Jane Austen (1775 - 1817)
It isn’t what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.
Time will explain.
Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.
We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours and laugh at them in our turn?
Selfishness must always be forgiven…because there is no hope for a cure.
What is right to be done cannot be done too soon.
An artist cannot do anything slovenly.
Every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies.
Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosures; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.
Business…may bring you money…friendship hardly ever does.
I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, through not in principle.
A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing and can see nothing that does not answer.
What wild imaginations one forms where dear self is concerned! How sure to be mistaken!
Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.
We do not look in our great cities for our best morality.
I could not sit down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life.
How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!
Nothing ever fatigues me but doing what I do not like.
Cato Bontjes van Beek (1920 - 1943)
I will go my own way
I only want to be one thing – a human being!
(aged 22 awaiting execution) I didn’t beg for my life
(in response to her schoolmaster who told her that ‘you can’t always swim against the tide’) Yes, we can!
Hans Blumenberg 1920 - 1996
on ‘light’: Light is only seen in what it lets become visible. The ‘naturalness’ of light consists precisely in this, that it only ‘dawns’ on its own sense, with the visibility of things, and this is itself not of the same nature as that which it evokes.
Light produces space, distance, orientation, calm contemplation; it is the gift that makes no demands, the illumination capable of conquering without force.
on ‘truth’: Leaving the cave…does something not only to man but to the world, something that no longer depends on the individual’s education and will. This is not, however, a momentary act, but rather a historically continuous path of discovering the truth…
on ‘perspective’: I remained for a whole day by myself in a small stone-heated room. Here the relation of the room to the world…is from the outside to the inside…completely medieval.
on our ‘weakness’: only when the spectators have been shown to their secure places can the drama of human imperilment be played out before them.
Source: https://www.uni-muenster.de/Religion-und-Politik/forschung/zukunft/blumenberg/blumenberg.shtml
E.E. Cummings (1894 - 1962)
Yes is a world and in this world of yes live (skilfully curled) all worlds.
Relax and give the play (read everything) a chance to strut its stuff…life…isn’t “about”, it simply is… Don’t try to enjoy it, let it try to enjoy you. Don’t try to understand it, let it try to understand you.
Emanuel Geibel 1815 - 1884
on communicating the ‘truth’: To express the most difficult matters clearly and intelligently, is to strike coins out of pure gold.
on ‘joy’: True joy doth need no song to praise it, silence for love’s delight is best.
Vladimir Ghika (1873 – 1954)
To begin to perceive God, one must have lost sight of self.
Those who love God are ready to discover new beatitudes in every situation, quite often where they are least expected.
Paul Grüninger (1891-1972)
A police commander in Switzerland who saved around 3,600 Jewish refugees from near certain death in Germany by backdating their visas and falsifying their documents. He spent time in prison for these acts, was fined, lost his job and with it all prospects, received no pension and died in poverty. Ostracised and forgotten he never showed any public regret and was finally cleared of charges 23 years AFTER he died.
Christian Friedrich Hebbel 1813 - 1863
It’s incredible how much intelligence is used in this world to prove nonsense.
If you hate something thoroughly without knowing why, you can be sure there is something of it in your own nature.
One lie does not cost you one truth, but truth.
What you can become you are already.
Religion is the highest vanity.
That Man, who flees from truth, should have invented the mirror is the greatest of historical miracles.
Most people are good only so long as they believe others to be so.
What a vast difference there is between the barbarian that precedes culture and the barbarian that follows it.
In a good play, everyone is right.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Friedrich_Hebbel
Conrad Busken Huet (1826 - 1886)
Just as all Christianity is purely devotional love after Christ’s example, the entire Bible is purely a human creation. Yes, a creation inspired by the personal faith of the prophets and apostles; brought forth by the national genius of the Hebrews…one that did not fall from the clouds like a meteor…but which emerged leaf by leaf…under God’s guidance…
The best way to know God is to love many things.
The most important thing in life is to be free to do things…be rich or…reduce your needs to zero.
Jan van Hulst (1903 - 1975)
(on saving countless lives during WW2) I did not do what I did in order to have my name remembered. My work was an obligation in those days.
Franz Kafka (1883 – 1924)
There is a destination but no way there; what we refer to as way is hesitation.
The Expulsion from Paradise is eternal in its principal element: this makes it irrevocable, and our living in this world inevitable…but the eternal nature of this process has the effect that not only could we remain forever in Paradise, but that we are currently there, whether we know it or not.
In the struggle between yourself and the world, hold the world’s coat.
We are instructed to do the negative: the positive is already within us.
Belief in progress doesn’t mean belief in progress that has already occurred. That would not require belief.
There are two cardinal sins from which all others spring: impatience and laziness. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise; because of laziness we cannot return.
We don’t share one body, but we do share growth, and that leads us through all pain, whether in this form or that.
That what passes for suffering in this world is, in another world, without any change and merely without its contrariety, bliss.
All that (language) knows to do is to treat of ownership and its relations.
It is not necessary for you to leave the house. Stay at your table and listen. Don’t even listen, just wait. Don’t even wait; be utterly still and alone. The world will offer itself to you…it will writhe before you in ecstasy.
There are questions we could never get past, were it not that we are freed of them by nature.
There is a point of no return. That is the point one must achieve.
(it may be that) Your steps backward are only caused by the nature of the ground, and you do not have to despair.
The true path is along a rope, not a rope suspended way up in the air, but rather only just over the ground. It seems more like a tripwire than a rope.
My job is unbearable to me because it conflicts with my only desire and my only calling, which is literature…Nervous states of the worst sort control me without pause…A marriage could not change me, just as my job cannot change me.
The tremendous world I have inside my head, but how to free myself and free it without being torn to pieces.
Enclosed in my own four walls, I found myself as an immigrant in a foreign country;…I saw my family as strange aliens whose foreign customs, rites, and very language defied comprehension;…though I did not want it, they forced me to participate in their bizarre rituals;…I could not resist.
Thomas à Kempis (1380 - 1471)
Without the Truth, there is no knowing
…man proposes…God disposes.
At the Day of Judgement we shall not be asked what we have read, but what we have done.
Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.
The loftier the building, the deeper must the foundation be laid.
First keep the peace within yourself, then you can also bring peace to others.
Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility: for it thinks all things lawful for itself, and all things possible.
Without the way, there is no going…
Great tranquillity of heart is his who cares for neither praise nor blame.
If you knew all, you would pardon all.
The acknowledgment of our weakness is the first step in repairing our loss.
He who loves with purity considers not the gift of the lover, but the love of the giver.
A humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God than a deep search after learning.
All men commend patience, although few are willing to practice it.
Bear the Cross cheerfully and it will bear you.
Out of sight, out of mind, The absent are always in the wrong.
It is much safer to obey than to rule.
Occasions do not male a man either strong or weak but they show what he is.
I would far rather feel remorse than know how to define it.
Never be entirely idle; but either be reading, or writing, or praying or meditating or endeavouring something for the public good.
A man is hindered and distracted in proportion as he draws outward things to himself.
We usually know what we can do, but temptation shows us who we are.
Who has a harder fight than he who is stirring to overcome himself.
He will easily be content and at peace, whose conscience is pure.
But because many endeavour to get knowledge rather than to live well, they are often deceived and reap little or no benefit from their labour.
Wait for the Lord, Behave yourself manfully, and be of good courage. Do not be faithless, but stay in your place and do no turn back.
Anne Knight (1786 - 1862)
By tortured millions, By the divine redeemer, Enfranchise Humanity, Bid the Outraged World, BE FREE
Alfred Korzybski (1879 - 1950)
The map is not the territory
To use words to sense reality is like going with a lamp to search for darkness.
If all people learned to think in the non-Aristotelian manner of quantum mechanics…the ‘intractable’ problems of war, poverty and injustice would suddenly seem a great deal closer to solution.
Man’s achievements rest upon the use of symbols…those who rule the symbols, rule us.
We read unconsciously into the world the structure of the language we use.
Words don’t mean, people mean
(We) seem unaware…that by teaching and preaching “identity”, which is empirically non-existent in this actual world, they are neurogically training future generations in the pathological identifications found in the “mentally” ill or maladjusted.
We see what we see because we miss all the finer details.
As words are not the things we speak about, and structure is the only link between them, structure becomes the only content of knowledge.
He who learns and learns and yet does not know what he knows, is one who plows and plows yet never sows.
…the “so-called” normal person practically never abides by his beliefs as we then cannot adjust ourselves to so-called normal conditions.
If a psychiatric and scientific inquiry were to be made upon our rulers, mankind would be appalled at the disclosures.
I think therefore I seem to be.
It is a fallacy of old schools to divide man into parcels, elements, thoughts, emotions, intuitions etc. All human faculties consist of an interconnected whole.
Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895 - 1986)
If you are serious, really earnest, want to find the truth of it, you have to find out if you can live without a motive and be free to observe.
C S Lewis (1898 - 1963)
dedicated to Kelly – may she find the space within herself to be away from herself so she can find her true-self
God is not hurried along in the Time-stream of this universe any more than an author is hurried along in the imaginary time of his own novel…All the days are Now to him.
I believe Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.
…he (Aslan – the lion in Narnia) is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, “What might Christ become like, if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?”
human beings…have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it…they do not in fact behave in that way.
They (human beings) know the Law of Nature; they break it.
It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them them when you do not think they are there.
You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.
Friendship…is born at the moment when one man says to another “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself…
If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.
If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.
Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ, and you will find Him, and with him everything else thrown in.
Thomas Mann (1875 - 1955)
(of Nietzsche) His personal feelings initiate him into those of a criminal…in general all creative originality, all artist nature in the broadest sense of the word, does the same.
(on illness) In their (a Nietzsche or Dostoyevsky) something comes out in illness that is more important and conducive to life and growth than any medically guaranteed health or sanity…in other words: certain conquests made by the soul and the mind are impossible without disease, madness, crime of the spirit.
(on respect) Whose best and most fruitful gift was the power of admiration, which made it possible for me to learn. Now, as in my youth, I am looking up to the truly great creations of the past, which I see high above my own and which alone deserve the name of greatness.
(on war) War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.
(on truth) A harmful truth is better than a useful lie.
(on love) He who loves the more is the inferior and must suffer’
(on truth) A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.
(on ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’) Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of time.
(on democracy) It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory.
(on speech) What is uttered is finished and done with.
(on solitude) Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous – to poetry. But also it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.
(on fate) Human reason needs only to will more strongly than fate, and she is fate.
(on creation) One must die to life in order to be utterly a creator.
(on reason) I don’t think anyone is thinking long-term now.
Joseph Marechal (1878 – 1944)
The absolute has placed its mark on the fundamental tendency of our intelligence, such that this tendency constantly transcends particular intellections: the mind, through its internal dynamism, is driven from intellection to intellection, from object to object, but as long as it remains in the realm of the finite, it strives in vain to equal its own internal movement…And this unevenness…is the very conditioning of reasoning, the catalyst of that always dissatisfied curiosity in which the scholastics of old rightly discovered the principle of all speculation. Thus the human mind is a faculty in search of its intuition, that is, of assimilation of being, with pure and simple being, supremely one, without restriction, without distinction as to essence and existence or possibility or actuality.
Louise Michel (1830 – 1905)
You wanted me to live, For you it’s fate! You will see me, from life to life, sending the cry of freedom, I will go everywhere, crying for justice!
The keep talking to us about liberty…people are dying from hunger, and they do not even have the right to say that they are dying from hunger.
Good men in power are incompetent, just as bad men are evil, and therefore it is impossible for liberty to ever be associated with any form of power whatsoever.
Progress being infinite, transformations will be perceptual.
Piet Modrian (1872 - 1944)
Art is higher than reality and has no direct relation to reality. To approach the spiritual in art, one will make as little use as possible of reality, because reality is opposed to the spiritual. We find ourselves in the presence of an abstract art. Art should be above reality, otherwise it would have no value to man.
I construct lives and colour combinations on a flat surface, in order to express general beauty with the utmost awareness. Nature (or, that which I see) inspires me, puts me, as with any painter, in an emotional state so that an urge comes about to make something, but I want to come as close as possible to the truth and abstract everything from that, until I reach a foundation (still just an external foundation!) of things.
Erich Mühsam 1878 - 1934
From the poem ‘At the Beginning’:
Want freedom? Stop being a servant!
Want Happiness? Why not create it?
If your want fruits, the seeds will do the work!
If you want life, do it by living!
A net tightly wrapped around the forehead
constricts thought until it can’t breathe,
smothers flickering flames of the mind and shackles feelings –
and it is called law…
They sue each other before God,
then all are sentenced to a chain gang…
A free world? It can be won,
and the first step to happiness is to start!
Samuel Pepys (1633 – 1703)
Fight the good fight; and always call to mind that it is not you who are mortal, but this body of ours. For your true being is not discerned by perceiving your physical appearance. But “what a man’s mind is that he is ” not that individual human shape that we identify through your senses.
He that will not stoop for a pin will never be worth a pound.
…the artist does not start with nothing and make something of it. He starts with himself as nothing and makes something of the nothing with the things at hand.
Mr. Mills made an unnecessary sermon (at church) on Original Sin, neither understood by himself, or the people.
…the world does not grow old at all, but is in as good condition in all respects as ever it was.
But I do not see much thorough joy, but only an indifferent one, in the hearts of people, who are much discontented at the pride and luxury of the Court, and running in debt.
Frank Pick (1878 – 1941)
Beauty < Immortality
Utility < Perfection
Goodness < Righteousness
Truth < Wisdom
A thing may be right and beautiful and true without being lovable, though a thing cannot be loveable without being also in itself right and beautiful and true. Love is the harmony which such a thing awakens in the emotions; it is the harmony of what it feels to be. It adds the heart, as we call it, to the conscience, the sense, and the mind, to make the four great organs of being.
Gustav Radbruch 1878 - 1949
Originated what became known as the Radbruch formula in German law, specifically the notion that if statutory law is incompatible with the requirements of justice ‘to an intolerable degree’, or where statutory law was obviously designed in a way that deliberately negates ‘the equality that is the core of all justice’, statutory law must be disregarded by the judge in the favour of the justice principle.
Arthur Rimbaud (1854 – 1891)
I’m now making myself as scummy as I can…I’m working at turning myself into a seer…the idea is to reach the unknown by the development of all the senses…it involves enormous suffering, but one must be strong and be a born poet.
It’s really not my fault…a seer…consumes all the poisons in him (love, suffering, madness) and keeps only their quintessences. This is an unspeakable torture…during which he becomes the great patient, the great criminal, the great accused and the great learned one among men.
For he arrives at the unknown. Because he has cultivated his own soul – which was rich to begin with – more than any other man!…he ends up by losing the understanding of his visions, at least he has seen them!
Let him die charging through those unutterable, unnameable things: other horrible workers will come, they will begin from the horizons where he has succumbed.
Enough seen, enough had, enough known.
In truth, I have wept too much! Dawns are heart-breaking. Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter. Acrid love has swollen me with intoxicating torpor. O let my keel burst! O let me go into the sea!
Baruch Spinoza (1632 – 1677)
…that which is in itself and is conceived through itself…
(God is) a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence.
Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can exist or be conceived without God.
the infant believes that it is by free will that it seeks the breast; the angry boy believes that by free will he wishes vengeance; the timid man thinks that it is with free will he seeks flight; the drunkard believes that by a free command of his mind he speaks the things which when sober he wishes he had left unsaid…All believe that they speak by a free command of the mind, whilst, in truth, they have no power to restrain the impulse which they have to speak.
(Einstein on Spinoza) I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.
The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent as they have to speak.
The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to to be free.
In so far as we understand, we can desire nothing but that which must be, nor, in an absolute sense, can we find contentment in anything but truth.
If the body is inactive, the soul is not capable of thinking.
The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure…you are above everything distressing.
When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master.
What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter.
…a thing does not…cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.
In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.
The endeavour to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.
A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation, not on death, but on life.
because we delight (in our lusts)…we are able to restrain them.
Of all the things that are beyond my power, I value nothing more highly than to be allowed the honour of entering into bonds of friendship with people who sincerely love truth…I believe there is nothing in this world which we can love with tranquillity except such men.
as (rulers) plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.
In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth.
We feel and experience ourselves to be eternal.
Minds, however, are conquered not by arms, but by love and nobility.
Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions , and ignorance of the causes by they are determined.
The superstitious…strive not to guide men by reason, but to restrain them by fear, so that they flee the evil rather than love virtues.
He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.
…everyone endeavours…to make others lover what he loves, and to hate what he hates…(equals) in truth ambition.
Elizabeth of the Trinity (1880 - 1906)
O my God…help me to forget myself completely and to establish myself in you, as still and at peace as if my soul were already in eternity. Let nothing disturb my peace nor draw me away from you…Through all darkness, all emptiness, and all helplessness, I want to be catered on you always…May I be for him another humanity in whom he may renew his whole mystery.
My only devotional practice is to enter “within” and lose myself to Those Who are there.
(dying) I am going to Light, to Love, to Life!
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_of_the_Trinity
L. L. Zamenhof (1859 - 1917)
dedicated to Ula – May she find the courage to stand on her own before she can join holy communion with others
Actions speak louder than words
…nationalism offers humanity only the greatest unhappiness…if the nationalism of the strong is ignoble, the nationalism of the weak is imprudent; both give birth to and support each other…’
Diversity of languages is the first, or at least the most influential, basis for the separation of the human family into groups of companies.
