"The Desert. Sinai.", Ch. 21, p. 276
Report to Greco (1965)
Context: Inhuman solitude made of sand and God. Surely only two kinds of people can bear to live in such desert: lunatics and prophets. The mind topples here not from fright but from sacred awe; sometimes it collapses downward, losing human stability, sometimes it springs upward, enters heaven, sees God face to face, touches the hem of His blazing garment without being burned, hears what He says, and taking this, slings it into men's consciousness. Only in the desert do we see the birth of these fierce, indomitable souls who rise up in rebellion even against God himself and stand before Him fearlessly, their minds in resplendent consubstantiality with the skirts of the Lord. God sees them and is proud, because in them his breath has not vented its force; in them, God has not stooped to becoming a man.
“Nothing can be accomplished without solitude; I have made a kind of solitude for myself.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer
Quote in "Picasso", Hans L. C. Jaffe, Thames and Hudson Ltd
Attributed from posthumous publications
“God's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Mark Twain's Notebook (1935)
“Castles made of sand, fall in the sea, eventually”
Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) American musician, singer and songwriter
Castles Made Of Sand
Song lyrics, Axis: Bold as Love (1967)
“And so castles made of sand slips into the sea, eventually..”
Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) American musician, singer and songwriter
Castles Made Of Sand
Song lyrics, Axis: Bold as Love (1967)
Variant: Castles made of sand, fall in the sea, eventually
“Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.”
Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author
Variant: He who delights in solitude is either a wild beast or a God.
“Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.”
Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy
Mike Scott (1958) songwriter, musician
"Church Not Made With Hands"
A Pagan Place (1984)
Context: She is everywhere and noplace
Like a breath or like a wind
she moves among men
They would seek to hold her as a prize
But she is in the shadows,
the ocean and the sand
She is everywhere and noplace,
Her church not made with handsUncontained by man.
“The two conditions that lead others to languor – i. e. leisure and solitude – him made sharper.”
Ita duae res, quae languorem afferunt ceteris, illum acuebant; otium et solitudo.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman
Book III, section 1
De Officiis – On Duties (44 BC)
Robert Sarah (1945) Roman Catholic bishop
The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise (2017)
