The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), X : Religion, the Mythology of the Beyond and the Apocatastasis
Quotes about fashion
page 10
" Andrea Dworkin Has Died http://susiebright.blogs.com/susie_brights_journal_/2005/04/andrea_dworkin_.html" by Susie Bright, Susie Bright's Journal (blog), April 11, 2005.
About
From the same game when Wade Dubielewicz, filling in for the injured Rick DiPietro, stopped Brylin to go to the playoffs.
2011, Undated
But I would rather go back to the old days when even the most modest attempt by Government to intervene in commerce and industry was rudely rebuffed.
March 27, 1968, page 213.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 388.
Description of the temple built by Shantidas Jhaveri. Indian Records Series Indian Travels Of Thevenot And Careri https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.210583/2015.210583.Indian-Records_djvu.txt Cited in Harsh Narain, The Ayodhya Temple Mosque Dispute: Focus on Muslim Sources, Appendix VI
Horvendille, in Book Six : In the Sylan's House, Ch. XXXIX : One Warden Left Uncircumvented
The Silver Stallion (1926)
Context: Is it not a pity, Guivric, that this Kalki will not come in our day, and that we shall never behold his complete glory? I cry a lament for that Kalki who will someday bring back to their appointed places high faith and very ardent loves and hatreds; and who will see to it that human passions are in never so poor a way to find expressions in adequate speech and action. Ohé, I cry a loud lament for Kalki! The little silver effigies which his postulants fashion and adore are well enough: but Kalki is a horse of another color.
The Australian Conservation Foundation, Canberra (April 1970)
The Environmental Revolution: Speeches on Conservation, 1962–77 (1978)
Context: A new criterion has been added, the conservation of the environment so that in the long run life, including human life, can continue. This new consideration must be taken into account at all levels and in all departments of government and in the boardrooms of every industrial enterprise. It is no longer sufficient simply to quantify the elements of existence as in old-fashioned material economics; conservation means taking notice of the quality of existence as well... The problem is of course to give some value to that quality and perhaps the only way to do this is to try and work out the cost in terms of loss of amenities, loss of holiday and recreation facilities, loss of property values, loss of contact with nature, loss of health standards and loss of food resources, if proper conservation methods are not used. Looked at in that light it may well turn out that money spent on proper pollution control, urban and rural planning and the control of exploitation of wild stocks of plants or animals on land and in the sea, is the less expensive alternative in the long run... The conservation of nature, the proper care for the human environment and a general concern for the long-term future of the whole of our planet are absolutely vital if future generations are to have a chance to enjoy their existence on this earth.
“His fashion is passion, sincere and intense, —
His impulse is simple and true”
Nature's Nobleman (1844)
Context: His fashion is passion, sincere and intense, —
His impulse is simple and true;
Yet temper'd by judgment, and taught by good sense,
And cordial with me and with you.
Letter 56 (60), to Hugo Boxel (1674) http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1711&chapter=144218&layout=html&Itemid=27
Context: When you say that if I deny, that the operations of seeing, hearing, attending, wishing, &c., can be ascribed to God, or that they exist in him in any eminent fashion, you do not know what sort of God mine is; I suspect that you believe there is no greater perfection than such as can be explained by the aforesaid attributes. I am not astonished; for I believe that, if a triangle could speak, it would say, in like manner, that God is eminently triangular, while a circle would say that the divine nature is eminently circular. Thus each would ascribe to God its own attributes, would assume itself to be like God, and look on everything else as ill-shaped.
The briefness of a letter and want of time do not allow me to enter into my opinion on the divine nature, or the questions you have propounded. Besides, suggesting difficulties is not the same as producing reasons. That we do many things in the world from conjecture is true, but that our redactions are based on conjecture is false. In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth. A man would perish of hunger and thirst, if he refused to eat or drink, till he had obtained positive proof that food and drink would be good for him. But in philosophic reflection this is not so. On the contrary, we must take care not to admit as true anything, which is only probable. For when one falsity has been let in, infinite others follow.
Again, we cannot infer that because sciences of things divine and human are full of controversies and quarrels, therefore their whole subject-matter is uncertain; for there have been many persons so enamoured of contradiction, as to turn into ridicule geometrical axioms.
Source: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 104-105
" The Presence of Love http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Presence_Love.html" (1807), lines 1-4.
On the issue of nuclear weapons, in England Their England : Monsters, Maniacs and Moore (1987) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv44V4d_fDQ
Context: It doesn’t even matter if we ever fire these missiles or not. They are having their effect upon us because there is a generation growing up now who cannot see past the final exclamation mark of a mushroom cloud. They are a generation who can see no moral values that do not end in a crackling crater somewhere. I’m not saying that nuclear bombs are at the root of all of it, but I think it is very, very naïve to assume that you can expose the entire population of the world to the threat of being turned to cinders without them starting to act, perhaps, a little oddly.
I believe in some sort of strange fashion that the presence of the atom bomb might almost be forcing a level of human development that wouldn’t have occurred without the presence of the atom bomb. Maybe this degree of terror will force changes in human attitudes that could not have occurred without the presence of these awful, destructive things. Perhaps we are faced with a race between the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse in one line and the 7th Cavalry in the other. We have not got an awful lot of mid ground between Utopia and Apocalypse, and if somehow our children ever see the day in which it is announced that we do not have these weapons any more, and that we can no longer destroy ourselves and that we’ve got to do something else to do with our time than they will have the right to throw up their arms, let down their streamers and let forth a resounding cheer.
“The pure modernist is merely a snob; he cannot bear to be a month behind the fashion.”
"The Case for the Ephemeral"
All Things Considered (1908)
Context: It is incomprehensible to me that any thinker can calmly call himself a modernist; he might as well call himself a Thursdayite. … The real objection to modernism is simply that it is a form of snobbishness. It is an attempt to crush a rational opponent not by reason, but by some mystery of superiority, by hinting that one is specially up to date or particularly "in the know." To flaunt the fact that we have had all the last books from Germany is simply vulgar; like flaunting the fact that we have had all the last bonnets from Paris. To introduce into philosophical discussions a sneer at a creed’s antiquity is like introducing a sneer at a lady’s age. It is caddish because it is irrelevant. The pure modernist is merely a snob; he cannot bear to be a month behind the fashion.
Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1898)
Context: It has been said that "Nothing worth the proving can be proved, nor yet disproved." True though this may have been in the past, it is true no longer. The science of our century has forged weapons of observation and analysis by which the veriest tyro may profit. Science has trained and fashioned the average mind into habits of exactitude and disciplined perception, and in so doing has fortified itself for tasks higher, wider, and incomparably more wonderful than even the wisest among our ancestors imagined. Like the souls in Plato's myth that follow the chariot of Zeus, it has ascended to a point of vision far above the earth. It is henceforth open to science to transcend all we now think we know of matter and to gain new glimpses of a profounder scheme of Cosmic law.
Source: The Revolt of the Angels (1914), Ch. XXXV
Context: The following day, on the ethereal plain, Satan commanded the black standards to be distributed to the troops, and the winged soldiers covered them with kisses and bedewed them with tears.
And Satan had himself crowned God. Thronging round the glittering walls of Heavenly Jerusalem, apostles, pontiffs, virgins, martyrs, confessors, the whole company of the elect, who during the fierce battle had enjoyed delightful tranquillity, tasted infinite joy in the spectacle of the coronation.
The elect saw with ravishment the Most High precipitated into Hell, and Satan seated on the throne of the Lord. In conformity with the will of God which had cut them off from sorrow they sang in the ancient fashion the praises of their new Master.
Of Negotiating
Essays (1625)
Context: If you would work any man, you must either know his nature and fashions, and so lead him; or his ends, and so persuade him or his weakness and disadvantages, and so awe him or those that have interest in him, and so govern him. In dealing with cunning persons, we must ever consider their ends, to interpret their speeches; and it is good to say little to them, and that which they least look for. In all negotiations of difficulty, a man may not look to sow and reap at once; but must prepare business, and so ripen it by degrees.
But trying to have Christian love, without its source in the revelation of a God of love in Christ, is trying to create something out of nothing.
Marching Off the Map : And Other Sermons (1952), p. 83; in his autobiography Russell has emphasized that in such expressions he was using the term "Christian love" in a very broad sense, in contrast to sexual love, and was not actually endorsing Christian creeds.
“Dear, I took these trackless masses
Fresh from Him who fashioned them”
"Juanita".
In Classic Shades, and Other Poems (1890)
Context: p>Dear, I took these trackless masses
Fresh from Him who fashioned them;
Wrought in rock, and hewed fair passes,
Flower set, as sets a gem.Aye, I built in woe. God willed it;
Woe that passeth ghosts of guilt.
Yet I built as His birds builded —
Builded singing as I built.All is finished! Roads of flowers
Wait your loyal little feet.
All completed? Nay, the hours
Till you come are incomplete.</p
"Zion's Vital Signs" in The Atlantic (November 2001) http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2001/11/o_rourke.htm
Source: A Brief History of Everything (1996), p. 42
Context: Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity — a total embrace of the entire Kosmos — a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?
Variant translation: One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought. With this negative motive goes a positive one. Man seeks to form for himself, in whatever manner is suitable for him, a simplified and lucid image of the world, and so to overcome the world of experience by striving to replace it to some extent by this image. This is what the painter does, and the poet, the speculative philosopher, the natural scientist, each in his own way. Into this image and its formation, he places the center of gravity of his emotional life, in order to attain the peace and serenity that he cannot find within the narrow confines of swirling personal experience.
As quoted in The Professor, the Institute, and DNA (1976) by Rene Dubos; also in The Great Influenza (2004) by John M. Barry
1910s, Principles of Research (1918)
Context: Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it. This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientist do, each in his own fashion. Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way the peace and security which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.
“They have amused themselves after their fashion, and I have no quarrel with them.”
Three Worlds, Three Summers — But Not the Summer Just Past (1949).
Context: One might think, to hear some people talk, that this had been a particularly fine summer. From their point of view, I suppose, it has. They have rushed about the lakes in noisy little boats; they have permitted themselves to be dragged behind other little boats, standing more or less upright on ironing boards; they have immersed themselves in lakes into which countless summer cottage privies drain; they have laboriously pursued summer flirtations, and some of them have achieved gritty conquests on the sands; they have sat in hot little boats waiting to catch fish which they have then had to eat; they have passed many hours changing their skins from pinkish-drab to brown, erroneously believing that they are "storing up sunshine" against the winter months; they have motored penitential distances; they have taken thousands of feet of film of people whose names they will not be able to remember in November. They have amused themselves after their fashion, and I have no quarrel with them.
GQ Interview (2005)
Context: I get a very deep sense that the generation after Generation X is a very conservative generation, and I'm not sure they understand the commitment part of what I do. I'm not sure if we'll ever be able to regain that ground.... I quite often feel like I'm the youngest of the old guys, where I've got some really old-fashioned philosophies about what's credible and what's not.... Suddenly, someone like me seems like a dinosaur from a different age, but I hope it's the opposite of that. I hope I'm at the forefront of thinking and it'll all come back to that at some point.
"An International Administrative Service", From an Address to the International Law Association at McGill University, Montreal, 30 May, 1956. Wilder Foote (Ed.), The Servant of Peace, A Selection of the Speeches and Statements of Dag Hammarskjöld, The Bodley Head, London 1962, p. 116.
Context: Do we refer to the purposes of the Charter? They are expressions of universally shared ideals which cannot fail us, though we, alas, often fail them. Or do we think of the institutions of the United Nations? They are our tools. We fashioned them. We use them. It is our responsibility to remedy any flaws there may be in them.... This is a difficult lesson for both idealists and realists, though for different reasons. I suppose that, just as the first temptation of the realist is the illusion of cynicism, so the first temptation of the idealist is the illusion of Utopia.
Heaven and Hell #528
Context: Some people believe it is hard to lead the heaven-bound life that is called "spiritual" because they have heard that we need to renounce the world and give up the desires attributed to the body and the flesh and "live spiritually." All they understand by this is spurning worldly interests, especially concerns for money and prestige, going around in constant devout meditation about God, salvation, and eternal life, devoting their lives to prayer, and reading the Word and religious literature. They think this is renouncing the world and living for the spirit and not for the flesh. However, the actual case is quite different, as I have learned from an abundance of experience and conversation with angels. In fact, people who renounce the world and live for the spirit in this fashion take on a mournful life for themselves, a life that is not open to heavenly joy, since our life does remain with us [after death]. No, if we would accept heaven's life, we need by all means to live in the world and to participate in its duties and affairs. In this way, we accept a spiritual life by means of our moral and civic life; and there is no other way a spiritual life can be formed within us, no other way our spirits can be prepared for heaven. This is because living an inner life and not an outer life at the same time is like living in a house that has no foundation, that gradually either settles or develops gaping cracks or totters until it collapses.
“The fashions of human affairs are brief and changeable, and fortune never remains long indulgent.”
Breves et mutabiles vices rerum sunt, et fortuna nunquam simpliciter indulget.
IV, 14, 20.
Historiarum Alexandri Magni Macedonis Libri Qui Supersunt, Book IV
Section 5 : Love and Marriage
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
Context: Love is the expansion of two natures in such fashion that each include the other, each is enriched by the other.
Love is an echo in the feelings of a unity subsisting between two persons which is founded both on likeness and on complementary differences. Without the likeness there would be no attraction; without the challenge of the complementary differences there could not be the closer interweaving and the inextinguishable mutual interest which is the characteristic of all deeper relationships.
Myth of Megalopolis <!-- p. 545 -->
The City in History (1961)
Context: Unfortunately, once an economy is geared to expansion, the means rapidly turn into an end and "the going becomes the goal." Even more unfortunately, the industries that are favored by such expansion must, to maintain their output, be devoted to goods that are readily consumable either by their nature, or because they are so shoddily fabricated that they must soon be replaced. By fashion and built-in obsolescence the economies of machine production, instead of producing leisure and durable wealth, are duly cancelled out by the mandatory consumption on an even larger scale.
“I have been studying it [sexuality] since before it became fashionable.”
When asked "why you write about sex?" Paglia on AOL (11 September 1996) http://privat.ub.uib.no/BUBSY/aolpag.htm
Context: I have been studying it [sexuality] since before it became fashionable. At the Yale Grad School, for example, where I was from 1968 to 1972, I was literally the only person in the humanities departments doing a dissertation on sex — hard to believe now, but I was a real pioneer and I took the career hit for it. It was considered tacky, low, not serious — my dears, I was absolutely scouring the Yale archives for every bit of dirt on homosexuality, sadomasochism, transvestism — you name it. That is the basis of the research for my first book, Sexual Personae, which was my dissertation.
Source: Kindergarten Chats (1918), Ch. 10 : A Roman Temple
Context: Taste is one of the weaker words in our language. It means a little less than something, a little more than nothing; certainly it conveys no suggestion of potency. It savors of accomplishment, in the fashionable sense, not of power to accomplish in the creative sense. It expresses a familiarity with what is au courant among persons of so-called culture, of so-called good form. It is essentially a second-hand word, and can have no place in the working vocabulary of those who demand thought and action at first hand. To say that a thing is tasty or tasteful is, practically, to say nothing at all.
“The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion.”
Referring to the term "cloud computing" in his Oracle OpenWorld 2008 speech, as quoted in "Oracle's Ellison nails cloud computing" at cnet (26 September 2008) http://news.cnet.com/8301-13953_3-10052188-80.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5.
Context: The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?
The Key to the Universe (1977)
Context: In a sense, human flesh is made of stardust.
Every atom in the human body, excluding only the primordial hydrogen atoms, was fashioned in stars that formed, grew old and exploded most violently before the Sun and the Earth came into being. The explosions scattered the heavy elements as a fine dust through space. By the time it made the Sun, the primordial gas of the Milky Way was sufficiently enriched with heavier elements for rocky planets like the Earth to form. And from the rocks atoms escaped for eventual incorporation in living things: carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulphur for all living tissue; calcium for bones and teeth; sodium and potassium for the workings of nerves and brains; the iron colouring blood red… and so on.
No other conclusion of modern research testifies more clearly to mankind’s intimate connections with the universe at large and with the cosmic forces at work among the stars.
Source: Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922), Ch. 20
Context: Feisal asked me if I would wear Arab clothes like his own while in the camp. I should find it better for my own part, since it was a comfortable dress in which to live Arab-fashion as we must do. Besides, the tribesmen would then understand how to take me. The only wearers of khaki in their experience had been Turkish officers, before whom they took up an instinctive defence. If I wore Meccan clothes, they would behave to me as though I were really one of the leaders; and I might slip in and out of Feisal's tent without making a sensation which he had to explain away each time to strangers. I agreed at once, very gladly; for army uniform was abominable when camel-riding or when sitting about on the ground; and the Arab things, which I had learned to manage before the war, were cleaner and more decent in the desert.
“Cease from sonneting, my brothers; let us fashion songs from life.”
"Auctorial Induction"
The Certain Hour (1916)
Context: We are talking over telephones, as Shakespeare could not talk;
We are riding out in motor-cars where Homer had to walk;
And pictures Dante labored on of mediaeval Hell
The nearest cinematograph paints quicker, and as well. But ye copy, copy always; — and ye marvel when ye find
This new beauty, that new meaning, — while a model stands behind,
Waiting, young and fair as ever, till some singer turn and trace
Something of the deathless wonder of life lived in any place.
Hey, my masters, turn from piddling to the turmoil and the strife!
Cease from sonneting, my brothers; let us fashion songs from life.
Source: Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche (1994), The Self, p. 324 - 325
Section 14 : "Three-Cornered Play : Caroll to Alice to Computer"
The Riverworld series, The Magic Labyrinth (1980)
Context: How strange and unforeseeable! The world had been saved, not by great rulers and statesmen, not by mystics and saints and prophets and messiahs, not by any of the holy scriptures, but by an introverted eccentric writer of mathematical texts and children's books and by the child who'd inspired him.
The little girl become a woman, dream-ridden Alice, had inspired the nonsense not really nonsense, and this in circuitous and spiralling fashion had inspired her to do what all others had failed to do, to save eighteen billion souls and the world.
Fragment 63 (trans. by E. H. Plumptre), reported in Theoi http://www.theoi.com/Text/AeschylusFragments2.html
“Jubal had a frame
Fashioned to finer senses, which became
A yearning for some hidden soul of things”
The Legend of Jubal (1869)
Context: Jubal had a frame
Fashioned to finer senses, which became
A yearning for some hidden soul of things,
Some outward touch complete on inner springs
That vaguely moving bred a lonely pain,
A want that did but stronger grow with gain
Of all good else, as spirits might be sad
For lack of speech to tell us they are glad.
"A Pledge of Allegiance" - speech for "I Am an Amercan Day" Central Park, New York, New York. (20 May 1945) Hand credited H. G. Wells with inspiring some of the ideas expressed in this speech.
Extra-judicial writings
Context: We may not stop until we have done our part to fashion a world in which there shall be some share of fellowship; which shall be better than a den of thieves. Let us not disguise the difficulties; and, above all, let us not content ourselves with nobel aspirations, counsels of perfection, and self-righteous advice to others. We shall need the wisdom of the serpent; we shall have to be content with short steps; we shall be obliged to give and take; we shall face the strongest passions of mankind — our own not the least; and in the end we shall have fabricated an imperfect instrument. But we shall not wholly have failed; we shall have gone forward, if we bring to our task a pure and chastened spirit, patience, understanding, sympathy, forbearance, generosity, fortitude, and, above all, an inflexible determination. The history of man has just begun; in the aeons which lie before him lie limitless hope or limitless despair. The choice is his; the present choice is ours. It is worth the trial.
Source: LSD : My Problem Child (1980), Ch. 11 : LSD Experience and Reality
Context: It could become of fundamental importance, and be not merely a transient fashion of the present, if more and more people today would make a daily habit of devoting an hour, or at least a few minutes, to meditation. As a result of the meditative penetration and broadening of the natural-scientific world view, a new, deepened reality consciousness would have to evolve, which would increasingly become the property of all humankind. This could become the basis of a new religiosity, which would not be based on belief in the dogmas of various religions, but rather on perception through the "spirit of truth." What is meant here is a perception, a reading and understanding of the text at first hand, "out of the book that God's finger has written" (Paracelsus), out of the creation.
The transformation of the objective world view into a deepened and thereby religious reality consciousness can be accomplished gradually, by continuing practice of meditation. It can also come about, however, as a sudden enlightenment; a visionary experience. It is then particularly profound, blessed, and meaningful. Such a mystical experience may nevertheless "not be induced even by decade-long meditation," as Balthasar Staehelin writes. Also, it does not happen to everyone, although the capacity for mystical experience belongs to the essence of human spirituality.
"Symphony", in Memoir of William Henry Channing (1886) by Octavius Brooks Frothingham, p. 166.
Context: To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion: to he worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to have an oratory in my own heart, and present spotless sacrifices of dignified kindness in the temple of humanity; to spread no opinions glaringly out like show-plants, and yet leave the garden gate ever open for the chosen friend and the chance acquaintance: to make no pretenses to greatness; to seek no notoriety; to attempt no wide influence; to have no ambitious projects; to let my writings be the daily bubbling spring flowing through constancy, swelled by experiences, into the full, deep river of wisdom; to listen to stars and buds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never; … in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.
The Progressive interview (2010)
Context: There were a lot of utopias in the nineteenth century, wonderful societies that we might possibly construct. Those went pretty much out of fashion after World War I. And almost immediately one of the utopias that people were trying to construct, namely the Soviet Union, threw out a writer called Zamyatin who wrote a seminal book called We, which contains the seeds of Orwell and Huxley. Writers started doing dystopias after we saw the effects of trying to build utopias that required, unfortunately, the elimination of a lot of people before you could get to the perfect point, which never arrived. … I don’t believe in a perfect world. I don’t believe it’s achievable, and I believe the people who try to achieve it usually end up turning it into something like Cambodia or something very similar because purity tests set in. Are you ideologically pure enough to be allowed to live? Well, it turns out that very few people are, so you end up with a big powerful struggle and a mass killing scene.
Source: Way Station (1963), Ch. 25
Context: That had not been the first time nor had it been the last, but all the years of killing boiled down in essence to that single moment — not the time that came after, but that long and terrible instant when he had watched the lines of men purposefully striding up the slope to kill him.
It had been in that moment that he had realized the insanity of war, the futile gesture that in time became all but meaningless, the unreasoning rage that must be nursed long beyond the memory of the incident that had caused the rage, the sheer illogic that one man, by death or misery, might prove a right or uphold a principle.
Somewhere, he thought, on the long backtrack of history, the human race had accepted an insanity for a principle and had persisted in it until today that insanity-turned-principle stood ready to wipe out, if not the race itself, at least all of those things, both material and immaterial, that had been fashioned as symbols of humanity through many hard-won centuries.
Bewilderness: New York (audio CD, 2002)
As quoted in Saul Leiter (2008) by Agnès Sire
Context: I must admit that I am not a member of the ugly school. I have a great regard for certain notions of beauty even though to some it is an old fashioned idea. Some photographers think that by taking pictures of human misery, they are addressing a serious problem. I do not think that misery is more profound than happiness.
Source: Fourth Mansions (1969), Ch. 4
Context: "There was a later time when sincere men tried to build an organization as wide as the world to secure the peace of the world. It had been tried before and it had failed before. Perhaps if it failed this time it would not be tried again for a very long while. The idea of the thing was attacked by good and bad men, in good faith and bad. The final realization of it was so close that it could be touched with the fingertips. A gambler wouldn't have given odds on it either way. It teetered, and it almost seemed as though it would succeed. Then members of that group interfered."
"And it failed, O'Claire?"
"No. It succeeded, Foley, as in the other case. It succeeded in so twisted a fashion that the Devil himself was puzzled as to whether he had gained or lost ground by it. And he isn't easily puzzled."
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29
Context: My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the world will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that's all. God, I don't want to have any more enthusiasm for big programs full of social planning for big masses of people that leave individual Quality out. These can be left alone for a while. There's a place for them but they've got to be built on a foundation of Quality within the individuals involved. We've had that individual Quality in the past, exploited it as a natural resource without knowing it, and now it's just about depleted. Everyone's just about out of gumption. And I think it's about time to return to the rebuilding of this American resource—individual worth. There are political reactionaries who've been saying something close to this for years. I'm not one of them, but to the extent they're talking about real individual worth and not just an excuse for giving more money to the rich, they're right. We do need a return to individual integrity, self-reliance and old-fashioned gumption. We really do.
Source: To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare (1618), Lines 55 - 70
Context: Yet must I not give nature all: thy art,
My gentle Shakspeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the poet's matter nature be,
His art doth give the fashion. And that he
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat,
(Such as thine arc) and strike the second heat
Upon the muses anvil; turn the fame,
And himself with it, that he thinks to frame;
Or for the laurel, he may gain a scorn,
For a good poet's made, as well as born.
And such wert thou. Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue, even so the race
Of Shakspeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well-turned, and true filed lines:
In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance.
“Away with false fashion, so calm and so chill,
Where pleasure itself cannot please”
Nature's Nobleman (1844)
Context: Away with false fashion, so calm and so chill,
Where pleasure itself cannot please;
Away with cold breeding, that faithlessly still
Affects to be quite at its ease;
For the deepest in feeling is highest in rank,
The freest is first of the band,
Nature's own Nobleman, friendly and frank,
Is a man with his heart in his hand!
Democracy Now! interview (2005)
Context: Between the years of 1988 to 1994, and it's a continuous — it's an incessant reality for me. My redemptive transition began in solitary confinement, and unlike other people who express their experiences of an epiphany or a satori, I never experienced anything of that ilk. Mine — that wouldn't have been enough. I often tell people that I didn't have a 360-degree turnaround; I had a 720-degree turnaround. It took me twice as much. Just one spin around wouldn't have done it. I was that messed up, that lost, that mentacided, brainwashed. So, I was able to gradually in a piecemeal fashion change my life slowly but surely through education, through edification, through spiritual cultivation, battling my demons. And eventually, that led to me embracing redemption.
Prelude
Middlemarch (1871)
Context: Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favorite love-stories in prose and verse. Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centring in some long-recognizable deed.
No. 13
1790s, Discourses on Davila (1790)
Context: Are riches, honors, and beauty going out of fashion? Is not the rage for them, on the contrary, increased faster than improvement in knowledge? As long as either of these are in vogue, will there not be emulations and rivalries? Does not the increase of knowledge in any man increase his emulation; and the diffusion of knowledge among men multiply rivalries? Has the progress of science, arts, and letters yet discovered that there are no passions in human nature? no ambition, avarice, or desire of fame? Are these passions cooled, diminished, or extinguished? Is the rage for admiration less ardent in men or women? Have these propensities less a tendency to divisions, controversies, seditions, mutinies, and civil wars than formerly? On the contrary, the more knowledge is diffused, the more the passions are extended, and the more furious they grow.
1961, Address to ANPA
Context: Today no war has been declared — and however fierce the struggle may be, it may never be declared in the traditional fashion. Our way of life is under attack. Those who make themselves our enemy are advancing around the globe. The survival of our friends is in danger. And yet no war has been declared, no borders have been crossed by marching troops, no missiles have been fired.
If the press is awaiting a declaration of war before it imposes the self-discipline of combat conditions, then I can only say that no war ever posed a greater threat to our security. If you are awaiting a finding of "clear and present danger," then I can only say that the danger has never been more clear and its presence has never been more imminent.
It requires a change in outlook, a change in tactics, a change in missions — by the government, by the people, by every businessman or labor leader, and by every newspaper. For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence — on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match.
Nevertheless, every democracy recognizes the necessary restraints of national security — and the question remains whether those restraints need to be more strictly observed if we are to oppose this kind of attack as well as outright invasion.
As quoted in Conversations with Edward Albee (1988) by Philip C. Kolin, p. 176
Context: I have been both overpraised and underpraised. I assume by the time I finish writing — and I plan to go on writing until I'm 90 or gaga — it will all equal itself out... You can't involve yourself with the vicissitudes of fashion or critical response. I'm fairly confident that my work is going to be around for a while. I am pleased and reassured by the fact that a lot of younger playwrights seem to pay me some attention and gain some nourishment from what I do.
A response to the Nazi book burnings, in "To Posterity" (1939) as translated by H. R. Hays (1947)
Context: Do not treat me in this fashion. Don't leave me out. Have I not
Always spoken the truth in my books? And now
You treat me like a liar! I order you:
Burn me!
Those who lead the country into the abyss
Call ruling too difficult
For ordinary men.
Ah, what an age it is
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!
A Voice from the Attic (1960)
Context: Prayer is petition, intercession, adoration, and contemplation; great saints and mystics have agreed on this definition. To stop short at petition is to pray only in a crippled fashion. Further, such prayer encourages one of the faults which is most reprehended by spiritual instructors — turning to God without turning from Self.
“Fashion as king is sometimes a very stupid ruler.”
Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (1938), p. 146
Context: Fashion as king is sometimes a very stupid ruler. As was observed a little way back, the kernel of Plücker's theory of geometric dimensionality is that the dimensionality of a given space is not an absolute constant, but depends upon the elements, accepted as irreducible, in terms of which the space is described.
Paths of the Dead (2002)
Context: To seek understanding before taking action, yet to trust my instincts when action is called for. Never to avoid danger from fear, never to seek out danger for its own sake. Never to conform to fashion from fear of eccentricity, never to be eccentric from fear of conformity.
“They are learned by the constant use of the language and cannot be taught in any other fashion.”
Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985)
Context: Mathematics, being very different from the natural languages, has its corresponding patterns of thought. Learning these patterns is much more important than any particular result... They are learned by the constant use of the language and cannot be taught in any other fashion.
“The typical old-fashioned diet was so bad it almost resembled modern dieting.”
All the Trouble in the World (1994)
Source:"Defence and Illustration of Classical Construction," Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris, Sept. 15, 1952).
Cited in: Fayek S. Hourani, Daily Bread for Your Mind and Soul: A Handbook of Transcultural Proverb and Sayings https://books.google.nl/books?id=ASN8DVH2AgYC&pg=PA169&lpg=PA169&dq=%22Beauty+is+composed+of+an+eternal,+invariable+element+whose+quantity+is+extremely+difficult+to+determine%22&source=bl&ots=JwrnY2eVbL&sig=1XbUReB25BMZsF5sXNTPqHqhwJU&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiMjZS2rJ_LAhUqGZoKHfIWBvMQ6AEIOzAE#v=onepage&q=%22Beauty%20is%20composed%20of%20an%20eternal%2C%20invariable%20element%20whose%20quantity%20is%20extremely%20difficult%20to%20determine%22&f=false, 2012, p. 169
Section 2.6
Workers Councils (1947)
" "Preface" http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Hazlitt/Political/Preface.htm
Political Essays (1819)
"Homo Sum." Being a Letter to an Anti-Suffragist from an Anthropologist, 1900, p. 30 https://archive.org/details/homosumbeinglett00harruoft/page/30
Letter to Lord Newton (25 July 1911), quoted in The Times (26 July 1911), p. 8
Leader of the Opposition
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilights of Idols (1888), "Skirmishes of an Untimely Man", 23.
M - R
On keeping poetry apolitical in “INTERVIEW WITH ARIANA REINES” http://www.thewhitereview.org/feature/interview-ariana-reines/ in The White Review (July 2019)
"The Intellectuals We Abandon", TruthDig https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-intellectuals-we-abandon/page/2/ (3 September 2016)
Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1972/feb/17/european-communities-bill#column_741 in the House of Commons (17 February 1972)
1970s
A dry chuckle: “I used to try to believe a different one before breakfast every day, you know, just in case Pascal’s wager was right—exploring the phase-space of all possible resurrections, you know? But I think at this point we can agree that Dawkins was right. Human consciousness is vulnerable to certain types of transmissible memetic virus, and religions that promise life beyond death are a particularly pernicious example because they exploit our natural aversion to halting states.”
Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 9 (“Survivor”), pp. 396-397
1940s, Why Socialism? (1949)
The Intellectuals We Abandon, TruthDig, https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-intellectuals-we-abandon/page/2/ (3 September 2016)
Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1975/feb/17/industry-bill#column_942 in the House of Commons (17 February 1975) on the Second Reading of the Industry Bill
1970s
“Stalin-Wells Talk: The Verbatim Report and A Discussion”, G.B. Shaw, J.M. Keynes et al., London, The New Statesman and Nation, (1934) p. 15
On her novel Barkskin in “Annie Proulx: ‘I’ve had a life. I see how slippery things can be’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/05/annie-proulx-ive-had-a-life-i-see-how-slippery-things-can-be in The Guardian (2016 Jun 5)
Personal life and writing career
Letter to an unknown correspondent (26 January 1791), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. 215
1790s
Source: Rogue in Space (1957), Chapter 3 (p. 364)
Tibawi, A.L. (ed. and tr.). (1965) Al-Risala al-Qudsiyya (The Jerusalem Epistle) “Al-Ghazali's Tract on Dogmatic Theology”. In: The Islamic Quarterly, 9:3–4 (1965), 3-4.