“A beautifully constructed borsch, such as you are going to experience presently, ought not only to banish conversation but almost to annihilate thought.”

—  Saki, book Beasts and Super-Beasts

"The Blind Spot"
Beasts and Super-Beasts (1914)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A beautifully constructed borsch, such as you are going to experience presently, ought not only to banish conversation …" by Saki?
Saki photo
Saki58
British writer 1870–1916

Related quotes

“The American Revolution was ignited by the slogan ‘no taxation without representation’, a slogan suggested by democratic ideals… Ought not the present day version of the old slogan be ‘No annihilation without representation?”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

1960s, "The Study of Conflict," 1968

Tom Robbins photo

“Watts published a luminous book entitled The Wisdom of Insecurity that ought to be required reading for every high school senior. Watts elaborates beautifully on what I've learned from observation and personal experience: namely, that security is an illusion.”

Tom Robbins (1932) American writer

The Syntax of Sorcery (2012)

Daniel Dennett photo

“Experience teaches…that there is no such thing as a thought experiment so clearly presented that no philosopher can misinterpret it…”

Daniel Dennett book Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995)

Michael Crichton photo

“In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought.”

Michael Crichton book Jurassic Park

Source: Jurassic Park

Susan Sontag photo

“Literature offers not only myths but counter-myths, just as life offers counter-experiences — experiences that confound what you thought you thought, or felt, or believed.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)
Context: Literature is dialogue; responsiveness. Literature might be described as the history of human responsiveness to what is alive and what is moribund as cultures evolve and interact with one another.
Writers can do something to combat these clichés of our separateness, our difference — for writers are makers, not just transmitters, of myths. Literature offers not only myths but counter-myths, just as life offers counter-experiences — experiences that confound what you thought you thought, or felt, or believed.

“Talking with you is sort of the conversational equivalent of an out of body experience.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Yukon Ho!

“You can only experience the new when you are aware, when you are without thought.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)
Context: When the robot mind is mastered, undisciplined thinking ceases and is replaced by awareness. Awareness can know love. You can only experience the new when you are aware, when you are without thought.

Hazrat Inayat Khan photo

“There can be no rebirth without a dark night of the soul, a total annihilation of all that you believed in and thought that you were.”

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) Indian Sufi

Source: Thinking Like The Universe: The Sufi Path Of Awakening

Related topics