go through the wards of a hospital and be as ignorant of man at the end as you were at the beginning. If you want to get any benefit from such an experience you must have an open mind and an interest in human beings. I look upon myself as very fortunate in that though I have never much liked men I have found them so interesting that I am almost incapable of being bored by them. I do not particularly want to talk and I am very willing to listen. I do not care if people are interested in me or not. I have no desire to impart any knowledge I have to others nor do I feel the need to correct them if they are wrong. You can get a great deal of intertainment out of tedious people if you keep your head. I remember being taken for a drive in a foreign country by a kind lady who wanted to show me round. Her conversation was composed entirely of truisms and she had so large a vocabulary of hackneyed phrases that I despaired of remembering them. But one remark she made has stuck in my memory as have few witticisms; we passed a row of little houses by the sea and she said to me: "Those are week-end bungalows, if you understand what I mean; in other words they're bungalows that people go to on Saturdays and leave on Mondays." I should have been sorry to miss that.
— W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up, the end of Chapter XIX.
For the disadvantage and dangers of the author's calling are offset by an advantage so great as to make all its difficulties, disappointments, and maybe hardships, unimportant. It gives him spiritual freedom. To him life is a tragedy and by his gift of creation he enjoys the catharsis, the purging of pity and terror, which Aristotle tells us is the object of art. For his sins and his follies, the unhappiness that befalls him, his unrequited love, his physical defects, illness, privation, his hopes abandoned, his griefs, humiliations, everything is transformed by his power into material and by writing it he can overcome it. Everything is grist to his mill, from the glimpse of a face in the street to a war that convulses the civilized world, from the scent of a rose to the death of a friend. Nothing befalls him that he cannot transmute into a stanza, a song or a story, and having done this be rid of it. The artist is the only free man.
— W. Somerset Maugham, Ibid., Chapter L.
The kindness I have longest remembered has been of this sort, — the sort unsaid; so far behind the speaker's lips that almost it already lay in my heart. It did not have far to go to be communicated. The gods cannot misunderstand, man cannot explain. We communicate like the burrows of foxes, in silence and darkness, under ground. We are undermined by faith and love. How much more full is Nature where we think the empty space is than where we place the solids! — full of fluid influences. Should we ever communicate but by these? The spirit abhors a vacuum more than Nature. There is a tide which pierces the pores of the air. These aerial rivers, let us not pollute their currents. What meadows do they course through? How many fine mails there are which traverse their routes! He is privileged who gets his letters franked by them.
I believe these things.
— Henry D. Thoreau, last 1/3 of a letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson dated February 12, 1843, in The World's Greatest Letters, M. Lincoln Schuster (ed.).
When I look back at the past and think how much time has been wasted in vain, how much time was lost in delusions, in errors, in idleness, in ignorance of how to live, how I did not value time, how often I sinned against my heart and spirit — my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is happiness, each minute might have been an age of happiness. Si jeunesse savait! Now, changing my life, I am being reborn into a new form. Brother! I swear to you that I shall not lose hope and shall preserve my spirit and heart in purity. I shall be reborn to a better thing. That is my whole hope, my whole comfort!
— Ibid., Fyodore Dostoevsky, from a letter dated December 22, 1849, sent to his brother, Mihailovitch Dostoevsky, and written the day after he was to be executed but had his sentence commuted to four years hard labor.
Truth is such a rare thing, it is delightful to tell it.
I find ecstasy in living; the mere sense of living is joy enough. How do most people live without any thoughts? There are many people in the world — you must have noticed them in the street, — how do they live? How do they get strength to put on their clothes in the morning?
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?
— Ibid., Emily Dickinson, in a letter to Colonel Higginson.
— Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. I, p. 156.
But of course human nature may be displayed before you and if you have not the eyes to see you will learn nothing. If you are hidebound with prejudice, if your temper is sentimental, you can go through the wards of a hospital and be as ignorant of man at the end as you were at the beginning. If you want to get any benefit from such an experience you must have an open mind and an interest in human beings. I look upon myself as very fortunate in that though I have never much liked men I have found them so interesting that I am almost incapable of being bored by them. I do not particularly want to talk and I am very willing to listen. I do not care if people are interested in me or not. I have no desire to impart any knowledge I have to others nor do I feel the need to correct them if they are wrong. You can get a great deal of intertainment out of tedious people if you keep your head. I remember being taken for a drive in a foreign country by a kind lady who wanted to show me round. Her conversation was composed entirely of truisms and she had so large a vocabulary of hackneyed phrases that I despaired of remembering them. But one remark she made has stuck in my memory as have few witticisms; we passed a row of little houses by the sea and she said to me: "Those are week-end bungalows, if you understand what I mean; in other words they're bungalows that people go to on Saturdays and leave on Mondays." I should have been sorry to miss that.
— W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up, the end of Chapter XIX.
For the disadvantage and dangers of the author's calling are offset by an advantage so great as to make all its difficulties, disappointments, and maybe hardships, unimportant. It gives him spiritual freedom. To him life is a tragedy and by his gift of creation he enjoys the catharsis, the purging of pity and terror, which Aristotle tells us is the object of art. For his sins and his follies, the unhappiness that befalls him, his unrequited love, his physical defects, illness, privation, his hopes abandoned, his griefs, humiliations, everything is transformed by his power into material and by writing it he can overcome it. Everything is grist to his mill, from the glimpse of a face in the street to a war that convulses the civilized world, from the scent of a rose to the death of a friend. Nothing befalls him that he cannot transmute into a stanza, a song or a story, and having done this be rid of it. The artist is the only free man.
— W. Somerset Maugham, Ibid., Chapter L.
The kindness I have longest remembered has been of this sort, — the sort unsaid; so far behind the speaker's lips that almost it already lay in my heart. It did not have far to go to be communicated. The gods cannot misunderstand, man cannot explain. We communicate like the burrows of foxes, in silence and darkness, under ground. We are undermined by faith and love. How much more full is Nature where we think the empty space is than where we place the solids! — full of fluid influences. Should we ever communicate but by these? The spirit abhors a vacuum more than Nature. There is a tide which pierces the pores of the air. These aerial rivers, let us not pollute their currents. What meadows do they course through? How many fine mails there are which traverse their routes! He is privileged who gets his letters franked by them.
I believe these things.
— Henry D. Thoreau, last 1/3 of a letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson dated February 12, 1843, in The World's Greatest Letters, M. Lincoln Schuster (ed.).
When I look back at the past and think how much time has been wasted in vain, how much time was lost in delusions, in errors, in idleness, in ignorance of how to live, how I did not value time, how often I sinned against my heart and spirit — my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is happiness, each minute might have been an age of happiness. Si jeunesse savait! Now, changing my life, I am being reborn into a new form. Brother! I swear to you that I shall not lose hope and shall preserve my spirit and heart in purity. I shall be reborn to a better thing. That is my whole hope, my whole comfort!
— Ibid., Fyodore Dostoevsky, from a letter dated December 22, 1849, sent to his brother, Mihailovitch Dostoevsky, and written the day after he was to be executed but had his sentence commuted to four years hard labor.
Truth is such a rare thing, it is delightful to tell it.
I find ecstasy in living; the mere sense of living is joy enough. How do most people live without any thoughts? There are many people in the world — you must have noticed them in the street, — how do they live? How do they get strength to put on their clothes in the morning?
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?
— Ibid., Emily Dickinson, in a letter to Colonel Higginson.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Freedom Free?
It is then possible to say that rebellion, when it develops into destruction, is illogical. Claiming the unity of the human condition, it is a force of life, not death. Its most profound logic is not the logic of destruction; it is the logic of creation. Its movement, in order to remain authentic, must never abandon any of the terms of the contradiction that sustains it. It must be faithful to the yes that it contains as well as to the no that nihilistic interpretations isolate in rebellion. The logic of the rebel is to want to serve justice so as not to add to the injustice of the human condition, to insist on plain language so as not to increase the universal falsehood, and to wager, in spite of human misery, for happiness. Nihilistic passion, adding to falsehood and injustice, destroys in its fury its original demands and thus deprives rebellion of its most cogent reasons. It kills in the fond conviction that this world is dedicated to death. The consequence of rebellion, on the contrary, is to refuse to legitimize murder because rebellion, in principle, is a protest against death.
— Albert Camus, The Rebel, p. 285.
June sat filled with champagne. I have no need of it. She talked about the effects of hashish. I said, "I have known such states without hashish. I do not need drugs. I carry all that in myself." At this she was irritated. She does not realize that, being an artist, I want to be in those states of ecstasy or vision while keeping my awareness intact. I am the poet and I must feel and see. I do not want to be anaesthesized. I am drunk on June's beauty, but I am also aware of it.
— Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. I, "Life in Paris: 1931-1934," p. 37.
Of Marcel Duchamp:
About his painting he is detached. He showed me a portfolio, a box, really, which he said should now take the place of completed books. "This is not a time in which to finish anything, he said. It is a time for fragments." This box contained an unfinished book. Scraps of drawings on any old paper, notes torn from a notebook, odds and ends, half-finished comments, a word all by itself, in large handwriting, the elements with which to compose a book which he would never write. A symbol of the times.
— Anaïs Nin, Ibid., p. 357.
We live on top of a crumbling world. The more it crumbles the more I feel like asserting the possibility of an individually perfect world, personal loves, personal relationships, creation. I may be trying to place an opium mat on top of a volcano. The world is chaos. Panic. Hysteria.
— Anaïs Nin, Ibid., Vol. II, "Paris Pre-World War II: 1934-1939," p. 94.
But, soon after my "Goetz" and "Werther," that saying of a sage was verified for me — "If you do anything for the sake of the world, it will take good care that you shall not do it a second time."
— Wolfgang Göethe, in Conversations with Eckermann
When you ask what people here are like, I must reply, like verywhere else. The human race does not vary much. Most people pass the greater part of their lives in work, in order to live, and the modicum of free time they have to themselves makes them so uneasy that they seek every means they can to kill it. Alas, the destiny of man!
— Wolfgang Göethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther, William Rose (tr.), in The Permanent Göethe, edited and selected by Thomas Mann (1948), p. 365.
I remember the fable of the horse that was tired of its freedom, allowed itself to be saddled and bridled, and was ridden to death.
Wolfgang Göethe, Ibid., p. 399.
....a system of slavery so well designed that it does not breed revolt is the real threat. The literature of freedom has been designed to make men "conscious" of aversive control, but in its choice of methods it has failed to rescue the happy slave.
— B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, p. 40.
.... The disciple bows his head, and now the teacher elucidates further for him, "If you want to see, look straight into the thing; but if you seek to ponder over it, then you have already missed the goal!"
Thus truth in the world of man is not to be found as the content of knowledge, but only as human experience. One does not reflect upon it, one does not express it, one does not perceive it, but one lives it and receives it as life. That is expressed in Zen and in Hasidism in almost the same language.
— Martin Buber, The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, p. 229.
— Albert Camus, The Rebel, p. 285.
June sat filled with champagne. I have no need of it. She talked about the effects of hashish. I said, "I have known such states without hashish. I do not need drugs. I carry all that in myself." At this she was irritated. She does not realize that, being an artist, I want to be in those states of ecstasy or vision while keeping my awareness intact. I am the poet and I must feel and see. I do not want to be anaesthesized. I am drunk on June's beauty, but I am also aware of it.
— Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. I, "Life in Paris: 1931-1934," p. 37.
Of Marcel Duchamp:
About his painting he is detached. He showed me a portfolio, a box, really, which he said should now take the place of completed books. "This is not a time in which to finish anything, he said. It is a time for fragments." This box contained an unfinished book. Scraps of drawings on any old paper, notes torn from a notebook, odds and ends, half-finished comments, a word all by itself, in large handwriting, the elements with which to compose a book which he would never write. A symbol of the times.
— Anaïs Nin, Ibid., p. 357.
We live on top of a crumbling world. The more it crumbles the more I feel like asserting the possibility of an individually perfect world, personal loves, personal relationships, creation. I may be trying to place an opium mat on top of a volcano. The world is chaos. Panic. Hysteria.
— Anaïs Nin, Ibid., Vol. II, "Paris Pre-World War II: 1934-1939," p. 94.
But, soon after my "Goetz" and "Werther," that saying of a sage was verified for me — "If you do anything for the sake of the world, it will take good care that you shall not do it a second time."
— Wolfgang Göethe, in Conversations with Eckermann
When you ask what people here are like, I must reply, like verywhere else. The human race does not vary much. Most people pass the greater part of their lives in work, in order to live, and the modicum of free time they have to themselves makes them so uneasy that they seek every means they can to kill it. Alas, the destiny of man!
— Wolfgang Göethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther, William Rose (tr.), in The Permanent Göethe, edited and selected by Thomas Mann (1948), p. 365.
I remember the fable of the horse that was tired of its freedom, allowed itself to be saddled and bridled, and was ridden to death.
Wolfgang Göethe, Ibid., p. 399.
....a system of slavery so well designed that it does not breed revolt is the real threat. The literature of freedom has been designed to make men "conscious" of aversive control, but in its choice of methods it has failed to rescue the happy slave.
— B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, p. 40.
.... The disciple bows his head, and now the teacher elucidates further for him, "If you want to see, look straight into the thing; but if you seek to ponder over it, then you have already missed the goal!"
Thus truth in the world of man is not to be found as the content of knowledge, but only as human experience. One does not reflect upon it, one does not express it, one does not perceive it, but one lives it and receives it as life. That is expressed in Zen and in Hasidism in almost the same language.
— Martin Buber, The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, p. 229.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Clear Reflections
....the idea of art as something that induces madness or that it is the proper sphere of the mad is one of the worst blasphemies one can utter....
— Simone Weil, Seventy Letters, Richard Rees (tr.)
I do not believe that a mediocre painting necessarily deepens self respect more than watching a good movie. Only good movies are so rare. By good movies I do not mean here movies that meet some esoteric standards, but those presenting situations and ideas that induce the spectator to reexamine his life and its purposes. Out of the experience, he may arrive at spontaneous new decisions about himself and his way of life, decisions that awaken in him, or encourage him to persist in, the elusive search for meaning and the widening of his consciousness of freedom.
Most movies, TV shows and other types of liesure time activities are so planned as to prevent such experiences from taking place. They are devised and prepared by people who do not allow themselves (or are not allowed) any free play of ideas; they are not supposed to have that effect. But short of it, choices among movies, juke boxes, or TV shows are so limited or meaningless that they are pseudo choices. They are so empty or so fixed that they wake no emotional or intellectual participation and cannot serve the need for enriching one's life.
— Bruno Bettelheim, The Informed Heart, p. 91.
Darling M. you think that I have something to give. That is the wrong way to put it. But I too have a sort of growing inner certainty that there is within me a deposit of pure gold which must be handed on. Only I become more and more convinced, by experience and by observing my contemporaries, that there is no one to receive it.
It is indivisible, and whatever is added to it becomes part of it. And as it grows it becomes more compact. I cannot distribute it piecemeal.
To receive it calls for an effort. And effort is so fatiguing!
Some people feel in a confused way that there is something. But once they have made a few polite remarks about my intelligence their conscience is clear. After which, they listen to me or read me with the same hurried attention which they give to everything, making up their minds definitely about each separate little hint of an idea as soon as it appears: "I agree with this," "I don't agree with that," "this is marvelous," "that is completely idiotic" (the latter antithesis comes from my chief). In the end they say: "Very interesting," and pass on to something else. They have avoided fatigue.
What else can one expect? I am convinced that the most fervent Christians among them don't concentrate their attention much more when they are praying or reading the Gospel.
Why imagine it is better elsewhere? I have seen some of those elsewheres.
As for posterity, before there is a generation with muscle and power of thought the books and manuscripts of our day will surely have disappeared.
This does not distress me at all. The mine of gold is inexhaustible.
— Simone Weil, Seventy Letters, Richard Rees (tr.), p.196-197.
Come here, my dear, good, beautiful doggie, and smell this excellent perfume which comes from the best perfumer of Paris.
And the dog, wagging his tail which I believe, is that poor creature's way of laughing and smiling, came up and put his curious nose on the uncorked bottle. Then, suddenly, he backed away in terror, barking at me reproachfully.
"Ah miserable dog, if I had offered a package of excrement you would have sniffed at it with delight and perhaps gobbled it up. In this you resemble the public which should never be offered delicate perfumes that infuriate them, but only carefully selected garbage."
— Charles Baudelaire, from VIII: "The Dog and the Scent-Bottle," in Paris Spleen, Louise Varèse (tr.), p. 11.
Do not seek fame. Do not make plans. Do not be absorbed by activities. Do not think that you know. Be aware of all that is and dwell in the infinite. Wander where there is no path. Be all that heaven gave you, but act as though you have received nothing. Be empty, that is all.
The mind of a perfect man is like a mirror. It reflects but does not hold. Therefore, the perfect man can act without effort.
— Chuang Tzu: Inner Chapters, Gia-Fu Feng & Jand English Trs.), p. 159, from Chapter 7, "The Sage King."
If there is no other, there is no I. If there is no I, there is no one to perceive. This is close to the truth, but we do not know why. There must be some primal force, but we cannot discover any proof. I believe it acts, but I cannot see it. I can feel it, but it has no form.
The hundred joints, nine openings, and six organs all function together. Which part do you prefer? Do you like them all equally, or do you have a favorite? Are they not all servants? Can they keep order among themselves, or do they take turns being masters and servants? It may be that there is indeed a true master. Whether I really feel his existence or not has nothing to do with the way it is. Once a man is given a body it works naturally as long as it lasts. It carries on through hardship and ease and, like a galloping horse, nothing can stop it. Isn't it sad? All through life one toils and sweats, never seeing any result. Weary and exhausted, man has no place to rest his bones. Isn't it a pity? One may say, "There is no death." What good does that do? When the body decays, so does the mind. Is this not a great sorrow? Is life really this absurd? Am I the only one who sees the absurdity? Don't others see it too? If one is true to one's self and follows its teaching, who needs be without a teacher? Not only those who are experienced and wise may have a teacher, the fools have theirs too. When those who are not true to themselves try to choose between right and wrong, it is as if they set off for Yueh today and arrived yesterday. That would be making what does not exist, exist....
Words are not just blown air. They have a meaning. If you are not sure what you are talking about, are you saying anything, or are you saying nothing? Words seem different from the chirping of birds. Is there a difference, or isn't there? How can Tao be so obscure and yet admit of truth and falsehood? How can words be so obscure and yet admit of right and wrong? How can Tao cease to exist? How can words not be heard?
— Chuang Tzu: Inner Chapters, Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English (trs.), from Chapter 2, "The Equality of All Things," pp. 25-26.
— Simone Weil, Seventy Letters, Richard Rees (tr.)
I do not believe that a mediocre painting necessarily deepens self respect more than watching a good movie. Only good movies are so rare. By good movies I do not mean here movies that meet some esoteric standards, but those presenting situations and ideas that induce the spectator to reexamine his life and its purposes. Out of the experience, he may arrive at spontaneous new decisions about himself and his way of life, decisions that awaken in him, or encourage him to persist in, the elusive search for meaning and the widening of his consciousness of freedom.
Most movies, TV shows and other types of liesure time activities are so planned as to prevent such experiences from taking place. They are devised and prepared by people who do not allow themselves (or are not allowed) any free play of ideas; they are not supposed to have that effect. But short of it, choices among movies, juke boxes, or TV shows are so limited or meaningless that they are pseudo choices. They are so empty or so fixed that they wake no emotional or intellectual participation and cannot serve the need for enriching one's life.
— Bruno Bettelheim, The Informed Heart, p. 91.
Darling M. you think that I have something to give. That is the wrong way to put it. But I too have a sort of growing inner certainty that there is within me a deposit of pure gold which must be handed on. Only I become more and more convinced, by experience and by observing my contemporaries, that there is no one to receive it.
It is indivisible, and whatever is added to it becomes part of it. And as it grows it becomes more compact. I cannot distribute it piecemeal.
To receive it calls for an effort. And effort is so fatiguing!
Some people feel in a confused way that there is something. But once they have made a few polite remarks about my intelligence their conscience is clear. After which, they listen to me or read me with the same hurried attention which they give to everything, making up their minds definitely about each separate little hint of an idea as soon as it appears: "I agree with this," "I don't agree with that," "this is marvelous," "that is completely idiotic" (the latter antithesis comes from my chief). In the end they say: "Very interesting," and pass on to something else. They have avoided fatigue.
What else can one expect? I am convinced that the most fervent Christians among them don't concentrate their attention much more when they are praying or reading the Gospel.
Why imagine it is better elsewhere? I have seen some of those elsewheres.
As for posterity, before there is a generation with muscle and power of thought the books and manuscripts of our day will surely have disappeared.
This does not distress me at all. The mine of gold is inexhaustible.
— Simone Weil, Seventy Letters, Richard Rees (tr.), p.196-197.
Come here, my dear, good, beautiful doggie, and smell this excellent perfume which comes from the best perfumer of Paris.
And the dog, wagging his tail which I believe, is that poor creature's way of laughing and smiling, came up and put his curious nose on the uncorked bottle. Then, suddenly, he backed away in terror, barking at me reproachfully.
"Ah miserable dog, if I had offered a package of excrement you would have sniffed at it with delight and perhaps gobbled it up. In this you resemble the public which should never be offered delicate perfumes that infuriate them, but only carefully selected garbage."
— Charles Baudelaire, from VIII: "The Dog and the Scent-Bottle," in Paris Spleen, Louise Varèse (tr.), p. 11.
Do not seek fame. Do not make plans. Do not be absorbed by activities. Do not think that you know. Be aware of all that is and dwell in the infinite. Wander where there is no path. Be all that heaven gave you, but act as though you have received nothing. Be empty, that is all.
The mind of a perfect man is like a mirror. It reflects but does not hold. Therefore, the perfect man can act without effort.
— Chuang Tzu: Inner Chapters, Gia-Fu Feng & Jand English Trs.), p. 159, from Chapter 7, "The Sage King."
If there is no other, there is no I. If there is no I, there is no one to perceive. This is close to the truth, but we do not know why. There must be some primal force, but we cannot discover any proof. I believe it acts, but I cannot see it. I can feel it, but it has no form.
The hundred joints, nine openings, and six organs all function together. Which part do you prefer? Do you like them all equally, or do you have a favorite? Are they not all servants? Can they keep order among themselves, or do they take turns being masters and servants? It may be that there is indeed a true master. Whether I really feel his existence or not has nothing to do with the way it is. Once a man is given a body it works naturally as long as it lasts. It carries on through hardship and ease and, like a galloping horse, nothing can stop it. Isn't it sad? All through life one toils and sweats, never seeing any result. Weary and exhausted, man has no place to rest his bones. Isn't it a pity? One may say, "There is no death." What good does that do? When the body decays, so does the mind. Is this not a great sorrow? Is life really this absurd? Am I the only one who sees the absurdity? Don't others see it too? If one is true to one's self and follows its teaching, who needs be without a teacher? Not only those who are experienced and wise may have a teacher, the fools have theirs too. When those who are not true to themselves try to choose between right and wrong, it is as if they set off for Yueh today and arrived yesterday. That would be making what does not exist, exist....
Words are not just blown air. They have a meaning. If you are not sure what you are talking about, are you saying anything, or are you saying nothing? Words seem different from the chirping of birds. Is there a difference, or isn't there? How can Tao be so obscure and yet admit of truth and falsehood? How can words be so obscure and yet admit of right and wrong? How can Tao cease to exist? How can words not be heard?
— Chuang Tzu: Inner Chapters, Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English (trs.), from Chapter 2, "The Equality of All Things," pp. 25-26.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Wait and How
"What! He is now going to teach me!"
— Why not? There is nobody from whom you cannot learn. Before God, who speaks through all men, you are always in the bottom class of nursery school.
— Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings (Diary 1925-1961), 1955, p. 104.
On the field where Ormuzd has challenged Ahriman to battle, he who chases away the dogs is wasting his time.
— Ibid., 1956, p. 128.
Tired
And lonely,
So tired
The heart aches.
The fingers are numb
The knees tremble.
It is now,
Now, that you must not give in.
On the path of others
Are resting places,
Places in the sun
Where they can meet
But this
Is your path,
And it is now,
Now that you must not fail.
Weep
If you can,
Weep,
But do not complain.
The way chose you —
And you must be thankful.
— Ibid., 1961, p. 213.
The non-action of the wise man is not inaction. It is not studied. It is not shaken by anything. The sage is quiet because he is not moved, not because he wills to be quiet.
— The Way of Chuang Tzu, Thomas Merton, from "Action and Non-action," p. 80.
If a person keeps failing to solve his problems, those within himself, and those between him and society, he loses faith in being able to meet new ones sucessfully. The challenge of repeated choices as to which of many unsuitable jobs to select, which of several imperfect party platforms to support, which of many tempting but often not too essential gadgets to buy, confronts the modern citizen with his own lack of decision. Rarely do these choices really satisfy his deeper needs. Therefore, the psychic energy spent in reaching a decision is wasted and the individual feels drained of energy without purpose.
— Bruno Bettelheim, The Informed Heart, p. 80.
— Why not? There is nobody from whom you cannot learn. Before God, who speaks through all men, you are always in the bottom class of nursery school.
— Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings (Diary 1925-1961), 1955, p. 104.
On the field where Ormuzd has challenged Ahriman to battle, he who chases away the dogs is wasting his time.
— Ibid., 1956, p. 128.
Tired
And lonely,
So tired
The heart aches.
The fingers are numb
The knees tremble.
It is now,
Now, that you must not give in.
On the path of others
Are resting places,
Places in the sun
Where they can meet
But this
Is your path,
And it is now,
Now that you must not fail.
Weep
If you can,
Weep,
But do not complain.
The way chose you —
And you must be thankful.
— Ibid., 1961, p. 213.
The non-action of the wise man is not inaction. It is not studied. It is not shaken by anything. The sage is quiet because he is not moved, not because he wills to be quiet.
— The Way of Chuang Tzu, Thomas Merton, from "Action and Non-action," p. 80.
If a person keeps failing to solve his problems, those within himself, and those between him and society, he loses faith in being able to meet new ones sucessfully. The challenge of repeated choices as to which of many unsuitable jobs to select, which of several imperfect party platforms to support, which of many tempting but often not too essential gadgets to buy, confronts the modern citizen with his own lack of decision. Rarely do these choices really satisfy his deeper needs. Therefore, the psychic energy spent in reaching a decision is wasted and the individual feels drained of energy without purpose.
— Bruno Bettelheim, The Informed Heart, p. 80.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
A Blogger's Right
Remy de Gourmont says somewhere that "the man of letters loves not only to be read but to be seen. Happy to be by himself, he would be happier still if people knew that he was happy to be by himself, working in solitude at night under his lamp; and he would be indeed happiest of all if, after he has closed his door, his servant should open it for a visitor and show to the importunate fellow, through the chink, the man of letters happy to be by himself."
— Source Unknown
....; I thought then of the woman of thirty, the symbol of the ancient and eternal Snake and of the men who have written of her, and I realized then the immitigable chasm between all life and all print — that those who can, do, those who cannot and suffer enough because they can't, write about it. Then I was free, I could see her again, I saw her still watching me with that dark inscrutable look....
— William Faulkner, The Unvanquished, p. 262.
This is the discovery that intoxicated the Greeks: that the reality of the sensible universe is constituted by a necessity whose laws are the symbolic expression of the mysteries of faith.
— Simone Weil, "Notes on Cleanthes, Pherecydes, Anaximander, and Philolaus," in On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God
Then the revelation occurred: Marino saw the rose as Adam might have seen it in Paradise, and he thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it; and that the tall, proud volumes casting a golden shadow in a corner were not — as his vanity had dreamed — a mirror of the world, but rather one thing more added to the world.
— Jorge Luis Borges, "A Yellow Rose," in Dreamtigers (El Hacedor), p. 38.
This is the last stanza of François Villon's poem "Le Debat Du Cuer Et Du Corps De Villon" ("Villon's Dialogue With His Heart." The italic are his Heart's replies:
"You want to live?" — God give me strength to do so!" — "You then must..." — "What?" — "Feel penitent and read unceasingly." — "What sort of things?" — "Graver subjects, and leave your foolish friends." — "I'll think about it." — "Now don't forget." — "I've made a note of it." — "Don't wait so long that things get worse. I say no more." — "That's quite alright with me."
— in The Complete Works of François Villon, Anthony Bonner (tr.)
It makes one's heart ache when one sees that a man has staked his soul upon some end, the hopeless imperfection and futility of which is immediately obvious to everyone but himself. But isn't this, after all, merely a matter of degree? Isn't the pathetic grandeur of human existence in some way bound up with the eternal disproportion in this world, where self-delusion, is necessary to life, between the honesty of the striving and the nullity of the result? That we all — every one of us — take ourselves seriously is not merely ridiculous.
— Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings (Diary 1925-1961), p. 13.
What I ask for is absurd: that life shall have a meaning.
What I strive for is impossible: that life shall acquire a meaning.
I dare not believe, I do not see how I shall ever be able to believe: that I am not alone.
— Ibid., 1952, p. 86.
— Source Unknown
....; I thought then of the woman of thirty, the symbol of the ancient and eternal Snake and of the men who have written of her, and I realized then the immitigable chasm between all life and all print — that those who can, do, those who cannot and suffer enough because they can't, write about it. Then I was free, I could see her again, I saw her still watching me with that dark inscrutable look....
— William Faulkner, The Unvanquished, p. 262.
This is the discovery that intoxicated the Greeks: that the reality of the sensible universe is constituted by a necessity whose laws are the symbolic expression of the mysteries of faith.
— Simone Weil, "Notes on Cleanthes, Pherecydes, Anaximander, and Philolaus," in On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God
Then the revelation occurred: Marino saw the rose as Adam might have seen it in Paradise, and he thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it; and that the tall, proud volumes casting a golden shadow in a corner were not — as his vanity had dreamed — a mirror of the world, but rather one thing more added to the world.
— Jorge Luis Borges, "A Yellow Rose," in Dreamtigers (El Hacedor), p. 38.
This is the last stanza of François Villon's poem "Le Debat Du Cuer Et Du Corps De Villon" ("Villon's Dialogue With His Heart." The italic are his Heart's replies:
"You want to live?" — God give me strength to do so!" — "You then must..." — "What?" — "Feel penitent and read unceasingly." — "What sort of things?" — "Graver subjects, and leave your foolish friends." — "I'll think about it." — "Now don't forget." — "I've made a note of it." — "Don't wait so long that things get worse. I say no more." — "That's quite alright with me."
— in The Complete Works of François Villon, Anthony Bonner (tr.)
It makes one's heart ache when one sees that a man has staked his soul upon some end, the hopeless imperfection and futility of which is immediately obvious to everyone but himself. But isn't this, after all, merely a matter of degree? Isn't the pathetic grandeur of human existence in some way bound up with the eternal disproportion in this world, where self-delusion, is necessary to life, between the honesty of the striving and the nullity of the result? That we all — every one of us — take ourselves seriously is not merely ridiculous.
— Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings (Diary 1925-1961), p. 13.
What I ask for is absurd: that life shall have a meaning.
What I strive for is impossible: that life shall acquire a meaning.
I dare not believe, I do not see how I shall ever be able to believe: that I am not alone.
— Ibid., 1952, p. 86.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Strive Beyond, Not Toward
The following are from Handful of Beach Sand by Kalil Gibran:
They tell me: If you see a slave sleeping do not wake him lest he be dreaming of freedom.
I tell them: If you see a slave sleeping, wake him and explain to him freedom.
The river continues on its way to the sea, broken the wheel of the mill or not.
There are among the people murderers who have never committed murder, thieves who have never stolen, and liars who have spoken nothing but the truth.
Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.
O great intelligent Being! hidden and existing in and for the universe, You can hear me because You are within me and You can see me because You are all-seeing; please drop within my soul a seed of Your wisdom to grow a sapling in your forest and to give of Your fruit. Amen!
— All of the above are excerpted from Kahlil Gibran's Handful of Beach Sand
Who pities those who wait? They are easily recognized: by their gentleness, by their falsely attentive looks — attentive, yes, but to something other than what they are looking at — by their absent-mindedness.
— Pauline Réage, Story of O, p. 90.
Being absurd as well as beautiful,
Magic — like art — is a hoax redeemed by awe.
(Not priest but clown, the shuddering sorcerer
Is more astounded than his rapt applauders:
"Then all those props and Easters of my stage
Came true? But I was joking all the time!")
Art. being bartender, is never drunk;
And magic that believes itself, must die.
....
— From "A Walk on Snow," #3, Peter Viereck
Here at last, men must have felt was a cause compared with which the grandest of historic causes had been trivial. It was doubtless because it could have commanded millions of martyrs, that none were needed. The change of a dynasty in a petty kingdom of the old world often cost more lives than did the revolution which set the feet of the human race at last in the right way.
Doubtless it ill beseems one to whom the boon of life in our resplendent age has been vouchsafed to wish his destiny other, and yet I have often thought that I would fain exchange my share in this serene and golden day for a place in that stormy epoch of transition, when heroes burst the barred gate of the future and revealed to the kindling gaze of a hopeless race, in place of the blank wall that had closed its path, a vista of progress whose end, for very excess of light, still dazzles us. Ah, my friends! who will say that to have lived then, when the weakest influence was a lever to whose touch the centuries trembled, was not worth a share even in this era of fruition?
— Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, p.232.
They tell me: If you see a slave sleeping do not wake him lest he be dreaming of freedom.
I tell them: If you see a slave sleeping, wake him and explain to him freedom.
The river continues on its way to the sea, broken the wheel of the mill or not.
There are among the people murderers who have never committed murder, thieves who have never stolen, and liars who have spoken nothing but the truth.
Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.
O great intelligent Being! hidden and existing in and for the universe, You can hear me because You are within me and You can see me because You are all-seeing; please drop within my soul a seed of Your wisdom to grow a sapling in your forest and to give of Your fruit. Amen!
— All of the above are excerpted from Kahlil Gibran's Handful of Beach Sand
Who pities those who wait? They are easily recognized: by their gentleness, by their falsely attentive looks — attentive, yes, but to something other than what they are looking at — by their absent-mindedness.
— Pauline Réage, Story of O, p. 90.
Being absurd as well as beautiful,
Magic — like art — is a hoax redeemed by awe.
(Not priest but clown, the shuddering sorcerer
Is more astounded than his rapt applauders:
"Then all those props and Easters of my stage
Came true? But I was joking all the time!")
Art. being bartender, is never drunk;
And magic that believes itself, must die.
....
— From "A Walk on Snow," #3, Peter Viereck
Here at last, men must have felt was a cause compared with which the grandest of historic causes had been trivial. It was doubtless because it could have commanded millions of martyrs, that none were needed. The change of a dynasty in a petty kingdom of the old world often cost more lives than did the revolution which set the feet of the human race at last in the right way.
Doubtless it ill beseems one to whom the boon of life in our resplendent age has been vouchsafed to wish his destiny other, and yet I have often thought that I would fain exchange my share in this serene and golden day for a place in that stormy epoch of transition, when heroes burst the barred gate of the future and revealed to the kindling gaze of a hopeless race, in place of the blank wall that had closed its path, a vista of progress whose end, for very excess of light, still dazzles us. Ah, my friends! who will say that to have lived then, when the weakest influence was a lever to whose touch the centuries trembled, was not worth a share even in this era of fruition?
— Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, p.232.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Who Owns It?
The sea at rest need not hear the gale to know that it is vast and deep.
— Par Lagerkvist, The Eternal Smile
This is how I sum up for myself what I wish to convey to those who work here with me:
I am dead because I lack desire;
I lack desire because I think I possess;
I think I possess because I do not try to give;
In trying to give, you see that you have nothing;
Seeing you have nothing, you try to give of yourself;
Trying to give of yourself, you see that you are nothing;
Seeing you are nothing, you desire to become;
In desiring to become, you begin to live.
— From one of the last letters of René Daumal (1908-1944) in the Afterword by Véra Daumal to his symbolic, utopian quest novel Mount Analogue which was published in an incomplete version after his death.
On the other hand, those who wish to believe that he spun his theories from his own inner consciousness alone will consider that it is diminishing his originality to show the sources of his raw material, to show whence he may have borrowed his ideas. But the power of invention seems rarely to accompany great literary genius; it is the minor writers who conceive the brilliant ideas which they drop carelessly by the wayside for greater writers to pick up. All great writers have robbed the hives of diligent bees and, paradoxically, genius might be said to be the faculty for clever theft.
It is natural that Rimbaud should have gone to literature rather than to life for his material. He was not yet seventeen, his most intense form of living had been, on the whole, through books, and the world of literature had been to him a kinder world than the material world. He possessed a unique power of assimilation and his imagination and memory were a rich storehouse of literary and philosophical ideas. From the wealth which he had consciously borrowed elsewhere, he created something that was his alone.
— Enid Starkie, Arthur Rimbaud, pp. 96-97.
People ask what are my intentions with my films — my aims. It is a difficult and dangerous question, and I usually give an evasive answer: I try to tell the truth about the human condition, the truth as I see it. This answer seems to satisfy everyone, but it is not quite correct. I prefer to describe what I would like my aim to be.
There is an old story of how the cathedral of Chartres was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Then thousands of people came from all points of the compass, like a giant procession of ants, and together they began to rebuild the cathedral on its old site. they worked until the building was completed — master builders, artists, laborers, clowns, noblemen, priests, burghers. But they all remained anonymous, and so no one knows to this day who built the cathedral of Chartres.
Regardless of my own beliefs and my own doubts, which are unimportant in this connection, it is ny opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God. He lived and died without being more or less important than other artisans; "eternal values," "immortality" and "masterpiece" were terms not applicable in his case. The ability to create was a gift. In such a world flourished invulnerable assurance and natural humility.
Today the individual has become the highest form and the greatest bane of artistic existence. The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy. Thus we finally gather in one large pen, where we stand and bleat about our loneliness without listening to each other and without realizing that we are smothering each other to death. The individualists stare into each other's eyes and yet deny the existence of each other. We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the ganster's whim and the purest ideal.
Thus if I am asked what I would like the general purpose of my films to be, I would reply that I want to be one of the artists in the cathedral on the great plain. I want to make a dragon's head, an angel, a devil — or perhaps a saint — out of stone. It does not matter which; it is the sense of satisfaction that counts. Regardless of whether I believe or not, whether I am a Christian or not, I would play my part in the collective building of the cathedral.
— Ingmar Bergman, from the Introduction to Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman, pp. xvi-xxii, 1960, in Film: A Montage of Theories, R. MacCann (ed.), pp. 145-146.
Overnight our place was busting its seams with idiotics.
Anything went, and every fool thing you might think of under the influence of hashish or a hangover went big.
We were awash with pretty women, clowns, and storytellers who couldn't write. We made a million dollars so fast my fingers ached from trying to count.
We did the best we could with what we had.
We made funny pictures aa fast as we could for money.
: I, Mack Sennett, the Canadian farm boy, the boilermaker, was the head man.
— Mack Sennett, King of Comedy, from pp.86-90, in Ibid. pp. 163-164.
— Par Lagerkvist, The Eternal Smile
This is how I sum up for myself what I wish to convey to those who work here with me:
I am dead because I lack desire;
I lack desire because I think I possess;
I think I possess because I do not try to give;
In trying to give, you see that you have nothing;
Seeing you have nothing, you try to give of yourself;
Trying to give of yourself, you see that you are nothing;
Seeing you are nothing, you desire to become;
In desiring to become, you begin to live.
— From one of the last letters of René Daumal (1908-1944) in the Afterword by Véra Daumal to his symbolic, utopian quest novel Mount Analogue which was published in an incomplete version after his death.
On the other hand, those who wish to believe that he spun his theories from his own inner consciousness alone will consider that it is diminishing his originality to show the sources of his raw material, to show whence he may have borrowed his ideas. But the power of invention seems rarely to accompany great literary genius; it is the minor writers who conceive the brilliant ideas which they drop carelessly by the wayside for greater writers to pick up. All great writers have robbed the hives of diligent bees and, paradoxically, genius might be said to be the faculty for clever theft.
It is natural that Rimbaud should have gone to literature rather than to life for his material. He was not yet seventeen, his most intense form of living had been, on the whole, through books, and the world of literature had been to him a kinder world than the material world. He possessed a unique power of assimilation and his imagination and memory were a rich storehouse of literary and philosophical ideas. From the wealth which he had consciously borrowed elsewhere, he created something that was his alone.
— Enid Starkie, Arthur Rimbaud, pp. 96-97.
People ask what are my intentions with my films — my aims. It is a difficult and dangerous question, and I usually give an evasive answer: I try to tell the truth about the human condition, the truth as I see it. This answer seems to satisfy everyone, but it is not quite correct. I prefer to describe what I would like my aim to be.
There is an old story of how the cathedral of Chartres was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Then thousands of people came from all points of the compass, like a giant procession of ants, and together they began to rebuild the cathedral on its old site. they worked until the building was completed — master builders, artists, laborers, clowns, noblemen, priests, burghers. But they all remained anonymous, and so no one knows to this day who built the cathedral of Chartres.
Regardless of my own beliefs and my own doubts, which are unimportant in this connection, it is ny opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God. He lived and died without being more or less important than other artisans; "eternal values," "immortality" and "masterpiece" were terms not applicable in his case. The ability to create was a gift. In such a world flourished invulnerable assurance and natural humility.
Today the individual has become the highest form and the greatest bane of artistic existence. The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy. Thus we finally gather in one large pen, where we stand and bleat about our loneliness without listening to each other and without realizing that we are smothering each other to death. The individualists stare into each other's eyes and yet deny the existence of each other. We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the ganster's whim and the purest ideal.
Thus if I am asked what I would like the general purpose of my films to be, I would reply that I want to be one of the artists in the cathedral on the great plain. I want to make a dragon's head, an angel, a devil — or perhaps a saint — out of stone. It does not matter which; it is the sense of satisfaction that counts. Regardless of whether I believe or not, whether I am a Christian or not, I would play my part in the collective building of the cathedral.
— Ingmar Bergman, from the Introduction to Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman, pp. xvi-xxii, 1960, in Film: A Montage of Theories, R. MacCann (ed.), pp. 145-146.
Overnight our place was busting its seams with idiotics.
Anything went, and every fool thing you might think of under the influence of hashish or a hangover went big.
We were awash with pretty women, clowns, and storytellers who couldn't write. We made a million dollars so fast my fingers ached from trying to count.
We did the best we could with what we had.
We made funny pictures aa fast as we could for money.
: I, Mack Sennett, the Canadian farm boy, the boilermaker, was the head man.
— Mack Sennett, King of Comedy, from pp.86-90, in Ibid. pp. 163-164.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Internal Movement
"Those folks who are concerned with freedom, real freedom — not the freedom to say "shit" in public or to criticize their leaders or to worship God in the church of their choice, but the freedom to be free of language and gods — well, they must use style to alter content. If style is masterful, if it is fluid and at the same time complete, then we can re-create ourselves, or rather, we can re-create the Infinite Goof within us. We can live on top of content, float above predictable responses, social programming and hereditary circuitry, letting the bits of color and electricity and light filter up to us, where we may incorporate them at will into our actions. That's what the voices said. They said that content is what man harbors but does not parade. And I love a parade"
— Tom Robbins, spoken by character Amanda, in Another Roadside Attraction (1971), Part III, p. 250.
Everybody wants to be somebody, but nobody wants to grow.
— Wolfgang Goethe
"It was pity made you cry," she said. "Pity, not for this person or that person who is suffering, but for all things — for the very nature of things. Unless a man has pity he is inhuman and not yet truly a man, for out of pity comes the balm which heals. Only good men weep. If a man has not wept at the world's pain he is less than the dirt he walks upon because the dirt will nourish seed, root, stalk, leaf and flower, but the spirit of a man without pity is barren and will bring forth nothing — or only pride which must finally do murder of one sort or another — murder of good things, or murder even of human lives." Now Mrs. Macauley returned to the sink of the kitchen where she began new work — work which even Homer knew was unnecessary.
"There will always be pain in things," Mrs. Macauley said. "Knowing this does not mean that a man shall despair. The good man will seek to take pain out of things. The foolish man will not even notice it except in himself. And the evil man will drive pain deeper into things and spread it about wherever he goes. But each man is guiltless, for the evil man no less than the foolish man or the good man did not ask to come here and did not come alone, from nothing, but from many worlds and from multitudes. The evil do not know they are evil and are therefore innocent. The evil man must be forgiven every day. He must be loved, because something of him is in each of us. He is ours and we are his. None of us is separate from any other. The peasant's prayer is my prayeer, the assassin's crime is my crime. Last night you cried because you began to know these things."
— William Saroyan, The Human Comedy, pp. 188-189.
Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the srtarkest madness.
'Tis the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur, — you're straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.
— Emily Dickinson
— Tom Robbins, spoken by character Amanda, in Another Roadside Attraction (1971), Part III, p. 250.
Everybody wants to be somebody, but nobody wants to grow.
— Wolfgang Goethe
"It was pity made you cry," she said. "Pity, not for this person or that person who is suffering, but for all things — for the very nature of things. Unless a man has pity he is inhuman and not yet truly a man, for out of pity comes the balm which heals. Only good men weep. If a man has not wept at the world's pain he is less than the dirt he walks upon because the dirt will nourish seed, root, stalk, leaf and flower, but the spirit of a man without pity is barren and will bring forth nothing — or only pride which must finally do murder of one sort or another — murder of good things, or murder even of human lives." Now Mrs. Macauley returned to the sink of the kitchen where she began new work — work which even Homer knew was unnecessary.
"There will always be pain in things," Mrs. Macauley said. "Knowing this does not mean that a man shall despair. The good man will seek to take pain out of things. The foolish man will not even notice it except in himself. And the evil man will drive pain deeper into things and spread it about wherever he goes. But each man is guiltless, for the evil man no less than the foolish man or the good man did not ask to come here and did not come alone, from nothing, but from many worlds and from multitudes. The evil do not know they are evil and are therefore innocent. The evil man must be forgiven every day. He must be loved, because something of him is in each of us. He is ours and we are his. None of us is separate from any other. The peasant's prayer is my prayeer, the assassin's crime is my crime. Last night you cried because you began to know these things."
— William Saroyan, The Human Comedy, pp. 188-189.
Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the srtarkest madness.
'Tis the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur, — you're straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.
— Emily Dickinson
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Thinking Light
Consciousness and being are not there different from each other. All being is consciousness and all consciousness being. Thought and reality coalesce and a creative merging of subject and object results. Life grows conscious of its incredidible depths. In this fulness of felt life and freedom, the distinction of the knower and the known disappears. The privacy of the individual self is broken into and invaded by a universal self which the individual feels as his own.
The experience itself is felt to be sufficient and complete. It does not come in a fragmentary or truncated form demanding completion by something else. It does not look beyond itself for meaning or validity. It does not appeal to external standards of logic or metaphysics. It is its own credentials. It is self-established (svatahsiddha), self-evidencing (svasamvedya), self-luminescent (svayaamprakasa). It does not argue or explain but knows and is. It is beyond the bounds of proof and so touches completeness. It comes with a constraint that brooks no denial. It is pure comprehension, entire significance, complete validity. Patanjali, the author of the Yoga Sutra, tells us that the insight is truth-filled, or truth-bearing.
The tension of normal life disappears, giving rise to inward peace, power, and joy. The Greeks called it ataraxy, but the word sounds more negative than the Hindu trem "santi" or peace, which is a positive feeling of calm and confidence, joy and strength in the midst of outward pain and defeat, loss and frustration. The experience is felt as profoundly satisfying, where darkness is turned into light, sadness into joy, despair into assurance. The continuance of such an experience constitutes dwelling in heaven which is not a place where God lives, but a mode of being which is fully and completely real.
— S. Radhakrishnan, "Character of Religious Experience," from Chapter III of An Idealist's View of Life, in A Sourcebook of Indian Philosophy, pp. 617-618.
Reflecting minds make little use of this expression; the happy and the unhappy. In this world, the vestibule of another evidently, there is none happy.
The true division of humanity is this: the luminous and the dark.
To diminish the number of the dark, to increase the number of the luminous, behold the aim. This is why we cry: education, knowledge! to learn to read is to kindle a fire; every syllable spelled sparkles.
But he who says light does not necessarily say joy. There is suffering in the light; in excess it burns. Flame is hostile to the wing. To burn and yet to fly, this is the miracle of genius.
When you know and when you love you shall suffer still. The day dawns in tears. The luminous weep, were it only over the dark.
— Victor-Marie Hugo, Les Miserables, Vol. 2, Part IV, Book VII, p. 209.
In every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing.
— Thomas Caryle, The French Revolution, Vol. X, p. 7.
[After speaking about Caballah and the Zohar:]
Every question a man can find to utter is answered even in the moment of its asking when dealt with in the way of the spirit....
The whole of life is nothing more than questions that have taken unto themselves shape, and bear within themselves the sum of their own answer: and answers that are pregnant with questions. Only fools see it otherwise.
— Gustave Meyrink, The Golem, p. 26.
The strength of the intellectual chain is no greater than that of the staple from which it hangs — and that is human feeling. The strength of Euclid is no greater than the axioms — and they are feelings; they are unreasoning statements of which all that we can say is, "I feel like that."
— Edward Carpenter, Civilization: Its Causes and Cure (1889), p. 83.
The experience itself is felt to be sufficient and complete. It does not come in a fragmentary or truncated form demanding completion by something else. It does not look beyond itself for meaning or validity. It does not appeal to external standards of logic or metaphysics. It is its own credentials. It is self-established (svatahsiddha), self-evidencing (svasamvedya), self-luminescent (svayaamprakasa). It does not argue or explain but knows and is. It is beyond the bounds of proof and so touches completeness. It comes with a constraint that brooks no denial. It is pure comprehension, entire significance, complete validity. Patanjali, the author of the Yoga Sutra, tells us that the insight is truth-filled, or truth-bearing.
The tension of normal life disappears, giving rise to inward peace, power, and joy. The Greeks called it ataraxy, but the word sounds more negative than the Hindu trem "santi" or peace, which is a positive feeling of calm and confidence, joy and strength in the midst of outward pain and defeat, loss and frustration. The experience is felt as profoundly satisfying, where darkness is turned into light, sadness into joy, despair into assurance. The continuance of such an experience constitutes dwelling in heaven which is not a place where God lives, but a mode of being which is fully and completely real.
— S. Radhakrishnan, "Character of Religious Experience," from Chapter III of An Idealist's View of Life, in A Sourcebook of Indian Philosophy, pp. 617-618.
Reflecting minds make little use of this expression; the happy and the unhappy. In this world, the vestibule of another evidently, there is none happy.
The true division of humanity is this: the luminous and the dark.
To diminish the number of the dark, to increase the number of the luminous, behold the aim. This is why we cry: education, knowledge! to learn to read is to kindle a fire; every syllable spelled sparkles.
But he who says light does not necessarily say joy. There is suffering in the light; in excess it burns. Flame is hostile to the wing. To burn and yet to fly, this is the miracle of genius.
When you know and when you love you shall suffer still. The day dawns in tears. The luminous weep, were it only over the dark.
— Victor-Marie Hugo, Les Miserables, Vol. 2, Part IV, Book VII, p. 209.
In every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing.
— Thomas Caryle, The French Revolution, Vol. X, p. 7.
[After speaking about Caballah and the Zohar:]
Every question a man can find to utter is answered even in the moment of its asking when dealt with in the way of the spirit....
The whole of life is nothing more than questions that have taken unto themselves shape, and bear within themselves the sum of their own answer: and answers that are pregnant with questions. Only fools see it otherwise.
— Gustave Meyrink, The Golem, p. 26.
The strength of the intellectual chain is no greater than that of the staple from which it hangs — and that is human feeling. The strength of Euclid is no greater than the axioms — and they are feelings; they are unreasoning statements of which all that we can say is, "I feel like that."
— Edward Carpenter, Civilization: Its Causes and Cure (1889), p. 83.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Deepening Depths
That innocence is to be feared. "Everything is permitted," exclaims Ivan Karamazov. That, too, smacks of the absurd. But on condition that it not be taken in the vulgar sense. I don't know whether or not it has been sufficiently pointed out it is not an outburst of relief or joy, but rather a bitter acknowledgement of a fact. The certainty of a God giving a meaning to life far surpasses in attractiveness the ability to behave badly with impunity. The choice would not be hard to make. But there is no choice, and that is where the bitterness comes in. The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions. "Everything is permitted" does not mean that nothing is forbidden. The absurd merely confers equivalence on the consequences of those actions. It does not recommend crime, for this would be childish, but it restores to remorse its futility. Likewise, if all experiences are different, that of duty is as legitimate as any other. One can be virtuous through a whim.
— Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 50.
Only when we feel that a story tells us more than just some perculiar happening, that it shows us through the singular story a generally human or epochal condition, when by its piercing vividness it touches the human core in us; only when a picture, even a portrait, reaches through the individual form into a conception of the structure of the phenomenal world — only then do these images attain to the sphere of art.
— Erich Kahler, "The Nature of the Symbol," VI, in Symbolism in Religion and Literature, Rollo May (ed.), p. 69.
The assertion often found at the beginning of creeds originating in our time that they deal not with belief but with scientifically based knowledge, thus contains an inner contradiction and rests on a self-deception.
— Werner Heisenberg, "The Representation of Nature in Contemporary Physics," in Ibid., p. 230.
Now therefore it is clear and plain that neither times past nor times future have any being. Nor may it properly be said that there are three times: past, present, and to come. But peradvanture it might properly be said that there are three times thus: a present time of things past, a present time of things present, and a present time of things future.
— St. Augustine, Confessions of St. Augustine, Book XI, Chapter 20.
[Speaking of T. S. Eliot's Waste-Land] The force of this poetic myth is the suggestion of its universality. Yet if we look at it more carefully, we see that it is not, in fact, universal. Not only is it Eliot's own personal synthesis, rather than the myth of a people, but also it is a myth of and for modern man, a sophisticated mosaic with eight pages of footnotes in five languages. The assent that it claims is not that of immediate experience and response, but of the interrelationships of meaning suggested by multifarious allusions and ironic contrasts. Hence, it is the exact opposite of what myth has always been to those among whom it has arisen — an immediate, dramatic presentation of a unique event. It belongs, rather, to that, modern myth-mongering — to coin a phrase — which substitutes the secondary meaning derived from the similarity of myths in different times and places for the direct meaning of the myth taken by itself that was available to ancient man. The myth-monger asks us to accept a rich sense of everything having significant relation to everything else in place of any immediate insight into any particular event of reality. The modern myth that is created in this way is a confession of the absence of meaning: in the end, it betrays its own nihilism.
— Maurice Friedman, "Images of Inauthenticity," in To Deny Our Nothingness, p. 37.
Man is not a circle with a single center; he is an ellipse with two foci. Facts are one, ideas are the other.
— Victor-Marie Hugo, Les Miserables, Vol. 2, Part IV, Book VIII, p. 207.
— Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 50.
Only when we feel that a story tells us more than just some perculiar happening, that it shows us through the singular story a generally human or epochal condition, when by its piercing vividness it touches the human core in us; only when a picture, even a portrait, reaches through the individual form into a conception of the structure of the phenomenal world — only then do these images attain to the sphere of art.
— Erich Kahler, "The Nature of the Symbol," VI, in Symbolism in Religion and Literature, Rollo May (ed.), p. 69.
The assertion often found at the beginning of creeds originating in our time that they deal not with belief but with scientifically based knowledge, thus contains an inner contradiction and rests on a self-deception.
— Werner Heisenberg, "The Representation of Nature in Contemporary Physics," in Ibid., p. 230.
Now therefore it is clear and plain that neither times past nor times future have any being. Nor may it properly be said that there are three times: past, present, and to come. But peradvanture it might properly be said that there are three times thus: a present time of things past, a present time of things present, and a present time of things future.
— St. Augustine, Confessions of St. Augustine, Book XI, Chapter 20.
[Speaking of T. S. Eliot's Waste-Land] The force of this poetic myth is the suggestion of its universality. Yet if we look at it more carefully, we see that it is not, in fact, universal. Not only is it Eliot's own personal synthesis, rather than the myth of a people, but also it is a myth of and for modern man, a sophisticated mosaic with eight pages of footnotes in five languages. The assent that it claims is not that of immediate experience and response, but of the interrelationships of meaning suggested by multifarious allusions and ironic contrasts. Hence, it is the exact opposite of what myth has always been to those among whom it has arisen — an immediate, dramatic presentation of a unique event. It belongs, rather, to that, modern myth-mongering — to coin a phrase — which substitutes the secondary meaning derived from the similarity of myths in different times and places for the direct meaning of the myth taken by itself that was available to ancient man. The myth-monger asks us to accept a rich sense of everything having significant relation to everything else in place of any immediate insight into any particular event of reality. The modern myth that is created in this way is a confession of the absence of meaning: in the end, it betrays its own nihilism.
— Maurice Friedman, "Images of Inauthenticity," in To Deny Our Nothingness, p. 37.
Man is not a circle with a single center; he is an ellipse with two foci. Facts are one, ideas are the other.
— Victor-Marie Hugo, Les Miserables, Vol. 2, Part IV, Book VIII, p. 207.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
A Pointed Genius
Sartre has said that genius is what a man invents when he is looking for a way out.
— Hayden Corrith, preface to Nausea
Palindromic sentence:
....say I'd said,"I like wonder, do they say I said Otto said I say they do wonder," like I said I'd say....
What would be left of our tragedies if a literate insect were to present us his?
— Cioran
I feel it right to warn the reader that he can very well skip this chapter without losing the thread of such story as I have to tell, since for the most part it is nothing more than the account of a conversation that I had with Larry. I should add, however, that except for this conversation I should perhaps not have thought it worth while to write this book.
— W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge, Chapter Six (i), entire chapter.
The more perfect and more eternal aspect of the universe is represented in our religions as having a personal form. The universe is no longer a mere It to us, but a Thou, if we are religious; and any relation that may be possible from person to person might be possible here. For instance, although in one sense we are passive portions of the universe, in another we show a curious autonomy, as if we were small active centres on our own account.
— William James, The Will to Believe, 1896.
A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
— James Joyce, Ulysses, p. 190.
A passage comes to mind from a novel in which Pursewarden speaks about the role of the artist in life. He says something like this: "Aware of every discord, of every calamity in the nature of man himself, he can do nothing to warn his friends, to point, to cry out in time and to try to save them. It would be useless. For they are the deliberate factors of their own unhappiness. All the artist can say as an imperative is: 'Reflect and weep.'"
— Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar, pp. 131-132.
I believe you capable of any evil: therefore I desire of you the good.
In truth, I have often laughed at the weaklings who think themselves good because their claws are blunt!
— Frederich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra
— Hayden Corrith, preface to Nausea
Palindromic sentence:
....say I'd said,"I like wonder, do they say I said Otto said I say they do wonder," like I said I'd say....
What would be left of our tragedies if a literate insect were to present us his?
— Cioran
I feel it right to warn the reader that he can very well skip this chapter without losing the thread of such story as I have to tell, since for the most part it is nothing more than the account of a conversation that I had with Larry. I should add, however, that except for this conversation I should perhaps not have thought it worth while to write this book.
— W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge, Chapter Six (i), entire chapter.
The more perfect and more eternal aspect of the universe is represented in our religions as having a personal form. The universe is no longer a mere It to us, but a Thou, if we are religious; and any relation that may be possible from person to person might be possible here. For instance, although in one sense we are passive portions of the universe, in another we show a curious autonomy, as if we were small active centres on our own account.
— William James, The Will to Believe, 1896.
A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
— James Joyce, Ulysses, p. 190.
A passage comes to mind from a novel in which Pursewarden speaks about the role of the artist in life. He says something like this: "Aware of every discord, of every calamity in the nature of man himself, he can do nothing to warn his friends, to point, to cry out in time and to try to save them. It would be useless. For they are the deliberate factors of their own unhappiness. All the artist can say as an imperative is: 'Reflect and weep.'"
— Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar, pp. 131-132.
I believe you capable of any evil: therefore I desire of you the good.
In truth, I have often laughed at the weaklings who think themselves good because their claws are blunt!
— Frederich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Saved From Lies
More writers fail from lack of character than from lack of intelligence. Technical solidity is not attained without at least some persistence.
— Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading, p. 193.
There can be knowledge of the diabolical, but no belief in it, for more of the diabolical than there is does not exist.
—Franz Kafka, Dearest Father
The hollow which the work of genius has burned into our surroundings is a good place in which to put one's little light. Therefore the inspiration that emanates from genius, the universal inspiration that doesn't only drive one to imitation.
— Franz Kafka, Diaries: 1910-1913, p. 273, from September 15, 1912.
Every race, every art has its hypocrisy. The world is fed with a little truth and many lies. The human mind is feeble : pure truth agrees with it but ill : its religion, its morality, its states, its poets, its artists, must all be presented to it swathed in lies. These lies are adapted to the mind of each race : they vary from one to the other : it is they that make it so difficult for nations to understand each other, and so easy for them to despise each other. Truth is the same for all of us : but every nation has its own lie, which it calls its idealism : every creature therein breathes it from birth to death: it has become a condition of life : there are only a few men of genius who can break free from it through heroic moments of crisis, when they are alone in the free world of their thoughts.
— Romain Rolland, Jean-Christophe, "Lightning Strikes Christophe."
The smallest hope, a base continuing to exist, is enough for the antihero's future: leave him, says our age, leave him where mankind is in its history, at a crossroads, in a dilemma, with all to lose and only more of the same to win; let him survive, but give him no direction, no reward; because we too are waiting, in our solitary rooms where the telephone never rings, waiting for this girl, this truth, this crystal of humanity, this reality lost through imagination, to return; and to say she returns is a lie.
But the maze has no center. An ending is no more than a point in sequence, a snip of the cutting shears.
— John Fowles, The Magus, Chapter 78, p. 595.
There is a Catholic circle ready to give an eager welcome to whoever enters it. Well, I do not want to be adopted into a circle, to live among people who say "we" and to be part of an "us," to find I am "at home" in any human milieu whatever it may be. In saying I do not want this, I am expressing myself badly, for I should like it very much; I should find it all delightful. But I feel that it is necessary and ordained that I should be alone, a stranger and an exile in relation to every human circle without exception.
— Simone Weil, Waiting On God, pp. 22-23, "Letter to Father Perrin."
The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry. It can only persuade itself of this by lying, for the reality of its hunger is not a belief, it is a certainty.
We all know that there is no true good here below, that everything which appears to be good in this world is finite, limited, wears out and, once worn out, leaves necessity exposed in all its nakedness. Every human being has probably had some lucid moments in his life when he has definitely acknowledged to himself that there is no final good here below. But as soon as we have seen this truth we cover it up with lies. Many people even take pleasure in proclaiming it, seeking a morbid joy in their sadness, without ever having been able to bear facing it for a second. Men feel that there is a mortal danger in facing this truth squarely for any length of time. That is true. Such knowledge strikes more surely than a sword; it inflicts a death which is more frightening than that of the body. After a time it kills everything within us which constitutes our ego. In order to bear it we have to love truth more than life itself. Those who do this turn away from the fleeting things of time with all their souls, to use the expression of Plato.
— Simone Weil, Waiting On God, p. 162, "Forms of the Implicit Love of God."
Better, however, to be foolish with happiness than foolish with misfortune, better to dance awkwardly than walk lamely.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Part IV, No. 19, p.331
— Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading, p. 193.
There can be knowledge of the diabolical, but no belief in it, for more of the diabolical than there is does not exist.
—Franz Kafka, Dearest Father
The hollow which the work of genius has burned into our surroundings is a good place in which to put one's little light. Therefore the inspiration that emanates from genius, the universal inspiration that doesn't only drive one to imitation.
— Franz Kafka, Diaries: 1910-1913, p. 273, from September 15, 1912.
Every race, every art has its hypocrisy. The world is fed with a little truth and many lies. The human mind is feeble : pure truth agrees with it but ill : its religion, its morality, its states, its poets, its artists, must all be presented to it swathed in lies. These lies are adapted to the mind of each race : they vary from one to the other : it is they that make it so difficult for nations to understand each other, and so easy for them to despise each other. Truth is the same for all of us : but every nation has its own lie, which it calls its idealism : every creature therein breathes it from birth to death: it has become a condition of life : there are only a few men of genius who can break free from it through heroic moments of crisis, when they are alone in the free world of their thoughts.
— Romain Rolland, Jean-Christophe, "Lightning Strikes Christophe."
The smallest hope, a base continuing to exist, is enough for the antihero's future: leave him, says our age, leave him where mankind is in its history, at a crossroads, in a dilemma, with all to lose and only more of the same to win; let him survive, but give him no direction, no reward; because we too are waiting, in our solitary rooms where the telephone never rings, waiting for this girl, this truth, this crystal of humanity, this reality lost through imagination, to return; and to say she returns is a lie.
But the maze has no center. An ending is no more than a point in sequence, a snip of the cutting shears.
— John Fowles, The Magus, Chapter 78, p. 595.
There is a Catholic circle ready to give an eager welcome to whoever enters it. Well, I do not want to be adopted into a circle, to live among people who say "we" and to be part of an "us," to find I am "at home" in any human milieu whatever it may be. In saying I do not want this, I am expressing myself badly, for I should like it very much; I should find it all delightful. But I feel that it is necessary and ordained that I should be alone, a stranger and an exile in relation to every human circle without exception.
— Simone Weil, Waiting On God, pp. 22-23, "Letter to Father Perrin."
The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry. It can only persuade itself of this by lying, for the reality of its hunger is not a belief, it is a certainty.
We all know that there is no true good here below, that everything which appears to be good in this world is finite, limited, wears out and, once worn out, leaves necessity exposed in all its nakedness. Every human being has probably had some lucid moments in his life when he has definitely acknowledged to himself that there is no final good here below. But as soon as we have seen this truth we cover it up with lies. Many people even take pleasure in proclaiming it, seeking a morbid joy in their sadness, without ever having been able to bear facing it for a second. Men feel that there is a mortal danger in facing this truth squarely for any length of time. That is true. Such knowledge strikes more surely than a sword; it inflicts a death which is more frightening than that of the body. After a time it kills everything within us which constitutes our ego. In order to bear it we have to love truth more than life itself. Those who do this turn away from the fleeting things of time with all their souls, to use the expression of Plato.
— Simone Weil, Waiting On God, p. 162, "Forms of the Implicit Love of God."
Better, however, to be foolish with happiness than foolish with misfortune, better to dance awkwardly than walk lamely.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Part IV, No. 19, p.331
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
The Zen of Procrastination
There are two fatal errors that keep great projects from coming to life:
1. Not finishing
2. Not starting
— The Buddha
1. Not finishing
2. Not starting
— The Buddha
Monday, March 15, 2010
Move Slow, Grow Life
To draw a moral, to preach a doctrine, is like shouting at the north star. Life is a vast and awful business.The great artist sets down his vision of it and is silent.
— Ludwig Lewisohn, Modern Drama, p. 109.
Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a Spirit is manifest in the Laws of the Universe....
— Albert Einstein
If at first you don't succeed, you may be at your level of incompetence already.
— Laurence Peter
We start when we're ready and we're done when we finish.
— Ojibwe, Bear Dancer
Wherever you find injustice, the proper form of politeness is attack.
— T-Bone Slim
If a seed is there
the pine will sprout
even among boulders;
if I love and keep on loving,
can we fail to meet?
— Anonymous Japanese poem from the Kaknishu
Think about living as taking a trip to the top of a mountain. How are you going to take that trip? Are you going to drive 90 miles an hour in as straight as possible a path? Or are you going to take a country road, stop for a liesurely lunch, pick a few flowers and then get there and feel you're on top of the world? The second way — that's music.
— Yo-Yo Ma, cellist
When a pickpocket looks at a saint, he sees only his pockets.
— East Indian Proverb
— Ludwig Lewisohn, Modern Drama, p. 109.
Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a Spirit is manifest in the Laws of the Universe....
— Albert Einstein
If at first you don't succeed, you may be at your level of incompetence already.
— Laurence Peter
We start when we're ready and we're done when we finish.
— Ojibwe, Bear Dancer
Wherever you find injustice, the proper form of politeness is attack.
— T-Bone Slim
If a seed is there
the pine will sprout
even among boulders;
if I love and keep on loving,
can we fail to meet?
— Anonymous Japanese poem from the Kaknishu
Think about living as taking a trip to the top of a mountain. How are you going to take that trip? Are you going to drive 90 miles an hour in as straight as possible a path? Or are you going to take a country road, stop for a liesurely lunch, pick a few flowers and then get there and feel you're on top of the world? The second way — that's music.
— Yo-Yo Ma, cellist
When a pickpocket looks at a saint, he sees only his pockets.
— East Indian Proverb
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Straight Thinking
It is not for nothing that Confucius told his disciples that the three hundred and five songs of the Song-word Scripture could be boiled down to the commandment: "Have no twisty thoughts." You cannot have twisty thoughts if you are real and if you are thinking about real things....
— Archibald MacLiesch, "Why Do We Teach Poetry?"
"Solomon," I used to counsel him when I still assumed — preposterously, as it turned out — that every living being has some potential for salutory intellectual change, "there is really no better thing a man hath to do under the sun than to eat and to drink and to be merry, for who can tell when the silver cord shall be loosed and the golden bowl be broken and our dust be returned to the earth as it was?"
The prick wrote it down studiously, pausing with the tip of his tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth before requesting me to please repeat the one about the silver cord. And soon he was noising these words of mine about the city as his own. Solomon writes down on his clay ledger everything I say, as though the ramifications of knowledge were coins to be gained and husbanded avariciously, instead of liberating influences to expand and gladden the psyche.
— Joseph Heller, God Knows, p.87.
It is an old story, that men sell themselves to the tempter, and sign a bond with their blood, because it is only to take effect at a distant day; then rush on to snatch the cup their souls thirst after with an impulse not the less savage because there is a dark shadow beside them for evermore. There is no short cut, no patent tram-road, to wisdom: after all the centuries of invention, the soul's path lies through the thorny wilderness which must be still trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time.
— George Elliot, The Lifted Veil, used as the fronticepiece of Malcolm Lowry's October Ferry to Gabriola.
In explaining the nature of influx, Swedenborg wrote: "I am obliged by my conscience to manifest these things; for what is the use of knowing, unless what is know to one be also know to others? Without this, what is knowing but collecting and storing up riches in a casket, and only looking at them occasionally and counting them over, without any thought of use from them? Spiritual avarice is nothing else."
— Emanuel Swedenborg, The Intercourse Between the Soul and the Body, paragraph 18, London, 1796.
Samuel Johnson and Boswell, his biographer, were together at a concert in which some violin virtuoso had just sweated through a very difficult piece. Boswell said, "That piece must have been very difficult." Johnson answered, "Difficult? I wish it had been impossible!"
From p. 94 in Raymond Smullyan's This Book Needs No Title:
....we should bear in mind the keen observation of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, that certain kinds of nonsense are important nonsense.
Forgiveness is giving up all hopes for a better past.
— Anonymous
The heathen spirit is wingless. It cannot lift itself to heights from which the totality of being is visible, and it therefore loses itself in details. It lacks fantasy for that which it cannot apprehend with the senses; it must hold the thing in its hand.
— Sholem Asch, What I Believe, 1941, p. 157.
— Archibald MacLiesch, "Why Do We Teach Poetry?"
"Solomon," I used to counsel him when I still assumed — preposterously, as it turned out — that every living being has some potential for salutory intellectual change, "there is really no better thing a man hath to do under the sun than to eat and to drink and to be merry, for who can tell when the silver cord shall be loosed and the golden bowl be broken and our dust be returned to the earth as it was?"
The prick wrote it down studiously, pausing with the tip of his tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth before requesting me to please repeat the one about the silver cord. And soon he was noising these words of mine about the city as his own. Solomon writes down on his clay ledger everything I say, as though the ramifications of knowledge were coins to be gained and husbanded avariciously, instead of liberating influences to expand and gladden the psyche.
— Joseph Heller, God Knows, p.87.
It is an old story, that men sell themselves to the tempter, and sign a bond with their blood, because it is only to take effect at a distant day; then rush on to snatch the cup their souls thirst after with an impulse not the less savage because there is a dark shadow beside them for evermore. There is no short cut, no patent tram-road, to wisdom: after all the centuries of invention, the soul's path lies through the thorny wilderness which must be still trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time.
— George Elliot, The Lifted Veil, used as the fronticepiece of Malcolm Lowry's October Ferry to Gabriola.
In explaining the nature of influx, Swedenborg wrote: "I am obliged by my conscience to manifest these things; for what is the use of knowing, unless what is know to one be also know to others? Without this, what is knowing but collecting and storing up riches in a casket, and only looking at them occasionally and counting them over, without any thought of use from them? Spiritual avarice is nothing else."
— Emanuel Swedenborg, The Intercourse Between the Soul and the Body, paragraph 18, London, 1796.
Samuel Johnson and Boswell, his biographer, were together at a concert in which some violin virtuoso had just sweated through a very difficult piece. Boswell said, "That piece must have been very difficult." Johnson answered, "Difficult? I wish it had been impossible!"
From p. 94 in Raymond Smullyan's This Book Needs No Title:
....we should bear in mind the keen observation of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, that certain kinds of nonsense are important nonsense.
Forgiveness is giving up all hopes for a better past.
— Anonymous
The heathen spirit is wingless. It cannot lift itself to heights from which the totality of being is visible, and it therefore loses itself in details. It lacks fantasy for that which it cannot apprehend with the senses; it must hold the thing in its hand.
— Sholem Asch, What I Believe, 1941, p. 157.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Be Adviced
He [Everett Ruess] wrote in his diary that there were "two rules in life — never count the cost, and never do anything unless you can do it wholeheartedly."
When it comes to actresses or dancers or booze or drugs or dope it's like the rabbit makin' love to the skunk — I ain't had all I want, but I had all I can stand.
— Robert Blake on the "Tonight Show," May 3, 1984, Johnny Carson, hosting.
I am still writing bad poems which give me a great deal of pleasure: I know they are bad, and yet . . . a bad poem sometimes brings the poet, if not the reader, close to beauty.
— Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, Secret Journal, p. 52, January 17, 1945.
People don't wear out, they give up. As far as trails go, there's always an open trail for the mind if you keep the doors open and give it a chance.
— Louis L'Amour, Bendigo Shafter
Walking, there is no road. I swim, and water disappears. A squirrel jumping from tree to tree sees branches, not air.
— Source unknown
I've made shoes for everyone, even you, and still I'm barefoot!
— Bob Dylan, song "I an I,"
On the surface it's deep, but down deep it's very shallow.
— Peter de Vries
I don't write fiction; I invent fact.
— Jorge Luis Borges
Warner Swayze Axiom: When small men begin to cast large shadows, it is a sure sign that the sun is setting.
— From Robert Blay
Alex's Iron Axiom: Life is the ultimate IQ test.
— Alex Fraser
Amis' Advice: Go ahead and be different — if you think you can stand the beating you'll get.
When it comes to actresses or dancers or booze or drugs or dope it's like the rabbit makin' love to the skunk — I ain't had all I want, but I had all I can stand.
— Robert Blake on the "Tonight Show," May 3, 1984, Johnny Carson, hosting.
I am still writing bad poems which give me a great deal of pleasure: I know they are bad, and yet . . . a bad poem sometimes brings the poet, if not the reader, close to beauty.
— Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, Secret Journal, p. 52, January 17, 1945.
People don't wear out, they give up. As far as trails go, there's always an open trail for the mind if you keep the doors open and give it a chance.
— Louis L'Amour, Bendigo Shafter
Walking, there is no road. I swim, and water disappears. A squirrel jumping from tree to tree sees branches, not air.
— Source unknown
I've made shoes for everyone, even you, and still I'm barefoot!
— Bob Dylan, song "I an I,"
On the surface it's deep, but down deep it's very shallow.
— Peter de Vries
I don't write fiction; I invent fact.
— Jorge Luis Borges
Warner Swayze Axiom: When small men begin to cast large shadows, it is a sure sign that the sun is setting.
— From Robert Blay
Alex's Iron Axiom: Life is the ultimate IQ test.
— Alex Fraser
Amis' Advice: Go ahead and be different — if you think you can stand the beating you'll get.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Thought For Food?!
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
— Thomas Hardy
The enormous increases in population seem to have dwarfed the individual. So have modern physics and astronomy. But we may be somewhere between a false greatness and a false insignificance. At least we can stop misrepresenting ourselves and realize that the only thing we can be in this world is human. We are temporarily miracle-sodden and feeling faint.
— Saul Bellow, "The Sealed Treasure" (short essay)
.... He differentiated between existence and Existence, and knew one was preferable, but could never remember which. Human freedom for Needleman consisted of being aware of the absurdity of life. "God is silent," he was fond of saying, "now if we can only get Man to shut up."
— Woody Allen, "Remembering Needleman," in Side Effects, p. 5.
Man is perishable. That may be; but let us perish resisting, and if it be nothingness that awaits us, do not let us so act that it shall be justice.
— Étienne Pivert de Sénancour (1770-1846)
A page is no place for a pen, he said. Laying down his pen to write a sonnet with his tongue on her astonished flesh.
— Anonymous, 6-4-1984.
Like depending on a prop in a wall or expecting unbaked clay to last or trying to fish the moon out of water, you can monkey around with various systems of knowledge; however, you will never, thereby, live forever.
— Reference to a passage on pp. 21-22 in Monkey, by Wu Ch'eng-en, Waley (tran.), Grove Press, 1943.
No one wants a man with a story.
— Richard & Susan Thomas, from the song "Wake Up, Rosa," 1973.
The function of art is to scare the shit out of people.
— Gerald Campbell Forest Allen, Ph.D., April 1, 1984.
Since Hannah Arendt's description of the German war criminals, much has been made of the banality of evil, but rarely has anyone commented on the commonplace mask that greatness often wears. Kierkegaard declared that if he ever met a true "knight of faith," a man whose every moment was lived with an awareness of the infinite, he would exclaim, "Good Lord, is this the man? Why he looks like a tax collector!" For such a man would necessarily be unremarkable on the surface, and his difference from the mass of humanity discernible only in the totality of his internal life. In the same way, many of Beethoven's very best compositions lack the peremptory power, the tragic passion, and the ethereal strangeness of some of his better known works....
— Beginning of a review by Kyle Gann of a concert by Maurizio Pollini given at Orchestra Hall in Chicago on March 11, 1984.
If you set out deliberately to make a masterpiece, how will you ever get it finished?
— George Balanchine
What, what not, nothing. No foundation all the way down the line.
— Arab's speech, in The Time of Your Life, William Saroyan.
As Nathalie Sarraute has pointed out, it is hard for a writer to avoid being buried by the mediocrity surrounding him or even worse, dazzled by the genius of the past.
— Thomas Hardy
The enormous increases in population seem to have dwarfed the individual. So have modern physics and astronomy. But we may be somewhere between a false greatness and a false insignificance. At least we can stop misrepresenting ourselves and realize that the only thing we can be in this world is human. We are temporarily miracle-sodden and feeling faint.
— Saul Bellow, "The Sealed Treasure" (short essay)
.... He differentiated between existence and Existence, and knew one was preferable, but could never remember which. Human freedom for Needleman consisted of being aware of the absurdity of life. "God is silent," he was fond of saying, "now if we can only get Man to shut up."
— Woody Allen, "Remembering Needleman," in Side Effects, p. 5.
Man is perishable. That may be; but let us perish resisting, and if it be nothingness that awaits us, do not let us so act that it shall be justice.
— Étienne Pivert de Sénancour (1770-1846)
A page is no place for a pen, he said. Laying down his pen to write a sonnet with his tongue on her astonished flesh.
— Anonymous, 6-4-1984.
Like depending on a prop in a wall or expecting unbaked clay to last or trying to fish the moon out of water, you can monkey around with various systems of knowledge; however, you will never, thereby, live forever.
— Reference to a passage on pp. 21-22 in Monkey, by Wu Ch'eng-en, Waley (tran.), Grove Press, 1943.
No one wants a man with a story.
— Richard & Susan Thomas, from the song "Wake Up, Rosa," 1973.
The function of art is to scare the shit out of people.
— Gerald Campbell Forest Allen, Ph.D., April 1, 1984.
Since Hannah Arendt's description of the German war criminals, much has been made of the banality of evil, but rarely has anyone commented on the commonplace mask that greatness often wears. Kierkegaard declared that if he ever met a true "knight of faith," a man whose every moment was lived with an awareness of the infinite, he would exclaim, "Good Lord, is this the man? Why he looks like a tax collector!" For such a man would necessarily be unremarkable on the surface, and his difference from the mass of humanity discernible only in the totality of his internal life. In the same way, many of Beethoven's very best compositions lack the peremptory power, the tragic passion, and the ethereal strangeness of some of his better known works....
— Beginning of a review by Kyle Gann of a concert by Maurizio Pollini given at Orchestra Hall in Chicago on March 11, 1984.
If you set out deliberately to make a masterpiece, how will you ever get it finished?
— George Balanchine
What, what not, nothing. No foundation all the way down the line.
— Arab's speech, in The Time of Your Life, William Saroyan.
As Nathalie Sarraute has pointed out, it is hard for a writer to avoid being buried by the mediocrity surrounding him or even worse, dazzled by the genius of the past.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Target Points
I hear and I forget.
I see and I remember.
I do and I understand.
— Chinese Proverb
Who ever praises the man who never took up cigarette smoking to begin with, and thus was never obliged to quit?
— Ned Rorem
A very remarkable woman whom I know lost her husband. They had been very much in love and extremely happy. When I saw her some weeks later she radiated a tranquility and confidence which was inspiring. I asked her how she had achieved it. She said, "All the water in the world cannot sink a ship unless it gets inside the ship. All the sorrow in the world cannot sink a person unless it gets inside the mind. I have kept my mind so full of good thoughts, so full of thoughts of others, that there hasn't been any room for sorrow and self-pity to get in."
— Mary Pickford, Why Not Try God?
Oh go through the walls; if you must, walk on the ledges
Of roofs, of oceans; cover yourself with light;
Use menace, use prayer....
My sleepers will flee toward another America.
— Jean Genet
Love at first sight is easy to understand. It's when two people have been looking at each other for years that it becomes a miracle.
— Sam Levenson
I hate faces that have no questioning in them, no quest for wanting to learn more, look at more, see more, be more!
— Maria Tallchief
What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?
— George Eliot
You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
— John Morley
Originality is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe — you can't take a taxi.
— Alan Alda
Man needs to suck his breath in sharply now and then, to stand with jaw agape and see with childlike eyes.
— National Geographic
There's a lot of good ideas in a pint of whiskey — not so many in a quart.
— Woody Guthrie
I see and I remember.
I do and I understand.
— Chinese Proverb
Who ever praises the man who never took up cigarette smoking to begin with, and thus was never obliged to quit?
— Ned Rorem
A very remarkable woman whom I know lost her husband. They had been very much in love and extremely happy. When I saw her some weeks later she radiated a tranquility and confidence which was inspiring. I asked her how she had achieved it. She said, "All the water in the world cannot sink a ship unless it gets inside the ship. All the sorrow in the world cannot sink a person unless it gets inside the mind. I have kept my mind so full of good thoughts, so full of thoughts of others, that there hasn't been any room for sorrow and self-pity to get in."
— Mary Pickford, Why Not Try God?
Oh go through the walls; if you must, walk on the ledges
Of roofs, of oceans; cover yourself with light;
Use menace, use prayer....
My sleepers will flee toward another America.
— Jean Genet
Love at first sight is easy to understand. It's when two people have been looking at each other for years that it becomes a miracle.
— Sam Levenson
I hate faces that have no questioning in them, no quest for wanting to learn more, look at more, see more, be more!
— Maria Tallchief
What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?
— George Eliot
You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
— John Morley
Originality is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe — you can't take a taxi.
— Alan Alda
Man needs to suck his breath in sharply now and then, to stand with jaw agape and see with childlike eyes.
— National Geographic
There's a lot of good ideas in a pint of whiskey — not so many in a quart.
— Woody Guthrie
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Who's Mad at Whom?
The only people for me are the mad ones — the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous Roman candles.
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Before you are frank with another, ask yourself: why? Is it to diminish the other, to make yourself feel better at his expense? The ethical question is to ask: will this foster the relationship? There is always a way to be honest without being brutal.
— Arthur Dobrin
The only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos: the pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write and the lives they lead.
Of all these things, the richest in beauty is a life well lived. That is the perfect work of art.
W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil
Malcolm and Huey emerged from the "familiar sights" of the ghetto with their love for and confidence in their people intact. That may seem to be a banal observation, but consider it in light of the contempt which so many white radicals feel toward their people. Hustler, pimp, even servant of the white power structure, no black is diminished for the temporary identity he may have acquired in the ghetto. Black revolutionaries see a man's ghetto function, however compromising, as a flaky shell which can be shed once his underlying needs have been stirred. I think whites have a lot to learn from the revolutionary patience with which the Malcolms and Hueys relate to the deformations of their own people — and more so because, I suspect, the pink white suburban grottos and the black ghettos ultimately have more in common than we imagine.
— David Gelber
Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. Without that power probably the earth would still be swamp and jungle. The glories of all our wars would be unknown. We should still be scratching the outlines of deer on the remains of mutton bones and bartering flints for sheepskin or whatever simple ornament took our unsophisticated taste.... That serves to explain in part the necessity that women so often are to men. And it serves to explain how restless they are under her criticism; how impossible it is for her to say to them this book is bad, this picture is feeble, or whatever it may be, without giving far more pain and rousing far more anger than a man would do who gave the same criticism. For if she begins to tell the truth, the figure in the looking-glass shrinks; his fitness for life is diminished. How is he to go on giving judgment, civilizing natives, making laws, writing books, dressing up and speechifying at banquets, unless he can see himself at breakfast and at dinner at least twice the size he really is.
— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
All writing is garbage.
— Antonin Artaud
A man who marries a woman to educate her falls into the same fallacy as the woman who marries a man to reform him.
— Elbert Hubbard
One madman laughs at another, and they each give enjoyment to one another. If you watch closely, you will see that the maddest one gets the biggest laugh.
— Erasmus
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Before you are frank with another, ask yourself: why? Is it to diminish the other, to make yourself feel better at his expense? The ethical question is to ask: will this foster the relationship? There is always a way to be honest without being brutal.
— Arthur Dobrin
The only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos: the pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write and the lives they lead.
Of all these things, the richest in beauty is a life well lived. That is the perfect work of art.
W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil
Malcolm and Huey emerged from the "familiar sights" of the ghetto with their love for and confidence in their people intact. That may seem to be a banal observation, but consider it in light of the contempt which so many white radicals feel toward their people. Hustler, pimp, even servant of the white power structure, no black is diminished for the temporary identity he may have acquired in the ghetto. Black revolutionaries see a man's ghetto function, however compromising, as a flaky shell which can be shed once his underlying needs have been stirred. I think whites have a lot to learn from the revolutionary patience with which the Malcolms and Hueys relate to the deformations of their own people — and more so because, I suspect, the pink white suburban grottos and the black ghettos ultimately have more in common than we imagine.
— David Gelber
Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. Without that power probably the earth would still be swamp and jungle. The glories of all our wars would be unknown. We should still be scratching the outlines of deer on the remains of mutton bones and bartering flints for sheepskin or whatever simple ornament took our unsophisticated taste.... That serves to explain in part the necessity that women so often are to men. And it serves to explain how restless they are under her criticism; how impossible it is for her to say to them this book is bad, this picture is feeble, or whatever it may be, without giving far more pain and rousing far more anger than a man would do who gave the same criticism. For if she begins to tell the truth, the figure in the looking-glass shrinks; his fitness for life is diminished. How is he to go on giving judgment, civilizing natives, making laws, writing books, dressing up and speechifying at banquets, unless he can see himself at breakfast and at dinner at least twice the size he really is.
— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
All writing is garbage.
— Antonin Artaud
A man who marries a woman to educate her falls into the same fallacy as the woman who marries a man to reform him.
— Elbert Hubbard
One madman laughs at another, and they each give enjoyment to one another. If you watch closely, you will see that the maddest one gets the biggest laugh.
— Erasmus
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Strive to Begin
Perenial: Any plant which, had it lived, would have bloomed year after year.
— Henry Beard, Gardening
Ignorance is not bliss — it is oblivion.
— Philip Wylie, Generation of Vipers
Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible — not to run away.
— Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings
We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon.
— Konrad Adenauer
Success isn't final.
Failure isn't fatal.
— Anonymous
What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.
— Richard Harkness, New York Herald Tribune, 6-15-60.
A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras
With money in your pocket, you are wise and you are handsome, and you sing well too.
— Yiddish Proverb
When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes.
— Disiderius Erasmus
Bad movies, bad television, fine. But I require more from the printed page.
— Maureen Howard, New York Times Book Review, 4-25-92.
Don't worry. Life's too long.
— Vincent Sardi Jr.
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan
— Henry Beard, Gardening
Ignorance is not bliss — it is oblivion.
— Philip Wylie, Generation of Vipers
Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible — not to run away.
— Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings
We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon.
— Konrad Adenauer
Success isn't final.
Failure isn't fatal.
— Anonymous
What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.
— Richard Harkness, New York Herald Tribune, 6-15-60.
A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras
With money in your pocket, you are wise and you are handsome, and you sing well too.
— Yiddish Proverb
When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes.
— Disiderius Erasmus
Bad movies, bad television, fine. But I require more from the printed page.
— Maureen Howard, New York Times Book Review, 4-25-92.
Don't worry. Life's too long.
— Vincent Sardi Jr.
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan
Monday, March 8, 2010
The Search Continues
He who from day to day recognizes what he has not yet, and from month to month does not forget what he has attained to, may be said indeed to love to learn.
— Confucius
The advice which their friends have not the courage to give to kings is found written in books.
— Plutarch
The downfall of a magician is belief in his own magic.
— Anonymous
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed....
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with half a million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 80,000 people.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Is there no other way the world may live?
— Dwight David Eisenhower
Fashion is a way of not having to decide who you are. Style is deciding who you are and being able to perpetuate it.
— Quentin Crisp, in a speech given on 10-29-1980
Then, sir, you will turn it over once more in what you are pleased to call your mind.
— Attributed to Richard Barthell, Lord Westbury
Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
— Francis Bacon, Apothegms
Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
— Gene Fowler
If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the "Ode to a Grecian Urn" is worth any number of old ladies.
— William Faulkner
Art serves beauty.... Just as soon as art begins to take delight in that beauty which is already found, instead of the search for new beauty, an arrestment occurs and art becomes a superfluous estheticism, encompassing man's vision like a wall. The aim of art is the search for beauty, just as the aim of religion is the search for God and truth. And exactly as art stops, so religion stops also as soon as it ceases to search for God and truth, thinking it has found them. This idea is expressed in the percept: "Seek the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness...." It does not say find, but merely seek!
— P. D. Ouspensky, Tertium Organum
— Confucius
The advice which their friends have not the courage to give to kings is found written in books.
— Plutarch
The downfall of a magician is belief in his own magic.
— Anonymous
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed....
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with half a million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 80,000 people.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Is there no other way the world may live?
— Dwight David Eisenhower
Fashion is a way of not having to decide who you are. Style is deciding who you are and being able to perpetuate it.
— Quentin Crisp, in a speech given on 10-29-1980
Then, sir, you will turn it over once more in what you are pleased to call your mind.
— Attributed to Richard Barthell, Lord Westbury
Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
— Francis Bacon, Apothegms
Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
— Gene Fowler
If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the "Ode to a Grecian Urn" is worth any number of old ladies.
— William Faulkner
Art serves beauty.... Just as soon as art begins to take delight in that beauty which is already found, instead of the search for new beauty, an arrestment occurs and art becomes a superfluous estheticism, encompassing man's vision like a wall. The aim of art is the search for beauty, just as the aim of religion is the search for God and truth. And exactly as art stops, so religion stops also as soon as it ceases to search for God and truth, thinking it has found them. This idea is expressed in the percept: "Seek the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness...." It does not say find, but merely seek!
— P. D. Ouspensky, Tertium Organum
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Experience of a lifetime
If I were to have read a book each week of my adult life.... I would have read only a few thousand books.... the trick is knowing which books to read.
— Carl Sagan on a segment of his Cosmos television series.
Steve Allen spoke of his early 1960's controlled LSD (artist group) experience in which he saw a sheet of typewritten material, but then noticed each word had an asterisk denoting a footnote and then looking down to the bottom of the page he saw that it spread out to hold all these footnotes and then noticed that each word in every one of these footnotes also had an asterisk, etc., etc., until the page filled the universe. Compare Borges story "Aleph."
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believed.
— William Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell."
....I've just discovered that to greet or leave someone with "shalom" is not equal to saying "peace." The Hebrew word means something closer to "fullness" of "wholeness." When you say "shalom" you are wishing that person the fulness of their being, to be and become all that they truly are. It's at the core of the Jewish faith, to be you and to become fully you, both. For example, Jacob, son of Isaac, became "Israel." Fully being himself — and this, including some sneaky activities by the way — Jacob was transformed and fully became himself, Israel, the father of a nation. "Shalom" then means "I wish you your fulness; be whole!" Isn't that beautiful? It hits at the core of life for me, especially said with love.
— Diane at the Second Unitarian Church of Chicago, circa 1982.
You can't hurt me, I'm ignorant.
— John Hayes
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
I suffer, I do, I really do, I do, I do suffer, I suffer, I do, I do, I do, O! O! O! I do suffer, I do....
Line from a theater piece seen in Milwaukee, circa 1983.
Art is a lie which makes us realize the truth.
— Pablo Picasso
When we talk of tomorrow, the gods laugh.
— Chinese proverb
Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you.
— Aldous Huxley, quoted in Readers Digest, March 1956.
No great thing is created suddenly.
— Epictetus, Discourses.
— Carl Sagan on a segment of his Cosmos television series.
Steve Allen spoke of his early 1960's controlled LSD (artist group) experience in which he saw a sheet of typewritten material, but then noticed each word had an asterisk denoting a footnote and then looking down to the bottom of the page he saw that it spread out to hold all these footnotes and then noticed that each word in every one of these footnotes also had an asterisk, etc., etc., until the page filled the universe. Compare Borges story "Aleph."
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believed.
— William Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell."
....I've just discovered that to greet or leave someone with "shalom" is not equal to saying "peace." The Hebrew word means something closer to "fullness" of "wholeness." When you say "shalom" you are wishing that person the fulness of their being, to be and become all that they truly are. It's at the core of the Jewish faith, to be you and to become fully you, both. For example, Jacob, son of Isaac, became "Israel." Fully being himself — and this, including some sneaky activities by the way — Jacob was transformed and fully became himself, Israel, the father of a nation. "Shalom" then means "I wish you your fulness; be whole!" Isn't that beautiful? It hits at the core of life for me, especially said with love.
— Diane at the Second Unitarian Church of Chicago, circa 1982.
You can't hurt me, I'm ignorant.
— John Hayes
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
I suffer, I do, I really do, I do, I do suffer, I suffer, I do, I do, I do, O! O! O! I do suffer, I do....
Line from a theater piece seen in Milwaukee, circa 1983.
Art is a lie which makes us realize the truth.
— Pablo Picasso
When we talk of tomorrow, the gods laugh.
— Chinese proverb
Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you.
— Aldous Huxley, quoted in Readers Digest, March 1956.
No great thing is created suddenly.
— Epictetus, Discourses.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Is Everness After?
We play with obscure forces, which we cannot lay hold of, by names we give them, as children play with fire, and it seems for a moment as if all the energy had lain unused in things until we came to apply it to our transitory life and its needs. But repeatedly through the millenaries these forces shake off their names and rise like an oppressed class against their little lords, no, not even against — they simply rise, and civilizations fall from the shoulders of the earth, which becomes large and spacious once again and alone with its seas, its stars, and its trees.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, "Worpswede"
There can be no truth since truth varies with the individual and the circumstance. There can be no communication since words interpret what seems to be, not what is. There can be no sanity, for sanity demands stability, which is not to be found in the human condition.
— Luigi Pirandello
.... in a Universe that is suddenly deprived of illusion and of light, man feels a stranger. His is an irremediable exile, because he is deprived of memories of a lost homeland as much as he lacks the hope of a promised land to come. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, truly constitutes the feeling of Absurdity.
— Albert Camus
Yes, I wrote about Wilkins. But he also invented a wonderful word that strangely enough has never been used by English poets — an awful word, really, a terrible word. Everness, of course, is better than eternity.... But he also created a beautiful word, a word that's a poem in itself, full of hopelessness, sadness, and dispair: the word neverness.
— From the Borges interview in Writers at Work, Fourth Series, p.140.
Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the Dawn has come.
— Rabindranath Tagore
We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream: it may be so at the moment of death.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
When the news of Charles Darwin's "terrible theories" reached the Bishop of Worcester's wife, she is said to have exclaimed, "Descended from monkeys? My dear, let us hope it isn't true! But if it is true, let us hope that it doesn't become widely known!"
— Source unknown
— Rainer Maria Rilke, "Worpswede"
There can be no truth since truth varies with the individual and the circumstance. There can be no communication since words interpret what seems to be, not what is. There can be no sanity, for sanity demands stability, which is not to be found in the human condition.
— Luigi Pirandello
.... in a Universe that is suddenly deprived of illusion and of light, man feels a stranger. His is an irremediable exile, because he is deprived of memories of a lost homeland as much as he lacks the hope of a promised land to come. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, truly constitutes the feeling of Absurdity.
— Albert Camus
Yes, I wrote about Wilkins. But he also invented a wonderful word that strangely enough has never been used by English poets — an awful word, really, a terrible word. Everness, of course, is better than eternity.... But he also created a beautiful word, a word that's a poem in itself, full of hopelessness, sadness, and dispair: the word neverness.
— From the Borges interview in Writers at Work, Fourth Series, p.140.
Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the Dawn has come.
— Rabindranath Tagore
We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream: it may be so at the moment of death.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
When the news of Charles Darwin's "terrible theories" reached the Bishop of Worcester's wife, she is said to have exclaimed, "Descended from monkeys? My dear, let us hope it isn't true! But if it is true, let us hope that it doesn't become widely known!"
— Source unknown
Friday, March 5, 2010
Is it how?
This is not the end — this is not even the beginning of the end — this is the end of the beginning.
— Winston Churchhill of the Battle of El Allamain (turning point for the North African campaign in WWII, and the first real American assisted victory).
Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.
— Francis Bacon
Paranoid Splendor = elations/delusions of grandeur.
Creature of havoc, wrecker of doom.
The remedy of those who are uneasy without a known cause is change of place.
— Samuel Johnson
Tim Morris has styled me as a "learn-a-tic."
Your levelers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.
— Boswell's Life of Johnson, Vol. 1, p. 448, July 21, 1863.
"What's the difference," Bursky said. "Who cares what the point of the story is? If it even has a point. It was an entertaining anecdote. Let's order."
— Woody Allen, "The Shallowest Man," in Side Effects, p.111.
As human society evolves, the names of sins become increasingly long and complicated.
— Virgil Demoianu
Premise: Ways to tell that you have died and gone to heaven:
1. Pizza delivery — "Don't burn yourself, it's pretty hot!"
2. Car repair — "Sure we have the part, we'll put it right on."
3. Sales — "Oh! That's the old price, it's much cheaper now."
Each particle of space is eternal; each indivisible moment of duration is everywhere.
— Isaac Newton, III, 42.
— Winston Churchhill of the Battle of El Allamain (turning point for the North African campaign in WWII, and the first real American assisted victory).
Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.
— Francis Bacon
Paranoid Splendor = elations/delusions of grandeur.
Creature of havoc, wrecker of doom.
The remedy of those who are uneasy without a known cause is change of place.
— Samuel Johnson
Tim Morris has styled me as a "learn-a-tic."
Your levelers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.
— Boswell's Life of Johnson, Vol. 1, p. 448, July 21, 1863.
"What's the difference," Bursky said. "Who cares what the point of the story is? If it even has a point. It was an entertaining anecdote. Let's order."
— Woody Allen, "The Shallowest Man," in Side Effects, p.111.
As human society evolves, the names of sins become increasingly long and complicated.
— Virgil Demoianu
Premise: Ways to tell that you have died and gone to heaven:
1. Pizza delivery — "Don't burn yourself, it's pretty hot!"
2. Car repair — "Sure we have the part, we'll put it right on."
3. Sales — "Oh! That's the old price, it's much cheaper now."
Each particle of space is eternal; each indivisible moment of duration is everywhere.
— Isaac Newton, III, 42.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Life Matters
Sometimes there is no there there.
Stephen Spender writes, "It might seem then, that autobiography was the most stimulating of forms for a writer. For here he is dealing with his life in the raw at the point where it is also his art in the raw.... The basic truth of autobiography is: I am alone in the universe." Rabbi Hillel said it somewhat differently: "If I am not for myself, who is for me? And if I for myself alone, what then am I? And if not now, then when?" And finally, Borges writes, "I always said that there is at least a moment in the life of a man when you can see him. I have tried to find such a moment." It was this moment, and only this moment, that Dostoevsky considered relevant within an entire life. But it is too demanding a stricture, this loneliness.
— Michael Tobias, "On Thinking About Oneself," Kenyon Review, New Series, Vol. 4, No. 1, Winter 1982, pp. 17-18.
Tar-baby ain't sayin' nuthin', en Brer Fox, he lay low.
— Uncle Remus, Legends of the Old Plantation (1881), Chap. 2.
For the Cabala, that letter [Aleph] stands for the En Soph, the pure and boundless godhead; it is also said that it is the shape of a man pointing to both heaven and earth, in order that the lower world is the map and mirror of the higher; ....
— Jorge Luis Borges, "The Aleph"
Today — twenty years later — despite all the time I have had to waste, I feel (with a touch of sadness) that I was right. Because (apart from the prose pieces, the early poems, and the others which echo them in the first issues of various literary reviews) I have always dreamed of, and attempted, something else; patient as an alchemist and ready to sacrifice all vanity and satisfaction to it, just as men used to burn their furniture and the beams of their house to feed the furnace of the Great Work. What work? It is hard to explain. I mean a book, simply; a book in many volumes; a book which is a book, architectural and premeditated, and not a miscelleny of chance inspirations, however marvelous they may be. I will go even further and say: the Book, for I am convinced that there is only One, and that it has been attempted by every writer, even by Geniuses. The Orphic explanation of the Earth, which is the poet's sole duty and the true function of literature. For the very rhythm of the book, impersonal and alive even in its pagination, would then be juxtaposed to the equation of this dream, this Ode.
— Stephen Mallarme, from "Autobiography" (a letter of biographical information to Paul Verlaine), in Mallarme: Selected Prose Poems, Essays, & Letters, Bradford Cook (tran.).
Upon being asked his opinion about an Assertiveness Training course which he was required to take during corporate training for management, Richard Bebeau said: "Some of us are lambs, some of us are lions — why do you want to turn all of us into sheep?"
Smoking is repetitive, unmerited sighing.
— Donald Elgeti
Never wrestle with a pig — you both get dirty and the pig likes it.
— attributed to Roger Hilsman in a letter to the Atlantic, May 1982, at "ancient aphorism."
I have secluded myself from society; and yet I never meant any such thing, nor dreamed what sort of life I was going to lead. I have made a captive of myself, and put me into a dungeon, and now I cannot find the key to let myself out.
— Letter by Hawthorne to Longfellow, 1837.
Stephen Spender writes, "It might seem then, that autobiography was the most stimulating of forms for a writer. For here he is dealing with his life in the raw at the point where it is also his art in the raw.... The basic truth of autobiography is: I am alone in the universe." Rabbi Hillel said it somewhat differently: "If I am not for myself, who is for me? And if I for myself alone, what then am I? And if not now, then when?" And finally, Borges writes, "I always said that there is at least a moment in the life of a man when you can see him. I have tried to find such a moment." It was this moment, and only this moment, that Dostoevsky considered relevant within an entire life. But it is too demanding a stricture, this loneliness.
— Michael Tobias, "On Thinking About Oneself," Kenyon Review, New Series, Vol. 4, No. 1, Winter 1982, pp. 17-18.
Tar-baby ain't sayin' nuthin', en Brer Fox, he lay low.
— Uncle Remus, Legends of the Old Plantation (1881), Chap. 2.
For the Cabala, that letter [Aleph] stands for the En Soph, the pure and boundless godhead; it is also said that it is the shape of a man pointing to both heaven and earth, in order that the lower world is the map and mirror of the higher; ....
— Jorge Luis Borges, "The Aleph"
Today — twenty years later — despite all the time I have had to waste, I feel (with a touch of sadness) that I was right. Because (apart from the prose pieces, the early poems, and the others which echo them in the first issues of various literary reviews) I have always dreamed of, and attempted, something else; patient as an alchemist and ready to sacrifice all vanity and satisfaction to it, just as men used to burn their furniture and the beams of their house to feed the furnace of the Great Work. What work? It is hard to explain. I mean a book, simply; a book in many volumes; a book which is a book, architectural and premeditated, and not a miscelleny of chance inspirations, however marvelous they may be. I will go even further and say: the Book, for I am convinced that there is only One, and that it has been attempted by every writer, even by Geniuses. The Orphic explanation of the Earth, which is the poet's sole duty and the true function of literature. For the very rhythm of the book, impersonal and alive even in its pagination, would then be juxtaposed to the equation of this dream, this Ode.
— Stephen Mallarme, from "Autobiography" (a letter of biographical information to Paul Verlaine), in Mallarme: Selected Prose Poems, Essays, & Letters, Bradford Cook (tran.).
Upon being asked his opinion about an Assertiveness Training course which he was required to take during corporate training for management, Richard Bebeau said: "Some of us are lambs, some of us are lions — why do you want to turn all of us into sheep?"
Smoking is repetitive, unmerited sighing.
— Donald Elgeti
Never wrestle with a pig — you both get dirty and the pig likes it.
— attributed to Roger Hilsman in a letter to the Atlantic, May 1982, at "ancient aphorism."
I have secluded myself from society; and yet I never meant any such thing, nor dreamed what sort of life I was going to lead. I have made a captive of myself, and put me into a dungeon, and now I cannot find the key to let myself out.
— Letter by Hawthorne to Longfellow, 1837.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
How It's Done
Life with its torments is the basis of art.
— Pablo Picasso
To punish me for my contempt of authority, fate made me authority itself.
— Albert Einstein
Claire Booth Luce said that the difference between a pessimist and an optimist is that the pessimist is generally better informed.
During the 1930's Chandler had a black Persian called Taki. He often spoke to her as if she were human. Sometimes he called her his secretary, because she frequently sat on the paper he was about to use or on copy that needed revising.
— Book of Lists #2, Irving Wallace, et alii, p. 113, "12 Famous Cat Lovers," 1.
cf. my own: Cats read with their feet and write with their teeth.
....it becomes overwhelmingly important for us to become detached from our everyday conception of ourselves as potential subjects for special and unique experiences, or as a candidate for realization, attainment, and fulfillment.
— Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite
The fish-trap exists because of the fish: once you've gotten the fish, you can forget the trap.... Words exist because of meanings: once you've gotten the meanings, you can forget the words.
— Chuang-Tzu
Anyone who can kill a cactus should forget about having plants in his livingroom.
— Ivan Verheye
Donald Elgeti was asked what he would like if he could have anything, and he replied:
A. Unlimited storage at no cost
B. A large income without effort
C. Something to do a lot
D. Lack of physical discomfort
Yeats wrote at the very end of his autobiographical musing Reveries, that "all life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens."
— Michael Tobias, Kenyon Review, New Series, Vol. 4, No. 1, Winter 1982, p. 24.
I fancy mankind may come in time to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.
— Ben Jonson, quoted in Curiosities of Literature, Isaac D'Israeli, selected and edited by E. Bleiler, pp. 282-283.
— Pablo Picasso
To punish me for my contempt of authority, fate made me authority itself.
— Albert Einstein
Claire Booth Luce said that the difference between a pessimist and an optimist is that the pessimist is generally better informed.
During the 1930's Chandler had a black Persian called Taki. He often spoke to her as if she were human. Sometimes he called her his secretary, because she frequently sat on the paper he was about to use or on copy that needed revising.
— Book of Lists #2, Irving Wallace, et alii, p. 113, "12 Famous Cat Lovers," 1.
cf. my own: Cats read with their feet and write with their teeth.
....it becomes overwhelmingly important for us to become detached from our everyday conception of ourselves as potential subjects for special and unique experiences, or as a candidate for realization, attainment, and fulfillment.
— Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite
The fish-trap exists because of the fish: once you've gotten the fish, you can forget the trap.... Words exist because of meanings: once you've gotten the meanings, you can forget the words.
— Chuang-Tzu
Anyone who can kill a cactus should forget about having plants in his livingroom.
— Ivan Verheye
Donald Elgeti was asked what he would like if he could have anything, and he replied:
A. Unlimited storage at no cost
B. A large income without effort
C. Something to do a lot
D. Lack of physical discomfort
Yeats wrote at the very end of his autobiographical musing Reveries, that "all life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens."
— Michael Tobias, Kenyon Review, New Series, Vol. 4, No. 1, Winter 1982, p. 24.
I fancy mankind may come in time to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.
— Ben Jonson, quoted in Curiosities of Literature, Isaac D'Israeli, selected and edited by E. Bleiler, pp. 282-283.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Quincunx Conjuncts
What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that from now on I can no longer believe you.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Don't buy the house; buy the neighbor.
— Russian Proverb
Ne te quaesiverie extra = Do not seek yourself outside yourself.
— Persius, Satire I, 7.
Ah! very great tree of language, peopled with oracles and maxims, and murmuring the murmur of one born blind among the quincunxes of knowledge....
— St.-John Perse"Winds," I, 1.
As soon as you discover that someone has something to say, you do your best to congratulate them out of ever doing it again.
— Frederic Raphael on Dick Cavett's PBS Show.
If you selected 100 people at random, about how many do you think could be taught to ice skate or to roller skate in a reasonably short period of time? Don't you think it would be about 97 or 98? If you did the same thing and tried to get them to listen to Bartok's Third String Quartet, how many would listen? Maybe three or four? Well, what I'm saying is that you could do either and here you are roller skating!
Unlike his talent for composing, Chopin's genius as a pianist was recognized from the very beginning. It is a fascinating sport to speculate about the actual sound of his playing. There are many descriptions by his contemporaries and some by himself. We know that it was dynamically restricted; Chopin did not have the physical strength of some of his colleagues since he suffered from consumption nearly all of his life. His weight never exceeded a mere 100 pounds. Once, while listening to a young pianist play his Polonaise Militaire, a string broke in the piano and the pianist apologized in confusion. "Young man," said Chopin, "if I had your strength and played that polonaise as it should be played, there would not be a string left in the instrument by the time I got through."
— Thomas Frost, Liner Notes on "Vladimir Horowitz: New Recordings of Chopin."
Clown is a French word meaning "clown"; importance is a French word meaning "importance."
Let's create monasteries in space with encapsulated Libraries of Congress!
Pipe smokers are slow thinkers.
— Donald Elgeti
A bachelor lives like a king and dies like a beggar.
— A. E. Lowry
A cigar is something with a fire at one end and a fool at the other.
— Horace Greeley
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Don't buy the house; buy the neighbor.
— Russian Proverb
Ne te quaesiverie extra = Do not seek yourself outside yourself.
— Persius, Satire I, 7.
Ah! very great tree of language, peopled with oracles and maxims, and murmuring the murmur of one born blind among the quincunxes of knowledge....
— St.-John Perse"Winds," I, 1.
As soon as you discover that someone has something to say, you do your best to congratulate them out of ever doing it again.
— Frederic Raphael on Dick Cavett's PBS Show.
If you selected 100 people at random, about how many do you think could be taught to ice skate or to roller skate in a reasonably short period of time? Don't you think it would be about 97 or 98? If you did the same thing and tried to get them to listen to Bartok's Third String Quartet, how many would listen? Maybe three or four? Well, what I'm saying is that you could do either and here you are roller skating!
Unlike his talent for composing, Chopin's genius as a pianist was recognized from the very beginning. It is a fascinating sport to speculate about the actual sound of his playing. There are many descriptions by his contemporaries and some by himself. We know that it was dynamically restricted; Chopin did not have the physical strength of some of his colleagues since he suffered from consumption nearly all of his life. His weight never exceeded a mere 100 pounds. Once, while listening to a young pianist play his Polonaise Militaire, a string broke in the piano and the pianist apologized in confusion. "Young man," said Chopin, "if I had your strength and played that polonaise as it should be played, there would not be a string left in the instrument by the time I got through."
— Thomas Frost, Liner Notes on "Vladimir Horowitz: New Recordings of Chopin."
Clown is a French word meaning "clown"; importance is a French word meaning "importance."
Let's create monasteries in space with encapsulated Libraries of Congress!
Pipe smokers are slow thinkers.
— Donald Elgeti
A bachelor lives like a king and dies like a beggar.
— A. E. Lowry
A cigar is something with a fire at one end and a fool at the other.
— Horace Greeley
Monday, March 1, 2010
Pointing Comments
It is no use saying, "we are doing our best." You have to succeed in doing what is necessary.
— Winston Churchhill
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
— Edith Wharton
We must become as clear glass through which God can shine.
— Meister Eckhart
Only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches.
— Killer Khalsa (Pro Wrestler)
Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.
— Soren Kierkegaard
It matters not whether a cat is black or gray providing it catches mice.
— Deng Xiaoping
When a man does not arrange his life with a view to a certain end, it is an indication of great folly.
— Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, 1.2.1214, b 10-11
A rabbit's foot is a poor substitute for horse sense.
— A fortune cookie received in May 1985
Life is a constant distraction that does not even allow for reflection as to what it distracts from.
— Franz Kafka
Art is a luxury for which the artist pays.
— David Smith (Sculptor, 1896-1955)
— Winston Churchhill
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
— Edith Wharton
We must become as clear glass through which God can shine.
— Meister Eckhart
Only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches.
— Killer Khalsa (Pro Wrestler)
Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.
— Soren Kierkegaard
It matters not whether a cat is black or gray providing it catches mice.
— Deng Xiaoping
When a man does not arrange his life with a view to a certain end, it is an indication of great folly.
— Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, 1.2.1214, b 10-11
A rabbit's foot is a poor substitute for horse sense.
— A fortune cookie received in May 1985
Life is a constant distraction that does not even allow for reflection as to what it distracts from.
— Franz Kafka
Art is a luxury for which the artist pays.
— David Smith (Sculptor, 1896-1955)
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