“A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.”
193
Stray Birds (1916)
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Rabindranath Tagore178
Bengali polymath 1861–1941Related quotes
Lin Carter (1930–1988) American fantasy writer, editor, critic
Source: Tower at the Edge of Time (1968), Chapter 9, “Slaves of Chan” (p. 86)
“It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife.”
Alanis Morissette (1974) Canadian-American singer-songwriter
"Ironic"
Jagged Little Pill (1995)
Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature
The Clerk's Vision (1949)
Context: No use going out or staying at home. No use erecting walls against the impalpable. A mouth will extinguish all the fires, a doubt will root up all the decisions. It will be everywhere without being anywhere. It will blur all the. mirrors. Penetrating walls and convictions, vestments and well-tempered souls, it will install itself in the marrow of everyone. Whistling between body and body, crouching between soul and soul. And all the wounds will open because, with expert and delicate, although somewhat cold, hands, it will irritate sores and pimples, will burst pustules and swellings and dig into the old, badly healed wounds. Oh fountain of blood, forever inexhaustible! Life will be a knife, a gray and agile and cutting and exact and arbitrary blade that falls and slashes and divides. To crack, to claw, to quarter, the verbs that move with giant steps against us!
It is not the sword that shines in the confusion of what will be. It is not the saber, but fear and the whip. I speak of what is already among us. Everywhere there are trembling and whispers, insinuations and murmurs. Everywhere the light wind blows, the breeze that provokes the immense Whiplash each time it unwinds in the air. Already many carry the purple insignia in their flesh. The light wind rises from the meadows of the past, and hurries closer to our time.
“Music trains the mind, like mathematics, or logic, to precision of mind.”
Guy Gavriel Kay book Tigana
Source: Tigana (1990), Chapter 4 (p. 77)