José Saramago book The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis
Source: The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (1993), p. 108
Source: Report to Greco
José Saramago book The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis
Source: The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (1993), p. 108
“Hope of attaining true freedom by purely political means has become an insane delusion.”
Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author
from "The Pasternak Affair"
Disputed Questions (1960)
“Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached.”
Franz Kafka book The Trial
5; variant translations:
From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.
As quoted in The Unfinished Country: A Book of American Symbols (1959) by Max Lerner, p. 452; also in Wait Without Idols (1964) by Gabriel Vahanian, p, 216; in Joyce, Decadence, and Emancipation (1995) by Vivian Heller, 39; in "The Sheltering Sky" (1949) by Paul Bowles, p. 213; and in the poem "Father and Son" by Delmore Schwartz.
There is a point of no return. This point has to be reached.
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
Variant: From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.
Source: The Trial
E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist
"Notes on the Way", Time and Tide Magazine (10 June 1934); reprinted in The Prince's Tale and Other Uncollected Writings (1998)
Sherwood Smith book Crown Duel
Crown Duel (Crown & Court #1 - 2, 1997)
Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader
Undated
Source: Conversation with Prem Rawat The Prem Rawat Foundation
Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
As quoted in Soviet Strategy and the New Military Thinking (1992) by Derek Leebaert and Timothy Dickinson, p. 68
Georg Simmel (1858–1918) German sociologist, philosopher, and critic
Source: The View of Life (1918), p. 5-6 part of the first essay "Life as Transcendence"
Context: Man is something that is to be overcome.
Logically considered, this, too, presents a contradiction: he who overcomes himself is admittedly the victor, but he is also the defeated. The ego succumbs to itself, when it wins; it achieves victory, when it suffers defeat. Yet the contradiction only arises when the two aspects of this unity are hardened into opposed, mutually exclusive conceptions. It is precisely the fully unified process of the moral life which overcomes and surpasses every lower state by achieving a higher one, and again transcends this latter state through one still higher. That man overcomes himself means that he reaches out beyond the bounds that the moment sets for him. There must be something at hand to be overcome, but it is only there in order to be overcome. Thus even as an ethical agent, man is the limited being that has no limit.