“Existence would be a quite impracticable enterprise if we stopped granting importance to what has none.”
The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
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Emil M. Cioran 531
Romanian philosopher and essayist 1911–1995Related quotes

The Other World (1657)
Context: You imagine that what you can't understand is either spiritual or does not exist. The conclusion is quite wrong; rather there are obviously a million things in the universe that we would need a million quite different organs to understand. For example, I perceive by my senses what makes a magnet point north, what makes tides rise and fall, and what becomes of an animal after death. Your people are not proportioned to perceive such miracles, just as someone blind from birth cannot imagine the beauty of a landscape, the colors of a painting or the shadings of an iris. He will imagine them as something palpable, edible, audible or olfactory. Likewise, if I were to explain to you what I perceive by the senses you do not have, you would interpret it as something that could be heard, seen, touched, smelled or tasted; but it is not like that.

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 3, hadith number 443
Sunni Hadith


“Unblemish'd let me live, or die unknown;
O grant an honest fame, or grant me none!”
Closing line.
The Temple of Fame (1711)