The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), as quoted in Milan Kundera (2003) by Harold Bloom, [//books.google.it/books?id=SXDojRJFMPIC&pg=PA91 p. 91]
Context: True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude toward those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.
“Perhaps the greatest of the many fundamental changes which are inevitable for the man who studies the facts of life is that which is produced in his attitude towards death. This matter has been fully treated elsewhere; here I need state only that the knowledge of the truth about death robs it of all its terror and much of its sorrow, and enables us to see it in its true proportion and to understand its place in the scheme of our evolution. It is perfectly possible to learn to know about all these things instead of accepting beliefs blindly at second-hand, as most people do; and knowledge means power, security and happiness.”
Source: The Hidden Side of things (1913), Chapter II
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Charles Webster Leadbeater 37
English theosophist 1854–1934Related quotes
Source: Oak Openings or The bee-hunter (1848), Ch. XXI
Grassé, Pierre Paul (1977); Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation. Academic Press, p. 3
Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation (1977)
Source: (1845), p. 112
Sono quattr' anni che parlo di nazismo islamico, di guerra all' Occidente, di culto della morte, di suicidio dell' Europa. Un' Europa che non è più Europa ma Eurabia e che con la sua mollezza, la sua inerzia, la sua cecità, il suo asservimento al nemico si sta scavando la propria tomba.
"Il nemico che trattiamo da amico", in Corriere della Sera (15 September 2006)
The Paris Review interview (1982)