Song lyrics, The Dreaming (1982)
“The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.”
31
Sovereign Maxims
Variant: Natural justice is a pledge of reciprocal benefit, to prevent one man from harming or being harmed by another.
“In the spiritual realm nothing is indifferent: what is not useful is harmful.”
Source: A Letter to a Hindu (1908), VII
“Use harms and even destroys beauty. The noblest function of an object is to be contemplated.”
El use estropea y hasta destruye toda belleza. La función más noble de los objetos es la de ser contemplados.
Niebla [Mist] (1914)
“To me, a painter, if not the most useful, is the least harmful member of our society.”
In response to criticism of controversial paintings, in Self Portrait (1963), p. 342
Context: There is … your high bridge in Pasadena from which every once in a while someone jumps off, committing suicide. There is no question of removing the bridge. Poems have been written by well-known authors that are supposed to have driven love-sick young people to suicide. These works are not banned. Thousands lose their lives in automobile accidents, yet nothing is done to restrain manufacturers from building lethal instruments that can do more than 30 miles an hour. To me, a painter, if not the most useful, is the least harmful member of our society. An unskilled cook or doctor can put our lives in danger. l have tried … to paint a picture that would, like the beautiful head of Medusa, turn the spectator to stone … so that certain ones who looked at it would drop dead … but l have not yet succeeded!
“Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.”
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde.
"Liberty of the Press," Dictionnaire philosophique (1785-1789)
Citas
“Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.”
D 5
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook D (1773-1775)
“It does not undo harm to acknowledge that we have done it; but it undoes us not to acknowledge it.”
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified
