“Sharp nostalgia, infinite
And terrible, for what I already possess!”
Nostalgia aguda, infinita,
terrible, de lo que tengo.
"South", in Poesía, en verso, 1917–1923 (1923), p. 97.
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Juan Ramón Jimenéz18
Spanish poet 1881–1958Related quotes
Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified
Yu Kwang-chung (1928–2017) Taiwanese poet
"Nostalgia" (《乡愁》, "Xiangchou"), in The Isle Full of Noises: Modern Chinese Poetry from Taiwan, ed. and trans. Dominic Cheung (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), p. 51
Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna
[Swami Nikhilananda, Holy Mother, 121]
“When the real is no longer what it was, nostalgia assumes its full meaning.”
Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher
The Precession of Simulcra, The Divine Irreference Of Images
1980s, Simulacra and Simulation (1981)
“To accept reason is impossible if you don’t already possess it.”
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer
Raison annehmen kann niemand, der nicht schon welche hat.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 23.
Colin Wilson book The Philosopher's Stone
Source: The Philosopher's Stone (1969), p. 317-318
Context: Man should possess an infinite appetite for life. It should be self-evident to him, all the time, that life is superb, glorious, endlessly rich, infinitely desirable. At present, because he is in a midway position between the brute and the truly human, he is always getting bored, depressed, weary of life. He has become so top-heavy with civilisation that he cannot contact the springs of pure vitality. Control of the prefrontal cortex will change all of this. He will cease to cast nostalgic glances towards the womb, for he will realise that death is no escape. Man is a creature of life and the daylight; his destiny lies in total objectivity.
William James book The Varieties of Religious Experience
Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Source: 1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Context: I am well aware of how anarchic much of what I say may sound. Expressing myself thus abstractly and briefly, I may seem to despair of the very notion of truth. But I beseech you to reserve your judgment until we see it applied to the details which lie before us. I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.