Meditation 5 - Die Before Dying
Books, The Beggar, Volume IV: Die Before Dying (Hari-Nama Press, 2005)
“The past is always beautiful. So, for that matter, is the future. Only the present hurts, and we carry it around like an abscess of suffering, our compassion between two infinities of happiness and peace.”
Source: Soumission
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Michel Houellebecq 24
writer 1956Related quotes
Variant: People see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is and the future less resolved than it’ll be.
The Golden Man (1954)
Context: "He can look ahead. See what's coming. He can — prethink. Let's call it that. He can see into the future. Probably he doesn't perceive it as the future."
"No," Anita said thoughtfully. "It would seem like the present. He has a broader present. But his present lies ahead, not back. Our present is related to the past. Only the past is certain, to us. To him, the future is certain. And he probably doesn't remember the past, any more than any animal remembers what happened."
"As he develops," Baines said, "as his race evolves, it'll probably expand its ability to prethink. Instead of ten minutes, thirty minutes. Then an hour. A day. A year. Eventually they'll be able to keep ahead a whole lifetime. Each one of them will live in a solid, unchanging world. There'll be no variables, no uncertainty. No motion! They won't have anything to fear. Their world will be perfectly static, a solid block of matter."
"And when death comes," Anita said, "they'll accept it. There won't be any struggle; to them, it'll already have happened."
Source: "Some Perplexities about time: with an attempted solution" (1925), p. 149. as cited in: Jonathan Gorman, "The transmission of our understanding of historical time." Historia Social y de la Educación 1.2 (2012): 129-152.
Source: Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991), Chapter 1: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
Words of Wisdom from Buddhist Master Jun Hong Lu, Volume 1 (2016) ISBN 978-0-6482300-1-4
“We are proud of our past and our present and we face the future with unflagging determination.”
Quotes on Life and its challenges, http://www.sheikhmohammed.co.ae/vgn-ext-templating/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=ab878960a5a11310VgnVCM1000004d64a8c0RCRD&appInstanceName=default, sheikhmohammed.ae.
Source: The Mind and the Brain, 1907, p. 60; Definition of sensation
Source: Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister