“A man is whole only when he takes into account his shadow as well as himself — and what is a man's shadow but his upright astonishment?”
Source: Nightwood (1936), Ch. 6 : Where the Tree Falls
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Djuna Barnes39
American Modernist writer, poet and artist 1892–1982Related quotes
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
As quoted in "Lincoln's Imagination" by Noah Brooks, in Scribner's Monthly (August 1879), p. 586 http://books.google.com/books?id=jOoGAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA586 <br class="br">Posthumous attributions <br class="br">Variant: Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (1838–1894) Bengali writer
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay: From Bankim's novel Krishnakanta's Will. Quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2001). Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism. New Delhi: Rupa. p. 114-115
“Man is a torch borne in the wind; a dream
But of a shadow, summ'd with all his substance.”
Act I, scene i.
Bussy D'Ambois (1607)
“But only he who, himself enlightened, is not afraid of shadows.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher
Source: An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?
“What is it that distinguishes man from animals? It is not his upright posture.”
Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst
"Affluence and Ennui in Our Society" in For the Love of Life (1986) translated by Robert and Rita Kimber
Context: What is it that distinguishes man from animals? It is not his upright posture. That was present in the apes long before the brain began to develop. Nor is it the use of tools. It is something altogether new, a previously unknown quality: self-awareness. Animals, too, have awareness. They are aware of objects; they know this is one thing and that another. But when the human being as such was born he had a new and different consciousness, a consciousness of himself; he knew that he existed and that he was something different, something apart from nature, apart from other people, too. He experienced himself. He was aware that he thought and felt. As far as we know, there is nothing analogous to this anywhere in the animal kingdom. That is the specific quality that makes human beings human.
“Creatures of a day! What is a man?
What is he not? A dream of a shadow
Is our mortal being.”
Pindar (-517–-437 BC) Ancient Greek poet
Pythian 8, line 95-8; pages 162-3. (446 BC)
Context: Creatures of a day! What is a man?
What is he not? A dream of a shadow
Is our mortal being. But when there comes to men
A gleam of splendour given of Heaven,
Then rests on them a light of glory
And blesséd are their days.
Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VI : In the Depths of the Abyss
Context: In the most secret chamber of the spirit of him who believes himself convinced that death puts an end to his personal consciousness, his memory, for ever, and all unknown to him perhaps, there lurks a shadow, a vague shadow, a shadow of uncertainty, and while he says within himself, "Well, let us live this life that passes away, for there is no other!" the silence of this secret chamber speaks to him and murmurs, "Who knows!... " These voices are like the humming of a mosquito when the south-west wind roars through the trees in the wood; we cannot distinguish this faint humming, yet nevertheless, merged in the clamor of the storm, it reaches the ear.
Joseph H. Hertz (1872–1946) British rabbi
Genesis II, 18 (p. 9)
The Pentateuch and Haftorahs (one-volume edition, 1937, ISBN 0-900689-21-8