Tag: quotes

ENOSIS

by: Christopher Cranch (1813-1892)

THOUGHT is deeper than all speech,
Feeling deeper than all thought;
Souls to souls can never teach
What unto themselves was taught.

We are spirits clad in veils;
Man by man was never seen;
All our deep communing fails
To remove the shadowy screen.

Heart to heart was never known;
Mind with mind did never meet;
We are columns left alone,
Of a temple once complete.

Like the stars that gem the sky,
Far apart, though seeming near,
In our light we scattered lie;
All is thus but starlight here.

What is social company
But a babbling summer stream?
What our wise philosophy
But the glancing of a dream?

Only when the sun of love
Melts the scattered stars of thought;
Only when we live above
What the dim-eyed world hath taught;

Only when our souls are fed
By the Fount which gave them birth,
And by inspiration led,
Which they never drew from earth,

We like parted drops of rain
Swelling till they meet and run,
Shall be all absorbed again,
Melting, flowing into one.

 

Wolfpen Creek
by: James Still

How it was in that place, how light hung in a bright pool
Of air like water, in an eddy of cloud and sky,
I will long remember. I will long recall
The maples blossoming wings, the oaks proud with rule,

The spiders deep in silk, the squirrels fat on mast,
The fields and draws and coves where quail and peewees call.
Earth loved more than any earth, stand firm, hold fast;
Trees burdened with leaf and bird, root deep, grow tall.

White Nights

“I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can’t help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year. I feel I know you so well that I couldn’t have known you better if we’d been friends for twenty years. You won’t fail me, will you? Only two minutes, and you’ve made me happy forever. Yes, happy. Who knows, perhaps you’ve reconciled me with myself, resolved all my doubts.

When I woke up it seemed to me that some snatch of a tune I had known for a long time, I had heard somewhere before but had forgotten, a melody of great sweetness, was coming back to me now. It seemed to me that it had been trying to emerge from my soul all my life, and only now-

If and when you fall in love, may you be happy with her. I don’t need to wish her anything, for she’ll be happy with you. May your sky always be clear, may your dear smile always be bright and happy, and may you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn’t such a moment sufficient for the whole of one’s life?”

– Fyodor Dostoyevsky; White Nights

Insanity

What is insanity? The most familiar definition that comes to mind is from Einstein who said, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” It is peculiar to think of insanity this way, particularly because it flies in the face of normalcy. Many believe that the socially responsible and acceptable thing to do is to adhere to certain norms and customs and traditions, and that these will allow you to adequately function in society. What normalcy doesn’t guarantee, however, is individuality, or originality. To be an individual, one must do things differently and expect different results. But what of a society that values doing things differently only to achieve the same results, such as participating in all the counter-cultural rituals to gain acceptance as an ‘individual’ ? Can it be said that such a person has achieved individuality?

‎”Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” -F.Nietzsche

Insanity. What I find insane is society. Civilization. Tradition. Custom. Ritual. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the utility of consistency. I understand the pragmatic element of predictability, from a linguistic standpoint as well as a logical and epistemological standpoint. After all, learning curves are greatly reduced by assimilating the knowledge past down by forbearer, no? And we can’t very well go about creating our own neologistic language and expect to be effective interpersonally, now can we?  But where do we draw the line between maintaining and gaining? Passing on and passing over? Subsisting and thriving? Progress requires change. Change requires adaptation. If we sell out to maintain the status quo, if we fail to commit to the efflorescent incarnations of possibility in favor of the denouement of equilibrium, we must embrace our death; for we have already died.

Society is insane. Look at the way they scuttle around in the rat race, trying to secure these temporal provisions; see how they frantically instill meaning and comfort into fabricated facticities. Observe the perduring populous that embodies repetition; always allied to the alacritous attachment of doing the same thing, over and over again, and always expecting different results. If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting. In the end everyone’s demise is the same. Society is a self-fulfilling prophecy; a reflexive perpetuation proselytizing more of the same. The social consciousness does not readily expand but rather, it promptly strengthens itself onto itself.

So what is insanity? A break from conventional norms, I suppose. So sanity, once again, is doing the same thing over and over again. The endorsement of cultural customs, e.g. materialism, hedonism, consumerism, aceticism, celebrityism, sciencism, etc. I suppose the great majority of people think they aren’t insane because they don’t expect different results. Predictability is offered as a sycophant of security.

That is the real tragedy. When people not only do the same thing over and over again, but they do not expect different results. They have been sedated or conditioned or desensitized to rudimentary routines and rituals. 9 to 5. Primary, secondary, tertiary schooling, followed by a stint of rebellious youth, cue the career, make room for marriage, corral some kids, restfully retire, and then comes the inevitable surprise of death.

Sanity: “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same results.” This rationalist program will inevitably suffer the same stifling fate as freedom. Time waits for no man. If you are not progressing, you are regressing. Life is meant to flourish. Growth and evolution should be the cynosure of contemplation, the mark of progress. But not by any quantitative measure imposed by external authority. It should be an inward journey. Growth is not static.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”  -R.W. Emerson

Insanity is characterized by senseless or abnormal behavior by societal standards. But how amazing it is to look at societal standards! Especially through the perspective lens of time! How standards change!

So the question of insanity remains. Are you insane for following your desires? Even if your desires lead to your demise? Even if they cast you into chains? Even if they toss you into pain and hardship? Would you be willing to escape sanity and embrace the lucres of authentic freedom? At what price?

Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.
-A. Camus

 

Blind Onlookers

“I wonder how many people I’ve looked at all my life and never seen.”
-John Steinbeck

Be aware of blindness. See the best in people. See them as they really are. Do not place them in the chains that bind you.

Think about your life. Think about how much of your life you wear on your sleeve. That is, think about how much of your experiences that lie open for the world to see. Consider all the experiences that make you up as a person and have contributed to your personality and character and life story. Each person is a book, albeit closed. It is up to us to open these books. Love is the key that conquers all.

I know I certainly don’t waltz around inviting people into my inner chambers, into the intimate reflections of past experience. People must show an earnest interest.

All too often we judge others with nothing more than a handful of encounters, mostly impersonal. Here is a person, composed of years of experience that shaped and molded their being, and we overlook the beautiful opportunity to extend a charity and a benefit of doubt that would allow us into their world, into a realm of experience previously undreampt and unbeknowst to us. All too often we over look people as they are. I was always fond of the quote “We never see people as they are; we see people are we are.”

So yea… we look at people, but we rarely take the time to see them. To appreciate the depth of their experience. One problem is that most people aren’t even aware of the quality of their experience. They don’t value their originality. Instead they lead an inauthentic life and never leverage their unique experience, or they sell out to the collective experience of the masses. As a result, our inquiring eye is mislead to think there is nothing there. How wrong we are. There is always so much more than meets the eye. The surface is nothing compared to the volume.

Take time to see people. Love them. That is the best charity of all.

Anyway.

Creative Angst

“In The Courage to Be Paul Tillich mentions the Creative as being unable to accept into or create a unity with himself and reality due to a profound dissatisfaction with it as well as with the ‘absolute threat of nonbeing.’ The problem that arises from this dissatisfaction is that one is then faced with extreme anxiety, which is defined as a state of constant worry and unease due to a situation. Since the situation in question (living itself) is somewhat inescapable, ‘Anxiety turns toward courage, because the other alternative is despair. Courage resists despair by taking anxiety into itself.’ Despair would lead to a kind of escape, but that sort which promises no greater comfort for the anxious and for that reason is often a last resort. Tillich asserts that the ‘average person keeps himself away from the extreme situations by dealing courageously with concrete objects of fear. He usually is not aware of nonbeing and anxiety in the depth of his personality.’ However, ‘He who does not succeed in taking his anxiety courageously upon himself can succeed in avoiding the extreme situation of despair by escaping into neurosis.’

This neurosis is present in many a creative individual because these people are thinkers, sensitive, and unable to ignore their own anxiety, thus having to turn to this method of coping when despair becomes unbearable…The anxiety of the neurotic is what leads him to create alternate worlds: both the artist and the man of logic throws himself into a type of problem-solving which is idiosyncratic on some level. The ‘world’ they create is not necessarily the stereotypical castle of imaginary wonders or something so concrete as the very stylistically differentiable works of some artists…  No, the world is a mental construct wherein one is safe to evaluate reality on his own terms and to create based on his dissatisfactions.”

— World Creators or What I Wish Someone Explained to Me Years Ago

I believe this angst is derived from the existential burden of possibility. Creative minds are not subjected to the same constraining ideologies and conventional ways of thinking that govern the behaviors and thoughts of the rest of the population. They ordain entirely new worlds of thought, preferring to reside among the more familiar comforts of their alien mind, while others look on with the curious perplexity of imitation.

Creative minds do not easily conform to transplanted opinions and beliefs of the whole. Hence, before the feet of the creative lies the question of being, and with it, the responsibility of being. The fear of non-being is the source of madness driving the creative mind to declare their being through thoughts and actions wholly original and reflective of their world. The responsibility of being creates an existential angst, an anxiety overwhelmed by endless possibilities and limitless freedom to be or not be. Creativity is the ultimate expression of free and true being. With it comes a deluge of choice which dilutes the value of meaning into arbitrary and trivial contrivances.

Existence

“One sticks one’s finger into the soil to tell by the smell in what land one is: I stick my finger in existence — it smells of nothing. Where am I? Who am I? How came I here? What is this thing called the world? What does this world mean? Who is it that has lured me into the world? Why was I not consulted, why not made acquainted with its manners and customs instead of throwing me into the ranks, as if I had been bought by a kidnapper, a dealer in souls? How did I obtain an interest in this big enterprise they call reality? Why should I have an interest in it? Is it not a voluntary concern? And if I am to be compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I should like to make a remark to him. Is there no director? Whither shall I turn with my complaint? ”
-Søren Kierkegaard, Repetition (1843), Voice: Young Man

Sagacity

Contemplation. What good is aimless thought? Does it sharpen? Does it build? What purpose or function does it serve? How do I know what I think if I can’t see what I say? Why wait for the day of judgment to see what I really think about matters? Most people keep it in. They are unknown to themselves. What do people think about in their free time? I think about too much. Far too much. Everything and anything. Mostly the abstract. I often find myself wrestling to reconcile certain paradoxes, or trying to merge dissimilar ideas into an attractive whole.

I am usually not present. I try, I try desperately to be present. I recognize that being present is happiness. Being present with the moment is being eternal. Eternity isn’t bound by feeble notions concerning infinite temporal duration. Eternity is beyond time, open to ultimate possibility, residing in some place of timelessness. Those who seek eternal life must look no farther than the present. The present is our eternal life.

The present. What is the present? This moment. Now. It is a phenomenon. It is a phenomenon that is all encompassing. Nothing escapes the now. In all of time and space, no matter how respective one point from another, there is an eternal inescapable now. We cannot escape its grip. Physically, we cannot escape the now. Nothing can. What about psychologically? Can we mentally escape the now? How would this be possible?

The now is defined by sensations- sense data and impressions- registered from the external environment. Can we escape these sensations? Can we recreate sensations and alter our consciousness so that we find ourselves attending to sensations that are not present? Surely. Any recall provides this mental escape. Memories allow us to revisit mental states. They recreate the sensations within us and allow us to inspect and judge their perceived nature according to what the present confirms.

When we imagine, or reflect, or think, I believe this is what we do.  Perhaps reason is as much of a vice as it is a gift? In that, it removes us from present demands and causes us to become preoccupied with demands that are distant and far removed from the now.

Perhaps this is why faith plays such an instrumental role in theology and religion? Living in the present requires a blind attendance to the now. It requires that we hold off judgement, criticism, analysis, and react to an intuition that embodies belief.

Belief forms the sum of man’s experience. It is the core of his being, a amalgam that wholly embodies actuality.

I was recently thinking about my life and what I want out of it. What is it that I want from life? Everything really. I wouldn’t mind money, fame, solitude, poverty, adventure- whatever. I could take it all, be it all, do it all.  I suppose I could be happy with anything really. I say that because it’s all too often that I find myself happy with nothing; the absurdity of life, the trivial nature of existence.  Life has no meaning as soon as one loses the illusion of being eternal. But how does one lose that illusion? Straying too far from the present, perhaps?

I spoke with my father and voiced my concern about continuing along with economics as a major. While the discipline fascinates me to no end, it doesn’t provide my curiosities enough stimulation. I would like to follow my passions on conviction alone. I don’t want desires transplanted from outside me as dictated from the world. I am my own master. My conclusions are my own.

So I was thinking of finishing up all my major requirements in Philosophy next semester and pursuing courses more liberally. I’d like to take some classes in English and writing, math and physics, possibly chemistry, history, anthropology, sociology and, why not, some more classes in economics. Sure I can take more philosophy classes, but as a philosopher, why stop with philosophy? Philosophy is concerned with truths, with facts and the paradigms where they reside. It is concerned with existence, meaning, and life. Any discipline of study will afford me the material to think more critically about life. Studying new disciplines will only add to my language, build my vocabulary, and allow me to think beyond my current capacity for thought.

“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.”
— Ludwig Wittgenstein

Pursuing unfamiliar domains of thought and experience provides the unique opportunity for new acquaintances and carries me to a proximity in which I can more closely engage life in general.  Repeated exposure with any unknown soon renders a familiarity that becomes known to us. We learn the idiosyncrasies, coin meaning and expectations. New language expands my world, my conception of life, my understanding of existence.

Introspection. More introspection. What is introspection? A self-examination? Personal reflection? A mediation?  –spect comes from L. spectrum “appearance, vision, apparition.Intro- comes from L. intro “on the inside, within, to the inside.”

Introspection: 1670s, from L. introspectionem, from introspectus, pp. of introspicere “to look into, look at,” from intro- “inward” + specere “to look at” (see scope (1)).

The relative nature of our world fascinates me, particularly words. We treat them as these definite building blocks and act as if they maintain a univocity. The reality is that all language, all words that comprise language, has been past down and inherited by each successive generation throughout the ages.

We rely on a semantic content that is fixed, previously agreed upon and assigned. If it were not, communication would be near impossible. The fixed semantic content we attribute to words is not inherent, rather it is borne out of normative conventions that allow for a smooth exchange of understanding.

When I write it becomes much more evident of the relative nature of words. If I understand the content of a word in which someone else lacks there will be a gap in communication. Metaphors fill this gap. Metaphors. That’s another interesting phonomenon I’d like to study in more depth. Metaphors. Hot is red. Cold is blue. Why do these seem so intuitive? We describe certain people as being ‘radiant’. Of course they don’t shine or glow, but we associate nongermane concepts to things such as personality that illustrate the particular semantics of our expressive language. Is it true or false that a person is radiant? Or that someone is blue? Nietzsche captured the relative nature of language and the misguided assumptions of their truth and falsity in this passage with beautiful simplicity:

What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.

-Friedrich Nietzsche, in On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873)

As per usual, I have been giving quite a bit of thought to relativity. The relativity of life, meaning, purpose, language and the like.  Freedom as well.

If we wish to go beyond, to expand our minds and our worlds, we need to reexamine not just what language we use, but how we use it. Just as we cannot apply the same tool for every task, we cannot apply the same language for every problem. As Abraham Maslow said, “To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail.”

We must actively question which language tools we are apply to certain matters and situations. The unknown and unfamiliar, or anything that leaves us feeling disoriented or ‘wrong’, should never deter us from exploring the limits of our current conceptions. Learning and growth is a result of continual revision and adoption.

So long as man feigns the familiar, he will be forever trapped. If it does not occur to us to pull rather than push, we will be endlessly imprisoned in unlocked rooms that open inward. Life is open for all; seek the way with astute self reliance and courageous humility.

Anyway… need to continue writing that novel.

Sagacity

Contemplation. What good is aimless thought? Does it sharpen? Does it build? What purpose or function does it serve? How do I know what I think if I can’t see what I say? Why wait for the day of judgment to see what I really think about matters? Most people keep it in. They are unknown to themselves. What do people think about in their free time? I think about too much. Far too much. Everything and anything. Mostly the abstract. I often find myself wrestling to reconcile certain paradoxes, or trying to merge dissimilar ideas into an attractive whole.

I am usually not present. I try, I try desperately to be present. I recognize that being present is happiness. Being present with the moment is being eternal. Eternity isn’t bound by feeble notions concerning infinite temporal duration. Eternity is beyond time, open to ultimate possibility, residing in some place of timelessness. Those who seek eternal life must look no farther than the present. The present is our eternal life.

The present. What is the present? This moment. Now. It is a phenomenon. It is a phenomenon that is all encompassing. Nothing escapes the now. In all of time and space, no matter how respective one point from another, there is an eternal inescapable now. We cannot escape its grip. Physically, we cannot escape the now. Nothing can. What about psychologically? Can we mentally escape the now? How would this be possible?

The now is defined by sensations- sense data and impressions- registered from the external environment. Can we escape these sensations? Can we recreate sensations and alter our consciousness so that we find ourselves attending to sensations that are not present? Surely. Any recall provides this mental escape. Memories allow us to revisit mental states. They recreate the sensations within us and allow us to inspect and judge their perceived nature according to what the present confirms.

When we imagine, or reflect, or think, I believe this is what we do.  Perhaps reason is as much of a vice as it is a gift? In that, it removes us from present demands and causes us to become preoccupied with demands that are distant and far removed from the now.

Perhaps this is why faith plays such an instrumental role in theology and religion? Living in the present requires a blind attendance to the now. It requires that we hold off judgement, criticism, analysis, and react to an intuition that embodies belief.

Belief forms the sum of man’s experience. It is the core of his being, a amalgam that wholly embodies actuality.

I was recently thinking about my life and what I want out of it. What is it that I want from life? Everything really. I wouldn’t mind money, fame, solitude, poverty, adventure- whatever. I could take it all, be it all, do it all.  I suppose I could be happy with anything really. I say that because it’s all too often that I find myself happy with nothing; the absurdity of life, the trivial nature of existence.  Life has no meaning as soon as one loses the illusion of being eternal. But how does one lose that illusion? Straying too far from the present, perhaps?

I spoke with my father and voiced my concern about continuing along with economics as a major. While the discipline fascinates me to no end, it doesn’t provide my curiosities enough stimulation. I would like to follow my passions on conviction alone. I don’t want desires transplanted from outside me as dictated from the world. I am my own master. My conclusions are my own.

So I was thinking of finishing up all my major requirements in Philosophy next semester and pursuing courses more liberally. I’d like to take some classes in English and writing, math and physics, possibly chemistry, history, anthropology, sociology and, why not, some more classes in economics. Sure I can take more philosophy classes, but as a philosopher, why stop with philosophy? Philosophy is concerned with truths, with facts and the paradigms where they reside. It is concerned with existence, meaning, and life. Any discipline of study will afford me the material to think more critically about life. Studying new disciplines will only add to my language, build my vocabulary, and allow me to think beyond my current capacity for thought.

“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.”
— Ludwig Wittgenstein

Pursuing unfamiliar domains of thought and experience provides the unique opportunity for new acquaintances and carries me to a proximity in which I can more closely engage life in general.  Repeated exposure with any unknown soon renders a familiarity that becomes known to us. We learn the idiosyncrasies, coin meaning and expectations. New language expands my world, my conception of life, my understanding of existence.

Introspection. More introspection. What is introspection? A self-examination? Personal reflection? A mediation?  –spect comes from L. spectrum “appearance, vision, apparition.Intro- comes from L. intro “on the inside, within, to the inside.”

Introspection: 1670s, from L. introspectionem, from introspectus, pp. of introspicere “to look into, look at,” from intro- “inward” + specere “to look at” (see scope (1)).

The relative nature of our world fascinates me, particularly words. We treat them as these definite building blocks and act as if they maintain a univocity. The reality is that all language, all words that comprise language, has been past down and inherited by each successive generation throughout the ages.

We rely on a semantic content that is fixed, previously agreed upon and assigned. If it were not, communication would be near impossible. The fixed semantic content we attribute to words is not inherent, rather it is borne out of normative conventions that allow for a smooth exchange of understanding.

When I write it becomes much more evident of the relative nature of words. If I understand the content of a word in which someone else lacks there will be a gap in communication. Metaphors fill this gap. Metaphors. That’s another interesting phonomenon I’d like to study in more depth. Metaphors. Hot is red. Cold is blue. Why do these seem so intuitive? We describe certain people as being ‘radiant’. Of course they don’t shine or glow, but we associate nongermane concepts to things such as personality that illustrate the particular semantics of our expressive language. Is it true or false that a person is radiant? Or that someone is blue? Nietzsche captured the relative nature of language and the misguided assumptions of their truth and falsity in this passage with beautiful simplicity:

What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.

-Friedrich Nietzsche, in On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873)

As per usual, I have been giving quite a bit of thought to relativity. The relativity of life, meaning, purpose, language and the like.  Freedom as well.

If we wish to go beyond, to expand our minds and our worlds, we need to reexamine not just what language we use, but how we use it. Just as we cannot apply the same tool for every task, we cannot apply the same language for every problem. As Abraham Maslow said, “To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail.”

We must actively question which language tools we are apply to certain matters and situations. The unknown and unfamiliar, or anything that leaves us feeling disoriented or ‘wrong’, should never deter us from exploring the limits of our current conceptions. Learning and growth is a result of continual revision and adoption.

So long as man feigns the familiar, he will be forever trapped. If it does not occur to us to pull rather than push, we will be endlessly imprisoned in unlocked rooms that open inward. Life is open for all; seek the way with astute self reliance and courageous humility.

Anyway… need to continue writing that novel.

Contemplation

“To arrive at the simplest truth, as [Sir Isaac] Newton knew and practiced, requires years of contemplation. Not activity Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behaviour of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is one needs to know. And yet those with the courage to tread this path to real discovery are not only offered practically no guidance on how to do so, they are actively discouraged and have to set about it in secret, pretending meanwhile to be diligently engaged in the frantic diversions and to conform with the deadening personal opinions which are being continually thrust upon them.”

— George Spencer-Brown

What I Have Lived For

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy – ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness–that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what–at last–I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

Bertrand Russell -What I Have Lived For, The Prologue to Bertrand Russell’s Autobiography

Telling Character

A man never describes his own character so clearly as when he describes another.
-Johann Paul Friedrich Richter

This quote resonates with me. How people describe the world is an indication of their attitude towards the world. If you want a simple judgement test of someones character, you need only examine the attitude they hold for the world. This includes their beliefs about circumstances, people, relationships, and even the beliefs they maintain about themselves.

Thought is Supreme

Whenever you go out-of-doors, draw the chin in, carry the crown of the head high, and fill the lungs to the utmost; drink in the sunshine; greet your friends with a smile, and put soul into every handclasp. Do not fear being misunderstood and do not waste a minute thinking about your enemies. Try to fix firmly in your mind what you would like to do; and then, without veering off direction, you will move straight to the goal. Keep your mind on the great and splendid things you would like to do, and then, as the days go gliding away, you will find yourself unconsciously seizing upon the opportunities that are required for the fulfillment of your desire, just as the coral insect takes from the ruining tide the element it needs. Picture in your mind the able, earnest, useful person you desire to be, and the thought you hold is hourly transforming you into that particular individual…Thought is supreme. Preserve a right mental attitude-the attitude of courage, frankness, and good cheer. To think rightly is to create. All things come through desire and every sincere prayer is answered. We become like that on which our hearts are fixed. Carry your chin in and the crown of your head high. We are gods in the chrysalis.

-Elbert Hubbard

Quotes

Pursuing a means to the end. And writing about it.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read. -Twain

“A man should conceive of a legitimate purpose in his heart, and set out to accomplish it. He should make this purpose the centralizing point of his thoughts. It may take the form of a spiritual ideal, or it may be a worldly object, according to his nature at the time being; but whichever it is, he should steadily focus his thought forces upon the object which he has set before him. He should make this purpose his supreme duty, and should devote himself to its attainment, not allowing his thoughts to wander away into ephemeral fancies, longings, and imaginings. This is the royal road to self-control and true concentration of thought. Even if he fails again and again to accomplish his purpose (as he necessarily must until weakness is overcome), the strength of character gained will be the measure of his true success, and this will form a new starting point for future power and triumph.” Allen, James

“When I was young, I asked more of people than they could give: everlasting friendship, endless feeling. Now I know to ask less of them than they can give: a straightforward companionship. And their feelings, their friendship, their generous actions seem in my eyes to be wholly miraculous: a consequence of grace alone.” -Albert Camus

“Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him.” -RWE

“The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.” – Thomas Paine

“Everyone thinks of changing the world but no one thinks of changing himself.” -Tolstoy

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
WW

“If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!”
-Kierkegaard

Self-recollection: Amiel

“[The] capacity for self-recollection — for withdrawal from the outward to the inward — is in fact the condition of all noble and useful activity. If the sailor did not carry with him his own temperature he could not go from the pole to the equator, and remain himself in spite of all. The man who has no refuge in himself, who lives, so to speak, in his front rooms, in the outer whirlwind of things and opinions, is not properly a personality at all. He is one of a crowd, a taxpayer, an elector, an anonymity, but not a man.

He who floats with the current, who does not guide himself according to higher principles, who has no ideal, no convictions — such a man is a mere article of the world’s furniture — a thing moved, instead of a living and moving being — an echo, not a voice. The man who has no inner life is the slave of his surroundings, as the barometer is the obedient servant of the air at rest, and the weathercock the humble servant of the air in motion.”

— Henri Frederic Amiel

Inspiration

We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action. ~Frank Tibolt

You must actively mine for inspiration. It does not fall out of the sky and into our lap. If life is dull and pallid and limp, decide on an attractive and necessary undertaking, and dig. You will find treasure.

quotes

“The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade other people how good they are.” – G.K.C.

“The true value of a man is not determined by his possession, supposed or real, of Truth, but rather by his sincere exertion to get the Truth. It is not possession of the Truth, but rather the pursuit of Truth by which he extends his powers and in which his ever-growing perfectability is to be found. Possession makes one passive, indolent, and proud. If God were to hold all Truth concealed in His right hand, and in his left only the steady and diligent drive for Truth, albeit with a proviso that I would always and forever err in the process, and to offer me the choice, I would with all humility take the left hand.”
–Gotthold Lessing, 1778

“O quam cito transit gloria mundi.” -Thomas à Kempis

‘To the feeling man, life is a tragedy. To the thinking man, life is a comedy.’

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” (Twain)

“Who you will someday be, you are now becoming.”

“Errors cease to be dangerous when it is freely permitted to contradict them” Jefferson

Holding back

The only reason we hold back is because we think we have an endless amount of chances or that there will always be one more. But as time disappears into the past and life goes on, those chances will run out, and you’ll either live with: Eternal happiness for being brave, or eternal regret for holding back

You cannot bring prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
You cannot further brotherhood of men by inciting class hatred.
You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”
— Rev. William J. H. Boetcker

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. -Thomas Jefferson.

When we spend our life focused on our needs, we are never satisfied, and our deepest needs never seem to be met. But when we pour out our life and focus on how we can serve others, we find not only incredible fulfillment, but our deepest needs are met as well. Learning to serve leads to the “happily ever after” finish you’ve always dreamed of.

Sin will take you further than you ever thought you’d go
Keep you longer than you ever thought you’d stay
And cost you more than you ever thought you’d pay

Sometimes, when God doesn’t give us what we want, we say that God didn’t answer our prayer. I would say that He did, because “no” is as much an answer to prayer as “yes” is.

The hardest thing in this life is being yourself when the world is trying its hardest, day in and day out, to make you just like everyone else.

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are and your reputation is merely what others think you are!

Tyler

“I reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.”

“God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”

“Disaster is a natural part of my evolution,” Tyler whispered, “toward tragedy and dissolution.” “I’m breaking my attachment to physical power and possessions,” Tyler whispered, “because only through destroying myself can I discover the greater power of my spirit.”

Sometimes you do something, and you get screwed. Sometimes it’s the things you don’t do, and you get screwed.

“Sticking feathers up your butt,” Tyler says, “does not make you a chicken.”

“In the world I see – you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You’ll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.”

“Getting fired,” Tyler says, “is the best thing that could happen to any of us. That way, we’d quit treading water and do something with our lives.”

“A gun,” Tyler said, “is simple and perfect.” “The trigger,” Tyler said, “frees the hammer, and the hammer strikes the powder. The explosion blast a metal slug off the open end of the shell and the barrel of the gun focuses the exploding powder and the rocketing slug,” Tyler said, “like a man out of a cannon, like a missile out of a silo, like your jism, in one direction.”

“For thousands of years, human beings had screwed up and trashed and crapped on this planet, and now history expected me to clean up after everyone. I have to wash out and flatten my soup cans. And account for every drop of used motor oil. And I have to foot the bill for nuclear waste and buried gasoline tanks and landfilled toxic sludge dumped a generation before I was born.

I wanted to breath smoke. I wanted to burn the Lourve. I’d do the Elgin Marbles with a sledge-hammer and wipe my ass with the Mona Lisa. This is my world, now.

Only after disaster can we be resurrected. “It’s only after you’ve lost everything, that you’re free to do anything.” – Tyler Durdan, Fight Club by Chuck Palahnuik

Self-Reliance: To friends and foes

“I shall endeavor to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife, — but these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men’s, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. — But so you may give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they justify me, and do the same thing.”

“The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides. There are two confessionals, in one or the other of which we must be shriven. You may fulfil your round of duties by clearing yourself in the direct, or in the reflex way. Consider whether you have satisfied your relations to father, mother, cousin, neighbour, town, cat, and dog; whether any of these can upbraid you. But I may also neglect this reflex standard, and absolve me to myself. I have my own stern claims and perfect circle. It denies the name of duty to many offices that are called duties. But if I can discharge its debts, it enables me to dispense with the popular code. If any one imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its commandment one day.”

“And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others!”

Emerson.
Self-Reliance