“It is useless to seek the soul of things beneath their surface, for their surface is their soul.”
Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist
“The problem inherent in the surface of things, and only in the surface of things, is the heart of things.”
— Leo Strauss, book Thoughts on Machiavelli
Source: Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958), p. 13
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Do you have more details about the quote "The problem inherent in the surface of things, and only in the surface of things, is the heart of things." by Leo Strauss?
Leo Strauss78
Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservati… 1899–1973Related quotes
“Do not allow yourself to be misled by the surfaces of things.”
Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet
Source: Letters to a Young Poet
“The world is content with setting right the surface of things.”
John Henry Newman (1801–1890) English cleric and cardinal
Discourse VIII, pt. 8.
The Idea of a University (1873)
“The surface of things gives enjoyment, their interiority gives life.”
Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais
Written note in Mondrian's sketchbook around 1911; quoted in Abstract Painting, Michel Seuphor, Dell Publishing Co.,1964, p. 11
1910's
Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist
1973
1968 - 1974, Electric chair quote
Source: Warhol in his own words – Untitled Statements ( 1963 – 1987), selected by Neil Printz; as quoted in Andy Warhol, retrospective, Art and Bullfinch Press / Little Brown, 1989, pp. 457 – 467
“Go where we will on the surface of things, men have been there before us.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Thursday
“Look beneath the surface; let not the several quality of a thing nor its worth escape thee.”
Marcus Aurelius book Meditations
VI, 3
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VI
Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic
The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World (1994)
Context: Classical modern science described only the surface of things, a single dimension of reality. And the more dogmatically science treated it as the only dimension, as the very essence of reality, the more misleading it became. Today, for instance, we may know immeasurably more about the universe than our ancestors did, and yet, it increasingly seems they knew something more essential about it than we do, something that escapes us.
